12 Shocking TV Deaths You Never Saw Coming

The fifth season of Mad Men is a string of abject failures for Lane Pryce, but nobody realised how low he'd sunk until it was too late.

This culminates in him forging Don Draper's signature and ripping off his company to pay his debts. Once he's rumbled, it seems there's nothing left for Lane than to slink off back to Britain with his tail between his legs.

But, tragically, that was too much for him to bear and he chose suicide instead, attempting to gas himself in the Jaguar his wife bought with money they don't have.

There's hope when the car won't start. Maybe a moment of clarity will follow and he'll find help instead of trying to end his life again, but all is lost when that harrowing image of a lifeless Lane suspended from his neck is revealed in the next scene.

Mad Men had written characters out by firing them from the agency before this point, but it was gut-wrenching to see the show go one further with Jared Harris's Pryce.