This series has probably the highest body count of any show on TV, and so to honour all of those whose untimely passings have enriched the plot, drawn on the show's major themes and generally fucked with all of our moral sensibilities, we bring you AIG's Top 24 Most Memorable Deaths of 24.

24) Mandy's Neighbours. "Michelle, you lied to me, you bitch!" exclaims Mandy right before her car explodes, ostensibly taking both Tony's life and her own out along with it. Pretty much everyone believes Tony is dead except me, who could never accept such a travesty. This one makes the list simply because it was a fake-Almeida-death and the look on Michelle's face when it happened was gold.

23) Richard Walsh. Walsh knows, as he lays on the ground, shot and bleeding, that even the slightest further movement will draw fire and likely kill him, but he doesn't care. It is too important that he give Jack the keycard, which contains crucial evidence about the conspiracy to assassinate David Palmer. He throws the keycard to Jack, and sure enough, is pummelled with bullets and falls dead. The patriotic, gut-wrenching music as Jack shoots back and races into his SUV, then speeds away, still tugs at our heartstrings. Why, God, why??? Walsh was the man.

22) Peter Kingsley. Peter Kingsley may have been bit of a second-rate "ultimate villain" compared to the likes of Stephen Saunders and Victor Drazen, but his death freakin' ruled! Jack is out of bullets during a one on one standoff with Kingsley and thinks it is the end, when out of nowhere, the CTU chopper arrives in the nick of time and blasts Kinsgley to hell! In a season defined by redemption, CTU, the agency that Jack sacrificed so much for but that never fully demonstrated its gratitude, is too redeemed and saves Jack from Kingsley.

21) Ira Gaines. Whatever shortcomings Ira Gaines may have had, at least he knew when he was beaten and accepted defeat like a man. He fought the good fight, but Bauer was just better than him, and he accepted that. We like that in a villain. The moment where he turns around to face Jack, knowing he's about to be mowed down, and says "good luck" right before he's shot in the heart is one of the best moments of the first season, and basically summed up the character of Ira Gaines. To him, there was no emotion or cause in the job -- it was just the job and he got beat, he knew it, and he gave kudos where kudos was due. Go Gaines Go! Your villainy prowess is sorely missed.

20) Jonathan Wallace. "It's inside ... it's inside .... it's xbhsabdvsdhjafvsbc...". Oh dude, perfect. The whole thing was very dramatic though, bursting into the clinic with Wallace gushing blood from the neck, Jack shoving his gun in everyone's face, Jon refusing sedation and dying on the operating table, his last breath exhaled in a gravelly grunt. Plus, who could forget when Jack cuts open his corpse and retrieves the memory chip? Awesome!

19) Ted Cofell. It takes balls to willingly succumb to the extreme pain of cardiac arrest and certain death just to avoid giving up information. And the fact that Jack was the one who caused the heart attack? Priceless. Cofell gave it his all up to the very end, even in death, as he spits the medication Jack tries to forcefeed him back into Jack's face, then collapses. On the bright side, Cofell's hairstyle was significantly improved by his untimely death, and the fact that his corpse was used as a weapon against Fakeyork in the back of the limo is just too classic.

18) Mamud Faheen. We KNEW that $50 gift card would get its moment in the spotlight! Seeing that Jack is distracted by a phonecall from his imperiled daughter, Nina quietly convinces Faheen to tell her where the bomb is, then she promptly slits his throat with the $50 gift card fashioned into a crude dagger before Jack can stop her. What a way to go! Being murdered by Nina in such a dramatic fashion pretty well guarantees a place on this list, and Faheen is no exception.

17) Hector Salazar. In "24", the importance of family, and how it keeps you tied to your humanity when you live in a world overrun with incredibly difficult choices and impossible risks, is paramount. This theme has been explored over and over again, through Jack, Tony, Michelle, Kim, Palmer, Mason, the list goes on. So when one brother shoots another in the back over MONEY, it's a pretty freakin' huge deal. At least Victor Drazen and Stephen Saunders understood that FAMILY comes before ANYTHING else, which is more than we can say for Ramon. Even an insane brute like Hector deserved better than that from his own BROTHER. Even NINA couldn't believe Ramon actually killed his own brother, and this is the woman who would kill ANYBODY.

