The Terminator (1984) - 73 mistakes

Audio problem: When the Terminator breaks into the police station, he has an auto-shotgun in his left hand, and a machine gun in his right. Before he kills the power in the building, he comes to the end of a hall, points his shotgun through a doorway, and shoots. A machine gun sound is used for the blast, instead of a shotgun sound.

Continuity: When The Terminator's stolen police car is shown up close in the parking structure, the motto on the left side of it reads "to care and to protect." After the car crashes, you can see the motto on the left side again, but this time it reads "Dedicated to serve."

Continuity: When the Terminator says "I'll be back" he walks out of the police station. The cop inside the building looks out the window, looks very surprised, and you can see the headlights from the car shining on the cop's face. But when we see the car just before it comes crashing through the building the headlights aren't on. In the next shot of the cop the headlights are still shining on him.

Revealing: At the end of the film just before the tanker truck explodes you can clearly see the tow rope pulling the tanker forward.

Continuity: In the Tech Noir Bar, the same woman - blonde with a pink or orange dress - must have come dancing with her twin, because while she's sitting behind Sarah Connor when the laser beam is pointed at her, she's also dancing near Arnie. The T-800 moves past her when he sees Sarah Connor and moves to shoot her.

Audio problem: Towards the end of the movie, after the tanker is blown up with the terminator inside, Sarah and Kyle are relieved that he is finally 'dead'. When the terminator gets up from the huge fire in his metal form, Sarah screams twice, however when she screams the second time, her mouth doesn't actually move.

Visible crew/equipment: When Sarah and Kyle have run into the factory, the Terminator is breaking through the armour plated door. As the Terminator comes through you can clearly see the two operator guys crouching behind the model.

Continuity: When the Terminator enters the police department and he bends over to say "I'll be back" you can see through his shades and he has both of his eyes, despite cutting one out in an earlier scene.

Continuity: Arnold looks up Sarah Connor's address in the telephone book. The telephone book address has 4 digits, but he goes to a house that has 5 digits on it.

Continuity: During the scene when the Terminator is killing Sarah Connor's roommate and boyfriend, the sound of the phone being knocked around, enough to be off the hook, is heard. Shortly after the killings, a call (from Sarah herself) comes in and the phone rings until the machine picks up.

Visible crew/equipment: When the Terminator is blown up inside the gas truck and you think it is destroyed, Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn begin to hug. In the shot where the Terminator begins to rise from the destroyed truck, look just a little to the right of Linda's head and you'll see a mans head pop up and his hands pull down on a lever that makes the Terminator rise up.

Continuity: The telephone message left by Sarah's roommate changes the two times we hear it. The second time, there is no delay between "Hi there" and "ha ha ha fooled you", while the first time has a delay of over a second.

Revealing: When the Terminator's flesh is burning off in the burning tanker wreckage, you can see the wire moving the Terminator puppet around.

Continuity: During the final chase scene, Sarah loses control of the pickup and it rolls over, as it rolls you can plainly see that it has no engine.

Factual error: After the Terminator is destroyed, Sarah Connor is loaded into the ambulance feet-first. In real ambulances, the patient's head is closest to the front, not the back.

Continuity: Early on in the film Kyle cuts the wooden handle of the shotgun with a saw, but then later on when they are in the car park hiding from the cops you can clearly see that the handle is back to its original size.

Revealing: When Arnie drives through the police station, the cop is just sitting there. Not only that, his skin is a lot paler. It is so easy to see that it is a dummy.

Deliberate "mistake": After Reese rams the Terminator with the pick-up truck, the truck starts to back up out of the motel. The Terminator gets up and runs after it. Just before the shot changes, you can see that the truck still hasn't left yet. But when we cut to the Terminator getting on his motorcycle, the truck has disappeared. Considering that Sarah and Reese are in a huge pick-up truck, it is highly unlikely that they could have traveled that far in a short period of time.

Factual error: Right after Kyle saws off the barrel of the shotgun in the alley, he pumps a shell into it, then again after his dream of the future in the car, then a 3rd time in the night club before he shoots the terminator. The 2nd and 3rd time he pumps it, shells should come out. They don't.

