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All week long: Revisit the highlights and lowlights of 1987 with Popverse's Made in 87 week.

Of all the great movie casting What Ifs out there (Leonardo do Caprio was almost Peter Parker, David Bowie was almost Elrond, Robin Williams was almost The Riddler) one stands out for fans of monster movies. That is, the alternate reality in which Jean Claude Van Damme ended up playing the first Predator. Yes, the Belgian martial artist and Bloodsport star was set to don a rubber suit to go toe-to-toe with Arnold Schwarzenegger, but what makes the possibility even more interesting is that no one quite remembers why Jean Claude didn’t end up being in the final cut.

It’s Made in ‘87 week here at Popverse, and we’re dedicating a bunch of this time to the first film in the long running alien action franchise. I’ve written a couple of these now, and I have to say that of all the fascinating subjects I’ve come across in The Hollywood Reporter’s 2017 history of the filmmaking, chief among them is that no one can get their stories straight on why JCVD was fired.

That’s not to say folks have no memory at all. Multiple people in the cast and crew swear they have the answer, it’s just that not all of those stories line up.

The way casting director Jackie Burch tells it, JCVD was let go for the simple reason of a bad attitude. "I heard he was complaining the whole time," Burch said, "And they fired him." Likewise, SFX designer Joel Hynek and actor Ricardo Chaves (who plays Poncho in the film) said that Van Damme was dumped after a tumultuous relationship with producer Joel Silver, the latter claiming that the two would tiff over Van Damme being in the suit - Van Damme thought people wouldn't know it was him inside, said Chaves. When Silver got word Fox thought the suit didn't look good on camera, says Chaves, Jean Claude got the axe.

In 1987, the iconic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon debuted - and all our lives were changed. Watch this reunion of the original voice actors:

A quick note here - the suit Van Damme got into for screentests never made it into the film either - it was replaced by a design by Terminator legend Stan Winston.

Stunt coordinator Craig Baxley doesn't recall the Fox angle of it all, but says he was present when Jean Claude made a costly wardrobe error, saying he "took off this $20,000 head [from the prototype suit] and threw it on the ground and it shattered." Baxley expanded, saying "Joel said, 'What the f— are you doing!' And he told Jean-Claude, 'You’ll never work in Hollywood again! Get off my set!' So that was it."

Neither Bill Duke, AKA Mac in the film, or producer John Davis think the firing was due to any negativity between Silver and the action star. For Duke, he recalls Van Damme being let go for passing out one too many times in the suit, and for Davis, the recasting came down to JCVD being shorter than Arnold Schwarzenegger. "He actually needed to be of greater stature," claimed the producer. Adding credibility to this final telling is the fact that JCVD's replacement was Kevin Peter Hall, who stood at 7'2".

Now at this point, I bet you're wondering: 'Where's Jean Claude Van Damme's account? Shouldn't he be able to share his own side of the story.' Unfortunately, THR's history of the film didn't include any statements from JCVD, but hey, a little thing like that has never stopped us from looking.

According to a different THR article, wherein Jean Claude spoke to several myths surrounding his illustrious career, the truth as the almost-Predator tells it is a combination of what's been offered already. Like Duke, Van Damme points to the suit being dangerous to film in - "I’ve got my friend next to me," the actors said, "And I said, 'Man, I ain’t going to make it,'" referring to his difficulty breathing and the heat. Then, like many others, Van Damme brings up tension between himself and Silver, but not because of a bad attitude - because of impossible conditions.

"When Joel asked me to jump," the Hard Target star concludes, "I knew it was going to be a bad one. I said, 'This is impossible, Joel. I think we’re going to have a problem.' Then he replaced me."

But is that true? If so, why do eyewitnesses like Baxley remember it differently? It's a mystery that may remain forever unsolved in the annals of monster moviedom, and a great reminder that, if you're ever on set for a genre-defining blockbuster, you should really remember to take some notes.

Predator is available to stream now on Hulu. 

Get your wide-shoulder blouses and your Members-Only jackets, and go back in time with Popverse's Made in 87. Highlights include:

• Marvel Comics killed the X-Men in 1987 to reset the franchise - but it didn’t stick
• The Full House cast addresses some of the series’ biggest continuity errors
• How Spider-Man’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon was saved by a fired Marvel boss — and Ronald McDonald
• How NBC panicked after Diane left Cheers — and why Kirstie Alley’s casting sparked a quiet battle inside the hit show
• How Bart Simpson was quietly toned down from being "so mean" before The Simpsons' first episode, as revealed by his long-time voice actor Nancy Cartwright
• The 1987 Justice League reboot that made superheroes weird, hilarious, and unexpectedly human
• How The Golden Girls became a staple at gay bars in the 80s