The OP wants deaths that were unintentional highlights, though. Ellis being killed was clearly meant to be a crowd pleaser.
My wife and I cheered and high-fived each other when Ana Lucia bit the dust in Lost. When Libby, who we both liked, also died in the same scene, we both said something on the lines of “oh well, casualties of war”.
The real crowd-pleaser would have been if someone had managed to take out Dwayne T. Robinson. 
Liked it in Gravity when George Clooney died, then came back, but was really dead.
Bad Movie Night this past Saturday, my friends and I watch Python, and were quite delighted when the titular snake decapitated the titular Jenny McCarthy.
When The Blob killed the bratty little kid in the 1988 version.
The pompous scientist guy’s accidental death in World War Z (you know, the guy going on about “Mother Nature’s a bitch!”).
If they meant him to be annoying, boy did they nail it.
I had a similar reaction a few seasons later, when that mercenary chick got blown up in a dynamite accident. Same problem as Ana Lucia: she was such a bitch that it was impossible to like her.
The *Boogie Nights *commentary track had a thing about this. When Bill Macy guns down Nina Hartley, the test screening audience was practically cheering. The director said he was aghast at this reaction and felt that he’d made a bad mistake in how the scene was shot. Then Macy ate the gun and it shut the audience up fast. The director said that that was the reaction he was going for and it made the scene completely satisfying for him.
He’d probably be unhappy with my roomate who cheered and laughed hardest at that last part.
I didn’t get pompous or annoying from him at all. Though his death was a highlight in the sense that it was so pointless and unexpected that it was a nice aspect of an otherwise sort of formulaic movie. But, more because they had built him up to be this singular savior, not because he was a bad person.
I’m not saying bad person, but he went through that speech that had no real informational content, while holding a smug look through the whole thing.
Really I thought people would say my example fails the terms of the OP, as he was obviously meant to be an annoying character to kill off (personally, I’m not sure).
Ah, found it:
Mother Nature is a Serial Killer. No one’s better,more creative, but, like all Serial Killers she can’t help the urge to want to get caught. And what good are all those brilliant crimes, if no one takes the credit? So she leave crumbs. Now the hard part, why you spend a decade in school, is seeing the crumbs for the clues they are. Sometimes the things you thought were the most brutal aspect of the virus, turns out the be the chink in it’s armour… and she loves disguising her weaknesses as strengths…she’s a bitch!
How can you say there’s no informational content? All the principles he states are what Brad Pitt uses to slowly solve the question of the virus origin! And I didn’t see it as smug at all–just someone who really likes his work getting to use his (obvious) expertise.
Should’ve kept that gun holstered, though. :dubious:
No. Brad makes a fresh observation about the virus and pretty much immediately knows how to use that observation. There was no period in the film where anyone listed known strengths of the virus and tried to think about how to turn them against it.
So his words weren’t useful, but was he at least right that it was a strength turned into a weakness? Well, that depends. Would someone with a terminal illness still die if they get infected? Bear in mind the infected can apparently go without eating or drinking indefinitely. They also don’t need to excrete waste.
Expertise in flowery poetry, yes.
But I would have expected the UN would choose someone with microbiology, pathology or epidemiology chops.
When the main character in *The Thin Red Line * was finally killed off. The audience in the theater I was in cheered. Mainly because they thought the film would soon be over, poor bastards. I think it went for another 45 minutes. 
My deepest cinematic regret is that Katie Holmes didn’t reprise her role as Rachel in The Dark Knight…
The recast character getting blown up was, thus, only about one half to two-thirds as satisfying as it could have been, alas.
As much shit as I like to give Buffy (the character), I found Kendra far worse and was kind of happy when Dru killed her. Especially when we got my bff Faith out of the deal.