Actors, writers, producers, and other creators of Live-Action TV series who Died During Production.
- A few Brazilian soap operas had actors dying before their completion. The standout cases are ones where the death was not due to disease: Daniella Perez
was murdered by a castmate in 1992, and Domingos Montagner drowned in 2016. Both also had sad plot connections (Perez' assassin was her on-screen lover, while Montagner's character survived drowning in the very river the actor died in). Perez's death, halfway through the plot of a telenovela written by her mother Gloria, was more difficult to handle: Gloria took two weeks out (during which other authors wrote the victim and perpetrator out of the plot), once back added a subplot involving the legal system, and had to finish the soap opera two months before planned. Montagner's, close to the story's conclusion, only had any scenes he hadn't filmed yet rewritten from his character's point of view to imply Montagner's presence. - Game Show personnel:
- Bennett Cerf died in 1971 during the syndicated run of What's My Line?. Episodes featuring him on the panel aired after his passing, leading to confusion from viewers. Some even complained it was in poor taste, to which Gil Fates replied in a form letter that they were merely posthumously celebrating his work, carefully not mentioning the production costs that would've been wasted had the episodes been left unaired.
- The Hollywood Squares:
- Wally Cox died suddenly of a heart attack in 1973. 14 shows aired after his death.
- Charley Weaver died in 1974. Weaver had already been absent for several episodes due to his declining health following a stroke, with George Gobel mainly filling in for him. After Weaver's passing, Gobel took the lower left square on a regular basis.
- John Ritter taped a week of shows just before his September 11, 2003 passing. This week started airing September 29.
- Television host Larry Blyden, who hosted What's My Line? from 1968-1975, died in a car accident in Morocco. The final episodes of that run aired after his death. This also impacted the short-lived charades Game Show Showoffs, as he had already taped a pilot episode. As a result, creator Mark Goodson hastily replaced him with Bobby Van.
- The Price Is Right had this happen to two of their four announcers. Johnny Olson died of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 75 in 1985 and taped several episodes that would not air until after his death. His successor, Rod Roddy, died of cancer at age 66 in 2003. Unlike Olson, Roddy did not have any posthumous episodes, as Randy West and Burton Richardson were already filling in for him on days that he did not feel healthy enough to continue.
- Also true of Wheel of Fortune and its announcers. Jack Clark died of bone cancer in 1988 and was replaced by M. G. Kelly for a few months before original announcer Charlie O'Donnell returned. While Jack did not announce posthumously, there are a few episodes near the end of his tenure where he sounds particularly unwell. O'Donnell also averted this with his own 2010 death: while he had taped several episodes that would not air until after his death, the show chose instead to overdub his work with that of other announcers before seeking a replacement.
- The seventh syndicated season of The Joker's Wild was already planned to be Jack Barry's last. On the following season's premiere, Barry was to announce his retirement and hand the mike over to substitute host Jim Peck. During the hiatus, Barry went into fatal cardiac arrest while jogging in Central Park. Barry's partner Dan Enright instead picked Bill Cullen to host, and the show lasted another two years under his tenure. The Joker's Wild has had two short-lived revivals after Barry's death: one in 1990 with Pat Finn hosting and the other in 2017 hosted by Snoop Dogg.
- Alex Trebek was diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer in March 2019, and passed away from it on November 8, 2020, while the show he was most famous for hosting, Jeopardy!, was still airing (his last episodes as host were taped over a week before his death). Later that month, it was announced that the series would continue with a series of interim guest hosts for the remainder of its 37th season, starting with consulting producer and former contestant Ken Jennings; executive producer Mike Richardsnote and Mayim Bialik would eventually be announced as permanent successors in August 2021.
- Just over a year after he began hosting Password Plus, Allen Ludden was diagnosed with stomach cancer. He took a leave of absence for four weeks to receive treatments with Bill Cullen replacing him. Ludden returned once he was healthy enough, but the treatments forced him back into retirement. Tom Kennedy subbed for him, eventually becoming a full-time replacement when Ludden became too ill to come back. Ludden died on June 9, 1981, and Password Plus eventually ended its run nine months later.
- 15/Love lost two supporting actors (Jaclyn Linetsky and Vadim Schneider) in a car crash while they were on the way to the studio to film an episode. As a result, their characters were killed off in a plane crash.
- 3rd Rock from the Sun: The third season finale ends with Vicki Dubcek's ex-boyfriend Randy, played by Phil Hartman, kidnapping Harry Solomon and witnessing him transmitting a message from The Big Giant Head. Sadly, Hartman was killed by his wife eight days after the episode was aired, forcing the writers to abandon whatever storyline they'd planned for Randy. The fourth season premiere opens with Harry already having been sold by Randy to a circus as a new act for their freak show.