Continuity: Kyle loads a shell into his shotgun then falls asleep and dreams of his past in the future. When he wakes up he pumps the shotgun, so the first shell should come out, but doesn't.

Revealing: Watch the third 'future flashback' sequence carefully, particularly any shots that show Kyle charging towards the Terminator firing that oversized plasma weapon. There are at least two instances where you can see plasma bolts going straight through Kyle's body and impacting behind him.

Continuity: At the start of the film when we first see Reese arriving, the drunk homeless guy is holding a bottle in his left hand, then the camera continuously switches between Reese's arrival and the old guy, in these shots, the bottle keeps changing hands from left to right, then back to left.

Visible crew/equipment: When Sarah is being loaded into the ambulance, the boom mike's reflection is briefly visible in the left rear window. You need slow-mo to notice this one.

Continuity: When Kyle is in the police station being interviewed by the psychiatrist, watch where he says the line: "It's just him... and me", it appears different later in the film when the psychiatrist is showing the tape to Sarah. The first time, Kyle has his head turned up and to his left and on the tape, his head is facing straight as he says the line.

Continuity: When the tanker explodes near the end, the Terminator gets out of the truck on the left-hand side of the cab, and falls to the ground. When the endoskeleton arises minutes later, however, it is on the opposite side of the cab (Sarah approaches Reese from the right side, and the endoskeleton arises in the background).

Continuity: After the Endoskeleton emerges from the diesel fire look at his teeth. They're clearly metallic when he stands up and chases after Sarah and Kyle, then when he enters the factory his teeth are white enamel. Then when he's fighting with Kyle they're metal again and finally they turn white after he's blown apart.

Continuity: After Kyle saves Sara from the dance club and has her in the car she tries to get out. Kyle stops her by grabbing her.  In one scene he's holding her by the back of her hair, and when it cuts back to him his hand is across her chest. It goes back and forth like that.

Continuity: Every shot of the semi truck shows it has single round headlights, but after it's been blown up and the Terminator falls out of the cab, you can see that the truck has now got twin round headlights.

Revealing: When Arnie is being pulled under the semi-truck, his foot is caught and the green-colored dummy leg is revealed. It can't be a special effect sock since green screening was not in practice in the early 80s.

Continuity: After the Terminator discovers Sarah's mother's address in the little address book of Sarah's, the next shot shows the Terminator leaving his room and going to Sarah's mother's. In that track shot down the hall look at the Terminator's shoes. He's wearing white trainers instead of the black boots he wears for the whole other time in the film.

Continuity: At the end of the film, at the split second we see the ambulance workers zip up Reese in the bodybag, his right eyelid flinches a bit.

Continuity: When the semi truck hits the parked blue AMC Gremlin car, the force of the crash switches the lights off, but when the truck is then blown up, the lights are back on again.

Revealing: In the second future war sequence. At the end of the HK/car chase, the gunner in the car has been replaced by a very obvious dummy.

Visible crew/equipment: You can see a stage light resting in the background when Reese is crouching in the alley after arriving from the future.

Factual error: In the scene after Arnold says "I'll be back", it shows the desk cop writing a report with a pencil. Any public servant or corporation knows, reports are only written with BLUE or BLACK INK... NEVER with a pencil.

Continuity: After the shootout at the disco, there is a car chase. Towards the end of this chase, they turn a corner and Kyle smashes into the police car, veering it off to the right of the screen. If you look closely at Kyle's car as he hits, you can see FIVE shotgun holes in the side of the car. However, a few shots later, Arnie is firing at the same side, but there are only TWO shotgun holes in the side of the car, with Arnie just making the third hole with that shot.

Revealing: In the second 'future war' sequence where a female soldier is practically vaporised by a passing HK tank, watch her flaming remains. You can see the (exceptionally fake looking) head of the stand-in dummy tumble away from the body.

