Here’s The One Death Scene Hannibal Wasn’t Allowed To Do

Of all the unjustly terminated TV shows out there, Hannibal is the one that hurt the most. I was initially pretty skeptical of bringing the titular character to the small screen, but Bryan Fuller’s demented imagination and gorgeous visual stylings quickly made it one of the most fascinatingly unique and bizarre series on the air. It lasted for three glorious seasons, each barmier than the last, before being cruelly cancelled due to low ratings.

Lately, however, it’s been sounding like there’s a chance it could return. A few months back, Fuller even hinted at a potential set-up for a fourth season, which would seemingly be the lovechild of “Inception meets Angel Heart.” As exciting as that is, nothing’s been decided on just yet unfortunately and for now, the song remains the same.

Hannibal is still on ice for the time being, given that Fuller, who was once attached to Star Trek: Discovery over at CBS, is committing his time to the second season of American Gods. Ditto for Mads Mikkelsen, who held a role in Gareth Edwards’ Rogue One last year and is poised to explore the world of video games through Hideo Kojima’s peculiar PS4 exclusive, Death Stranding.

So, we shouldn’t expect to see the show back on our screens anytime soon, then (even if we’re not completely ruling out a return at some point in the future), but that doesn’t mean it didn’t give us a ton of extremely memorable moments to look back on fondly – many of which were quite bloody and violent. That being said, it seems that Hannibal didn’t exactly get away with everything it wanted to do, as one particular death scene that Fuller was hoping to include failed to receive the green light from NBC.

From what we understand, it would have taken place during season 1, as “FBI profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) is hunting down the escaped killer Dr. Abel Gideon (Eddie Izzard).” The scene in question would have had Gideon luring tabloid blogger Freddie Lounds (Lara Jean Chorostecki) to an office, wherein she would ” flip a light switch, unwittingly activating a ceiling fan that was attached to an incision in the living doctor’s abdomen,” thus ripping his intestines out while he’s still alive.

Speaking about the scene to Entertainment Weekly, Fuller said the following:

“[It] essentially disembowels him by spinning the fan, all in one fell swoop. That was the only one where NBC was like, ‘I just don’t know how you’re going to do it.’ We would have pushed back if we also hadn’t been told that financially we didn’t know how we could afford to produce such a gag, because you have intestines swinging around a ceiling fan.”

Sounds pretty gruesome, right? While Hannibal did get away with quite a lot and certainly pushed the envelope in many ways, we can see why this might have been a step too far. Still, it’s an interesting anecdote for fans and is yet another example of the creativity on the showrunners’ part when it came to constructing unique and artistic death scenes.