16) Michael Amador. Oh dude, so classic! After having the nerve to rip off the likes of Nina Myers and blowing up Ramon Salazar with a bomb-rigged medical vial, Amador should have remembered that what goes around comes around when he nonchalantly opened a bomb-rigged briefcase, engulfing not only himself, but also another Saunders employee AND a slick lookin' car in flames right before Jack's eyes. If anyone EVER deserved it...

15) Victor Drazen. For the first time, we realize that Jack Bauer can become wrath and shoot someone in cold blood, as Victor stood there, arms raised, empty gun on the ground. Yes, Victor deserved it and yes, no one can blame Jack, but as Jack contiues to chase Victor's corpse into the harbour with mute and empty dry-fire rounds, we see something in Jack that had the potential to be as base and ugly and desperate as the man he just killed. The moment where Victor closes his eyes, knowing Jack is going to kill him anyway, was the best moment of Dennis Hopper's entire performance.

14) Jamey Farrell. You can't help but feel sorry for Jamey. Yes, she betrayed her country for a paltry $300,000, but let's face it, she was a confused and desperate woman who was totally outleagued by the baddest, slickest danger slut of all time. When Tony and Nina burst into the room to find blood spurting from Jamey's slashed wrist, there was always something that didn't feel right about it. Tony's hands wringing the bloody rag, Jamey's blue face ... she just didn't seem like she would be the type leave her son motherless. So when this suicide turned out to be a murder at the hands of none other than Nina Myers, it all made sense. And the look on Nina's face during the video footage of Jamey's murder? Wow. That alone puts this one on the list.

13) Yusuf Auda. The worst part is that Yusuf was just as fine an agent as Jack and Tony, but succumbed to the sheer raging idiocy of the worst bottomfeeders of society in a horrible tragedy of circumstance. He is beaten within an inch of his life by psychotic racists, but manages to hang on just long enough to warn Jack that both Kate Warner AND crucial evidence have been abducted before that last inch slips away. Yusuf's last words are all business as he implores Jack to "go get the chip..." with his dying breath. He is truly the epitome of a patriot, a man who died to protect his country and the truth. Yusuf, you are missed!

12) Gary Matheson. The ultimate Bad Dad gets his just desserts when he fucks with the wrong bitch one too many times. Yes, Kim is young, impulsive and smaller than him, but she's also a Bauer, and he has no idea what he's dealing with. This fact is entirely evident as Jack, on the other end of a cell phone, talks his daughter through intentionally taking the life of another human being for the first time. Gary manages to utter some of the best last words of the series as he mutters "Kim, you little bitch..." right before she emits a primal scream and pumps a few slugs into this abusive psycho. A perfect ending.

11) Dan Allard. So we ALL should have seen this coming, but no one knew until that moment how stone cold Gaines really was. From the black crow that flies by like an omen as Dan waits in the clearing for Gaines to Gaines' pithy and oft-quoted "let me show you..." remark as the bullet enters Dan's skull and Rick's disbelieving stare to Kim screaming through her duct taoe, this scene was breathtaking from beginning to end.

10) Gael Ortega. After being exposed to a weaponized virus, Gael sure didn't leave a good-lookin' corpse. But the scene between he and Michelle right before the end, where he refuses to commit suicide, breathed a lot of life into a character who previously, while engaging and essential to the plot, had not yet REALLY made us care. Gael put a real face on just what kind of horror CTU was facing if the virus got out, and when he's wheeled past in a body bag, we can't help but think we might miss him.

9) The Sherry Palmer/Julia Milliken murder-suicide. For a plotline that was essentially dropped after the end of the second act, this one sure came back to bite EVERYONE in the ass. Most of the third season left audiences believing Michelle was theone in jeopardy, so when Julia Milliken comes back out of nowhere at the end of episode 23 and murders Sherry in revenge, then kills herself, it really blindsided us. What a brilliant move by the writers! The whole thing is capped off by the beautiful and moving image of Wayne Palmer, cradling the lifeless corpse of the woman he loves to his chest after it's all over. Sherry was a legend and her death was poetic justice. First rate.