- British comedian Sean Lock, known for starring as a permanent guest in 8 Out of 10 Cats, lost his battle with cancer in August 2021 while the future of its Countdown-themed spin-off was still undetermined.
- 8 Simple Rules: The show underwent a Retool following John Ritter's passing of an aortic dissection, only the show lasted a bit longer.
- Gothic novelist Anne Rice passed away in December 2021. At the time of her death, she and her son Christopher were overseeing production of two adaptations of her renowned work, Interview with the Vampire and Lives of the Mayfair Witches. Interview with the Vampire and Mayfair Witches premiered on October 2, 2022 and January 8, 2023, respectively, with Rice receiving Posthumous Credit as executive producer for both of them.
- Diana Rigg unfortunately passed away shortly after completion of the first season of the revived All Creatures Great and Small, where she played recurring character Mrs. Pumphrey. After months of uncertainty, the role ultimately went to Patricia Hodge beginning with the second season.
- All Saints: In August 2008, Mark Priestley took his own life, with his last produced episode being the climax of a story arc in which his character Dan had been searching for his missing wife Erica. The storyline had been intended to end happily, but Priestley's death and Jolene Anderson's unwillingness to continue playing Erica forced the story to resolve with Erica being found dead and Dan leaving the hospital to deal with his grief.
- In 2013, the History Channel began airing the John Pinette-hosted series All You Can Eat. It wound up being a Short-Runner once he had a fatal heart attack, preventing any more episodes from being produced.
- And Just Like That...: Willie Garson died on September 21, 2021 from pancreatic cancer while he'd been filming scenes for the Sex and the City revival. The fourth episode wrote his character, Stanford Blatch, out of the series by having him divorce his husband Anthony and move to Japan to manage a TikTok star before it was eventually revealed near the end of Season 2 that he’d decided to become a Shinto monk.
- Philippine TV drama Anna Liza ended with an unfinished plot in 1985 after Julie Vega, the actress who played the titular role, died.
- After Gene Siskel's death on February 20, 1999, Roger Ebert spent the first episode of At The Movies afterwards paying tribute to him. Then, he had different guest critics substituting for Siskel until he chose Richard Roeper for his new co-host. The show went on until 2006 when Ebert began battling thyroid cancer and different guest critics started substituting for him. The show was cancelled in 2010, and Ebert himself died on April 4, 2013.
- Gary Holton (Wayne) died of a drug overdose during filming of the second series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. He had filmed all of his outdoor scenes but had to be written out of some of the indoor scenes (generally by having a character remark that he was out with a girl). In other scenes, he was played by a double.
- The Beast: Despite positive reviews, the show had low ratings due to Patrick Swayze's struggle with pancreatic cancer, which made him unable to promote it himself. The show put on long-term hiatus in June 2009, after its first and only season, so that Swayze could take the time to deal with his health issues. The intention was that the show would return once Swayze got better, but he died three months later in September that year; the show was canceled as a result.
- Howard's mother was written out of The Big Bang Theory after her voice actor Carol Ann Susi died of cancer in 2014. The character died with her.
- Similar to the Father Ted example, narrowly avoided by The Bill where actor Kevin Lloyd died only a week after being fired for his alcoholism.
- Bunk'd:
- Cameron Boyce died after the third season was completed from a seizure.
- Frank, the lizard used to portray Mrs. Kipling, also died on October 2021. Two months later, the show was renewed for a sixth season.
- Call Me Kat: Leslie Jordan, who played Phil, died in a car accident after experiencing a heart attack in October 2022 during the show's third season. The last episode he appeared in had him flying off to Tahiti with his boyfriend, and the show's midseason premiere in January 2023 revealed that the lovers decided to live there. The episode ended with the surviving cast breaking character and giving a tribute to the actor, along with a prerecorded speech from Dolly Parton and a montage of Jordan's appearances on the show set to a song Jordan had recorded with Parton for his album Company's Comin' - fittingly titled "Where the Soul Never Dies".
- Brazilian comedy show Casseta & Planeta Urgente was in 2006 with half its crew in Germany doing skits on The World Cup. And then Bussunda, their best-known member, died in his sleep, forcing a quick turnaround to send his body back for a burial, and the show to both shelve the incomplete recordings and replace the episode that would air the following week with a tribute to Bussunda. The rest of the crew soldiered on without him until the show's cancellation in 2010.
