The most shocking deaths on 'The Last of Us,' ranked

We weren't surprised to see James (Troy Baker) go because he also dies in the game. However, if you're a show-only viewer, Ellie's quick cleaver to the throat likely took you by surprise.

Though James is a minor character on the live series, we had to include him here because fans of the game have a strong attachment to Baker. The actor brought Joel to life in the video game through motion capture and voice performances, so seeing him in the live series was a short, but sweet bonus.

From the moment he's introduced in episode eight, it becomes pretty clear that David's life is on the line: either he and his cohort will find and kill Joel, or Ellie and Joel will manage to kill him first. Between his hidden cannibalism and his seemingly pedophilic interest in Ellie, the creepy preacher is about as unlikeable as it gets on "The Last of Us" (no easy feat).

By the time Ellie struck him with a meat cleaver — 22 times, for those who are curious — we weren't too sad to see him go.

Episode one of "The Last of Us" clued viewers — even those who haven't yet played the game — into the fact that Riley was already dead. Thus, her death in episode seven was no surprise at all, netting her a low place on this list. Still, infusing "Left Behind" with the knowledge that these are the last happy hours that Ellie and Riley will ever spend together makes the entire episode a somber affair.

We understandably got attached to Riley over the course of the episode, yet we knew that she wasn't going to be around for much longer. That, plus the show's decision to gloss over the gritty details of her death, only for Ellie to vaguely expand on them in the finale, are what led to her low placement on this list.

The leader of the Fireflies, Marlene is an enigmatic figure who bookends "The Last of Us" season one, sending Joel and Ellie off on their journey and receiving them at its endpoint. For game players, Marlene's death, and even the method, weren't a surprise. But even for first-time viewers, Marlene's death was well-telegraphed. By the end of the finale, she was the only person left standing between Joel and Ellie.

If we had spent more time with Marlene over the course of the series, or better understood her attachment to Ellie earlier in the show, perhaps this would have hurt more. But as it stands, we had little time to feel close to Marlene, plus her death seemed inevitable.

We've known that Ellie's mom, Anna, was likely dead, but we weren't expecting to see her on-screen death play out on the show.

In the game, players don't learn much about Anna. Riley tells Ellie her mom was a nurse and a good friend of Marlene before her death. But video-game players never receive any flashbacks of Ellie's mom.

Going into the finale, show-only viewers and video-game fans alike didn't know the circumstances of Anna's death. So it was surprising to learn she was bitten only moments before giving birth to Ellie, resulting in Ellie's immunity to the cordyceps infection. The entire opening with an infected barreling toward a pregnant woman makes for one of the show's most stressful scenes to watch. It was an additional surprise to see this moment performed by Ellie's original voice and motion capture actor, Ashley Johnson.

When we finally expected Anna to take her own life to save her daughter, the episode revealed that Marlene shouldered the burden of shooting Anna off-screen before she succumbed to the cordyceps infection. It was a tragic reveal knowing that Marlene likely lived with the guilt of killing her friend while looking after her daughter.

For fans of the game, Sarah's death was no surprise. In the original "The Last of Us," players move through the game's prologue as Sarah at the inception of the cordyceps pandemic prior to her death. In the show, we experience those moments through her subjectivity as well — making it hurt all the more when she's killed not by an infected, but by a soldier following orders from above.

Nico Parker's performance and dynamic with Pascal in the brief time they share together on screen make it hard not to get attached. While Sarah's death isn't a huge surprise, it was still shockingly tragic to watch.

Once again, Tess' death certainly didn't come as a surprise for those who have played "The Last of Us" game. Even for first-time viewers, her survival seemed unlikely. But the circumstances of her death veered into something a bit more disturbing than her video game demise, which involved an infection and subsequent death at the hands of FEDRA.

After she's bitten during a fight with the clickers, Tess stays behind in Boston to fend off a horde of infected while Joel and Ellie escape. In the process, however, she shares a stomach-churning kiss with another Infected, her eyes wide with shock as its tendrils enter her mouth. Again, we knew that Tess was going to die, but the novelty — and fighting — method of her death put it toward the top of the list.

