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What Could Have Been / Terminator

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    The Terminator 

    Terminator 2: Judgment Day 
  • Shaquille O'Neal reportedly asked for a role as a black Terminator.
  • WASP singer Blackie Lawless was considered for the role of T-1000.
  • Billy Idol was originally slated to play the T-1000, but a serious motorcycle accident in 1990 left him incapacitated and unable to work.
  • Denzel Washington turned down the role of Dyson.
    "No offence to Jim Cameron but when I read the script, I thought 'all this guy does is look scared and sweat.' I had to pass."
  • When Cameron first told Arnold about a sequel in 1985, he said it would feature two T-800s played by him, one of which would become a metal skeleton. When he actually begun working on the second one in 1990, he decided to turn the evil Terminator into the T-1000 instead. A similar idea would eventually be used in Terminator Genisys.
  • The original concept of the Terminator Twosome was that the T-1000 was going to have the Shapeshifter Default Form of Kyle Reese and played by Michael Biehn, making for an even more interesting switch up of the first movie and involving an additional emotional subplot with Sarah recognizing his feature. Cameron would've written around it by saying that Skynet managed to get Kyle's DNA and used it for the T-1000. However, the idea was rejected by the studio when they thought audiences would get confused by this. Instead they opted for the similarly-built Robert Patrick to get the big guy (Arnold) and small guy fighting each other image.
  • Earlier drafts of the script included many scenes that was ultimately left out in the final script:
    • Alternate beginning has an extended battle sequence of the future war, with John Connor as the narrator, who mentions Judgement Day happened in 1999. It also describes many different war machines besides the flying and tank H/Ks. It shows the machines shut down, since Skynet has been defeated. It shows the soldiers breaking into the Skynet complex and sending Kyle Reese into the past. The sequence ends with John Connor looking at a storage area holding the Terminators with human skin, he finds a row with identical appearances (the Arnold model), and looks at an empty case (of the Terminator from the first movie) and the Terminator next to it. Then we flashback to Janelle trying to call John in the garage. A version of this sequence was eventually used to open the fifth movie.
    • A scene which Sarah was forced into shock therapy. She flashbacks to when she crushed the Terminator in the first film. Then we cut to the scene of the second Terminator's arrival.
    • Sarah's alternate dream after she was forced into taking the pills. After chasing after Reese, she was ambushed by the orderlies, then the Terminator came and grabbed her, and took her outside, to the playground. The nuclear explosion struck and it ends with the shockwave blasting the skin out of Sarah and the Terminator.
    • The Gant Camp sequence. A more extended and alternate version of the Salceda Ranch sequence. Travis Gant was the "ex-Beret guy" John mentioned in the film. Here Gant is married to Yolanda while Salceda is instead one of Gant's men. They all find out that Sarah was telling the truth about the Terminators. After John and the Terminator chase after Sarah, the T-1000 came and killed everyone at the ranch. There's also a scene where the T-1000 was listening to a recorded message from Sarah telling John to go to Gant Ranch (or Salceda Camp in a later draft); right before he heads there, a couple of cops came to arrest him when they discover he's driving a stolen police car, then we cut to the T-1000 in the motorcycle.
    • Similarly, there's a scene which the T-1000 arrives at Salceda Camp. Salceda performs a Heroic Sacrifice by blowing them both up, but the T-1000 survives, then he kindly asks the children of the Salceda's family where John went and lets them live. Notably in this draft the family survives, while in the Gant Camp sequence, Jolanda is implied to be killed (and she was pregnant).
    • Sarah's second dream sequence instead has nuclear missiles coming from beneath the playground, and the blast from the launch incinerated the people and Sarah.
    • Dyson had a dream sequence before he died and dropped the device on the trigger. In it, he saw a picture of his family before a nuclear inferno turned it to ash. He sees his family running and then a scene of the sun as it pulls back to reveal Dyson's dying eye, before he closes it and drops the section of the enlarged chip onto the trigger (Dyson has a copy in his home that gets shot up by Sarah, and the original is shot at the same time as he is by the SWAT Team, thus he uses his creation to destroy it). Scenes of the blazing inferno were ultimately used during the movie's opening credits.
  • In an early script, the initial encounter between John and The T-1000 took place at an amusement park.
  • Originally the Terminator was going to use a MAC-10 to shoot at the police, but Cameron decided to revisit the gun used in Predator instead.
  • A planned ending would have had an elderly Sarah in the park with a grown-up John and his daughter, foreclosing the possibility of further movies in the franchise. It was filmed, but cut in favour of the 'open road' ending. A flock of birds was also considered to be added as the scene pans from the sky in post-production.
    • While it didn't even made it to the early script draft, Word of God considered having the elderly Sarah seeing a carefree, non-jaded Kyle Reese.

    Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines 
  • James Cameron was expected to direct the film during the mid-1990s, but due to Carolco's bankruptcy in 1995, he lost interest in the franchise and focused on doing Titanic (1997) instead.
  • Ridley Scott was asked to direct, but he was busy with Black Hawk Down. Ang Lee was also offered the job, but he was busy with Hulk. Michael Bay, who would direct another movie based on a franchise that revolves around robots that started in 1984, and John McTiernan were also considered.
  • Director Jonathan Mostow accepted the movie with the condition Linda Hamilton returned. Hamilton was offered to reprise her role as Sarah, but declined after reading the script, in which she was killed halfway. It's has been entertained the character of Katherine Brewster was created to replace her.
  • Schwarzenegger originally wanted Chyna to play the T-X, but it was not possible. After this, the character oscillated between male and female, with actors of both sexes being considered for the role: Vin Diesel, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jeri Ryan, Shaquille O'Neal, Gwyneth Paltrow, Peta Wilson and Lucia Rijker were some of them. After it was established again as female, it was reported Famke Janssen was the main candidate to play it.
  • Claire Danes was a last second change after the original actress for Kate was found to be too young for the role.
  • In the earliest draft featuring writers Michael Ferris and John Brancato (the one writing in the link, who admits he didn't care for either of the two movies but accepted the job, brought in because Ferris was friends with director Jonathan Mostow), John had become a Silicon Valley CEO, Sarah was alive but alienated from her son, and the film would end with the missiles being launched but disabled en route. Later, this received a subplot where a seemingly heroic T-X infected John with nanomachines in order to have him betray the resistance in the future, with the T-850 being sent by Kate actually to kill him; it would end in a Downer Ending with present Kate being killed and Connor still having nanomachines in his head. Predictably, the execs were angry at those developments (which Brancato describes as "pretty insane, trippy and multiversive", trying to "conjure some of the dizzy absurdity of the first Terminator"), so they forced the writers to remake the script completely in a couple weeks, giving as a result the final film as we know it.
  • At some point, the enemy Terminator was a shapeshifter like the T-1000, but could also turn into a gaseous form. Lance Henriksen was to reprise the role of Detective Vukovich, having the character bound to a wheelchair following the events of the first film, but the idea was eventually dropped.
  • In the original script, in the scene where the T-X attacked the woman to take her clothes, the woman was at an ATM that wouldn't respond, as a way of foreshadowing that Skynet was already taking over. After killing her and taking her clothes, the woman's boyfriend called her on her cellphone. The T-X answered it by imitating her voice. When the T-X was pulled over by a cop, she did not inflate her breasts; the cop was simply taken in by her beauty, tore up the ticket, and asked her out. In the same script, when John was at the bridge in the beginning, he was actually contemplating suicide. Shortly after, when the T-850 steals the stripper's clothes and then the truck, a bouncer was going to try to stop him.
  • Apparently, an extended scene set in the future where Connor and Kate encouraged the resistance troops was filmed, with them in costume, but was never used in the cut.
  • The film was going to feature a subplot where it would be revealed the T-800 series' human parts were created after an Air Force sergeant from current time, William Candy (also played by Schwarzenegger, but redubbed in a Southern accent, implying the robot's voice was actually sampled from a technician named Olson who was hilariously redubbed by Arnold himself). In fact, in the scene where the heroes meet Kate's father, the general was going to be shocked to see the T-850 and mistake him for Sgt. Candy, making the T-850 clarify he is not and mention he was made there. This was all removed because the director realized the audience would find it confusing, but the first scene with the real Candy is included as a DVD bonus. The novelization, which contains a few plot differences from the film, also kept this subplot.
  • The first fight between the T-850 and the T-X featured the latter using headbutts and biting his arm with her steel teeth, exposing a bit of his arm's metal exoskeleton. Similarly, their final fight under the giant door had the T-X grappling T-850's and attacking him with her rotary saw. Those moments were actually filmed, but were discarded before completing the special effects. The film's novelization and comic book retain them with some changes.
  • Director Mostow feared the film's ending might be found too dark by the execs, so he had prepared a Focus Group Ending where a second T-850 came from the future directly inside Crystal Peak to somehow avert Judgement Day again.
  • One version of the script had a scene showing Dr. Silberman dying in the nuclear holocaust. Before being vaporized by nuclear radiation, Silberman's last thoughts would be of both Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese being right about everything.