- Production for The Charlie Horse Music Pizza came to an abrupt halt after three episodes of its sophomore season were taped. Shari Lewis was diagnosed with inoperable uterine cancer, and she would pass away from viral pneumonia soon after on August 2, 1998. The episodes eventually aired five months after Lewis' death.
- On Chicago Fire, DuShon Brown played Chief Boden's secretary Connie. Brown died in 2018 from sepsis and Connie was revealed to have taken a job as a school counselor.
- Chico and the Man: Freddie Prinze (Sr.) died by suicide towards the end of the third season. They initially wrote it into the script that Chico was visiting family in Mexico, but decided to finally write him out more permanently by revealing late in Season 4 that he'd died offscreen. They also tried to replace him with Raul, but ratings dipped in what would ultimately be the final season and it was canceled. Disturbingly, Freddie died just a few hours after taping his final episode, "Ed Talks to God."
- An automotive accident in Baja California claimed the lives of actors Raymundo Garduño Cruz and Juan Francisco González Aguilar when they were involved in filming The Chosen One on June 18, 2022.
- The French Mini Series Colette, une femme libre was struck by tragedy when main lead Marie Trintignant died as a result of domestic violence in the summer of 2003. Filming was about 80% completed, script cuts had to be made and a Fake Shemp was used for some scenes.
- Steve Irwin, aka the Crocodile Hunter, was killed in a freak accident with a stingray while filming the documentary Ocean's Deadliest with Philippe Cousteau Jr. He was posthumously featured in his daughter's show, Bindi the Jungle Girl. According to his wife, Terri, he had laid out ten years' worth of plans for Australia Zoo, their family's home base, before he died; Australia Zoo is the setting for the sequel series Crikey! It's the Irwins, and Steve often appears on the show through old footage and family reminiscences.
- Deadliest Catch: Rest in peace, Captain Phil Harris. He had a stroke, was put in a medically-induced coma, woke up, wrote to the film crew to keep shooting, and then died. In case you couldn't tell, he was something of a badass. Phil was also the member of the show who had previously come closest to dying (he broke a rib, which dislodged a blood clot).
- Whilst filming a guest spot on Death in Paradise, Larrington Walker died of natural causes mid-shoot. Since Walker's character was that week's murderer, The Summation scene was rewritten to take place before the police could confront him (rather than being a Summation Gathering as usual), followed by a new scene where D.I. Mooney discovers the killer has managed to flee before he can be arrested.
- Doctor Who:
- Plans for a Grand Finale for the Third Doctor's era, with a final massive confrontation between the Doctor and his Arch-Enemy the Master, were abandoned when Roger Delgado, the Master's actor, was killed in a car crash while working on another show in Turkey. They could technically have recast the Master, who was also a Time Lord, but the showrunners and other cast members thought that this would be in bad taste. The Master would eventually reappear in a heavily disfigured/decayed form a few years later, opposite the Fourth Doctor, before the role was filled for the remainder of the Classic Series by Anthony Ainley.
- The 1983 story "Frontios" suffered two unconnected deaths during production. The original designer, Barrie Dobbins, took his own life, leading to David Buckingham replacing him. Additionally, the actor Peter Arne, who had been initially cast as the guest character Range, was murdered by an unknown assailant, with the crime remaining unsolved to this day (the prime suspect, a student Arne was in a relationship with, was later found dead in the Thames, but his involvement in Arne's death was never officially confirmed); William Lucas was cast to replace him.
- Composer John Lewis was suffering from AIDS when he was brought on to score "The Mark of the Rani", and had only managed to complete part one and a few scenes from part two when the illness did him in. When it became clear that Lewis wouldn't be able to finish his work, BBC staffer Jonathan Gibbs was bought in to rescore the entire story. The DVD offers an option to play part one with Lewis' unused score; the later Blu-ray release also includes the option to play part two with the completed portion, which was not known to exist at the time of the DVD's production.
- Writer Robert Holmes died while writing "The Ultimate Foe", the concluding two episodes of 1986's season-long "The Trial of a Time Lord" story; he only managed to complete a rough draft of the first episode and a basic outline of the second, leaving script editor Eric Saward to have to scramble together to complete Holmes' work and turn it into something usable. However, the show's producer, John Nathan-Turner, pretty much rejected Holmes' planned ending (which featured the Doctor and the Valeyard [or the Master] falling through a "time vent", with no way out) as being too risky, given that the show was hanging by a thread and that said ending would give the BBC the excuse to cancel the series. As a result, Saward quit the show in protest, and legal complications meant that the writers who eventually took on the job (Pip and Jane Baker) weren't allowed to be told how Holmes and Saward had planned to conclude the story. Thankfully, the Bakers managed to do enough to help keep the series running for some time afterward, and even when the series was finally taken off the air by the BBC in 1989, it didn't prove to be permanent (though for most people, a 16-year wait can feel pretty permanent when one isn't able to see the future).
