Corrected entry: Kyle Reese says Skynet only knew that Sarah Connor lived in Los Angeles. Nothing to suggest Skynet had photos. So the Terminator should not have been able to recognize Sarah in the Tech Noir club.
Corrected entry: Sarah gives the Terminator (thinking it's her mother) a 408 area code for the Tiki Motel. At the time of the film's setting, the 408 serviced Monterey Bay all the way up to San Jose, meaning Sarah and Kyle would have been hundreds of miles away from the Terminator.
Correction: This isn't a mistake. They hitchhike to the hotel in the morning. Kyle leaves the hotel to get supplies and its daylight outside. Sarah then calls (she thinks) her mom. Kyle returns and he and Sarah make the plastique, then are shown in the hotel at night. It took the Terminator at least 8 hours to get there.
Corrected entry: The Terminator arrives through time at about 1am and only gets to a phone book to search for Sarah Connor at around midday. What has he been doing for the past 10 - 11 hours?
Correction: Reconnoitering the area, learning the layout of Los Angeles, and preparing for his assault, one can assume. Do you think that just because we don't see every move he makes, he must be twiddling his thumbs off in a corner somewhere?
Correction: Cameron provided a breakdown of the Terminator's actions before he begins his search: He located the dingy room we see him using as a safe house. He obtained a car. He sourced the necessary maintenance tools and bandages used to repair himself, as well as the change of clothes. He visited the gun shop and obtained his arsenal of weapons. Finally, back in the room, he converted his guns to full auto (they can't be sold to consumers with that function enabled).
Corrected entry: 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. (01:28:50)
Correction: The lights are not on, they are just illuminated on the outside by the explosion. The truck's front bumper and radiator grille are also illuminated by the explosion.
Corrected entry: 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. (01:23:55)
Correction: Trucks are perfectly capable of going very fast - their speed should not be judged by their size. Also, in the shot of the Terminator picking up his rifle and running after the truck, the truck has left - the light that you see is the glow of its headlights.
Corrected entry: 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. (00:31:40)
Correction: It is not the phone you hear being knocked off, it is the portable cassette tape player she is wearing that's hitting the floor when she falls down.
Corrected entry: When Sarah is hiding under the desk at the police station she has NO idea that its not Reese doing all the shooting with the police. As far as she knows he is crazy and out to get her like Dr. Soberman and the police just described. When he smashes the glass and calls out to her she runs into his arms. Talk about a trusting lady/foolish lady.
Correction: Reese has told Sarah that the Terminator is after her and that he's there to protect her. When the police station comes under attack, Sarah is probably pretty sure it's not Reese since he was in restraints the last she saw. Plus she knows the abuse the Terminator can take and dish out. When Reese escapes the handcuffs and finds Sarah, it is at this point that Sarah realizes that he is not crazy and that what he's told her it true.
Corrected entry: When Kyle first arrives in 1984 in the alley, the police immediately show up. Who called the police and why? To report a naked guy in a dark alley? And how did the cops get there so fast?
Correction: I always had the impression that the police just happen to pull up there while he's putting on the bum's pants.
Correction: The second film provides a possible answer: assuming the police were in the general vicinity when Reese arrived from the future, they could've seen the lightning storm that occurs during time travel and pulled up to investigate.
Corrected entry: At the end of the film just before the tanker truck explodes you can clearly see the tow rope pulling the tanker forward. (01:29:00)
Correction: I thought it was some tow-rope too at first, but it appears just to be a piece of metal stuck into the bumper. You can see the piece of metal sticking out of the truck right after it crashed into the blue car. In that shot, you see just the piece sticking out and it's not attached to anything. Plus, in the next shot of the piece of metal, you can see it's not attached to any part of the truck that would allow it to be towed from.
Corrected entry: 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. (00:14:40 - 00:46:00)
Correction: That's not true at all. It's the sawed version in both pictures. Look at the distance between the end and the trigger. https://terminator.fandom.com/wiki/Ithaca_37.
Corrected entry: 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. (01:40:00)
Correction: While it may be preferred, many EMS ambulance cot operation procedure manuals use the phrase "head or foot end first".
Corrected entry: When the terminator is walking out of the burning truck, only its arms and back are burning. But once it hits the ground, all of it is on fire. (01:28:50)
Correction: As the Terminator jumps out of the truck cab, we can see flames on his back and arms; it's difficult to see as he jumps to the ground, but there also appear to be flames on his legs. Regardless; he is jumping into a pool of burning fuel, so it is natural to assume some splashes up on his legs, and lights them up.
