10 TV Moments That Were Almost WAY Darker

Hannibal was easily one of TV’s most violent shows during its original run, giving the head crushing of Game of Thrones and baseball bat bashing of The Walking Dead a run for their money. Unlike those two examples, like its eponymous antagonist Hannibal revelled in setting up complex, multifaceted orchestras of extreme bodily harm, never settling for something as brutally simple as smashing a skull to shards.

Just look at the fate of Gideon, a troubled serial killer (played by alt-comedy icon Eddie Izzard, of all people) who evades Hannibal and Will Graham for almost two seasons. Gideon’s eventual fate is fairly gruesome—no one wants to have their limbs removed, after all.

But the character’s original demise took things to another, far gorier level, with a still-conscious Gideon’s internal organs tied to a string, which was itself tied to a ceiling fan so that once an unsuspecting individual hit the switch—well, you don’t need to be Rube Goldberg to work out where this is heading.

Luckily creator Bryan Fuller decided against filming the scene on the advisement of his network NBC, so we were spared this particularly dark—if a little bit slapstick—end for Gideon.