- Howard Attfield, who played Donna's father Geoff Noble in the 2006 Christmas Episode "The Runaway Bride", was intended to become a recurring cast member when Donna became a regular companion in Series 4, but died suddenly early in the series' production. As a result, the character Wilfred "Wilf" Motts, played by Bernard Cribbins, who had been introduced as a one-off minor character in "Voyage of the Damned", was retconned to be Donna's maternal grandfather, and took on the role Geoff would have played in the show. It was implied in later episodes, and confirmed in a spin-off prose novel, that The Character Died with Him. The few scenes that Attfield had recorded for Series 4 as Geoff were included as DVD deleted scenes on the season box set.
- Bernard Cribbins himself died during the production of the 2023 Fourteenth Doctor specials after having recorded one scene for the end of "Wild Blue Yonder". Since this led into the cliffhanger ending, the beginning of the next episode, "The Giggle", had his character Put on a Bus with the help of an out-of-focus Fake Shemp and a single reused line of recorded dialogue from an earlier season. In the final scene of "The Giggle", his character is supposedly nearby but off-camera and silent.
- Shortly before the filming of the second season of CBeebies children's series Dog Squad, Meagaidh, one of the dogs on the show, passed away. This resulted in a similar dog appearing in said season.
- Icelandic singer Sigurjón "Sjonni" Brink, a frequent participant in Iceland's national Eurovision Song Contest selection show, was due to compete in the 2011 edition with the song "Aftur Heim" ("Coming Home"). However, before he could perform the song in the third semi-final round, he passed away unexpectedly of natural causes. Rather than take the song out of the competition, his local musician friends (one of whom was also a competitor in that year's selection) decided to form a tribute group called "Sjonni's Friends" to perform the song. Performed in English as "Coming Home," it wound up winning the Icelandic selection and subsequently qualified Iceland for the grand final in Germany.
- In a similar situation, a singer in Israel's 2024 national selection who made it to the next round from his episode, and also happened to be a captain in the Israeli military, was killed in the line of duty a few weeks after his episode aired.
- Very narrowly averted by Dutch conductor and former musical director of the Metropole Orkest, Rogier van Otterloo. While the head of the Metropole Orkest (the orchestra of Dutch national broadcaster AVROTROS and usual musical accompanists for the Dutch national selection, as well as most of their Eurovision hosting gigs) was usually the one to accompany the Dutch representative to each international final, van Oterloo wound up sitting the contest out twice due to health issues he developed in the mid-'80s (Piet Souer conducted the Dutch entry in 1983, and Harry van Hoof did so in 1986). While his condition had worsened by 1987, he still made it to the final in Brussels, although his health issues made him sit out one rehearsal (for which he asked the Flemish conductor, Freddy Sunder, to step in). He would pass away a few months later.
- Similarly, British maestro Alyn Ainsworth (who had led the orchestra for several British entries, including the victorious "Save Your Kisses for Me" in 1976, and one Belgian entry) passed away in October 1990, five months after conducting the British entry in Zagreb.
- Zigzagged by Estonian conductor Peeter Lilje: he conducted his country's potential debut entry for the preselection round, Kvalificacija za Millstreet, but seeing as Estonia didn't qualify, he never led the orchestra at Eurovision itself. If he did, he'd be in the same boat as van Otterloo and Ainsworth, as he passed away in October 1993 of a heart attack.
- Played straight with longtime Spanish commentator José María Íñigo, who passed away three days before the first semi-final of the 2018 contest. Tony Aguilar stepped in to replace him, alongside Julia Varela, who had commentated alongside Íñigo for his last three contests.
- Liechtenstein's national broadcaster, 1 FL TV, had tried on several occasions starting in the late '00s to join the contest, with plans to hold a national final to select their entry. Sadly, in 2018, station director Peter Kölbel, who had been the main proponent of participating in the contest and joining the European Broadcasting Union, passed away unexpectedly. Since then, budget issues and lack of vision have prevented the broadcaster from making another attempt at joining the EBU and therefore being eligible to participate in Eurovision.
