9 of the most shocking offscreen TV and film deaths of all time

Loyal viewers knew the end was in sight for Logan Roy's (Brian Cox) reign over Waystar Royco — the show is called "Succession," after all — but that didn't mollify them after the mogul met an unceremonious end in the show's third episode of the fourth and final season. 

Having the family patriarch die offscreen aboard a plane was a very deliberate move on the part of "Succession" creator Jesse Armstrong.

"He always had it in his head that it was happening offscreen because big events don't happen in a perfect way," director Myles Mylod said of Armstrong during an episode of "HBO's Succession Podcast." "They sometimes happen in a humdrum way."

"This idea of taking away all the kind of television cliches of the kind of perfect TV death, I thought was really brilliant," he continued. "I love the idea of it. Have the audience be hijacked in exactly the same way that the siblings are when they receive the news. We're immediately parachuted into their emotional experience."

While tracking down a serial killer (Kevin Spacey) who styles his crimes around the seven deadly sins — pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth — retiring detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and his rookie partner Mills (Brad Pitt) find themselves up against a formidable force who outsmarts them at every turn. 

The film's big twist comes in the finale, when the killer murders Mills' wife Tracie (Gwyneth Paltrow), severs her head, and places it in a box. Once Mills stumbles upon the box and realizes what's inside it, he shoots the killer to death. 

Rosie Beltzer (Scarlett Johanssen), a member of the German resistance to the Nazis, does her part by hiding a Jewish teenager named Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) and spreading anti-Nazi messages around town. But when the Gestapo learn of Rosie's activities, they execute her in the public square. 

In film's most shocking scene, her son Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) finds her hanging from the gallows. 

When Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis del Mar (Heath Ledger) are hired to herd sheep on Brokeback Mountain during the summer of 1963, the two form a special romantic bond that's difficult for them to break in the years that follow. 

When Ennis sends a postcard to Jack, and the postcard comes back with the word "deceased" stamped across it, he calls Jack's wife Lureen (Anne Hathaway). She breaks the news to him that Jack died, telling him he drowned in his own blood after a car tire exploded in his face. Ennis, however, imagines Jack died another way, from a brutal gay bashing with a tire iron. 

One of the most poignant deaths in cinematic history belongs to a character that never speaks and has no name.

During a scene "Schindler's List" in the Krakow ghetto, the girl in the red coat appears against the film's black-and-white backdrop. Although the girl is never seen again, the film's protagonist, Oscar Schindler (Liam Neeson) sees her coat on a cart full of dead bodies — one of nearly 6 million European Jews executed during World War II. 

When three filmmakers — Heather Donahue (Heather Donahue), Mike Williams (Michael C. Williams), and Josh Leonard (Joshua Leonard) — set out to produce a documentary about the Blair Witch, they find more than they bargain for in Burkittsville, Maryland. The Blair Witch is not only real, they realize, but lethal. 

In the film's riveting finale, Heather finds Mike standing in the dark corner of a basement facing the wall. When she calls out to him, an unseen force kills Heather, causing her to drop the camera, before the movie fades to black. 

When Guido (Roberto Benigni), a Jewish waiter, and his son Giosué (Giorgio Cantarini) are taken to a Nazi concentration camp, Guido does everything he can to shield Giosué from the horrors of their new reality by convincing the boy that their time in camp is actually a game.

The charade eventually comes to an end when a Nazi soldier walks Guido off to an alley and executes him. 

When Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles upon a satchel filled with cash from a drug deal gone wrong, he takes the loot with him, with Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) and Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) hot on his trail. 

But the Mexican cartel get to Moss first, eventually finding and killing him at the Desert Sands  Motor Hotel in El Paso, Texas, leaving Moss's body splayed across the carpet in a hotel room for Bell to find. 

After barely escaping with their lives in "Aliens," Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn), and Newt (Carrie Henn) enter cryostasis for their journey back to Earth. 

At the start of "Alien 3," Ripley has a rude awakening when she realizes Hicks and Newt died in their sleep, leaving her alone to face the dangers that lie ahead in the film.