'Game of Thrones' Topped by 'Spartacus: Vengeance' as TV's Deadliest Series

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Funeral resource guide -- yes, that's right -- Funeralwise.com conducted a study of 40 kill-happy TV series and found that Spartacus: Vengeance topped them all, by a healthy margin, in weekly body counts.

The Starz drama posted an average of 25 dead bodies per episode. Each series' total casualties were measured based on eight recent episodes, and the 40 in the study combined to average 132 bodies in a single week.

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Coming in a not-so-close second place to Spartacus was Game of Thrones. Despite its high mortality rate, especially among primary players, the HBO show was 16 corpses behind Spartacus with 14 per episode.

"We did not find a direct correlation between the body count and viewership, but these programs are definitely popular with the viewing audience," Funeralwise managing partner Rick Paskin said of the findings. "As a funeral resource, the role of death in modern society is an interesting subject to Funeralwise. We know how difficult it is to get people to proactively plan for their funeral. There is a clear disconnect between the acceptance of death in popular culture and the acceptance of it in reality."

In other words: The next time you watch a loincloth-clad actor decapitate a room full of Roman guards, maybe take a moment to consider the pros and cons of cremation versus burial.

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Other fun findings reveal that CW spy thriller Nikita is the most lethal broadcast series with nine dead bodies per episode -- though it is outpaced by another CW series, if you count the undead. The Vampire Diaries dispatched an average 18 vampires per episode, topping even The Walking Dead, which puts roughly 16 zombies out of their misery every week.

Revenge, oddly enough, was among the safest series -- with not a single dead body among the eight episodes screened for the study. Emily Thorne must be getting lazy.