8 Most Pointless Deaths In Game Of Thrones

The Many Faced God is cruel and indiscriminate but there are times when he's just greedy.

With shock deaths, off camera deaths, mass deaths and many more, Game Of Thrones is utterly saturated with corpses. And simply by the law of averages a story this wide and sprawling will kill a few errant characters that maybe could have gone without being killed.

Obviously, needless death sometimes has its own purpose - this is after all a cruel world where death is dealt with almost casually. It's a fact of life. But even then from time to time after we've stopped hiding our eyes at the horror we're left scratching our heads. 

We can be a little precious when it comes to our favourite characters but when drama is added solely for shock value, it can just seem odd at best and an utter betrayal at worst. Sometimes characters are offed just to get them out of the way, which might serve a purpose, but to fans will never feel anything but needless.

These are the worst examples of pointless deaths that either shocked for shock's sake, veered away from conventions of the show or feel like they were a little too blatantly assassinated by Martin or the show runners. 

Season four kicked off with promises of revenge and reprisals and the most intriguing new character was Prince Oberyn. Finally that tragic tale of Elya Martell and her children was threatening to come full circle on the Lannisters. Finally we would receive some small portion of justice for some of the brutality in Westeros. 

What we got instead was a long, elaborate fake out by Martin and the show runners.

This doorway into Dorne was an interesting prospect on the small council and a huge threat for not only House Lannister but for enemies of Westeros. And given that he belonged to the only house that successfully resisted the Targaryens and their dragons, Oberyn made Daenerys' impending occupation all the more intriguing.

Volunteering to be Tyrion's champion was also exciting, like everything the Red Viper did. When we were treated to that fighting clinic he put on against the Mountain we were happy about Tyrion's direction and Oberyn's future arc. And then, out of nowhere he was abruptly and gruesomely popped like an over-ripe tomato.

This was shock for the sake of shock, and rather cruelly it felt like it was being set up as a book swerve. No such luck.

And to top it off, in the wake of his death, the connection would still be as volatile with Dorne and Tyrion would be free to sail away, after interrupting his father on the toilet. Pointless.