True Blood: Lafayette was supposed to die
Everybody’s favourite gay, cross-dressing short order fry cook from the popular vampire porno True Blood never made it much further than the first chapter of The Southern Vampire Mysteries, the series of novels on which the TV series is based. However, due to the popularity of the character, played masterfully by Nelsan Ellis, the show’s producers chose to ultimately save the man’s life, giving another poor secondary character the chop instead.
Rome: Caesarion was (also) supposed to die
Not so much an adaption of something else as a series which was supposed to be loosely historical. By all means not the first inaccuracy within the show but perhaps the largest and most deliberate. Child of Caesar and Cleopatra, Caesarion, is rescued from certain death by the show’s protagonists, legionaries Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, despite in reality meeting much the same fate as his mother. Presumably the producers felt that depicting child murder may have been a stretch too far.
Dexter: Rita actually WASN’T supposed to die
Showtime’s Dexter seems to buck trends by being even more bloodthirsty than its original source material, with several characters currently still alive in the books being brutally killed off in the show. Most controversially the character of Rita, Dexter’s wife and probably his main relationship in the show which makes you forget just how utterly cuckoo-clock he is. Whilst in the latest book the pair remain happily married, on TV she met a grisly end, even by the show’s own famously high standards of bloody violence.
World Without End: Edward II and III’s impossible fight scene
World Without End was a historical epic, one of those novels that despite not happening, there are no real reasons why it couldn’t have happened. After several major character who survived the book dropped dead of the plague throughout the series, the cherry on the cake came in the season finale. Gone was the pathos of the world’s tallest spire being built and in its place, a sword fight between Edward III and Edward II in a burning monastery… despite the fact the latter died decades earlier.