The Terminator

The Terminator (1984)

82 corrected entries

(19 votes)

Corrected entry: You can see a stage light resting in the background when Reese is crouching in the alley after arriving from the future. (00:07:05)

Correction: There isn't anything to suggest it's a piece of filming equipment. More likely, it is a light belonging to one of the buildings in the alley.

Corrected entry: 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. (01:12:45)

Correction: The blasts were seen visibly partially missing him, not going through him. This can be noticed if you pause and play each frame.

Casual Person

Corrected entry: During the motel love scene, it constantly shows clips of Sarah and Kyle holding hands, yet in all the other shots you can see that they aren't.

Correction: This is a composite of clips, also known as a montage, where only bits and pieces are shown to mark the passing of time. No continuity mistakes are made because they are shown at different times of their entire love-making session. Each clip represents more time that has passed, as they obviously made love for more than 30 seconds, and showing the whole event is something not done in movies.

Jazetopher

Corrected entry: When the Terminator first sees Kyle in the Blue Cadillac, he fires some shots at the car, one making a neat hole in the bootlid. This wouldn't be possible with the shotgun he was using as he simply wasn't close enough to create a hole that small and neat, it would more likely pepper the rear of the car as the shot spread.

Correction: It depends on the ammunition in the shotgun, if it was a solid bore round it would only make one hole, not all shot gun rounds are spread shots.

Corrected entry: When the Terminator is chasing Sarah Conner in the semi truck, the Terminator rams a blue AMC Gremlin car. If you slow the shots down, you can see that the car is already badly damaged from the view the Terminator has before the truck hits it. Yet in the actual shot of the collision, the car is fine. Obviously there were some extra shots needed, but the car had already been hit for the shots that were supposed to precede its damage. (01:25:05)

Correction: If you need to slow the shot down, it doesn't count as a mistake.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Arnie is blasting everyone in the office of the police station, if you look at the shirt under his jacket, it changes from blue to black as he swings around.

Correction: Not true. The office is very dark as the lights are out, especially at a couple of angles. His shirt is still blue, it just looks black.

Daz

Corrected entry: Reese's face is shaven/unshaven many times throughout the film. Compare his face where he falls asleep in the car to when Sarah is bandaging his wound. You'll see a BIG difference.

Correction: I see absolutely NO difference at all in the scenes you described, and I looked very closely. In both scenes he has roughly the same amount of noticeable growth all around his face.

Daz

Corrected entry: In the scene where the Terminator, driving the police car, is chasing Sarah Connor and Reese in the Cadillac, just as Sarah yells "Reese." to warn him of the upcoming wall, Reese shoots the Terminator with a shotgun in the face. Just before striking the wall, the Terminator sticks his head out the side window to see the approaching wall and his face shows no damage at all. However, when next we see the Terminator, his left eye has been blown to bits and must be cut out (at the hotel).

Correction: Some damage is visible to his left cheek when he looks out - the rest of the damage was done when the car actually hit the wall.

Corrected entry: When the Terminator is approaching the tanker's cab, he is limping (why?) on his right leg. But when he loses his skin, he limps on his left leg.

Correction: I just looked at this bit of the movie and when Terminator approaches tanker's cab, it's limping left leg and later it still limps left leg.

Corrected entry: In the second "future flash back" scene where Kyle battles the huge ground HK tank he tries to disable it by throwing a grenade at it. We see the grenade go under the HK's right wheel tread yet strangely in the next shot the left wheel tread explodes before the right one does.

Correction: Kyle's grenade falls under the right tread, which is also the side that explodes first (left side of the screen as we look at it.).

Corrected entry: Reese and the Terminator arrive in L.A. at 1:52 am on either Thursday May 12 (if the cop got the date right) or Friday May 13 (if the cop was still thinking it was Thursday night when he told Reese the date). When Sarah punches her time card at Big Boy, the date on the card is 5/19/84. It's pretty hard to believe Reese and the Terminator have just been hanging out for a week without doing anything yet.

Correction: The date '5/19/84' was the date that Sarah's pay period ended at work. It was not the date the film was set. Look next to the date on the slip to see this.

Corrected entry: Shortly after the cops discover that Sarah Connors are being killed, the press arrives at the police station. One of the reporters states that the women are being killed in the order they appear in the phone book. In the newsreport on the TV at the bar, the newscaster says the first victim was Sarah Ann Connor, and the second was Sarah Louise Connor. This is not consistent with the phone book, which lists, in order, Sarah Connor, Sarah Ann Connor and Sarah J Connor.

Correction: Wrong. The reporter says "2 hours ago, Sarah Ann Connor was pronounced dead at the scene... Sarah Louise Connor was killed earlier today..." So Sarah Louise Connor was killed first, which matches the order in the phonebook.

