This Collider feature by Christine Persaud looks at 10 network television characters who were written out of their shows not for storyline reasons but because of behind-the-scenes conflicts involving the actors who played them. It highlights how writers often had to hastily adjust scripts to explain a sudden departure, sometimes resorting to outlandish or abrupt deaths, and argues that the way these exits were handled could be genuinely shocking given how central some of the characters were.

Among the examples detailed, Charlie Sheen's Charlie Harper was axed from Two and a Half Men after a public feud with showrunner Chuck Lorre, killed off via a Paris train and later a falling grand piano, capped by Lorre's on-screen "Winning!" jab. Chevy Chase's Pierce Hawthorne vanished from Community following an alleged on-set racial slur, later dying of dehydration in his lab while a $14 million inheritance passed to Donald Glover's Troy Barnes. Shannen Doherty's Prue Halliwell was killed in the Charmed Season 3 finale amid reported tensions with co-star Alyssa Milano, with Rose McGowan's Paige Matthews introduced as a long-lost half-sister to preserve the trio.