9 Incredibly Important Movie Characters Who Were Killed Off Screen

5. Sarah Connor - Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines

In the first (and best) two Terminator films, the story revolves around Sarah Connor and her evolution from a vulnerable damsel in distress to a certified badass, militant heroine. The character quickly stole the show from the titular Terminator while Linda Hamilton revolutionized the role of females in action movies.

When the franchise began to hit the skids, it was no coincidence that Sarah Connor was nowhere to be found. The shift of focus from the protective mother to her son, John, may have been a natural progression, but the jarring manner in which it occurred during the third film couldn't have been more stilted.

In Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines, the audience is told that sometime between the second and third film, Sarah succumbed to leukaemia. The way she died wasn't the biggest issue - although it certainly felt a little cheap to hear that someone who got stabbed by a shapeshifting robot and lived to tell the tale was ultimately defeated by cancer - but it was the fact that it was so callously glossed over that really stung.

Behind the scenes, this was because Hamilton chose not to reprise her role again, as she felt her character's story had already wrapped up.