10 Movie Characters Who Died Breaking Their Own Rules

5. The T-850 - Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines

The Rule: Terminate John Connor.

Mid-way through the third Terminator movie, the benevolent T-850 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is defeated and corrupted by the evil T-X (Kristanna Loken). With its programming now altered, the T-850's new mission is to murder John Connor (Nick Stahl) rather than protect him.

The T-850 quickly attempts to kill John, except John is able, with a baffling amount of ease, to convince the T-850 to override its new programming by highlighting the "contradiction" between its old and new directives. The T-850 then betrays its active (murderous) programming and goes into standby mode.

Even ignoring the complete absurdity of the T-X's override being cancelled out with a few easy words, the T-850 breaking its new coded rules leads to it eventually returning in the third act to rescue John and Kate (Claire Danes) from the T-X, sacrificing itself by detonating its unstable fuel cell in the vicinity of the T-X.

You can argue that the T-850 was simply reverting to its prior "rules" or programming to protect John, but considering that the T-850 had to clearly be re-programmed by the resistance in the future in order to override its original, factory-set Skynet programming, it doesn't really track.

Had the Terminator stayed true to its prime directives, John Connor would've been dead meat and the machine would've still been "alive" at the end of the movie.

Quite ironically, a similar narrative is actually explored in the recent timeline-annihilating sequel Terminator: Dark Fate.