- Iconic Italian singer, dancer, and TV hostess Raffaella Carrà; who was one of the biggest proponents of Eurovision in Italy between their withdrawal in 1998 and eventual return in 2011 (she featured Eurovision acts on her Italian-aired TV show even in years where Italy didn't compete, and both commentated on all three shows in 2011 and presented Italy's top three scores in the final); passed away less than two months after Italy won the 2021 contest (their first victory since 1990 and third overall). She was a fan-favorite candidate to host the following year's contest, and the presenters in 2022 gave her a special homage during the first semi-final.
- Fashion Police did not last very long after the 2014 passing of co-host Joan Rivers.
- Father Ted just managed to avoid this. Dermot Morgan, the actor behind the titular character, tragically died of a sudden heart attack 24 hours after filming wrapped on the series' final episode. This has actually led to a belief that Father Ted was cancelled because of his death, when in fact, it was intended to end after three seasons. British TV show seasons are very short compared to American TV show seasons. His death did still invoke this trope, though, as a new series he was thinking of doing had to be scrapped.
- Alfonso Ribero has stated that any hope of a The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reunion/reboot died with James Avery on December 31st, 2013. Nonetheless, that didn't stop Will Smith from announcing in 2020 that there would indeed be a reboot (albeit Darker and Edgier) and a reunion special. Said reunion special would debut later that year on HBO Max, where Uncle Phil's death was directly addressed.
- The dog who played Cosmo (named after it) died by complications from surgery while the 5th and final season of Fuller House was being filmed.
- The producers of Game of Thrones reportedly planned for this in advance. In 2013, 60-something George R. R. Martin, author of the book series upon the program is based, revealed that he outlined his planned conclusion for the series to the showrunners, both so they could plan ahead, and also as insurance should he ever be unable to complete the final two books.
- A character from the source material who was set to appear in Season 5 did not do so. Why? Because the actor who played him died in the middle of filming, and the show's creators opted to not recast out of respect.
- George & Mildred came to an end following Yootha Joyce's death from portal cirrhosis of the liver due to chronic alcoholism.
- On Fox's Glee, main cast member Cory Monteith, who played Finn, died in July 2013 from a heroin overdose. It was decided that Finn would be killed off in the 5x03 episode "The Quarterback", with the show ending in 2015.
- Likewise, any future Glee projects will have to explain the absences of Noah “Puck” Puckerman and Santana Lopez after the former’s actor, Mark Salling, committed suicide in 2018 while awaiting sentencing for possession of child pornography and the latter’s actress, Naya Rivera, drowned in Lake Piru in 2020.
- Averted with The Goldbergs, as the actor who played Pops, George Segal, retired from acting three months before his death, his character not appearing in the show's Hannukah episode. Pops was written out of the series with "The Goldbergs' Excellent Adventure" centering around the family's inability to process their loss.
- Good Eats: Deborah Duchon, a recurring character and real-life nutritional anthropologist in the original show and "Reloaded" (where she appeared in one episode, the updated version of "Pressure"), died in October 2019, precluding any further appearances in the sequel series or "Reloaded".
- A miniseries adaptation of Gorilla and the Bird, public defender Zack McDermott's memoir about his experiences with bipolar disorder, was announced in 2018, but it fell into Development Hell after its intended director Jean-Marc Vallée died in December 2021.
- Home and Away: Hope Morrison's ending, already not looking good for her seeing how she was last seen being arrested towards the end of 2016, looks extremely bleak after Jessica Falkholt was hit by a disqualified driver on Boxing Day, lingering for several days in the hospital and ultimately succumbing to her injuries on January 17, 2018.
- Home Movie: The Princess Bride: Carl Reiner, father of the director of the original 1987 film, portrays the Grandfather in his final filmed performance. He passed away three days after recording his scene, the day the series premiered.
- Howards' Way: Maurice Colbourne, who played major character Tom Howard, died of a heart attack during a break in filming of series 5. The writers were forced to make significant changes to the plot of the series, including his character being Put on a Bus for the remaining episodes yet to be filmed. It was considered to end the show after this, but one final series followed in which Tom got a more permanent exit via a Bus Crash and the remaining characters had their storylines concluded.
- I Dream of Jeannie: Barton MacLane, who played the recurring character General Peterson, contracted pneumonia and passed away in January 1969 partway through the fourth season of the show. The character was quietly replaced with General Schaeffer, played by Vinton Hayworth. Hayworth would eventually pass away himself five days after the final episode of the series aired.
- The Britcom In Sickness And In Health, one of two sequels to the classic Till Death Us Do Part (best known outside of Europe as the inspiration for All in the Family), was initially written to deal with the fact that Dandy Nichols, who played Alf Garnett's wife Else, was terminally ill and confined to a wheelchair. When Nichols died in real life, the character of Else died as well. (Ironically, the episodes concerning Else's very real death were adapted from the Archie Bunker's Place episodes centered around Edith's death - which only occurred on the show after Jean Stapleton quit.)
