10 TV Fan Favourites Who Suffered Shockingly Brutal Deaths

4. Brian - Family Guy

Even if you've strayed away from Family Guy over the years, (and honestly, who could blame you? It's taken a nosedive in quality since its first few seasons) you probably still have a soft spot in your heart for Brian. So it was beyond shocking to watch the Griffin's beloved family dog meet his maker. Now, Family Guy is a cartoon, and we've seen Brian and many of the other characters on the show survive situations that would have destroyed any normal human being. I think a lot of us were expecting him to get right back up, like Rambo, with just a few cuts and bruises. It was doubly painful when the realization hit: Holy cr*p, he's actually dead. They actually killed Brian. Like, for real. He gets mowed down by a car and does not get up again. As one might expect, fan backlash was swift and unforgiving. And it comes to no surprise that Family Guy recently brought him back through the use of Stewie's reset button/time machine, which takes away a lot of the emotional power of his death. But for a brief few weeks, we were stunned that Family Guy actually had the balls to kill off one of their most popular characters, and I think it hit us all a little bit harder than we were expecting.