Characters least deserved of their fate

I agree. They were innocents who were stuck in bad situations. I think Bill could earn that spot from it's a good life as he only wanted to celebrate his birthday before he was sent to the corn field.

Didn't the closing narration suggest that Elva Keene had made her own bed and now had to sleep in it? Ouch! That was one of the nastiest endings of any Zone. She was imperious and domineering but not an innately bad person. Hadn't she suffered enough, being crippled for life after the car crash?

To have her hopes raised, at her age, after having been frightened half to death by those anonymous, spooky phone calls, and then have the apparently "dead voice" of her ex tell her that he always does what she tells him to do, then sign off, strikes me as a downright sadistic closure for the poor woman.

I don't think that either of the male characters at the end of Shadow Play and the Willoughby episodes got what they deserved,--unless in the latter the man did get a chance to spend eternity in his idealized community.

Of the examples you gave, only the two ladies in Midnight Sun got royally and unjustly screwed (and everyone else including the doctor for that matter!)

Bemis was anti social and preferred reading to interacting with his friends and family, indeed, wishing he could be alone.

Elva, as someone pointed out above, was an unrepentant shrew. If she was domineering as a young lady and learned her lesson, we'd have some pity for her. But she was also domineering to both her assistant and even the phone operator.

There are plenty of other examples. The three astronauts in Elegy were thoroughly hosed in that episode.

Good list. I believe the three top are...
Forbes, Harrington, and Gart. They were ripped from our world with no explanation. And they seemed like they suffered alot

Sam Conrad in "People Are Alike All Over".

He didn't get that grim of an ending compared to some of the others previously mentioned, however he believed these people were going to help him get back to his home, and then he finds out they're going to make him spend his life as a zoo exhibit for simply being an earthling. Harsh!

And I want to mention Barbara Polk in "Uncle Simon", although she did get herself into that terrible situation by wanting her uncle's fortune. Still, she put through a lot with that bastard.

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i feel like none of those people on the bus during "Will the real martian please stand up?" deserved dying.

then again.. the alien invasion would probably result in a worse death so.. perhaps they were spared in a way..