The Terminator

Revealing mistake: There is a shot from the Terminator's POV, before he rams the blue car with the semi truck, in which you can see that the car is already damaged. No slow-mo is required to see this, but it is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot.

Revealing mistake: 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 At the end of the HK/car chase, the gunner in the car has been replaced by a very obvious dummy. (00:19:55)

Revealing mistake: When the Terminator goes into the Alamo Gun Store scene of the famous "Uzi 9 millimeter" quote, the man turns to get something off the shelf, and Arnold takes a shell out of the box on the counter. It is an already fired shell - you can tell by the dimple in the center of the primer. (00:13:50)

Deadlock

The Terminator mistake picture

Revealing mistake: When the Terminator's flesh is burning off in the burning tanker wreckage, you can see the wire moving the Terminator puppet around. (01:29:45)

The Terminator mistake picture

Revealing mistake: 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 double, not Michael Biehn. (01:35:10)

The Terminator mistake picture

Revealing mistake: When Arnie drives through the police station, the cop is just sitting there. Not only that, his skin is a lot paler. It is too easy to see that it is a dummy. (01:00:00)

The Terminator mistake picture

Revealing mistake: 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. (01:26:05)

Revealing mistake: 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. (01:39:45)

The Terminator mistake picture

Revealing mistake: 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. (00:18:45)

The Terminator mistake picture

Revealing mistake: 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. (01:23:05)

The Terminator mistake picture

Revealing mistake: 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. (00:14:15)

The Terminator mistake picture

Revealing 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. (00:48:10)

Revealing mistake: In the shot of the Terminator skidding down the street after being rammed by the pick-up, it is a dummy. It's even missing a hand.

Revealing mistake: 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. (01:00:45)

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Suggested correction: He's definitely not giggling and I wouldn't call it a smile. Maybe he's grimacing, but I seen him just wincing at the situation he's in. At best you could say he's a bad actor, but poor acting isn't a valid movie mistake that I know of.

Bishop73

The Terminator mistake picture

Revealing mistake: 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. (01:24:30)

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Suggested correction: This scene don't have cuts. In this moment, a shadow covers the face of Reese, causing confusion, but still be Michael.

No, it isn't. It is too obvious that he is a stunt double.

This is a continuous shot. Where and how would they have made the switch?

After Biehn says "trade places", there's a cut. The mistake seems to be saying from that moment it's Biehn's double. And before the two switch seats, there's another cut of the Terminator shooting at them. But I don't think it's a stunt double because typically scenes filmed from the perspective of the hood are done with the camera rigged to the vehicle and the vehicle is being towed, so the actors aren't actually driving, so there would be no need for a stuntman to do the seat switching.

Bishop73

The Terminator mistake picture

Revealing mistake: 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." (00:59:55)

Revealing mistake: Just after the Terminator breaks into the police station, he is firing his gun, when he fires it repeatedly he makes a policeman jump who is lying dead on the floor, look closely.

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Suggested correction: Just because someone is shot by a gun doesn't necessarily mean they die instantly. The cop is likely still alive, albeit severely wounded.

Revealing mistake: 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.

keiko

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Suggested correction: This is one of those incidences where they intentionally show the scene multiple times. We in fact watch the semi blow up three times.

Bishop73

Audio problem: When the Terminator breaks into the police station, he has a Franchise SPAS 12 semi-automatic (or selectable pump action) shotgun in his left hand, and an Armalite AR 180 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. (01:00:28)

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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.

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