The Most Bizarre Sitcom Deaths Explained

Handily among the dominant genres of American entertainment since the mid-20th century, situation comedies have carved out a permanent presence in popular culture. In a general sense, sitcoms provide lighthearted, low-stakes escapism for folks who just want to shut their brains off and laugh after a long day. When serious issues arise on a sitcom, they're usually dealt with swiftly and entirely within the confines of "very special" episodes. Most of the time, nobody dies, because people don't turn on sitcoms to get bummed out. That's what makes death on sitcoms something of a departure from the norm, and therefore, worth examination.  

To be clear, we're not talking about instances in which an actor who plays a character passes away. You'll note we didn't include Bill McNeal from NewsRadio on this list of bizarre sitcom deaths, because that wasn't a sitcom death: That was the real-life death of Phil Hartman. The fact that Hartman's character couldn't appear on new episodes of television any longer is merely incidental. We're talking about the deaths of characters and characters alone, which can be extremely, enormously, and inordinately weird.

Death in real life is almost always sad — but that's not necessarily the case for imaginary deaths on sitcoms. Within those bounds, imaginary death can be strange, hilarious, and downright bizarre. These are the strangest sitcom deaths around.

When Roseanne returned to ABC in 2018, it looked like Roseanne Barr was back on her way to the heights of success she experienced during the show's initial run from 1988 to 1997. Then she got intensely racist on Twitter, and that was the end of that.

But The Conners — A Roseanne-less revival — certainly made the best of the star's embarrassing departure. On the new show's premiere, "Keep on Truckin'," which aired later that same year, Roseanne's family learns she succumbed to a secret opioid addiction. This leaves the recently-widowed Dan Conner (John Goodman) to cope with an additional pile of regret, on top of his already soul-crushing circumstances. 

The creative minds behind The Conners managed to shift a public scandal into a pretext for addressing the opioid epidemic that continues to plague America. That's not just impressive — it's astounding. Turns out, Roseanne Barr wasn't as essential to Roseanne as the title implies.     

Technically, it's only 30+ seasons deep, but The Simpsons feels like it's been on TV since the literal beginning of time. As a consequence, either due to the real-life passing of a voice actor or narrative necessity, the writers have had to remove a not-insignificant number of characters from Springfield's sprawling cast: Edna Krabappel, Rabbi Hyman Krustofsky, Mona Simpson, and Frank "Grimey" Grimes, to name a few examples. But the first major death on The Simpsons — and, therefore, one of the most famous deaths in television history — is Maude Flanders' in "Alone Again, Natura-Diddily." When the Flanders visit the race track for a family outing, Maude gets hit by a flurry of free merch from a t-shirt cannon barrage and falls off the bleachers to her doom.       

"Alone Again, Natura-Diddily" doesn't play Maude's death like an especially serious matter, partially because actor Maggie Roswell was still alive and well. The plot of the episode, apparently, came about because Roswell asked for a raise to cover her travel expenses.  According to Payscale.com, Fox was paying Roswell, the voice of multiple characters, a maximum of $2,000 per episode in 1999. We don't have the exact numbers available, but we can guess that the advertising revenue from a single commercial break during an episode of The Simpsons generated far, far more than $2,000 at the time. Roswell has since renegotiated her contract and returned to the show. 

Netflix's BoJack Horseman has a way of making us depressed, curing that depression with hilarious gags, then bringing that depression raging back with a vengeance. Now, the death of ex-child star Sarah Lynn in "That's Too Much, Man!" looks like a predictable Hollywood cliché on its surface. But for those of us who still aren't totally accustomed to emotional earnestness in animated talking animal shows, Sarah Lynn's demise packs a wallop.

Of course, series creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg might remind us that the show drops plenty of hints of what fate has in store for the "Prickly Muffin" singer. "In her very first episode, her kiss-off to BoJack is like, 'There's no hope for me! I'm going to surround myself with enablers until I die tragically young!'" Bob-Waksberg mentioned in a 2016 interview with Vox. "We never tried to hide the ball on that." He continued, "Even three episodes earlier where she goes, 'I'm clean and sober!' I think savvy TV-watchers are going to go, 'Okay...'"

Yeah, well, maybe we just wanted to believe Sarah Lynn would make it, Bob-Waksberg! Is it so wrong to have hope?! While Sarah Lynn no longer resides in the realm of the living following "That's Too Much, Man!," Kristen Schaal returned to the role in flashbacks and dream sequences, most notably the series' brutal penultimate episode, "The View From Halfway Down."     

Always Sunny gets a lot of attention for its nihilism, but it's also clever enough to completely switch premises and aesthetics, then effortlessly change back to the status quo of jerks who work at a crummy bar. The modern dance sequence in "Mac Finds His Pride" probably stands as the best example of Always Sunny's genre-elasticity, but let's not forget that one time Always Sunny turned into a true crime show.

During the production of season 12, Glenn Howerton didn't know for sure how much more Always Sunny he had in him (turns out it was a lot). So if the show seems like it's tying up Dennis' lingering storylines that year, we have an idea why that could be the case. "Making Dennis Reynolds a Murderer" consists of documentary-style footage and editing focused on the suspicious death of Dennis' former wife, Maureen "Bastet" Ponderosa (Catherine Reitman). At first, it looks like we'll never know for sure if she truly did fall off a building by accident, or if Dennis ruthlessly murdered her to avoid paying alimony. But later, it's revealed that Maureen really did fall off a building all on her own, making this an unusual instance of an Always Sunny character being accused of a crime that they did not, in fact, commit.

Creator Dan Harmon and star Chevy Chase did not become best friends on the set of Community, although Chase's unhinged voicemails to Harmon certainly made for celebrity gossip column gold. It could be that Harmon – hardly a perfect picture of stability during his time running the NBC cult sensation – was not the right person to manage Chase's aging movie star ego. It could be that the two were never going to get along. All we know is that things got ugly.

