8. Robert Baratheon
The death that started all the turmoil, you dont actually get to see the boar who put paid to the drunkest king in Westeros but his gradual decline into death has to be rated as shocking in terms of what it started. Remember, had Robert not been drunk while hunting possibly the worst place to be drunk, outside a car or knife-juggling class the whole shebang which was season two or three wouldnt have happened, and after being confronted with Neds evidence hed have probably had Cersei killed (probably not a bad thing) and Joffrey obliterated (definitely not a bad thing). But no, the walking disaster zone ruined everything, throwing the over-arching narrative its first proper curveball since a semi-naked Jaime Lannister threw a 10-year-old from a tower window. For non-book readers, it was a dramatic volte-face that nobody quite expected, the sort of kingdom-shattering event which throws all the existing pieces from the board in favour of something new and altogether more conniving. Remember that absolutely everything of worth stems from this death, turning a series which was formerly about intrigue and mystery into a full-blown war epic, and youll see why this death, even when the cause is unseen, ranks highly in just how shocking it was.