From the IMDB:
Zee: I lost two brothers to that ship, Link. Afraid of it. Afraid it’s gonna take you too.
umm… didn’t one of them survive the first movie???
I too have always wondered what happened to Tank. I just assumed that he died from the wound that Cypher gave him shortly after the first movie.
IIRC, he was zapped pretty bad, so while he had the endurance to gank the traitor, he might have expired of the complications afterwards.
('cause, apparently, the Zionists spent all their money on the cool raves and the giant mechs and can’t affort good medical services. :D)
Okay, so it’s not just me…
The second movie takes place some amount of time after the first (six months, maybe?). In that time it’s clear the fleet, including the Neb, has continued going on missions in the Matrix. It’s a dangerous job. I figure his number came up somewhere along the line.
(Behind the camera, Tank died between films because the actor asked for more money than the production wanted to give him.)
–Cliffy
He seemed pretty up-and-active when operating for Neo and Trin’s rescue of Morpheus, though that doesn’t rule out succumbing to infection from his wound, or for that matter dying in an unrelated later incident, since life aboard the Neb (indeed all the ships) is clearly a hazardous one and we don’t know how much time passes between the first and second films.
More likely, the producers simply dumped actor Marcus Chong when he either wanted too much money, or was judged not famous enough to contribute as a major supporting character to what they thought was a sure-fire blockbuster, and went with Harold Perrineau, who had some recognition value from his work on Oz.
Something vaguely similar happened during the Star Trek movies. Kirstie Alley apparently wanted too much money to reprise her role as Saavik and was replaced by Robin Curtis. Saavik was supposed to appear in the sixth film, but partly because Curtis didn’t have enough star power, the character was replaced with another Vulcan woman and the somewhat more recognizable Kim Cattrall was cast.
Curtis was pretty annoyed by this and described the experience at a convention I attended in 1993.
Yeah the actor playing tank was booted after demanding too much money.