Unexpected Bloopers During Death Scenes

Why do so many movies and shows have an outtakes or blooper reel? It's because bloopers are the result of contents under pressure breaking free. It's a lot of pressure for actors to film a movie or television show—they've got a huge crew and a multi-million-dollar production riding on their backs. 

For some, that's just too much to take and when it comes time to deliver their lines, they crack up laughing. And some scenes are even harder to shoot because they have to be serious, important, sad, and meaningful—like a death scene for example. Talk about too much pressure with nowhere to go. Here are some actors who couldn't get through an ultra-serious death scene with their serious face intact. Obviously, as is the nature of death scenes, spoilers ahead.

Sally Menke was an Academy Award-nominated film editor who worked on nearly all of Quentin Tarantino's films, from Reservoir Dogs up through Inglourious Basterds until she passed away in 2010. While working with Menke, actors and crew members on Tarantino films would leave friendly messages for her while shooting—which she'd discover months later in the editing bay. 

In Inglourious Basterds, German actor Til Schweiger played a German solider named Hugo Stiglitz. He capped his death scene by briefly resurrecting to deliver a boisterous communique to Menke: "Sally, I am not dead. I'm just pretending!"

Some things just plain tickle and you'd have to be an unfeeling monster not to react with a torrent of giggles. For example: feathers, fingers, and apparently, a prop knife repeatedly stabbing you in the stomach. On the set of the 2007 Rob Zombie-directed remake of Halloween, the fearsome Michael Myers keeps jamming a knife into actor Ken Foree. Rather than scream and flail and plead for his life, Foree giggles like he's watching a blooper reel.

Mel Brooks virtually created the movie parody genre, making full-length parodies of entire film genres like Blazing Saddles (westerns), Spaceballs (space operas), and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (vampire movies). In one scene, vampire hunters Harker (Steven Weber) and Professor Van Helsing (Brooks) need to stake a vampire named Lucy. Harker does so...and gets sprayed with a comically huge tidal wave of blood. The take used in the film shows Weber cracking a smile and almost breaking character, genuinely surprised with either the amount of blood, or just the ridiculousness of the situation.

The good guys aren't supposed to die in comic book movies—that's what the bad guys are supposed to. That's part of the reason why The Avengers was such a game-changer: consummate civilian hero and S.H.I.E.L.D. director Phil Coulson bites it hard at the hand of Loki in the first Marvel team-up flick. His S.H.I.E.L.D. associate Maria Hill just can't deal with that new reality, or least actress Cobie Smulders can't. In this blooper, her on-the-job training from the sitcom How I Met Your Mother serves her well as she hams it up, soap opera style, after the big death.

As grizzled old Quint in Jaws, Robert Shaw got to have a spectacular, gruesome, and memorable death. Cast and crew probably had no idea the scene would go down in the annals of movie history, because to Shaw (and from the sounds of it, everyone else on set of the shark movie), it was downright hilarious, what with the blood-curdling screams, and large amounts of fake blood all over Shaw's face and throat.

Making movies is tough work—a shooting day can regularly last more than 14 hours as crews prepare sets, lighting, props, and practical effects rigs. That means a lot of sitting around and waiting for the actors—which can be quite tedious and boring. To whit: Michael Rooker was filming a scene as Yondu in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and it must have been a long day because he fell asleep while lying there—and he's supposed to be dead. His snoring drowns out costar Chris Pratt's emotional eulogy.

Eoin Macken portrayed Sir Gwaine, a knight of light heart and true bravery, on the long-running British series Merlin based on the King Arthur legends. The evil Morgana (Katie McGrath) tortures him almost to death, as Morgana is wont to do, and the once mighty Gwaine dies in the arms of his friend, fellow knight Percival (Tom Hopper), all while sadly lamenting his failure to stop the bad guys. Hopper lightens the mood considerably by giving his "dying" costar a cute little peck on the cheek; Macken instantly cracks up.

Death is central to Seth Rogen and James Franco's controversial 2014 comedy The Interview—the duo play an American talk show producer and host, respectively, sent to North Korea on a mission to kill the nation's leader, Kim Jong Un. There's going to be some violence along the way, such as a hand-to-hand fight to the death in a control room between Rogen's character and a North Korean man. They just can't quite get around to fully dispatching one another without descending into hysterics.

Everything is fine now, thanks to the magic of a helpful sorceress, but when Jon Snow died on Game of Thrones, it was one of the most shocking moments ever on the HBO fantasy series. Season 5 ended with the stark, haunting image of Jon Snow lying dead on the ground, his eyes lifeless while dark blood flowed out of his body and pooled underneath him. Evidently, actor Kit Harington wanted viewers to know that everything was going to be okay in the end—in this outtake from his own death scene, he gives the camera a charming wink.