Corrected entry: In one shot when Sarah and Kyle try to escape the Terminator in a large vehicle, the front tires burnout upon acceleration. The car is a large early 1980's luxury sedan, and therefore obviously rear-wheel drive.

Correction: Wrong. The car is a Cadillac Eldorado - front wheel drive.

Corrected entry: What's up with those pipe bombs Reese makes? They seem to make nothing more then a puff of smoke and a loud bang when he's throwing them on the highway, but they can blow a huge cyborg made of powerful metal into a dozen pieces? Not likely.

Correction: Be as it may, any non-shrapnel explosive works better when put into target, not on top or on the side of something.

S.Holmes

Corrected entry: When Kyle escapes the department store he is not wearing a shirt, but in the next scene when he is following Sarah he is wearing a grey shirt and continues to wear it throughout the movie.

Correction: The scene where he's following Sarah actually takes place the next night. He had stolen a car by then, it's entirely possible he stole a shirt too.

Shay

Corrected entry: During the 1st few minutes of the film, the future shows a Flying HK travelling through the air, look closely at it and you can see it "clip" through a large piece of foreground.

Correction: This cannot be true for the simple reason that the HKs were done with small-scale models, not CGI.

Phil C.

Corrected entry: When Sarah is at the police station, the chief tells her something like, "Your mother will be here in a little over an hour." Meaning she is already on her way there. The Terminator reads the address book to find out Sarah's mother is at Big Bear. At the hotel, Sarah is talking to her "mother" (the Terminator). If her mother was on her way to the police station, why is she still at the cabin?

chrisco125

Correction: Big Bear Lake is actually just "a little over an hour" from Los Angeles (up to two hours at most). Sarah spoke to her mother on the phone at the motel, the day after the police station shootout. Keep in mind, all three of them are being hunted by law enforcement as armed fugitives who killed a bunch of police officers. It's possible it could have been longer. After they escape the police station in the subcompact car, they drive for hours until they run out of gas and push the car off the side of the road, find a drainage tunnel and talk about the future. Sarah has "her future dream" and she and Reese wake up in the morning. The next day, they then have to hitchhike back to Los Angeles to get supplies (If you watch the deleted scenes and read the script, Sarah decided the only way to stop the T-800 was to build bombs and blow up Cyber Dynamics, the predecessor to Cyberdyne Systems). Assuming Sarah's mother arrived at the police station after the shootout, with hundreds of police around and finds out her daughter is involved, she was questioned for hours and then went home. Which is the best thing she could do is wait for her at home for Sarah to call since pagers and cell phones are not readily available or affordable for most people in 1984. Regardless, Sarah didn't call her mother's cabin from the Tiki Motel until the next evening, at the very least.

Corrected entry: Early in the film, when Kyle first arrives in 1984, he steals a homeless man's pants and cops chase after him for it. It is very unlikely that police would chase after a man with that kind of intensity simply for taking a homeless man's pants. The cops would have bigger priorities than that.

calidude

Correction: The cops are chasing Reese before they encounter the homeless (and pantless) man. Maybe to question him about the immense lightning and wanton destruction that had gone on in the alley just moments prior?

Twotall

Correction: And my work has my name spelled wrong too after 18 months. It happens.

shortdanzr

Correction: No, it's spelled with an "or."

Bishop73

Corrected entry: When the Terminator "finishes off" Sara's girlfriend Ginger he stands over her and fires four or five rounds into her body. He shuts his eyes and flinches at every shot he fires. I would have thought the T would be a bit tough for this.

Correction: True, but seeing as the terminators are infiltrators who are designed to appear as human as possible, it wouldn't be too far fetched to assume that they would flinch at times when humans would, eg, when firing a weapon.

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)

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've always wondered, what's the significance of the kid pointing a wooden gun and making 'pew pew' noises at Reese when he enters the human hideout? Is it meant to be purely a bit of comical play between the two, or a subtle inference that mankind will never be able to abolish its inherent desire to destroy itself, even in the face of total extinction?

Answer: Its simply a child being a child and playing, but more than anything, showing the innocence of the children that inspite of the near death of the human race all around them, there's still time to play and be... human.

GalahadFairlight

Answer: I think it refers more to the irony fact the kids innocently playing soldiers, would soon become real soldiers in a fight for their lives.

Answer: I've always thought it was to show that these children didn't know anything else. They hadn't had a childhood due to the war against the machines and all they knew was to shoot guns because that's all they've seen people do.

The_Iceman

Answer: I agree with the playing and innocence aspects, as well as some comic relief. Toddlers/children prepare for possible future roles in life by mimicking adults' behaviors. What the child lacks is a sense of danger, showing no fear (or guilt) "shooting" a much larger person who knows how to kill. The child also lacks an understanding of consequences of behavior and meaning/permanence of death.

KeyZOid

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.