Audio problem: Early in the film, When the thugs are at the park, one of them is looking through a telescope and the other one breaks an alcohol bottle over it and says "Hey, it's my turn." Yet, if you look he mouths "My fu***ing turn."

Continuity: When the Terminator punches through the car window, there's broken glass all around the window frame. When he closes the door, there's only a little glass around the top of the frame.

Continuity: When the tanker explodes near the end, the Terminator gets out of the truck, then falls to the ground face-first, in an open area. Then he rolls over onto his back, lying prone, and stops moving. When the endoskeleton rises a minute or so later, however, it gets up as if it had been hunched over, face down - and several pieces of the truck's wreckage fall off of it as it rises, as if it had been covered by falling metal.

Revealing: In the scene where the tanker explodes, we see the cabin of the truck getting blown up. Then in the next shot, we see no flames have even reached the cabin, and it explodes again, this time with flames.

Audio problem: When the terminator smashes the car window, the crash sound occurs before his fist actually makes contact.

Continuity: When the Terminator steps into the house to kill Sarah Connor he walks over the thresh-hold however in the next shot he is outside again.

Continuity: When Kyle and Sarah leave the motel in the pickup, they ram the Terminator before they go, and you can see the bull bars on the front are damaged. When the camera shows the front of the pickup during the tunnel chase sequence, the bull bars are undamaged.

Visible crew/equipment: As the Terminator moves his right arm whilst in the press, you can see a crew member, behind the Terminator, move in the area of the picture where its arm was.

Continuity: After Reese blows the Terminator in half in the factory near the end, we see Sarah in a heap on the ground and chunks of endoskeleton (what looks like part of a leg) laying between her and the camera. The shot changes as she looks around. When the shot changes back to her (as she tries to move and discovers her leg injury) most of the endoskeleton chunks are gone - particularly the large one that was between her and the camera.

Revealing: The second future war segment: During the wide shot where Kyle and the female soldier are following the HK Tank, most of the plasma shots fired from said tank seem to come from above the gun turrets and not out of the barrels.

Continuity: Throughout the car chase shots where the Terminator is in the stolen police car, the car's rear view mirror is round. After the car crashes into the wall in the tunnel, the rear view mirror is square.

Other: As the Terminator is approaching Sarah in the Tech Noir nightclub, several other patrons can be seen behind her sitting in booths. These same people are in front of Kyle (he pushes them out of the way to get to Sarah before the Terminator does), yet he's on the other side of the club by the bar.

Continuity: In the scene in the apartment, where the Terminator cuts the flesh away from his damaged eye, he picks up a hobby knife that has a blade attached. In the next shot, as he lifts the knife up toward his eye, the blade has disappeared. Then in the front-on shot the blade is back again.

Continuity: When Sarah is sitting in the bar after talking with the police, there is a drink in a glass on the table in front of her. The scene cuts away and when it cuts back, it is a small bottle, not a drink glass.

Continuity: When the Terminator is crawling after Sarah Connor at the end of the film there is a close up of the endo-skeleton and the hydraulic cables from around his shoulders are missing.

Continuity: In the scene where Sarah and Kyle are escaping in the car they found in the alley after leaving the nightclub, Tech Noir, we see Arnie jump onto the hood of their car in flames. While he is in mid-air during the jump, he is on fire but as soon a he lands (the next shot) the flames are gone.

Continuity: In the factory, when Reese yells at Sarah to run and then turns and starts bashing at the Endoskeleton with his metal pole, if you watch carefully you can see that his fourth blow snaps one of the head supports. Yet we see a closeup of the head during his fifth blow, and the support is fixed again.

Revealing: When the Terminator invades the police precinct to kill Sarah, there is a part where he shoots a cop in the butt with his shotgun (right before he short circuits the building's wires). If you pay attention, the cop is smiling and giggling as he takes cover - before he is blasted.

Continuity: Just before Kyle exits the car park, he rams the police car driven by the Terminator into a parked car, and you can see the front left corner of the police car is damaged. In the next shot when you see the police car exit the car park, the damage has gone.