We knew that Kathleen probably wasn't going to make it out of "The Last of Us" alive, but no one anticipated the Kansas City leader would be taken down by the show's scariest contortionist child clicker.

A show-only character, Kathleen's death sequence delivered one of the show's most grisly moments after Perry's decapitation (more on that shortly). Seeing Kathleen beaten to death by a child wasn't only terrifying, but also a clever full-circle moment on the series. On HBO's official "TLOU" podcast, co-showrunner Craig Mazin said it was important for Kathleen to be killed by a child because earlier in the episode she flippantly mentioned that kids "die all the time."

"The idea that she, ultimately, is killed by a kid felt sort of like a circular completion of that story," Mazin said.

Kathleen isn't higher on our list for two reasons. Despite receiving one of the show's best deaths, we never imagined her surviving the series. Kathleen prioritized her vendetta against Henry above the safety of her group, so it was only a matter of time before it led to her downfall. We just weren't certain how she would go.

Ultimately, Kathleen's demise was more satisfying than surprising.

Frank's appearance on the show was a massive surprise as he's never seen alive in the game.

In the latter, Frank dies alone and angry, deciding to hang himself after getting bit by multiple infected. The show deviated from his video-game story completely to deliver a rich apocalyptic love story between Bill and Frank, which was only hinted at in the game.

It was difficult to not fall in love with Murray Bartlett's interpretation of the character. Even though we knew Frank likely wouldn't outlive his video-game character's death, we weren't expecting him to receive a happily ever after and to go out on his terms. His death was as shocking and sad as any jump scare on the series.

Frank isn't higher on our ranking because, unlike the next person on this list, he had the opportunity to live a full life that wasn't cut short by the cordyceps infection. Additionally, the show foreshadowed Frank's death once his illness was revealed.

When the infected attacked Kansas City, it seemed written on the wall that either Sam or Henry was going to get bitten, if not immediately killed. And while Sam becoming infected was a direct carry-over from the game, his death had a heartbreaking touch in the series: Ellie's unsuccessful attempt to save him with her blood. And when Sam has turned in the morning, it's not Joel nor Ellie who has to kill him — it's his own brother.

Watching a child perish (albeit, mercifully) at the hands of his own brother is heartbreaking enough. But there's one more detail that made the incident even more tragic. Before he turns, Sam sits on his bed facing away from Ellie. Given that he's deaf in the television series, it feels like a deliberate choice so that he won't see and attack her once he's turned.

There was no way that both Sam and Henry were making it out of Kansas City alive to join Joel and Ellie on their cross-country travels, but show-only viewers likely thought one of the brothers would survive.

Henry's death was one of the game's most shocking moments, occurring moments after he killed his younger, infected brother to save Ellie. Show-only viewers likely weren't prepared to see Henry turn the gun on himself so quickly.

Even if you played the game and anticipated this moment, it was still an incredibly unsettling scene. This was the most difficult death to watch in season one.

Since we never saw Bill die in the video game series, fans likely expected the hardened survivalist to survive "The Last of Us."

It was a massive shock to the system when Bill (Nick Offerman) decided to take his own life at the end of episode three, telling his love, Frank, and the audience that he was satisfied with the life he led and fulfilled his purpose by caring for and protecting the love of his life.

We were mostly shocked that Offerman only appeared as a guest on one episode of the series, especially because Bill's likely still alive in the game universe. His death also came as a surprise because, up until episode three, Bill and Frank were the most fleshed-out characters who we wanted to spend more time with outside of a standalone episode.

On all counts, Perry's death in episode five was the most gruesome — the man's head gets ripped off by a gigantic bloater whose fungal strength has been cooking underneath Kansas City for years. Initially, Mazin had imaged a somehow even more gruesome passing for Perry— a bloater ripping him in half at the waist — before co-creator Neil Druckmann reeled him back to trying something more realistic.

His death gets the top spot for easily being the most visceral in the entire series, and also one of the most poetic. Perry balanced being both Kathleen's right-hand man and her conscience, attempting to prioritize other survivors in Kansas City over her quest for revenge.

Unfortunately, he didn't succeed and was killed horrifically by the threat that he had previously urged Kathleen to disclose to the people: the infected lying in wait underground.