Watch a Video About 'The Terminator' You Never Got to See, Including the Stars Who Were Almost Cast

This year marks the 30th anniversary of one of the greatest sci-fi action films of all time, 1984’s The Terminator. But in keeping with the movie’s time-traveling theme, what if it had come together differently? Check out Yahoo Movies’ behind-the-scenes look above at some of the craziest ways that it could have become another movie entirely.

The Terminator launched the careers of an ambitious bodybuilder named Arnold Schwarzenegger and a young filmmaker named James Cameron. The two would go on to mega-money, awards prestige, and political power in the years that followed, and the movie would become basis of a massive franchise that is in the process of being semi-rebooted. It’s possible none of this would’ve happened though, if the first Terminator had featured some of the original stars that were lined up for the film.

After all, O.J. Simpson, who was eyed to play the T-800, would have had a lot of trouble filming sequels in the '90s. (Cameron nixed him in part because his public persona was too nice.) And what about that potential role for Sting? Or Schwarzenegger’s desire to cut his famous “I’ll be back” line? Watch and learn what could’ve been — and thankfully wasn’t.