Visible crew/equipment: When Kyle and Sarah escape in the pickup truck, the Terminator chases after them on a red motorcycle. The camera does lots of shots of what's behind Kyle and Sarah and what's ahead of them. When they overtake a truck, you can see headlights following and shining on the back of their pickup. These are the camera crew's lights, as the Terminator's motorcycle is too far away, and previous shots have shown there are no other vehicles around them.

Continuity: When the Terminator goes to kill Sarah in Technoir, the camera does a POV shot of the Terminator looking down at Sarah, and Sarah looking directly up at him. The immediate next shot where Kyle Reese is about to shoot the Terminator shows the the position of the Terminator and Sarah is different to the POV shot we saw before.

Revealing: After Reese finishes battering the Terminator with the pipe, the Terminator strikes back at him. Just before the camera angle changes to show us the pipe dropping on the floor, we get a close up of Reese's face. It is a stunt man, not Michael Biehn.

Visible crew/equipment: When Schwarzenegger rises to his feet after getting blasted out the window, a production vehicle and a couple of huge stage lights behind him are visible.

Continuity: When The Terminator is searching through Sarah's address book in his apartment he has flies on him. There is one on his forehead, but when the janitor knocks on the door, the Terminator turns his head towards the door and cusses at him but there is no fly on the forehead. When he turns back and continues reading the fly is again on his forehead at the same exact place on the forehead.

Continuity: The Terminator loses the flesh around his left eye early on, but at mom's cabin you can see his backlit left eyelash blinking.

Revealing: "Dead" Kyle Reese is still breathing.

Audio problem: When the Terminator first arrives in 1984, the whole time displacement sequence (or whatever you want to call it) is witnessed by a garbage truck driver who mutters 'What the hell?'. His mouth however is obviously saying something else which has been dubbed over.

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene were Kyle and Sarah are speeding away from Arnold in the truck, Arnold starts shooting the truck with Kyle driving. When Sarah and Kyle decide to switch (passenger, driver), the camera shows them switching but there is a stuntman in place of Kyle. If not he has gained some weight in the cheeks and grown a big mustache during the course of 2 seconds.

Continuity: In Tech Noir, The Terminator fires his Uzi at Reese who leaps behind the bar. In the next shot, The Terminator very briefly has the .45 Longslide he dropped earlier, the shot cuts back to Reese. It then returns to the Terminator who has the Uzi again.

Deliberate "mistake": After the Terminator (in his police car) discovers Reese and Sarah in the car park, Reese hot-wires the car and starts to speed away. After that, there are several shots of Reese driving the car. It is easy to see that it's not Michael Biehn, but a stunt double who doesn't resemble Biehn at all, and who is seen in several other shots during the movie.

Continuity: When Arnie gets shot in the club after he gets up again there's no bullet holes in his chest or blood on his shirt.

Continuity: At the very beginning of the film when we see the garbage man picking up the steel bin with his forks, if you watch closely you can see the shadow of the large forks pass the windscreen, yet in the following shots the forks are lower than the windscreen.

Revealing: When the Terminator takes out his "fake" human eye, he looks into the mirror. It is very obvious it's a dummy: 1) He has unnatural movements. 2) His skin is a lot paler, and not shiny. 3) His hair style has changed. It's easier to tell in the following shot, as he looks closer to the mirror that he's changed back to "real."

Continuity: Early in the movie, prior to heading out to the bar where she first sees the Terminator, Sarah Connor is holding her iguana at her apartment while talking to her roommate. In the first shot, she is holding it with her left hand under the lizard's chest. The film cuts to a different angle, and now the lizard is resting against her shoulder, with Sarah's left hand on its upper back. It cuts back to the original angle and again her hand is supporting the chest.

Continuity: In the scene where Arnold is turning off the power in the police station he gets shot by a cop and jerks forward. But every other time he is shot he does not even twitch.

Revealing: After the Terminator takes out his eye and is wiping it with a towel, it's pretty obvious that it's really a "robot Arnold." Notice the herky-jerky movements, as throughout the movie, the Terminator never moved like that.