10 TV Characters Who Went Through Hell To Win (And Died Anyway)

You hate to see it? A character we've grown to love fights through no end of torture, losing friends, minds and sometimes even limbs to finally claim bitter victory, only to end up offed, often off-screen, to no fanfare an episode later

And we really mean it when we say you hate to see it, to the extent that a lot of viewers never make it to the end of acclaimed shows such as Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad because of sheer frustration with the constant stream of near-misses and brutal deaths which rain down on the ostensible hero

These are the characters whose stories we followed, desperate for a little light at the end of the tunnel

only to find that after their eventual success, their only thanks was an ignoble death thrown in for sheer shock value

So I'm Ellie with WhatCulture, here with TV characters who went through hell to win and died anyway

Mike in Breaking Bad Okay, so including Breaking Bad on this list is a move so obvious it feels like cheating

The show made a twisted point of ensuring viewers were invested in characters both heroic and villainous

only to off them in underwhelming circumstances every other week, as if attempting to prove that subversions can be as frustrating as they are sometimes fun

However, no character got it in the neck figuratively or literally as badly as Mike in Breaking Bad

After three seasons of fraught collaboration with Jesse and Walt, it seemed as if Mike would finally be able to sell his shares in the pair's meth production operation

give the proceeds to his granddaughter, and escape the whole mess unscathed

Until Walt intercepted said cash and pulled a gun on Mike, threatening to off him unless he named his in-prison associates so Walt could tie up loose ends

Of course, this being Breaking Bad, it was only after firing that Walt remembered he could have just quizzed their mutual acquaintance

leaving Mike to plead that the murderous sad sack leave him to die in peace

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I'd make that deal. Damn good deal. Rickon in Game of Thrones

Ah, Rickon. Everyone's least favourite Stark may be the best example in the entire Game of Thrones universe of a truly pointless death

And for a show as long-running and unforgiving as the HBO mega-hit, that's quite an achievement

At various points in the show's first six seasons, Rickon graduated from oblivious kid to inept but caring protector of his older brother Bran

and then he spends an entire two seasons attempting to reach the Umbers, a house who are theoretically loyal to his late father

He lays low for a while, remaining unseen for quite some time, before reappearing in the penultimate episode of season six

It appears the long journey to the Umbers was all for naught, as it merely drove Rickon into the hands of Ramsay Bolton, the show's worst psycho

Ramsay drags the youngest Stark out onto the battlefield for an explosive start to the long

awaited Battle of the s and sends an arrow straight through the poor blighter a few seconds before he would have reached his older half Jon Snow Unlike Jon his kid brother doesn

warrant a resurrection, and so his long journey ends with a PSA teaching all of us the importance

of zigzagging when avoiding projectiles. Bill in True Blood True Blood was the R-rated HBO response to mega-franchise Twilight, which reveled in

both explicit sex and gruesome gore, but at its core was a romantic love story as sweet

as anything from the tweenage phenomenon. When the series debuted in 2008, we were introduced

to smooth-talking, good-hearted vampire Bill Compton, and also his love interest, the telepathic

fairy Miss Stackhouse. With an intense chemistry between its leads, surely the show would end with

the pair together despite the endless obstacles, human, vampire, demon, fairy and otherwise

which came between them, right? Sure. Or Bill could end up becoming the vampire king

his greatest ambition, and still eventually become infected by an awkward AIDS metaphor

prompting his eventual suicide. Yeah, this was a weird show. Carl in The Walking Dead

Famously optimistic and cheery, The Walking Dead is not. But the critically beloved first season

did manage to tread carefully and maintain the balance between thrills and the grim

realistic, nihilistic streak of the source material. Later seasons? Less so, if the declining

viewership and rapidly increasing gore quotient are anything to go by. Come season two, and the show became an increasingly sluggish affair, bleaker with each passing season, and seemingly committed to offing anyone remotely likable

The low point for many viewers was the ultra-violent death of Glenn in the opening episode of season seven at the hands of Negan

a shocking spectacle which pushed the boundaries of television violence as well as the patience of viewers

But the character who made this list is young Carl, the son of and sole source of moral redemption for protagonist Rick Grimes

After moving over the years from a cute but burdensome kid to a remorseless survivalist to a likeable and relatively well-adjusted young hero

Carl is killed off via walkerbite and subsequent suicide in the eighth season of the show

proving that the show's central thesis is that there's really no point in trying, is there

Cooper in Black Mirror We're getting into the anthology episodes now because while these may be one-off stories

the characters they feature have gone through enough misery for multiple lifetimes

The poor denizens of the Twilight Zone, and in particular The Outer Limits, are infamous for suffering ironic fates that are often far worse than whatever misdemeanor prompted the misadventure that led to them, and many were doomed to cruel hell just for the sheer fun of it

The contemporary sci-fi satire Black Mirror, penned by Charlie Brooker, may be sharper in its condemnation of society and culture than The Outer Limits, but it sure didn't blunt the edge of the show's mean sense of humour

Just look at Playtest, wherein a happy-go-lucky slacker gets more than he bargained for

when he agrees to test out an experimental virtual reality game for a shadowy, uber-rich developer