    Terminator Salvation 
  • Director McG expressed interest in casting Josh Brolin or Daniel Day-Lewis as Marcus Wright.
  • Tilda Swinton was originally cast as Dr. Serena Kogan.
  • Stan Winston was intended to have a cameo as a prisoner who was fighting a Hydrobot in the Skynet research facility, but this was scrapped due to Winston's worsening health.
  • In an early script, Marcus was much more emotional and talkative, just like Kyle and a non-mute Star, and they would encounter cannibals in the road instead of a good-natured clan of survivors. Marcus would be revealed to be just a brain in a cybernetic body, just like Serena Kogan who would explain that Skynet was creating hybrids like them to build a new, superior human society as part of what they called Project Angel. John Connor himself wouldn't appear personally until the last act and, more shockingly, be killed by Serena while rescuing Kyle, so Marcus would assume his role by surgical methods to lead the Resistance.
  • Even after turning John into a main character by Bale's demand and adding the Ashdown subplot to fit it better into the story, the main plot points were kept when they started shooting: Helena Bonham Carter was going to play the cyborg Kogan and not just her image used by Skynet, Marcus would have fought a T-800 in his meeting with her, and his impersonation of a dead John was going to be the official ending. However, this ending was blasted by everyone who heard about it after an internet leak, with McG himself finding it thoroughly wrong upon reading it, and the Project Angel storyline was felt as too outlandish and out-of-character for the franchise, so they changed plans again mid-production. Some scenes from these earlier ideas were shot and are contained in the DVD.
  • There was even a second alternate ending where Marcus, after waking up from the operation, turned evil and killed everyone in his hospital room, including Kyle, Star, Kate, and Barnes. It got as far along as having concept art drawn up for it, but was even more hated than the former and eventually discarded.
  • In the original filming script, Serena would have become a Terminator/human hybrid like Marcus and would have been the Big Bad and the Man Behind the Man of Skynet. The scenes were shot with Helena Bonham Carter but not used, which is why she became an Advertised Extra after the re-shoots.
  • The submarine commanded by Ashdown was originally going to be destroyed by an underwater Harvester and not by a simple missile.
  • Had Arnold Schwarzenegger not given permission for his likeness to be used for the T-800 that attacks John in the factory, the plan was to have John shoot the T-800's face off as the camera panned up.
  • This film was meant to be the first of a new trilogy, but the plans for any future endeavors with this incarnation vanished at some point and prompted a Continuity Reboot with Terminator Genisys. That said, Salvation did receive an Expanded Universe of novels and comic books that continued the story and even managed to wrap up the universe and timeline with a conclusive finale after it was abundantly clear no more actual films were going to be made. As far as we know, the sequel would have included:
    • John Connor traveling back in time to a 2011 where Judgment Day had yet to happen and had to convince the militaries of the world to stand together before the impending Skynet invasion, as Skynet had discovered how to send back multiple units back in time without the issue of only being allowed to send back one entity with only flesh. In the meantime, John would get to fight the various machines Skynet would send back by using conventional military weapons.
    • Along the way, an idea discussed between McG and Robert Patrick was for John to meet a scientist played by the latter, who would be studying cell replication in an effort to find a panacea to aging, disease, and so on, and this subplot would have been a deconstruction of such topics (and interestingly, sounds similar to Dr. Kogan's work) and would have culminated in this scientist somehow becoming the template for the T-1000 in T2.

    Terminator Genisys 
  • In 2013, it was originally reported that a television series would tie into the new trilogy (of which Genisys was the first — and only — film in). After Genisys underperformed at the box office, the show and the rest of the trilogy were cancelled.
  • Robert Patrick was offered a chance to play the T-1000 again, but declined because his age and bad hip would prevent him from doing the stunts himself, and because he didn't want to tarnish his original performance from Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
  • Emily Blunt, Brie Larson and Margot Robbie were considered for Sarah Connor.
  • Tom Hardy was considered for John Connor.
  • Wilson Bethel, Garrett Hedlund, Boyd Holbrook, Nicholas Hoult and Taylor Kitsch were considered for Kyle Reese.
  • Some of the plans for the rest of the trilogy included:
    • Centering around John being half-man, half-machine, and showing how he got from where he was after being converted to him showing up in 2017. This was how the second film was going to start, but that was as far as it was conceptualized.
    • J. K. Simmons reprising his role as O'Brien in the second and third films.
    • Dayo Okeniyi reprising his role as Danny Dyson, who would have played a significant role in the second film.

