The latest episode of HBO zombie drama The Last of Us will go down as an all-timer. For game players, it contained a plot turn they were first rocked by four years ago and have been keeping secret ever since. For everyone else, it was a blindside – a brutal event rendered with maximum emotional impact that redefines what the show is from this point on.

We’re not going to spoil it here because there are certainly people yet to experience it for themselves. And there’s a real magic in shows like this which dare to hit you like a freight train. Or a car. Or a baseball bat coated in barbed wire.

This is a good time, however, to come together and share our trauma. We’ve asked some of our culture writers to reflect on the most shocking things they’ve seen on screen. (Note: there are spoilers for various shows below, but the most recent is from nine years ago. You’ve had your chance).

Game of Thrones′ Red Wedding

HBO’s smash-hit adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones changed TV the moment it lobbed off Ned Stark’s (Sean Bean) head. Suddenly, nothing was safe. Not even your main character in the first season of your show. But even then, viewers who hadn’t read the books never knew quite how ruthless the show would get.

Widely revered as “the Red Wedding”, season three’s penultimate episode, The Rains of Castamere, was a staggering surprise slaughter of many remaining members of the Stark family. Robb (Richard Madden), the new King of the North on his way to lay claim to the Iron Throne, is knifed in the heart by his own bannermen. His pregnant wife is stabbed repeatedly in the stomach. And after wailing in grief, watching the life drain from her eldest son’s eyes, the Stark matriarch, Catelyn (Michelle Fairley), has a blade run swiftly across her throat.

The ensuing reaction videos of fans crying and screaming in shock almost got as much airplay as the episode itself. Meg Watson

Lou’s death on Love My Way

One of the golden rules in television? Never kill children or pets. And yet, that is the very rule that Foxtel broke when it commissioned Love My Way about former couple Frankie (Claudia Karvan) and Charlie (Dan Wyllie) and their extended family.

Frankie and Charlie shared custody of their gorgeous daughter Lou (Alex Cook) until January 17, 2005, when the eighth episode went to air. Without any warning, little Lou died after falling to the ground while riding her scooter.

The unbearable grief that followed won the series the AFI award for best direction in television, and cable TV proved that its locally made series would never be as safe and predictable as those on free-to-air networks. Andrew Mercado

The hospital shooting in Grey’s Anatomy

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Do you know how much it takes to shock a fan of Grey’s Anatomy? We’ve seen it all. Within just a couple of years at Seattle Grace Hospital, young intern Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) had already drowned; removed a live bomb from a man’s body; and lost one of her friends after he was hit by a bus and disfigured to the point no one knew who he was.

But not even that prepared us for the relentless two-part season six finale in which a grieving husband of a former patient shoots up half the hospital, starting with a straight shot between the eyes of a young female intern. Bang.

The whole ordeal (in which nearly a dozen died and many more were injured) sees staff hiding around the hospital, trying to care for their friends and begging for their lives. Meredith has a miscarriage at gunpoint while seemingly watching the love of her life die. Derek (Patrick Dempsey) lives, of course – only to be hit by a truck five seasons later. I don’t know why I do this to myself. MW

Patrick’s death on Offspring

For four hilarious seasons, Aussie viewers were hooked on the romantic entanglements of obstetrician Nina Proudman (Asher Keddie). When she fell in love with spunky anaesthetist Patrick Reid (Matthew Le Nevez), and then fell pregnant, fans began preparing for a happy birth.

Then on August 7, 2013, Patrick was clipped by a car. Ten’s ads for the series had stupidly promoted that a character would die that night, but it still came as a shock to learn that the victim would be the expectant father, especially given his injuries seemed so slight.

Nina’s grief, and her baby daughter, kept the show going for another three seasons, but at least she got to live happily ever after with Harry Crewe (Alexander England) … or did she? AM

Rosalind Shays’ elevator drop on LA Law

Australia pioneered this particular soap opera trope when medical meanie Sister Scott (Cornelia Frances) fell down a lift shaft in The Young Doctors in the ’80s. She survived, but a decade later Rosalind Shays (Diana Muldaur) was not so lucky.

Rosalind took a dive down the McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney and Kuzak elevator shaft to her doom. The twist shocked everyone, including Muldaur herself, who only found out she was out of the show when she read the script. Years later, on Friends, the moment would be repeated when Joey Tribbiani’s fictional Dr Drake Ramoray – the character he played in Days of our Lives – met his demise by taking a similar fall. Michael Idato

Adric’s death on Doctor Who

There is an unwritten rule in some TV shows, particularly those pitched at kids, that the good guys (mostly) live to fight another day. This made the death of The Doctor’s teenage companion Adric (Matthew Waterhouse) in Doctor Who truly shocking. With the sinister Cybermen planning to tamper with the flow of time, Adric remained on board a crashing space freighter, hoping to prevent disaster when it struck Earth.

