10 Famous Characters Who Acted Totally Out Of Character In Sequels

8. Sarah Connor €“ Terminator 2: Judgement Day

For the purposes of this article let's leave the short-lived Sarah Connor Chronicles to one side. Let's be clear €“ Linda Hamilton's Terminator heroine was never the all-out damsel in distress in her first turn in the role, but nor did she ever illicit any hint of being a Tank Girl-esque, medic-beating wayward soldier girl. That's not at all a complaint that she eventually turned into one, by the way, it's just that the transition was undeniably rather sudden. The Terminator introduces us to Sarah Connor €“ a happy-go-lucky college student living by herself in LA and working as a waitress to get by. She is, for all intents and purposes, your average American girl €“ so much so that were Tom Petty to ever meet her he'd probably attempt to sue her parents for plagiarism. Then Kyle Reese and the malevolent Terminator simultaneously show up in her life and that's when average living comes to a halt. Sarah and Kyle, who is from the same future as the machine and here to save her, go on the run. After a brief stop-off to inadvertently conceive future Earth saviour John Connor, Kyle is killed and Sarah must take centre-stage as the protagonist. She is thrust into acting alone and, through some trauma, she emerges triumphant. The edge-of-your-seat denouement to the first film would doubtlessly plant the seeds of bad-assery in anyone who survived it, but it is more likely Sarah's long stint in the mental asylum that chiseled away the last burdensome fragments of her girlishness and turned her into the rock-solid, action-movie one-liner-spitting mercenary she is by the beginning of Terminator 2: Judgement Day. It's a believable change, but given that we don't see it actually happening it's a rather jarring one.