    Terminator: Dark Fate 
  • Like Salvation and Genisys, Dark Fate was meant to be the first in a trilogy.
  • Concept art depicts a Resistance soldier named Harper. As Grace's surname is said to be Harper according to Word of God, this soldier was presumably a proto-Grace.
  • In 2017, while the film was still in early production, James Cameron stated that the cast surrounding the character that would then become Dani would include characters from the future, suggesting that there would be other future characters beyond Grace that would play important roles in the trilogy.
  • Cameron and Miller clashed on how to depict the future. Cameron wanted Legion to come from a human-occupied future and was on the defensive, while Miller wanted Legion to come from a machine-occupied future (i.e. a robot apocalypse, the same as Skynet).
  • According to director Tim Miller, the prologue originally had dialogue between John and Sarah, but it was eventually abandoned because "we never even got halfway across the Uncanny Valley." Miller briefly floated the idea of utilizing deepfake technology to portray a younger John, and while it did not work for the final cut, it provided the animators some reference for the final animation.
  • According to Mackenzie Davis, the sequel film to Dark Fate was planned to focus on an alternate timeline Grace fighting against Legion's forces in the future in a similar vein to Salvation.
  • Grace's arrival was rewritten several times during the film's development, with ideas ranging from her landing in a river and washing downstream or materializing in a vagrant camp, where she'd "beat up homeless people".
  • Hadrell (Tom Hopper's character) was initially meant to have a much larger arc and death scene, but his arc was ultimately cut for time.

    Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles 
  • Apparently the Season 1 high school stories would have tied into the Skynet plot...somehow. That's all the crew has let us know after the season was cut short by the writer's strike and they decided to abandon the stories entirely in Season 2. According to rumours, writer/creator Josh Friedman purportedly had an outline for 4-5 seasons of the show. Future episodes would have followed John into the future and included Allison Young, an adult Savannah, and Catherine Weaver, and explored his training with his father and uncle.
  • Garret Dillahunt was planned to play the Cromartie Terminator right from the start, but scheduling conflicts prevented him from appearing in the pilot episode.
  • Cameron getting caught in a jeep explosion at the end of the first season was supposedly written in case Summer Glau wanted to leave the role at the end of the series. If she had, the resolution would have been that Cameron had her skin burned off in the fire and regrew a new one for the new actress, either like Cromartie did early in the series or by having similar abilities to the T-X of the third film.
  • One vocal part of the series criticism was that the series was set in the present day, instead of being set in Future War as basically Band of Brothers with cyborgs. The season two cliffhanger indicates this is what the third season would actually have been. But, of course, Fox...
  • Actually, thanks again to the Writer's Strike, the whole plot for Season 1 had to be dropped and canceled. The Jeep explosion was supposed to be the halfway point. Remember that blonde chick, Cheri Westin who was mysterious, "broken goods" (as Morris called her) and seemed like she'd play a big part, but then suddenly vanished in Season 2, never to be mentioned again? Yeah, she was supposed to have a sub-plot about being the victim of blackmail from the same person who made Jordan Cowan (the cheerleader who killed herself near the beginning) commit suicide. Because John got to know her, he unwittingly got dragged into a similar type of situation where his identity would be compromised. Guess we'll never know who made poor Jordan kill herself, or what dark secrets Cheri had…
  • In 2018, Josh Friedman released pitch documents for both seasons via a Twitter thread. Notably, both seasons went through major changes compared to their original pitches (for example, the character who eventually became John Henry could have been introduced at the end of S1, as an entirely evil proto-Skynet in an entirely functional Terminator body, named Daedalus), with the general tone of both seasons becoming more morally-ambiguous compared to their pitches. The really big revelation, however, was that the show was intended to have four seasons, with a complex Stable Time Loop personal timeline for John incorporating his death as described in T3.note 

    Terminator 2 3-D: Battle Across Time 
  • During its development, the attraction was at one point envisioned as an indoor rollercoaster and later as an interactive shooter ride. Both concepts would've put guests right in the middle of a battle in the post-apocalyptic Los Angeles landscape between Skynet and the surviving humans.

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