His sacrifice was so shocking the closing credits of Doctor Who, usually an explosion of synth sound from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, were played in silence over the image of a smashed gold badge – Adric’s prized badge for mathematical excellence. MI

Claire’s death on McLeod’s Daughters

Things were looking up for Claire McLeod in the show’s third season. She had finally hooked up with hunky fellow farmer Alex Ryan (Aaron Jeffery), she had a healthy baby, and her sister had been cleared of cancer. So, when a horse darts across the road, sending her car sailing over a cliff edge, it felt like a sick joke.

But oh no, it didn’t happen that quick. The car dangled over the edge, threatening to tip over at any moment. Then we watched Claire’s sister desperately try (and fail) to save her, and suffered through a heartbreaking goodbye. To make matters worse, once the car finally hurtles forward, we see a mannequin dressed in Claire’s clothes thrash against the steering wheel. Rip my heart out, why don’t you? Nell Geraets

Glenn’s death on The Walking Dead

For six solid seasons, AMC’s zombie drama The Walking Dead had me. Then they killed Glenn. Played by the incomparable Steven Yeun, Glenn Rhee was the heart of the show. Not only had he been there since the very beginning, he was arguably the only character with a functioning moral compass.

But then, seemingly out of nowhere, his head is bashed in with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. His killer, the easy-to-hate Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), crushes his head to a pulp, literally shoving his eyeballs out of their sockets. The camera remains trained on Glenn after each hit. We’re forced to watch every horrific moment, as was his pregnant wife, who was held captive nearby.

After that, I quit the show cold-turkey (as did millions of others). It’s far too stressful watching something so clearly willing to rip your heart out. NG

Omar’s death on The Wire

In one of the greatest series in TV history, Omar (Michael K. Williams) was the most extraordinary, most memorable character. A stick-up man with a menacing facial scar, a durag and a long coat, he was so feared that the Baltimore streets cleared on his approach to cries of “Omar comin’!”.

But, while he robbed drug dealers and wielded a shotgun, Omar was also a moral character – highly intelligent, witty, gay and caring enough to take his grandmother to church on Sundays. He had many enemies but he was a survivor. So I remember gasping at Omar’s sudden death.

After pouring a dealer’s drugs down a drain, he was buying cigarettes in a corner store when, blam, he was shot in the head. The killer: an angelic-looking kid, Kenard (Thuliso Dingwall). Other kids looted Omar’s body for souvenirs then, when the Baltimore Sun was put to bed that night, his death didn’t even warrant a mention when they needed a four-paragraph brief. Garry Maddox

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Dynasty’s wedding massacre

Was it simply because the world was obsessed with royal weddings? Or was Dynasty trapped in the one-upmanship of shocking annual soap opera cliffhangers?

It was the ’80s, and this was a so-called supersoap, so it came as no surprise that heiress Amanda Carrington (Catherine Oxenberg) was off to fictional Moldavia to marry Prince Michael (Michael Praed). The twist? Pro-independence rebels in the European micro-monarchy staged a coup, storming the palace chapel and opening fire on the congregation, including all the show’s main characters.

Who lived? (Almost everyone.) Who died? (Predictably, the gay dude.) Contract renewal week was never more tense than it was in the summer of 1985. MI

The Number 96 bomb blast

Number 96 was unbeaten in the ratings until colour TV began in Australia in 1975. Then Seven and Nine began counter-programming blockbuster movies against Ten’s sexy serial and it worked. Ratings began to fall and panicked producers decided the quickest way to revamp the show would be to kill off several characters.

On Friday, September 5, a bomb exploded in the delicatessen and on the following Monday, a casualty list was printed in newspapers warning viewers that Aldo (Johnny Lockwood) and Roma Godolfus (Philippa Baker) and Les Whittaker (Gordon McDougall) were all dead. The show continued for another two years, but producers later admitted it had been a mistake to cruelly kill off such beloved characters. AM

Molly’s death on A Country Practice

Brendan (Shane Withington) and Molly Jones (Anne Tenney) were one of the happiest couples in Wandin Valley, so when Tenney decided to leave after 4½ years, producers were left in a quandary. Given nobody would accept the Joneses divorcing, it was decided Molly would have a “lovely, long, sad death”.

She was diagnosed with leukaemia, deliberately chosen so that scriptwriters had an out if Tenney changed her mind. She didn’t, and as her on-screen death loomed, Seven realised she would die during a non-ratings period. Ignoring continuity, they aired repeat episodes so Molly could slip away on June 5, 1985, while watching Brendan fly a kite with daughter Chloe (Emily Nicol). Viewers were left distraught, but Seven celebrated those huge ratings. AM

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.