- Joanne Rogers, chair of the board of Fred Rogers Productions, died on January 14, 2021, as two live-action shows they were directly involved with were still in production: Odd Squad and Donkey Hodie, the latter of which still had yet to air.
- The Joy of Painting ended when Bob Ross was diagnosed with lymphoma. He never recovered.
- Shotaro Ishinomori died while writing Kamen Rider Kuuga. He knew he would die soon, and wanted to get one more Kamen Rider out before he died. In addition, he wrote the story-intended-to-be-series Onigeki Hibiki, which was only published posthumously as Kamen Rider Hibiki.
- Lynn Shelton was originally going to direct the pilot of Kevin Can F**k Himself just before her passing in 2020.
- Kindred: The Embraced, a series based on Vampire: The Masquerade, was cancelled after eight episodes. However, any hope that the series could be picked up again was lost when Mark Frankel, the actor who played the Prince of the City (and was considered one of the show's assets), was killed in a motorcycle crash soon after the final episode aired.
- The 1985 TV series Lime Street was essentially devised for Samantha Smith after her letter to Yuri Andropov brought her worldwide attention. It ended even before it aired - with just eight episodes produced, the 13-year-old and her father were killed in a plane crash not long before the series premiered. Rather than recast her role, the series simply ceased production. That Other Wiki has the whole sordid story.
- Patty Duke's final performance before her March 29, 2016 death was on Liv and Maddie as the twins' Grandma Janice and her identical sister Hillary in October 2015. Given the positive response to that episode, along with Patty's own enjoyment of working there, it's likely that these would have become recurring roles for her.
- Following John McLaughlin's death on August 16, 2016, it was decided that the panel would tape one last episode of The McLaughlin Group the following Friday before saying "Bye-bye!" for good, save for an hour-long retrospective in the planning stages at the time of the announcement.
- Thuy Trang, who played the first Yellow Ranger Trini in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, died in a car crash in 2001. As a result, stock footage of the Yellow Ranger is used whenever she is mentioned in later seasons, and a popular Fanon was that Trini is also dead. The 30th anniversary special Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always eventually confirmed that Trini died; with her daughter appearing in her stead and outright having her die Taking the Bullet for Billy.
- Mister Rogers' Neighborhood:
- Johnny Costa, who composed music for the show, died in December of 1996 of anemia. The show would still reuse pieces of his music until it ended, while newer compositions were written by Michael Moricz.
- Bob Trow, who played several recurring characters on the show, died of a heart attack in November 1998, while the show was still producing new episodes. His characters would be retired soon afterward.
- According to the documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor?, the series ended production in 2000 at the request of Fred Rogers. He decided not to film any new episodes because he sensed his health was becoming worse. Three years later, he would die of stomach cancer.
- Mittens and Pants suffered from this when Samantha Weinstein, the voice of Mrs. McRooster, passed away from cancer during the production of season 2. According to a post on the social media account of the show, she was supposed to reprise her role in future episodes.
- Modern Family: Subverted with Sam Lloyd and Fred Willard, both of whom died a month after their last episodes aired. Played straight with Jon Polito who passed away eight weeks before what would have been his last episode, "The Revenge of Rod Skyhook", aired.
- Mary Pat Gleason, who played Mary on Mom, lost her battle with cancer weeks after Season 7 wrapped up.
- Murphy Brown: Colleen Dewhurst, who played the titular character's mother Avery, died from cervical cancer three weeks before the premiere of season 4. The writers made Avery die in the series proper, and had Murphy give birth to a child she named after her deceased mother.
- Some of the MythBusters alumni are no longer with us:
- Jessi Combs passed away on August 27, 2019, after getting into a high-speed car crash.
- Grant Imahara passed away on July 13, 2020, after a serious brain aneurysm episode.
- Oliver Reed's next project after Gladiator was a television adaptation of My Uncle Silas. Upon his death, the part went to Albert Finney.
- The NCIS franchise sadly have a history of this:
- After Miguel Ferrer died of throat cancer, his character Owen Granger in NCIS: Los Angeles was written off as taking care of some "unfinished business" but eventually became The Character Died with Him.
- Ralph Waite, who recurred as Jackson Gibbs (Gibbs's father) in flagship series NCIS, died in February 2014, resulting Jackson also dying and the eleventh season finale serving as a farewell episode to him.
- David McCallum died in September 2023, around two months before the twenty-first season of NCIS began filming and four months after his final appearance (as well as his final performance).as Ducky. The second episode of Season 21, which aired on February 19, 2024, paid tribute to him.
