Celebrities killed on TV or movies

Cafe Society
1

I was watching the TBS show Wrecked and there is one episode with a cameo by NBA star Chris Bosh playing himself. In it Bosh kills himself accidentally with a cheap knock off samurai sword. Obviously Chris Bosh isn’t actually dead.

It occurred to me that I’ve seen similar things before but I can’t think of examples. The criteria are: famous person (any level of fame), must be playing themselves, and must die as thenselves in the episode or movie.

A movie like The Kingsmen doesn’t count. Although an Obama-like president dies in it he is not playing himself.

2

Rob Thomas on iZombie.

3

Not exactly what you had in mind but Stephen King wrote his own death into one of the “Dark Tower” books.

Also on the show “Supernatural” they did an episode where the heroes found themselves in an alternate reality (ours) and one of the actors was killed. (Not a regular viewer so I can’t cite names and dates. Maybe someone else can fill in the blanks.)

4

Bill Murray in Zombieland.

5

Yes I think it was Misha Collins.

Yes

6

Penn & Teller get killed in Penn & Teller Get Killed.

7

Each episode of the short-lived TV series Police Squad! featured a special guest star who was immediately killed during the opening credits: Lorne Greene, Georg Stanford Brown, Robert Goulet, William Shatner, Florence Henderson and William Conrad. There was also a scene filmed featuring John Belushi, which never aired due to Belushi’s death a few weeks later.

8

Spoilers!

9

I was going to mention Police Squad as an example of what I wasn’t looking for. They were parodying the old Quinn Martin tv shows that were always loaded with “special guest stars.” They never played themselves, always a character. The joke here isn’t that they were killing Lorne Greene it was that the special guest star dies in the opening credits never to be seen again. There was no implication they were playing themselves.

10

This is the End (2013) might well hold the record for celebrities, playing themselves, and dying on-camera.

11

And the producers wanted to include it in the series DVD but were unable to find it. It was presumed destroyed.

12

Dang, Tom Jones was one of the few survivors in “Mars Attacks!”

13

Likewise for Reggie Jackson surviving that attempt on Queen Elizabeth.

14

In the TV show Preacher, Tom Cruise and Harry Connick Jr. have bitten the dust so far. (Not to mention character actor Mark Harelik)

EDIT: Oops, I forgot the “must be playing themselves” criterion – only Mark Harelik qualifies, then.

15

So does Chris Bosch qualify for the Actors who died before the characters they playedthread?

16

If you have Amazon Prime, you might give The Grand Tour (Clarkson, Hammond, and May) a try. They have a bit on most episodes called Celebrity Brain Crash that is right up the alley.

17

Would Castle count? There’s The Mentalist, too.

18

I’ve seen it, but I don’t remember where or when. To the best of my recollection, Belushi was the victim of a Mob hit in a “cement overshoes” scenario. He was trying to talk his way out of it before he sank to the bottom of a swimming pool.

I believe Woodward mentions this in his biography of Belushi. It was a dangerous stunt, and I think Belushi came close to drowning for real.

19

I totally missed that he was playing himself.

20

Paul Rudd bites it, or rather the other way around, in “Neon Joe, Werewolf Hunter.”