Corrected entry: When Sarah calls Ginger and gets the machine (as Ginger is being killed), he machine starts playing the message immediately after the first ring - before the phone bell even stops ringing. Since the machine is mechanical (before digital technology), it is unlikely that the machine could have reacted that fast. These types of machines would typically ring 2-3 times, then answer and take a message, then the next call would be picked up after just one ring - but not as fast as this one does. (00:26:30 - 00:32:40)
Correction: Digital, mechanical, it's all activated by an electrical signal from the phone receiving a call. Only the medium on which the message is recorded has really changed in any significant way over the years. There's a switch on the side of most old answering machines that let's you choose from 1-4 rings before it picks up.
Corrected entry: When the Terminator murders Ginger, it is supposed to be night time, but sunlight is reflecting off the apartment walls. (00:31:45)
Correction: It's not sunlight; it's the street lamps outside. Many apartment buildings have strong lights outside for security and are designed so the bedrooms don't get much light but other rooms do.
Corrected entry: Obviously James Cameron didn't have the budget to realize his full vision for this movie as he did in T2. The appearance of the time travelers is generally consistent with T2, except we don't see the actual bubble. With Reese, we see a hole in the lightning pattern, but no actual bubble. So we know Cameron was after an effect similar to T2. In T2, the time displacement dissolves surrounding matter, and causes a dimple in the ground. Same in T3. But when Arnold first appears in the first film, the ground remains completely flat. And it's pretty clear from the body position he materialized on the ground and didn't fall from the sky, as Reese did.
Corrected entry: During the final car chase the Terminator shoots at Sarah and Reese with a nickel S&W Model 15. We never see him obtain this revolver, the only weaponry we see him acquire is the AR-15, .45 longslide, SPAS 12, and Uzi 9mm but he never asked for the nickel S&W at the gun shop.
Correction: In the scene at the gun shop, the revolver is on the counter next to the other weapons. Here is a link. Http://www.imfdb.org/images/b/b1/TerminatorModel15.jpg.
Correction: The gun shop scene begins with the terminator already purchasing weapons. Its more likely he has already asked for this one before the scene begins.
Corrected entry: Towards the beginning of the movie, when the Terminator approaches the 3 punks, one of them snaps his fingers in the Terminator's face. He is wearing a glove, but the sound is unmistakably that of an ungloved hand snapping fingers.
Correction: They are fingerless gloves.
Correct, but the palms are gloved. It sounds like a completely ungloved hand, IMO.
Corrected entry: At the end of the film, how does Sarah know which button (she skips the first two, by feel no less) will crush the terminator? She works at a restaurant, not the automated factory. Not to mention knowing that the controls for the machine are located behind her.
Correction: When Sarah and Kyle are running from the terminator minutes earlier, they climb through the press, and Sarah accidentally activates it. So when the terminator needs crushing, Sarah knows just what to press.
Corrected entry: Instead of killing Sarah and Kyle in the street the T-800 runs away. He could easily fight the handful of police officers and finish his mission.
Correction: He's been damaged by the gunshots from Kyle, from being thrown off the moving car as they escaped, and from crashing the police car at high speed straight into a wall. He was also unarmed having lost both his weapons in the nightclub. The T-800 (at least in this film) is not totally indestructible. He obviously considered the risk of getting taken down by armed police officers in his current vulnerable state was too high. He knows the police will take her to the Station for her own safety. The best move for the T-800 was to retreat, repair and rearm himself then try again, which is exactly what he did.
Corrected entry: Reese relays a message to Connor from her son, supposedly verbatim - Reese says John made him memorize it: Thank you, Sarah, for your courage..." John wanted Reese to give the message verbatim - that's why he made Reese memorize it - so John would have said, "Thank you, mom", not "Sarah."
Correction: Not necessarily. He was an adult, in a ravaged future with the survival of the human species at stake. It's not improbable that he used the more formal/cold "Sarah", rather than "Mom."
Correction: This is an assumption of how a character should act and not a mistake. Not all people address their mother as "mom." Many address them by their name. I personally have used my parents' names when talking about them to another person. Not to mention Sarah had raised John to be a warrior and the resistance leader, which could have changed the mother/son relationship.
Correction: Did you not watch the film? He kills Sarah's roommate, then hears Sarah leave a message so knows he got the wrong person. He searches the apartment and finds Sarah's photo ID so he knows exactly where she is and what she looks like.