- NewsRadio continued after the tragic death of Phil Hartman but the show was never the same. It only continued for one more season, and only because Phil wouldn't have wanted them to stop.
- A new series based on Night Court premiered on January 17, 2023. Since Harry Anderson, the star of the original show, had died in April 2018 of complications of the seasonal flu, it focuses on Harry Stone's daughter Abby.
- Paula Kelly, Charlie Robinson, Markie Post, and Richard Moll have all since passed away note so there goes any chance of them making a guest appearance on the revival.
- While it's unknown how the revival will handle the absences of Christine, Bull, Mac and Liz due to their actors' deaths, the revival series revealed in the pilot that Harry Stone has since passed.
- Although since Liz was gone after season 1 it's unlikely she'll be mentioned.
- During Night Court's original run:
- Selma Diamond (who played Selma for the first two seasons) succumbed to lung cancer four days after the show aired its Season 2 finale. This resulted her character Selma also passing away when the show came back for the third season.
- After Selma's death, she was eventually replaced by Florence Halop (who played Flo in the third season) who unfortunately would also pass away from lung cancer in July 1986. In a S4 premiere, it's briefly mentioned that Flo had also passed away.
- The original creator of Night Court, Reinhold Weege, died in 2012.
- Some recurring guest stars such as George Murdock, Mel Torme, Eugene Roche and Phil Leeds have since deceased.
- Paula Kelly, Charlie Robinson, Markie Post, and Richard Moll have all since passed away note so there goes any chance of them making a guest appearance on the revival.
- The Orville: Yaphit's fate is uncertain after his actor Norm Macdonald lost his nine-year battle with cancer in 2021.
- Parts Unknown: Anthony Bourdain took his own life in 2018 while filming an episode of the show. The show ended after Season 12, which featured the final episodes Bourdain had filmed before his death.
- Pitchmen, a Discovery Channel show about finding (and shilling) unknown-but-great products and inventions, had as one of its costars legendarily loud huckster Billy Mays. After Mays' death, the show floated in limbo for a while, until it was eventually revealed (almost two years later) that his son would start doing the show.
- Proving Ground: Former Jackass cast member Ryan Dunn died in a car accident in June 2011, after just one episode of Proving Ground - a MythBusters-inspired Experiment Show series he co-hosted on G4 - had aired. The show was pulled immediately, a presumed difficult decision for the network, considering that the series premiered to decent ratings and they had spent quite a bit of time in the preceding weeks promoting the series on their other programs. They eventually aired the remaining eight episodes later in the Summer of 2011, with co-host Jessica Chobot becoming a correspondent for X-Play in order to fulfill her contract for Proving Ground, which was discontinued with no chance of revival.
- Riget ended after two seasons with many loose ends and at least one further season completely scripted, due to the deaths of three key actors: Ernst-Hugo Järegård (Stig Helmer), Kirsten Rolffes (Mrs. Drusse), and Morten Rotne Leffers (male dishwasher).
- The Royal Family: Redd Foxx died during production, in which he co-starred with Della Reese. The show continued production for a few episodes with actress Jackée Harry brought in to play opposite Reese, but the show sank so quickly after Foxx's death most of those episodes never aired.
- Rock & Chips: The Only Fools and Horses prequel would presumably have continued the story arc up to the death of Joan Trotter had writer John Sullivan not succumbed to viral pneumonia himself.
- The Sandbaggers' creator Ian Mackintosh died in a mysterious plane crash halfway through the third season. The season was finished with three episodes written by other writers, and the show wasn't continued after that.
- The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Doctor Who spin-off series was prematurely killed by Elisabeth Sladen's death from cancer in 2011. Half of Series 5 was finished by this point, but with the show revolving around her (and canon having established that her character would live longer), they had to stop production of any future episodes then and there. The final complete episodes were aired, drawing the series to an abrupt close.
- Any hopes of Screech appearing on Saved by the Bell (2020) were dashed when Dustin Diamond, who played him in the original show, died of lung cancer he'd been diagnosed with just a few weeks before in February 2021. The season two premiere strongly hints that Screech had died between seasons.
- Narrowly averted by Sewing with Nancy; host Nancy Zieman had the sense to announce her retirement in September 2017 following a terminal cancer diagnosis, ultimately passing on the day after the final episode was broadcast just over two months later.
- Plans for a fifth season of Sherlock, already in doubt due to the schedules of lead actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, became even more complicated in August 2021 with the passing of Una Stubbs (Mrs. Hudson).
