Terminator 3 threw lots of curve balls at the audience, including the death of Sarah Connor, but one thought dead character almost returned. Arriving 12 years after its predecessor, Terminator 3 was a bit of an unexpected follow-up, made back in the days when such belated sequels weren't as common as they are now. That's especially true due to Terminator 2's rather conclusive ending, which seemed to close the book on the franchise, with Sarah and John Connor undoing Skynet's creation with the help of Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800.
But money talks, and back when Terminator 3 came out, the franchise was still very much considered a bankable prospect at the box office. Schwarzenegger even resisted returning for the longest time, once creator James Cameron ended up leaving the potential project in the late-1990s. Cameron ended up urging his friend and collaborator to essentially take the large payday he was being offered, feeling that he deserved it. Linda Hamilton, however, opted not to come back, and was written out via Sarah Connor dying of cancer.
It turns out though that in an early script, Terminator 3 did bring back another character from the original, although certainly not one as high-profile. He appears to die in the first film, but apparently movie cops are durable.
In the first Terminator film, the T-800 famously busts into a police station to try and kill Sarah Connor, and while there, seemingly massacres just about every cop in the building. One pretty apparent victim is Detective Vukovich, quirky partner to Lieutenant Ed Traxler, the lead lawman attending to Sarah and Kyle Reese. Vukovich comes into a hallway guns blazing, only to get pumped full of lead by the T-800, including via a booming shotgun blast. While his body isn't shown, a faint yell can be heard in the background after the scene cuts back to the T-800's rampage.
Yet, back when James Cameron was still involved with a potential Terminator 3, the franchise creator planned to resurrect Vukovich, who would have been in a wheelchair due to his injuries. It's quite unlikely he could've survived getting blown away in the original, but that would hardly be the Terminator franchise's weirdest retcon decision. Oddly enough, Vukovich also almost returned for Terminator 2, although that idea didn't get very far either, as iconic sci-fi and horror movie actor Lance Henriksen had to take himself out of the mix due to a scheduling conflict. Sadly, it's not entirely clear what further story purpose Cameron had for Vukovich in Terminator 3.
