The Terminator

The Terminator (1984)

81 corrected entries

(19 votes)

Corrected entry: Arnold looks on the left page of the phone book to find Sarah Connor's name but when Sarah herself looks for her name she finds it on the right page.

Correction: 1/1/84 marked the end of AT&T (Ma Bell), and the start of the Baby Bells. Pacific Bell (now SBC) was the Baby Bell for LA. It's not uncommon for large cities to have more than one phonebook, one produced by PacBell (in this case) and another independently-produced book. One likely candidate is Verizon's Superpages (launched in '84), which is produced even in markets where Verizon Communications (the land line company) has no presence. Also, the phonebook in booths is usually (in my experience) produced by the administrator of the phone (not always the incumbent RBOC) or by someone contracted by them. Thus, given the possibility and plausibility of 2 phonebooks made by different companies, it's not unlikely that this "discrepancy" would take place.

Corrected entry: When the Terminator is chasing Kyle and Sarah through the alley after the club shooting, you get his view of the chase. If you pause the movie during this scene when the screen is red and there is information being displayed to the Terminator, you'll see that it in fact "Apple Computer" programming language.

Correction: It is not Apple Programming Language - it is part of the ROM Listing of an Apple II Computer - an old dog even at the time Terminator was released.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Kyle is fighting the future battle and he jumps into the armored car, the "plasma weapon" on the back of the car is a US Army M2 .50 caliber machine gun. It's a great weapon that's been in use since 1940 and still does good work, but how would you modify it to shoot plasma bolts? And why not build an all-new plasma weapon? Military budgets must have really been cut back in the future.

Correction: We don't know how they would modify it, but the resistance also have plasma weapons, so presumably, it is possible to combine the two. They may not have had the equipment or materials to build an all new plasma weapon. They have to use what they've got. And, they don't have a military budget.

Corrected entry: In both Terminator movies when you look into the future you see piles of broken bricks and skulls. Only skulls. What happened to the rest of their bodies?

Correction: There are other bones, most of them underneath, and if you look carefully you can see them in many scenes. The skulls are just lying on top.

STP

Corrected entry: When Kyle and his female consort take down the HK tank (2nd future war segment) there's something which confuses me: Kyle, being the intelligent soldier that he is, crouches and waits until the HK is looking the other way before throwing his grenade at it. The female soldier however remains standing in plain view of everyone and doesn't throw hers until the HK's head is looking directly at her (which of course results in her getting pulverised by laser fire). While she may not be as well trained a soldier as Kyle, common sense would dictate to anyone that attacking from a position where the enemy can both see you and hit you is just asking for it.

Correction: The novelization makes this clear. Ferro (the corporal who gets shot by the HK) slipped on the rubble as she armed her charge. She had to expose herself to the HK in order to get rid of the charge before it detonated in her hands.

Phil C.

Corrected entry: In all of the scenes leading up to when the Terminator crashes the police car into the wall, his hair is straight and parted on one side. After this crash in the remaining scenes, his hair is shorter and spiked. When did he have time to get a haircut, and why did he care about his physical appearance?

Correction: Part of his hair was burned off form the car Reese shot at in the Tech Noir alley. Look closely when he is about to punch through the windshield.

Corrected entry: In the beginning of the movie after Kyle hot wires the car, when he follows Sarah out of the car park, he starts the car up again. There is no easy way to stop the engine after hot wiring. If he did stop the engine, he would have had to re-hot wire the car when he follows her.

Correction: Absolutely not correct. All Kyle had to do was split apart the wires he'd just joined and the car would stop, similarly if he hadn't twisted them together properly, they'd quite easily unravel themselves.

GalahadFairlight

Corrected entry: In the first flashback scene, Reese is walking through the tunnels, it shows a mother and daughter watching TV made of a fire. But the housing is plastic and shows no signs of melting.

Correction: Well, since what you see on screen is a real TV casing with a real fire in, this is obviously possible. As for a more precise explanation, we do not know how long the fire has been burning. If they just lit it, the plastic would not yet have reached its melting point.

Twotall

Corrected entry: When the Terminator is flipping through Sarah's address book he has two flies on his face. When the janitor asks him the question and he moves his head they're still there. When he moves back after responding, after jerking his head to look back at the book they're still there. In reality they would have flown away.

Correction: Not necessarily. I've seen flies stay put when I would have thought they'd have flown away.

Phixius

Corrected entry: As the Terminator Breaks into the little room where he fixes his arm and eye, he sits down and cuts a piece of his arm off. After he does so, he moves his finger back and forth. You can see that it is made of rubber and that his arm is in his jacket. You can even hear it bend like rubber the same time it makes the mechanical sound.

Correction: Duplicate entry.

Brad

Corrected entry: As the Terminator breaks into the little room where he fixes his arm and eye, he sits down and cuts a piece of his arm off. After he does so, he moves his finger back and forth. You can see that it is made of rubber and that his arm is in his jacket. You can even hear it bend like rubber the same time it makes the mechanical sound.

Correction: Already listed.

Ssiscool

Corrected entry: When Traxler locks Sarah Connor in the office, there are 2 door. He locks both. Reese comes to look for Sarah, and breaks the glass on one door, he does NOT do the same on the other door, however he is able to simply open it, despite Traxler locking it previously.

Correction: Many doors are constructed so that the doorknob, once locked, may be turned from one side but not the other.