- Jonathan Demme died on April 26, 2017, the same day that an episode of the miniseries Shots Fired that he had directed was first aired.
- On HBO's Silicon Valley, one of the lead actors, Christopher Evan Welch, died in December 2013, before the series premiere and after shooting only five of the eight planned episodes. Instead of re-casting his character, the writers wrote his character out.
- Snowfall creator and executive producer John Singleton (who also did Boyz n the Hood) died from a stroke in April 2019, when production of the series' third season was wrapping. The show continued to air after his passing.
- Spartacus: Blood and Sand
- Andy Whitfield, who played the title character, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2010. This caused production to halt while Andy went through treatment. During this time, Starz produced a prequel series Gods of the Arena. Andy gave his blessing for the network to recast his character so the series could resume. He was declared cancer-free two months after Gods of the Arena aired, but succumbed to the disease in September 2011; the disease recurred in September 2010, only three months after initially being deemed cancer-free.
- SFX Lead editor Grant Konfeld passed away sometime before the final season.
- An in-show example: The Supernatural series of novels by Carver Edlund (aka Chuck Shurley) is actually a written account of the lives of Sam and Dean Winchester, written by a divine prophet. The series ends on the sadistic cliffhanger which is "No Rest for the Wicked," (the finale of season 3) when the publishers ran into financial troubles, mirroring fears of the effects of the writers' strike at the time. Despite this, he kept writing his books but couldn't publish them because Sam and Dean found out about it. "We have guns, and we'll find you." At the end of "Swansong", Chuck disappears and is presumed dead by Castiel (Word of God initially stated he was God, and simply left Sam and Dean to it). In season nine it is revealed that new volumes of the series are being published on the Internet. They are published under the Internet handle of Becky Rosen, a fan obsessed with Sam Winchester and the former girlfriend of Chuck.
- This was avoided by Kenn Viselman while Teletubbies, a show which he helped make the American version of, was still airing new episodes for the US market. Viselman was going to take one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11th, but he rescheduled his flight two days earlier.
- The remake series of Teletubbies has not gotten a Brazilian dub, but would only get one of its main actors back, as Henrique Ogalla (Dipsy) died in 2020, and both Ana Lucia Menezes (Po) and Iara Riça (Laa Laa) passed away in April 2021 - though the latter had retired from dubbing the previous year.
- During the '90s, two big deaths of Brazilian dubbers happened: Alexandre Lippiani, who voiced Superman in Lois & Clark and was even considering leaving dubbing just to act on TV, died in a car crash at just 33 (his replacement, Guilherme Briggs, has ever since voiced Superman in just about every media); and Darcy Pedrosa passed away from pulmonary edema just one day after dubbing over an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger.
- David A. Arnold, showrunner of That Girl Lay Lay, passed away suddenly on September 7, 2022, while new episodes were still in production.
- Jas Waters, one of the writers of This Is Us, died of suicide before the start of Season 5.
- John Dunsworth, perhaps best known as Jim Lahey of Trailer Park Boys, passed away on October 16, 2017. Given that he was one of the series' main characters, this leaves the future of the series uncertain. It also meant that "Dear Santa, Go Fuck Yourself", their live Christmas tour, had to be postponed on rather short notice, as there was no way they could rewrite all of his lines in such a short span of time. (The tour was moved to April, and is now called "A Fucked Up Evening with the Trailer Park Boys".)
- After the death of lead actor Bill Paxton, the producers of Training Day stated that there were no plans to recast his role, were the show to be renewed for a second season (which ultimately didn't happen).
- Treme writer David Mills, who had also worked on The Wire, died of an aneurysm while on set just days before the show's premiere.
- Writer Kota Fukihara died in May 2020 from a brain haemorrhage, just one month shy from the premiere of Ultraman Z. However, Fukihara managed to write all 25 episodes prior to his death, as both he and Kiyotaga Taguchi wrote the series composition through reverse method. The episodes filmed from June 2020 onwards have Taguchi replacing Fukihara as the series' main composition.
- Underground was a one-off play being broadcast live on 28 November 1958 when actor Gareth Jones died suddenly off-screen. Scenes had to be rewritten more or less as they went along to cover his absence from the remainder of the story.
- Talent show example: Aleksandr Gradsky, Russian singer, multi-instrumentalist and composer, died during the production of The Voice of Russia, where he was a coach. The shows after his passing kept his seat empty in his honor.
- Less than a week after the 2016 presidential election, Gwen Ifill, the moderator for Washington Week, died of endometrial cancer. For months afterwards, the show did not have a permanent host as PBS searched for a replacement.
