Popular TV series can become victims of their own success.
Cast and crew make such compelling television that some fans just can't wait to find out
what happens next on their favorite shows, and will go to any length to get that information.
That's why some productions have tried to thwart these spoilers at great effort and
expense by actually scripting and filming scenes they never even intend to use.
Here's a look at shows that tried to throw off the spoilers with fake footage.
And of course, real spoilers ahead…
The Sopranos
The Sopranos had one of the most famous — and maddening — final moments in TV history.
As gangster Tony Soprano sits in a diner with members of his family and Journey's "Don't
Stop Believing" plays on the jukebox, the scene abruptly cuts to black, mid-scene.
Many viewers assume that the sudden ending reflects Tony Soprano's fate — that he was
killed by one of his many enemies.
In the decade since The Sopranos wrapped up, creator David Chase has been reluctant to
spell out exactly what became of Tony, but in 2016, he told Deadline that he shot a different
ending because the production had experienced problems with "people trying to invade and
get our scripts."
The scene was shot, but the details were so inconsequential — and destined to be discarded
as a ruse — that Chase couldn't even remember all the details.
He tried to recall: "Tony goes back to the Bada Bing strip club and has an argument with
Silvio or something.
Well, it couldn't have been because he was in the hospital.
Well, anyway, it was a fake ending that we shot just to throw people off."
Lost
John Locke, played by Terry O'Quinn met a sad fate on Lost, horrifically strangled to
death by Michael Emerson’s Ben Linus.
But the show played fast and loose with time and space, so Locke was still part of the
series even after the revelation that the body in the casket in the funeral parlor was
his.
Or maybe not: After a major plot in which Locke led a group looking to take down Jacob,
his body was shown rolling out of a cargo box.
Heroic Leader Locke was actually the shape-shifting Man in Black, and the real Locke was dead.
To throw everybody for a loop, or maybe to keep their options open, the Lost crew shot
a couple of other scenes, in which the dead man in the coffin isn't Locke, but Sawyer
and Desmond instead.
"He was a man of faith.
He was… a much better man than I will ever be.”
Sex and the City
HBO's Sex and the City was an updated, urban take on the romantic comedy, but a romantic
comedy nonetheless, and it ended like one: Sarah Jessica Parker’s character, Carrie
Bradshaw wound up with her on-again, off-again guy, Mr. Big, and returned to New York after
a spell in Paris.
The day after the finale aired in 2004, Parker told USA Today that three different endings
had been shot, with the one true wrap-up kept a secret.
The abandoned endings, which Parker called "just silly," involved Carrie returning to
New York alone — or with artist boyfriend Aleksandr Petrovsky.
Imagine the fan uproar if that happened.
Dallas
A massive hit during the 1979 to 1980 TV season, the CBS primetime drama Dallas entranced millions
with the story of wicked Texas oil tycoon J.R. Ewing, played by Larry Hagman and his
family and associates.
In the cliffhanger third season finale, as J.R. got ready for bed one night…someone
shot him and left him for dead.
[Gunshot]
It was a shocking TV moment, and over the summer, seemingly all of America debated "Who
shot J.R.?" — as pretty much every character on Dallas had a motive.
So to keep fans guessing in case a cast or crew member leaked the details, multiple resolutions
to the cliffhanger were shot.
So who really shot J.R.? Turns out it was his mistress and sister-in-law, Kristin Shepard
portrayed by Mary Crosby.
The Simpsons
Fifteen years after "Who Shot J.R.?," the sixth season of The Simpsons ended with a
similar cliffhanger episode, in which Springfield Nuclear Power Plant boss C. Montgomery Burns
is shot by an unidentified assailant and collapses onto a sundial, with his arms pointed to the
"W" and "S." Pretty much everybody in Springfield was a suspect, but in the seventh-season premiere,
infant Maggie Simpson was revealed as the shooter.
While there were clues that the baby did it, Simpsons writer David Mirkin told The A.V.
Club that he "purposely wanted to construct it so that it made you think that Smithers
had done it."
As discussed on a Simpsons DVD commentary track, scenes of many characters pulling the
trigger were created, including Moe, Barney, and Santa's Little Helper.
To fool leakers further, a completely separate ending was produced in which Smithers actually
did shoot Mr. Burns.
The Walking Dead
The sixth season of The Walking Dead built up to the arrival of Negan, played by Jeffrey
Dean Morgan.
In the original comics written by Robert Kirkman, Negan almost immediately kills Glenn with
Lucille, his barbed-wire wrapped baseball bat.
Would the show follow suit, or would another member of Rick's gang, ambushed by the Saviors,
meet their doom instead?
In the mid-season finale, Negan killed…somebody.
The show cut to black before we could find out.
Viewers had to wait a while to learn that Glenn and Abraham were indeed at the other
end of Lucille.
Showrunner Scott Gimple wanted to keep that eventual outcome secret, which was especially
difficult because The Walking Dead deals with incredibly bold and intrusive spoiler-hunters
— in fact, camera-equipped drones have been spotted flying over the set.
In order to preserve the big reveal, the show shot 11 different Lucille-related deaths scenes:
one for each character.
Game of Thrones
While The Walking Dead crew has to deal with intrusive drones, Game of Thrones has to deal
with paparazzi using long-range camera lenses to snap pictures of the show in progress.
In the lead up to the show's seventh season in 2017, producers filmed fake scenes to fool
those tricky photographers and spoiler-hungry fans.
Kit Harington, who stars as Jon Snow, told Jimmy Kimmel that the series shot three scenes
that weren't part of the show or intended to be used at all.
"We put together people in situations where we knew the paparazzi was around, so they’d
take photos and that would get on the internet, to fake scenes.”
For his part, Kimmel summed up what the process must've been like for the cast and crew:
"What a pain in your ass that is.”
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