The Simpsons parodied it with Poochie, as did South Park with Towelie – but for the actors playing characters so unpopular they're swiftly written out, it's no laughing matter.
After all, it's bad enough to have your carefully crafted performance ripped apart by fans, but to then receive a P45 as a result, that's just the worst.
Especially as, in most of the following cases, the reception wasn't actually their fault (okay, maybe partly, but still). So, spare a thought for those poor performers as you read about the following characters, who were all basically so terrible they had to be quickly erased out of existence.
1. Coy & Vance - Dukes Of Hazzard
After a contract dispute took Tom Wopat (Luke Duke) and John Schneider (Bo Duke) off the show, …Hazzard's producers scrambled to replace them.
Enter stage left Byron Cherry as Coy Duke and Christopher Mayer as Vance Duke, AKA 'The New Dukes' who were so similar to the old Dukes that fans complained they were being sold a rip-off version of the same show.
Ratings plummeted, contracts were renegotiated and the old Dukes returned, with Coy and Vance swiftly written out to go "care for a sick relative" (lol), never to be referred to again.
2. Nikki Carpenter - MacGyver
Introduced in season three of the series, Carpenter (Elyssa Davalos) was intended as a love interest for MacGyver, joining the team and instantly clashing with our hero.
Initially, the character seemed to exist to set up a typical will-they-won't-they tension, until it became clear that they definitely won't, because the female fans of the show definitely didn't want a romantic subplot to get in the way of all of those "saving the world with a paperclip and chewing gum" scenes. (They preferred MacGyver single, apparently.)
Carpenter was sent on assignment to South America and was never heard of again.
3. Eve - Dawson's Creek
Season three of Dawson's Creek saw significant changes. The show lost a creator / writer in Kevin Williamson, and, rather than keep their heads down, the new showrunners decided to try to turn it into a sexy soap opera by adding a long-lost sister, Eve, for co-lead character Jen (Michelle Williams). Eve was basically trying to seduce Dawson pretty much constantly, and fans didn't like it.
The writers quickly changed course, abandoning Eve halfway through her plotline, and making sure that Jen not only didn't mention her sister again, she didn't even realise she had one.
4. Vicki Costa - Just Shoot Me!
However bad it got for everyone else on this list, at least their final episode aired – Vicki Costa (Rena Sofer) was so unpopular she not only didn't last a full season, her last appearance was binned.
Costa was a loud and obnoxious hairdresser who was hired to make the cast cooler, but with rumours that network execs cared more about making Sofer a star than giving the character a legitimate reason to be on the show (with every single plotline suddenly / randomly revolving around her), ratings swiftly dropped and Sofer was let go.
Costa was so unpopular we can't even find a clip of her on YouTube. The ignominy.
5. Riley - Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Urgh, Riley (Marc Blucas). Written into Buffy to replace Angel, AKA the best romantic lead in TV history, Riley was everything Angel wasn't: charisma-free and boring.
Brought into season four while Angel got his own series, and written out in season five because everyone hated him, Riley wasn't even invited back for the finale, which basically had EVERYONE in it.
6. Chuck - Happy Days
One of the industry terms for getting rid of a character audiences haven't connected with is to be 'Chucked' – not because they've been thrown away, but because it's named after of the most notorious early examples of the phenomenon, when Chuck Cunningham, Richie's older brother, was binned from Happy Days.
Don't remember Richie having a brother? Don't worry, neither does anyone on the show. Despite being played by two different actors (Gavan O'Herlihy and Randolph Roberts) across only 11 episodes (dotted throughout the first two seasons) the character didn't really gel, and was quietly... chucked.
7. Tori - Saved By The Bell
When Saved By The Bell execs decided to extend the fourth season by ten episodes, they hadn't anticipated the fact that a couple of cast members would be too busy to act in them. But with Elizabeth Berkley and Tiffani Amber Thiessen doing other stuff, the creative team invented Tori (Leanna Creel) a new love interest for Zack AND Slater.
Sadly for Tori, the audience saw straight through the ruse and rejected the replacement. Luckily, the season finale – featuring Berkley and Thiessen – had already been filmed, which meant the much-loved actresses could pretend they'd never been missing (indeed, no reference to it had been planned in advance, so it didn't come up in the episode), and Tori didn't appear again, not in Saved By The Bell: The College Years, not on Saved By The Bell: The New Class, and not on the TV movie, Saved By The Bell: Wedding in Las Vegas.
8. Nikki & Paolo - Lost
These two douches were introduced in season three as a response to the question 'What are the rest of the plane crash survivors up to?'. As it turned out, fans and critics didn't like the answer.
Nikki and Paolo were so viciously rejected even showrunner Damon Lindelof admitted they were "universally despised" by fans.
A mid-season break allowed the writers to course-correct, literally burying the pair alive in a weird meta-episode that must have been pretty miserable for the actors to perform.
9. Doctor Katherine Pulaski - Star Trek: The Next Generation
Pop quiz, Star Trek fans – who was the Chief Medical Officer of the Enterprise-D in Star Trek: The Next Generation? If you answered Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden), you'd be mostly right.
Except for season two, when the character was written out and replaced by Doctor Katherine Pulaski (Diana Muldaur). Rumours suggested head writer Maurice Hurley didn't get on with McFadden and had requested she be replaced.
Fans didn't like the change, partly because Muldaur didn't seem to have much chemistry with the main cast.
Realising their mistake, producers brought back Doctor Crusher for season three, and Pulaski beamed away (vanished).
