Predator 2 originally featured a cameo from the first Predator's survivor Anna, but the footage didn’t make it into the finished sequel - except in one easy-to-miss glimpse. Released in 1987, director John McTiernan’s Predator was a sci-fi horror hybrid whose combination of gory scares, thrilling action, and witty one-liners could rival James Cameron’s then-recent hit Aliens. The Xenomorph and Predator would eventually face off in the disappointing crossover Alien Vs Predator, but before that 2004 entry, Predator earned itself a city-set sequel in Stephen Hopkins’ Predator 2.
Set in the then near-future of 1997, the ambitious Predator 2 did justice to the first film while broadening the scope of the action, as the eponymous monster now had an entire city to prowl through. The original Predator’s Elpidia Carrillo, who played Anna, filmed a brief cameo for the sequel, but her appearance was bizarrely cut down to a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it-moment. One of the movie's two survivors alongside Arnie’s Dutch, Anna is the insurgent who the hero famously sends to “da Choppa!” near the film’s finale.
It’s a pivotal role in Predator so it is no surprise that, like Bill Paxton in Alien Vs Predator: Requiem, the franchise producers were eager to get Carrillo back for the follow-up. However, the scene was not meant to be. According to fansite AvP Galaxy, Carrillo is credited in Predator 2 despite barely being in the movie proper due to a deleted scene she shot which would have connected the first two outings, but was cut down to a momentary flash. During Predator 2, she can be spotted briefly on a monitor in the background of a scene before Peter Keyes (Gary Busey) attempts to capture the titular alien in the slaughterhouse.
It's such a brief role that it can hardly be called more than an easter egg for eagle-eyed fans. However, Carrillo did film a brief scene in which her character described the events of the original in an attempt to give the sequel a stronger tie to its predecessor. However, like a lot of promising Predator scenes, the footage was later removed. Set in a Central American palapa, the scene was featured in the first draft of Predator 2 and was intended to be footage from a debriefing that both Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch and Anna took part in to explain what went down in the jungle.
However, the scene was removed from the second draft when Schwarzenegger was unable to appear in Predator 2, only to then be reinstated in a later script, sans Dutch. The scene, which now featured only Anna recounting the events of Predator, was removed again after being filmed. The decision was unfortunate, as the cameo could have made Anna the only character to appear in two Predator movies. Even 2018’s The Predator could not pull off this feat, despite originally including an ending that brought back Schwarzenegger’s Dutch (or another that incorporated Newt of Aliens fame).