9 Incredibly Important Movie Characters Who Were Killed Off Screen

8. Tank - The Matrix Reloaded

The first Matrix film is pretty much a bloodbath for the human characters; basically anyone who stepped foot on the Nebuchadnezzar was dead before the ending credits rolled. The second-coming of Judas, Cypher, goes ahead and kills off most of the other crew members, including Apoc, Switch, Dozer, and Mouse before being executed himself, leaving the only good guys to make it out of the first movie alive Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, and Tank.

And yet, one of those four never made it to the sequel. Rather, a throwaway line in The Matrix Reloaded tells us that Tank died - the how and why is never fleshed out - and his duties have been given to his brother-in-law, Link.

It's a thoughtless swap-out that makes the mid-series recasting of Becky on the sitcom Roseanne look seamless and inspired by comparison. Did they really think no one would care that Tank was killed off and substituted with another random black guy (kinda racist, by the way)?

In one of many instances of real life meddling in the good intentions of screenwriters, it turns out the guy who played Tank in the first Matrix, Marcus Chong, got a little too big for his britches and demanded the same salary as Laurence Fishburne for the sequel. The Wachowskis responded by showing him just how replaceable he was.