8) Reza Naiyeer. Alas, Reza! Poor guy is accused of being a terrorist and interrogated by Federal Agents on his wedding day, only to discover (along with the rest of us) that his innocent suburban whitebread fiancee is actually a psycho terrorist bitch from hell who framed him! When Marie walks into her father's office pointing a gun at him, he barely has time to wonder whether or not his entire life was a lie when she mows him down! And the single tear rolling down Marie's cheek right before she pulls the trigger? 'Nuff said.

7) George Mason. In the climax of his season-long confrontation with certain death, George Mason's last act is to suicide a plane into the Mojave Desert and detonate an armed nuclear bomb a safe distance away from Los Angeles. To some, putting Jack in the plane to die and then having George take over at the last minute seemed out of character for Mason and somewhat contrived. However, the actual scenes between Jack and George more than redeemed this plot twist and the knowledge that George Mason was at the centre of the massive mushroom cloud engulfing the sky is impossible to forget.

6) Paul Raines. Once again, Jack must make an impossible choice between saving the life of his girlfriend's estranged husband who'd taken a bullet for him earlier in the day and saving the life of the only witness who can connect CTU to Habib Marwan. Jack orders the lone CTU clinic doctor to abandon Paul in the middle of surgery at gunpoint to save the witness. Sean Callery's heavy death requiem churns on as Paul goes into cardiac arrest and dies as Audrey unleashes her rage and disillusionment on Jack, telling him how much she hates him. The pain on Jack's face tell us that even he despises himself for what he had to do, but this is why he does what he does: he can make the choices that destroy souls.

5) Alan Milliken. Sure, we all knew Sherry was vicious and would stop at absolutely nothing to get what she wanted, but who knew she could literally talk a man into having a heart attack? Gasping for air, grabbing at his chest as Sherry's vitriol spewed and her indictments of him crescendoed, Milliken's weak heart was no match for Sherry Palmer's tongue lashing. Calling desperately for his pills as his wife Julia allowed herself to be talked into letting him die, the life slipping out of him, finally ending up as a corpse on the kitchen floor, the grimace of pain still on his face. The first time I watched this scene, I didn't even realize I wasn't breathing at all as it happened until it was all over, the mark of a fantastic and memorable death scene.

4) Janet York. The poor girl. After being drugged, date-raped, shot up with heroin, hit by a car nearly capped in the head, rushed to the hospital and flatlining twice during surgery, she lives and is expected to make a full recovery. That is until the man posing as her father coldly smothers her in her hospital bed. Who could forget the way Fakeyork never once looks away from Janet's dimming eyes as he chokes away her life, or how, as he's leaving the room, he pauses for one last lingering look at the flame he's just snuffed. A chilling, gutwrenching and unforgettable scene.

3) Teri Bauer. The moment where Jack hugs his wife's lifeless body to him, suffering the knowledge that not only was she murdered by the one person he trusted in the one place he believed she would be safe, but that everything he had given up that day to protect her was an exercise in futility. Teri's death changed Jack forever, and it changed us too. No one expected Teri to die, no one expected Jack to end the day in tragedy. But he did. And Teri's death will haunt us all.

2) Nina Myers. Even the most brilliant, gutsiest and unforgettable evil eventually must fall. Trapped in the basement of CTU where she herself murdered Teri 5 years earlier, bleeding and helpless on the floor, Nina finds herself at the mercy of the man she destroyed, and he's done playing around. Though Nina may not have been a physical threat to him at that moment, as Jack trained his gun on her, he recognized that as long as she was alive, the malignant blackness in his heart would only continue to gnaw away at him until there was nothing left. To recover, he had to end his addiction, had to end their bizarre and twisted bond. Cold and calculating, Jack pumps three bullets into the head of his soulmate and the world of 24 as we know it is irrevocably altered.

1) Ryan Chappelle. Absolutely the most unforgettable death of the entire series. This man, who lived his entire life asking others to make impossible sacrifices and judging their behaviour, is finally forced to walk the walk where he talked the talk when he must give up his own life to save the lives of millions of innocent civilians. Who can forget the pain and heartache as Chappelle kneels before Jack, a single tear rolling down his cheek, helplessly accepting of his fate, seconds before Jack asks God to forgive him and then puts a bullet in Ryan's head? In death, Chappelle gained his humanity as Jack was forced to give up a piece of his own in order to take Ryan's life. This brutal, uncompromising death scene definitely gets our vote for number one.

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