Corrected entry: When the Terminator is shot with pistols in the Police Station, his body reacts to the shots, but when Traxler and his buddy are shooting him in the back with M16's, he doesn't react.

Correction: He wouldn't necessarily react to a round from an M16 or 9mm, but a round from a 44 magnum or even .45 would knock him slightly.

Corrected entry: Arnold Schwarzenegger originally was offered the part of Reese, something Cameron thought an extremely bad idea. He went to meet with Arnold "to pick a fight with him" to see if he could somehow get him out of the film, but discovered during the meeting that he thought Arnold would be an excellent Terminator. He was therefore delighted when Arnold's agent called him later and said that Arnold really REALLY wanted to play the part of Terminator instead.

Phil C.

Correction: Not entirely the case. Arnold was the one who suggested he play The Terminator after reading the script and relating more with it. It was he who suggested it, just as Cameron was about to tell Arnold he doesn't want him as Reese, which Cameron responded by saying "That's actually a good idea".

Corrected entry: When Kyle and Sarah have changed cars and the Terminator is chasing them, before they exit the car park their headlights are off, then when they exit the car park they are on again, and then in the next shot the are off.

Correction: Already posted and corrected.

Corrected entry: When Sarah is at Technoir, the Terminator walks by, and she spills her Canada Dry. When the Terminator spots her the second time, a few seconds later, she's drinking a Pepsi.

Correction: Sarah isn't drinking anything. She sits down at a table that has several empty drink containers on it. She knocks the Canada Dry bottle to the floor, then picks it up and puts it back on the table next to the Pepsi container and the other drink containers.

Corrected entry: Sarah unnecessarily puts change into a payphone before dialling 911, typically a free call.

Correction: It's not unreasonable to believe that the stressed-out Sarah might have forgotten you don't need to insert change for this call. More a character mistake than a movie mistake.

Rooster of Doom

Corrected entry: Paul Winfield's character is Ed Traxler. Lance Henriksen's character name is given only as Vukovich, but when he starts telling the story about the Afghan during Reese's interrogation, Traxler grunts "Ed, shut up." A coincidence that these two detectives who work together are both named Ed, or a mistake?

rbryant73

Correction: Out of the 6 billion people in the world. I'm sure there are two people with there names as Ed working together on any job. It does also sound like Traxler actually says: "Hey! Shut up."

Corrected entry: How can John Conner be born if he has to send the soldier back to protect Sarah, when the soldier then becomes John Connor's father. Its a paradox, an endless loop that can't get started. What came first the chicken or the egg?

Correction: It's entirely possible that someone else was the father in the original timeline, but Kyle became the father and modified the timeline.

MoonMan

Corrected entry: This applies to both films - If only things surrounded by organic tissue can make it through the time machine, why not put some nifty weapons in wads of cheese! That why you'll be prepared. Of course, this only makes me wonder if the computers did that with the T-1000 in the next film. How else did a liquid metal item make its way through the time portal?

Correction: He says "living" tissue, not organic. Of course, that still means if they were desperate enough they could presumably cut open some sort of animal and send it through with a gun inside it before it dies, but that's a bit grim.

This technique is used in one of the Terminator comics published by Dark Horse Comics, and it is indeed grim. A team of Terminators travel back in time with a human prisoner carrying a plasma pistol hidden inside his body by a crude medical procedure. One of the Terminators rips it out of the already suffering man, killing him. A nasty idea that was possibly too gory for the more action oriented movie.

More mistakes in The Terminator

Kyle Reese: Listen! And understand. That Terminator is out there! It can't be bargained with, can't be reasoned with! It doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear, and it absolutely will not stop. EVER! Until you are dead!

More quotes from The Terminator
More trivia for The Terminator

Question: I know it's not important because the movie would be very short and boring, but there's something I've always wondered. What would have happened to the Terminator had he actually managed to kill Sarah Conner?

The_Iceman

Chosen answer: Since terminators cannot self-terminate, only one very likely possibility comes to mind: it would have hidden itself away somewhere known to have remained undisturbed in the years between the termination of Sarah Connor and the start of the war, at which point it would rejoin the war effort.

Phixius

Answer: Skynet knew nothing about Sarah Connor besides what city she was in in 1984 and that she had a pre war leg injury which they could use as a form of identification. However this injury only occurred in the factory at the end of the movie which would mean the terminator would have no way of identifying the real sarah connor before that time. The terminator therefore could've never completed its mission with 100% certainty because it had no idea what she actually looked like, therefore it may have just carried on hunting out Sarah Connors to increase the chances of getting the right one if it was still in good enough condition to move around unnoticed.

Answer: According to the official novelization, the Terminator looked for a specific injury that the Sarah Connor in question had, in order to insure that she was indeed the Sarah Connor that would give birth to John Connor. If any of the Sarah Connors that he killed didn't have that injury, then he knew that none of them were the Sarah Connor that he was looking for, and would move on to the next one. At the end of the novelization, it is revealed that Sarah Connor got the injury during her final battle with the Terminator, meaning that previous time travel loops had already happened that we didn't see or read about (alternatively the events in the first Terminator film are a causal loop that always happened). Since the Terminator wasn't aware that Sarah didn't have the injury at this point in time, this would mean that he would continue to search the world for other Sarah Connors after killing her. It's a piece of horror that unfortunately was cut from the film.

More questions & answers from The Terminator

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