The Terminator

The Terminator (1984)

82 corrected entries

(19 votes)

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.

Corrected entry: In the motel when they're making those bombs, he tells Sarah to handle them very carefully, but when he's packing them up in the bag, he angrily throws each one individually into the bag.

Correction: Kyle knows they are stable enough to be manhandled, and knows what he is doing. Sarah has never handled explosives before, so tells her to be careful.

Or otherwise known as "do as I say, not as I do"

Ssiscool

Not at all. When he tells her "gently" it's when she's assembling them and the explosive is exposed. A simple spark could set one off. When he's shoving them into the bag they're fully assembled and can only be ignited by lighting the fuse. He was likely as careful during assembly as he asked her to be.

The Terminator mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When the Terminator says "I'll be back" he walks out of the police station. The cop inside the building looks out of the window, looks very surprised, and you can see the headlights from the car shining on the cop's face. 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. (00:57:25)

More mistakes in The Terminator
More quotes from The Terminator

Trivia: At the beginning of the film, Sarah listens to an answering machine recording of her boyfriend cancelling a date. The voice on the answering machine belongs to James Cameron.

Deidra Goins

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

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.