What follows is a nightmarish odyssey which delves deep into his subconscious as his worst memories and fears come to life in the form of disformed spider monsters a creaky haunted house and a murderous version of a former lover

The episode culminates in his scraped-by survival and ends with him reunited with his ailing mother

Sike! He actually died before the test even began. Forgot to turn his phone off, didn't he

If you look closely, there's a very subtle anti-text subtext there. Marty in Tales from the Crypt

Another entry and another appearance from the venerable institution of endless character suffering

the anthology series. There really is no end to the torture writers can put the one-off stars of anthology episodes through

as the audience know they won't be appearing again and therefore can be offed as messily as the creators feel like

without sacrificing narrative momentum. To this end, an episode of Tales from the Crypt

sees a pair of brothers, both surgeons, playing a long-running set of pranks on one another

which get more than a little out of hand, to say the least. First off, there's the dumb med school prank which gives one brother, Carl, a heart attack

a reaction which you would think might discourage this family from further shenanigans

But alas, shenanigans continue unabated, and Carl retaliates years later by drugging his brother, Marty

and pretending to perform an entire autopsy on him whilst he's alive and awake, but paralyzed

It's a pretty savage prank by any metric, And no doubt Marty would have had some years of therapy ahead of him to undo the autopsy room 4 style ordeal he's been put through

Or at least he would have if he didn't promptly have a heart attack leading his brother to declare him dead and go through with the real autopsy

While poor Carl is still conscious and unable to move. Peter in Hemlock Grove

Poor Peter. Just like True Blood before it, Hemlock Grove made a point from its opening episodes to distinguish itself from the then-dwindling but once-massive Twilight franchise by showcasing an impressive amount of sex and gory, gory violence

This element was rarely better embodied than in Peter's pointless sacrifice, which made for impressive makeup effects and little else in storytelling terms

See, series protagonist Peter realises before his climactic face-off with Vargolf Christina

that he's going to have to do more than fight. As the man himself puts it, the price of this turn will be his human face

And it's a price he pays, with the Vargolf version of his murderous nemesis eating his face

after he was kind enough to coat it in bacon grease to coax her. Yes, really, that is something that happens in this show

And after having his face torn off, the heroic sacrifice pays off, right? Well, kind of

In as much as Christina is eventually defeated and Peter does revert to human form, face thankfully intact, but the manoeuvre still costs him his life and it isn't actually enough to stop Christina

Instead, she's off by Shelley, who in turn is shot by the sheriff, rendering Peter's not inconsiderable contribution of having his face mauled off pretty much irrelevant

Lieutenant Blake in MASH This may be the most famous or infamous moment on this list depending on your perspective and it one that still holds a place in the annals of television history where many of the entries on here fell victim to melodramatic plot machinations which aimed for tragedy but fell flat upon execution and others aimed for dark comedy in their pointless demises

MASH had another more poignant reason to kill off a character despite their heroic efforts

For all of its warmth, this show is ultimately an anti-war text, and one committed to highlighting

the pointless brutality and inhumanity of conflict. It's a metaphor rendered more pointed

by the fact that the show aired as the Vietnam War drew to a close, and this makes this death

all the more understandable, if no less devastating. After years of service, Lieutenant Blake is finally

granted an honourable discharge, prompting him to say his goodbyes to Hawkeye radar and the rest

of the camp as he excitedly calls his wife and family at home. So Blake heads off, free at last

until the episode's iconic closing line reveals that he died when his plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan

Misty Day in American Horror Story American Horror Story could quite easily have filled this list alone

given the fact that the horror anthology show has made a habit of offing every character, major and minor

fan-favorite and most-hated, before each season's closing credits roll. It's difficult to pick the most egregious case, but the one which drew the most ire from the internet will suffice

Misty Day was a deeply likeable character who was utterly tortured for no discernible reason

and the ignominious end of her character arc is inexcusable, particularly in a show where characters played by Emma Roberts frequently go on to survive

First off, Misty was burned alive for the crime of being a witch. Luckily, she was, as accused, a witch, and as such survived to tell the tale

but she's nonetheless isolated from the world, only to be buried alive and die of starvation when integrated into the titular coven

But she's resurrected and ends up in her own personal hell, dissecting a frog on an eternal loop because she can't pass some wizarding test or something

I don't know, it got a bit weird. Candice in You If ever there were a lesson in not relying on the power of sisterhood

Candice's brutal fate in You's second season has to qualify. The presumed dead ex-girlfriend of the show's psychotic protagonist

Candice is revealed to have been buried alive after a few cryptic references to her moving to Italy

once she cheated on former Gossip Girl and current Patrick Bateman wannabe, Joe

Unfortunately for him, Candace very much survived as more than just a figure haunting his troubled mind

and she's out for ambitious revenge against the psycho killer. Thus begins a season-long game of cat and mouse as Candace digs herself up

digs up the dirt necessary to prove Joe is the dangerous killer she knows him to be

integrates herself into his social circle over the course of some months, gets closer to the people he's close to

and finally has enough evidence to bring him to justice. Time to pull the trigger and end this guy, right

Right? Well, or, and hear me out here, why not bring his girlfriend down to the inescapable subterranean lair

you've got him trapped in and tell her everything? After all, she can't possibly be as crazy as him, right

Well, I guess some characters are best left buried, it would appear