These 5 Movie Villains And Heroes Were Almost Swapped — And We're STILL Shook

Woody Was Supposed To Be Toy Story's VILLAIN, And Tom Hanks Basically Revolted

Before Woody became Pixar's beloved cowboy leader, early drafts had him as a genuinely cruel tyrant who bullied the other toys. Even the guy voicing him couldn't take it — Tom Hanks reportedly shouted "This guy is a jerk!" while recording the story reel, and Disney execs agreed after a disastrous test screening.

Arnold Schwarzenegger Almost Played The HERO In The Terminator — Not The Killer Robot

Schwarzenegger originally met with James Cameron to audition for good guy Kyle Reese, while O.J. Simpson was the studio's pick for the murderous T-800. Cameron decided Simpson wouldn't be believable as a killer, and was so won over by Arnold's ideas about how a machine should move that he flipped the casting entirely.

Frozen's Elsa Was Meant To Be A Full-On Disney Villain — Until One Song Changed Everything

Elsa started as a straightforward antagonist with spiky black hair and a squad of evil snow monsters, complete with a villain song called "Cool With Me." But when songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez wrote "Let It Go" from a place of empathy instead of menace, director Jennifer Lee said she knew instantly she had to rewrite the whole movie around a sympathetic Elsa.

Die Hard's Screenwriter Says Hans Gruber Was Actually The Protagonist

According to co-writer Steven E. de Souza, Hans Gruber isn't just Die Hard's villain — he's the one driving the entire story forward, while John McClane simply reacts to Gruber's meticulously planned heist. De Souza has flatly stated that in genre filmmaking, the villain is often functionally the protagonist, since without Gruber's scheme, McClane would've just shown up to the party and gone home.

Iron Man 3's Mandarin Twist Was A Deliberate Bait-And-Switch — And It Still Splits Fans

Co-writer Drew Pearce pitched turning the Mandarin into a front for a hidden real villain, and director Shane Black ran with it partly to sidestep the character's dated Fu Manchu stereotype roots. The reveal that Ben Kingsley's menacing terrorist was actually washed-up actor Trevor Slattery, with tech mogul Aldrich Killian as the true mastermind, remains one of the most argued-about subversions in superhero movie history.