History Main / DeadStarWalking

** Subverted in the final episode of season 1 when [[spoiler: someone played by Mchale and claiming to be Starman suddenly appears trying to find Pat]].

** Then subverted later when [[spoiler:Yeoh plays a major role in the final third of the season as Georgiou's MirrorUniverse duplicate, who is still alive at the end and in the main universe, returning again in the second season.]]

* Though he wasn't a big star at the time, it's amusing to see Jimmy Smits playing Don Johnson's partner only to get blown up within the first few minutes of the pilot episode of ''Series/MiamiVice''.

* Phillipe Loren in ''VideoGame/SaintsRowTheThird'' who was billed as the BigBad in all the advertisments only to be killed off in the first act of the game.

* In the first issue of Peter Milligan and Mike Allred's run on the Marvel comic book ''ComicBook/XForce'', a new X-Force team is introduced with most of the focus put on the sympathetic team leader. Almost all of the team gets brutally killed off in the same issue, including the aforementioned leader. This effects AnyOneCanDie for the remainder of the book's run and its follow-up ''X-Statix''.

** The first season set the tone with Richard Walsh (played by noted character actor Michael O'Neill of ''Series/ThePretender'' fame), who's the Administrative Director of CTU. He gets gunned down by terrorists at the end of the second episode to illustrate that AnyoneCanDie, even major characters, and his death sets Jack on the path to the rest of the day's events.

* ''Series/ScreamTVSeries'':

* Kisaragi is one of the first named characters to appear in ''Manga/ElfenLied'' and gets a proper introduction. Name bar? Check. [[CuteClumsyGirl Clumsy but cute?]] Check. Works for another main character? Yeppers. Determined to overcome her shyness and make people proud of her one day? Double check. Twenty pages/five minutes later, Lucy comes into the picture. Kisaragi has her head ripped off, the pens from her pocket repurposed as deadly projectiles, and her corpse used as a [[BulletproofHumanShield meat shield]] that gets shredded to pieces in a hail of bullets, only to be dumped in a corridor once everyone else is dead. [[AnyoneCanDie This immediately sets the tone]] for the next 106 chapters.

* In ''Videogame/FinalFantasyXII'' we have the practically omnipresent Creator/YuriLowenthal voice the tutorial character, Reks. He doesn't last long.

* Subverted in ''Series/{{Succession}}'', which seems to be setting up the death of Logan Roy, who has just turned 80 and suffered a brain hemorrhage in the series premiere. Turns out he's far too stubborn to go out like that.

* ''The Night Agent (2023)'': Creator/RobertPatrick's character, FBI assistant director Jamie Hawkins, is clearly set up as a major character and probable antagonist. He doesn't make it out of the second episode alive.

'''As a DeathTrope, all spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.'''

* Games in ''VideoGame/TheDarkPicturesAnthology'' — where the whole point is that anyone can die or survive based on player choices — always feature a recognisable InksuitActor on the cover art and in one of the five leading roles. However, it's about a fifty-fifty chance whether they'll be [[PlotArmor incredibly hard to kill]] or follow this trope as one of the first characters who can bite the dust. So far, Shawn Ashmore fulfills this trope the best (the first of the 5 characters in ''Man of Medan'' that can die), followed by Ashley Tisdale (second in ''House of Ashes''), Jessie Buckley (fourth in ''The Devil in Me''), and finally Will Poulter, who is given so much plot armor in ''Little Hope'' that he is the final character that can die, which can't actually happen until the epilogue.

* Games in ''VideoGame/TheDarkPicturesAnthology'' — where the whole point is that anyone can die or survive based on player choices — always feature a recognisable InksuitActor on the cover art and in one of the five leading roles. However, it's about a fifty-fifty chance whether they'll be [[PlotArmor incredibly hard to kill]] or follow this trope as one of the first characters who can bite the dust.