Pierce Hawthorne exited Greendale Community College on much friendlier terms than his actor. In "Geothermal Escapism," it turns out that the recently deceased Pierce bequeathed Troy (Donald Glover) 14 million dollars, on the condition that Troy sail around the world on the appropriately-named ship, Childish Tycoon. Pierce also left inspiring messages for each individual member of the study group. 

Despite all the behind-the-scenes upheaval, Pierce's death leans into the warmth and emphasis on, well, community, that's helps define Community. Incidentally, "Geothermal Escapism" also reveals that Pierce dies from dehydration during the process of filling multiple canisters with his own sperm. Can't get too sappy on a Dan Harmon show, naturally.

The head of Ed Truck (Ken Howard), who mentored Michael Scott on his way up the Dunder Mifflin ladder, is ripped clean off his body during a drunk driving incident, as described in The Office's "Grief Counseling." Michael takes the news poorly, leaving it up to Dwight Schrute to remain stoic and composed, in order to keep administrative affairs at the Scranton branch running smoothly.

In the same episode, Dwight describes absorbing his own twin brother while the two of them developed in utero. Indeed, this whole episode is loaded with exciting, graphic, and outright disturbing incidents that take place in locations the audience never sees. What we do see is stuff like Jim charming Karen at the Stamford branch by chasing down an order of her favorite brand of potato chips. The Office loves to purposefully contrast the characters' mundane realities with over-the-top imagery, and this is one of the best examples of that approach.

The Simpsons and South Park tend to soak up most of the discourse related to adult animated sitcoms that have remained in production for remarkable durations of time. But did you know Family Guy is still on the air? It's true! Seth MacFarlane's flagship 'toon is slated to remain on TV until at least 2023, making it easily one of the most lucrative and long-running programs Fox ever canceled. 

Since its premiere in 1999, Family Guy has hardly demonstrated restraint when it comes to slaughtering its characters: Mr. Weed, Loretta Brown, Thelma Griffin, Brian's wife Jess, and a few others are all ghosts haunting the suburb of Quahog, Rhode Island. MacFarlane and company even went so far as to mow down beloved domestic pet Brian Griffin, voiced by MacFarlane, in 2013. Naturally, Stewie time-travels him back to life, but for a solid three episodes, fans thought Brian had crossed the rainbow bridge once and for all. 

Some of those fans lost their friggin' minds, but MacFarlane welcomed their insanity. "We were all very surprised — in a good way — that people still cared [enough] about that character to be that angry," he said in a 2013 Hollywood Reporter interview. "We thought it would maybe create a little bit of a stir, but the rage was not something we counted on."

You may have noticed this list includes a handful of characters who die offscreen, thus sparring the audience any explicit visual details related to their demises. Not so for Chef, who is a major part of South Park's supporting cast until he falls off a cliff, gets impaled on a sharp stick, and is torn apart by wild animals in the ironically-titled "The Return of Chef."

At the time, the public was led to believe Chef's fate was sealed because actor and iconic soul singer Isaac Hayes quit South Park in light of an episode that brutally mocked Scientology. Hayes, a Scientologist, passed away in 2008, about two years after the end of his tenure on South Park. Since then, the early narrative surrounding Hayes' departure from South Park has been credibly disputed.  

"Isaac Hayes did not quit South Park; someone quit South Park for him," Isaac Hayes III, his son and overseer of his estate, told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016. "What happened was that in January 2006 my dad had a stroke and lost the ability to speak. He really didn't have that much comprehension ... At the time, everybody around my father was involved in Scientology — his assistants, the core group of people ... My father was not that big of a hypocrite to be part of a show that would constantly poke fun at African-American people, Jewish people, gay people — and only quit when it comes to Scientology. He wouldn't be that hypocritical."

Judging by the fact that streaming platforms are willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to carry the thing, we can surmise that a whole heap of folks still rely on the buzz of nostalgic coziness Friends provides. We say this without judgment: Its world is one in which twentysomethings working service industry jobs can afford New York City apartments as spacious as medium-size houses, after all.

But did you know your '90s cutie-pies Chandler, Monica, Ross, Rachel, Joey, and Phoebe might be guilty of manslaughter, or possibly second- or -third-degree murder? In "The One Where Mr. Heckles Dies," the friends harass an old man who lives in the apartment underneath them by stomping on their floor/his ceiling, until the strain of repeatedly whacking his ceiling with a broom leads to his collapse. Naturally, the friends face no consequences for their crime. 

Larry Hankin, the actor who played Mr. Heckles, brought some highly-relevant experience to the table: He also portrayed an actor pretending to be Kramer, another wacky neighbor, in Seinfeld's fourth season. Speaking to The AV Club in 2019, Hankin revealed that the Friends writers killed Heckles essentially because one of the male friends was going to need an apartment, and the show had already spent time and money putting together the set for Heckles' place.

Even the other characters on 30 Rock are surprised to find out General Electric CEO Don Geiss has died off screen, weeks before they find out about it. Of course, it's all part of an elaborate cover-up designed to facilitate Kabletown, the show's fictionalized version of Comcast, buying up the show's fictionalized version of NBC. In an astounding and darkly humorous coincidence, the same thing happened in the real world. The truth might usually be stranger than fiction, but in this case, the two aligned perfectly in the most bizarre possible way.

We cannot determine whether 30 Rock removed Don Geiss because the writers thought it was the best strategy to carry the show forward, or because actor Rip Torn's penchant for alcohol-related mayhem was causing some form of problem behind the scenes. Torn himself died several years later in 2019 at the age of 88, due to Alzheimer's-related issues.