20 Mind-Blowing Facts You Never Knew About The Terminator Franchise

13. "I'll Be Back", The Iconic Line That Almost Never Was

It's a pretty mundane statement, but when it comes out of the mouth of Arnold Schwarzenegger, "I'll be back" is somehow a thing of iconic beauty. It's become the most enduringly popular line of the Austrian Oak's career, repeated not just across the Terminator films, but through several of his other movies as well. And yet, the line almost didn't feature in The Terminator at all. Not in that specific form anyway - originally scripted as "I'll come back" and changed to the more familiar version on-set, Schwarzenegger protested that the line should have been the more formal "I will be back". Schwarzenegger argued that "I'll" sounded more feminine and less robot-like - until Cameron fired back, "I don't tell you how to act, so don't tell me how to write". And so Schwarzenegger delivered the line as requested, making his mark on movie history.