Most annoying fridge stuffings of the eighties?

[ReComposed]

I was going to post my agreement to the vast displeasure with Starscream's abrupt death scene in Transformers '86 in the TF section when I started to drift off topic, listing characters from other series I also thought were punted rudely out the door before their times. There's a slang term for a fictional character being killed off in a fakey, unsatisfying way: "stuffed in the fridge." In later seasons of eighties toyline cartoons, a lot of characters got stuffed in the fridge. Here is your chance to vent on the abrupt deaths/disappearances that most made you want to tear your hair out in frustration.

1. Starscream, as mentioned. Jazz, too, and any Autobot or Decepticon that was only shown long enough to get smacked down like a whack-a-mole. To a lesser extent, Optimus Prime; I maintain that his death was a fridge stuff, but at least he got a big send-off.

2. Cobra Commander was stuffed in the fridge in the movie, but when DIC took over, Serpentor manfully traded him places in the icebox. Why two characters with such a great dynamic are never allowed to occupy the same space long enough to do anything fun with it is beyond me. Duke, fortunately, was spared the long, cold walk by a last-minute dub-over.

3. Shredder and Krang, in the "red sky" eps of TMNT. At least they escaped with their hides, as they were only banished to another dimension and never heard from again as opposed to being killed or mutated into copipods, but it was still the last we saw of a pair of beloved characters.

Who am I missing? Are there more heroes, since my list is a bit on the villain-centric side?

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Requiem's alternate ending!

[MacGyver]

I hadn't heard of this "stuffed in the fridge" term before (though I have heard "nuked the fridge" from the "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" movie- essentially meaning the same as "Jumped the shark" in TV shows. (and I don't care for either term really- because both Indiana Jones and Happy Days have always been cool with me. )
Anyway- good choices you have here. I can definitely agree with Starscream and Cobra Commander- though he didn't technically die in "G.I. Joe: The Movie", did he? I thought the deal was that he literally got turned into a snake and slithered off.
As to Krang and Shredder, I can't say for sure as I haven't seen those episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles yet. (Or at least if I have, it was back in 1995 or 1996 or so- and I can't recall them right now.) I really wish Lionsgate would release the last 2 seasons of the '80s cartoon on DVD so I could have the whole set. I've been watching the entire series in order on DVD since they started releasing the show. (Though they did leave out a few episodes for some reason, but I've been able to obtain those episodes as well- looks like they were released to VHS back in the day, but couldn't be put on the DVD for some reason.)
Jaga was pretty quickly taken out of the picture on ThunderCats, if that counts. But then, he did a Obi-Wan Kenobi deal and became the ghostly advisor for Lion-O, so I guess his character didn't really go away necessarily.

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"You can do anything you want to do if you put your mind to it."- MacGyver

"Thunder...Thunder....Thunder...ThunderCats...HOOOO!!!!!!"- Lion-O

[ReComposed]

Stuffed in the fridge is a pretty old term, comes from an issue of (I think) Green Lantern, in which one of the heroines was murdered and then jammed into a refrigerator. "Dropped a bridge on them" is sometimes used in the same general context, but it's not exactly the same thing, either. A character is "stuffed in the fridge" when their death (or removal, in this case) is exceptionally insulting and mean-spirited (like Cobra Commander being tied up and put on display) and when sympathy is focused so exclusively on another character there's none left for the actual recipient of the attack (Duke would have been classic if his death had stayed in the film; the whole purpose of it was to upset Lt. Falcon). That's why I tend to think the eighties 'toons more in terms of fridges than bridges.

That's not to say I think the shows were "ruined" or anything, just that the deaths/mutations/random removals were unnecessary (heck, they proved that when they were able to completely remove Duke's by changing a single line of dialogue).

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Requiem's alternate ending!