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Quotes

Kyle Reese: Come with me if you want to live.

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Mistakes

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. See more...

Trivia

The Tunnel that Reese & Sarah throw pipe bombs at the Terminator is called The Second St. Tunnel between Hill & Figueroa St. in downtown Los Angeles. See more...

Movie Mistakes blog

The Terminator (1984) - 60 corrections

Directed by James Cameron, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lance Henriksen, Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn (add more)

Genres: Action, Sci-fi, Thriller

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. As such, any aggressive/abusive corrections (and I get quite a few) written as if they're comments I've made myself will be ignored. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click the edit icon under an entry, then choose "correct entry". Some entries have "duplicated entry" after them - these are entries which were already listed on the main page, but were submitted again. I occasionally leave these online for a while, just in case they were moved in error, so don't worry about pointing them out to me.

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Entry When the Terminator is flipping through Sarah's address book he has two flies on his face. When the janitor asks him the question and he moves his head they're still there. When he moves back after responding, after jerking his head to look back at the book they're still there. In reality they would have flown away. [Not necessarily. I've seen flies stay put when I would have thought they'd have flown away.]
Entry As the Terminator Breaks into the little room where he fixes his arm and eye, he sits down and cuts a piece of his arm off. After he does so, he moves his finger back and forth. You can see that it is made of rubber and that his arm is in his jacket. You can even hear it bend like rubber the same time it makes the mechanical sound. [Duplicate entry.]
Entry As the Terminator breaks into the little room where he fixes his arm and eye, he sits down and cuts a piece of his arm off. After he does so, he moves his finger back and forth. You can see that it is made of rubber and that his arm is in his jacket. You can even hear it bend like rubber the same time it makes the mechanical sound. [Already listed.]
Entry When the Terminator comes through at the start of the film, it has longish hair, but when it is removing its eye, its hair is shorter and spiked. When would it have gone for a haircut? [The Terminator's hair was singed off when it jumped through the fire onto the hood of the car.]
Entry When Traxler locks Sarah Connor in the office, there are 2 door. He locks both. Reese comes to look for Sarah, and breaks the glass on one door, he does NOT do the same on the other door, however he is able to simply open it, despite Traxler locking it previously. [Many doors are constructed so that the doorknob, once locked, may be turned from one side but not the other.]
Entry When the Terminator is shot with pistols in the Police Station, his body reacts to the shots, but when Traxler and his buddy are shooting him in the back with M16's, he doesn't react. [He wouldn't necessarily react to a round from an M16 or 9mm, but a round from a 44 magnum or even .45 would knock him slightly.]
Entry Arnold Schwarzenegger originally was offered the part of Reese, something Cameron thought an extremely bad idea. He went to meet with Arnold "to pick a fight with him" to see if he could somehow get him out of the film, but discovered during the meeting that he thought Arnold would be an excellent Terminator. He was therefore delighted when Arnold's agent called him later and said that Arnold really REALLY wanted to play the part of Terminator instead. [Not entirely the case. Arnold was the one who suggested he play The Terminator after reading the script and relating more with it. It was he who suggested it, just as Cameron was about to tell Arnold he doesn't want him as Reese, which Cameron responded by saying "That's actually a good idea".]
Entry When the Terminator starts shooting up the Police station, Traxler goes into the room where Sarah Connor is and locks both doors, yet when Kyle Reese comes in later, he is able to open the other door in the room without a key. [He breaks the glass and unlocks the door from inside.]
Entry It is mentioned in the extra commentary that a production error caused the Endoskeleton to be made of STEEL - extremely heavy - causing Special effects shots to require multiple puppeteers. This is partly the reason why the Endoskeleton moves so slowly while the T800+organic skin moves so quickly. [Movie mistakes are about on-screen errors, not foul-ups in prop fabrication. While this did happen, hence the citation in the commentary, it cannot be said to count as a movie mistake. Even the disparity in movement speed between the flesh-covered cyborg and the exposed endoskeleton is adequately explained within the film as being due to damage sustained, so that cannot really be considered error-worthy either. I suggest that you resubmit as trivia.]
Entry 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. [You most certainly do need slow motion to see this "mistake" - it is on screen for just six frames.]
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. [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.]
Entry When Kyle and Sarah have changed cars and the Terminator is chasing them, before they exit the car park their headlights are off, then when they exit the car park they are on again, and then in the next shot the are off. [Already posted and corrected.]
Entry The photograph taken by the boy at the end of the film doesn't match what Sarah Conner was doing. When the boy took the photograph, she was caught unawares and wasn't looking directly at the camera, yet the picture shows her staring toward where the camera would have been. [False. She begins to glance at him as he raises the camera towards her, but he does not actually take the picture until she is looking directly at him.]
Entry At the end when Sarah Conner is talking into the microphone, recording something for her future son, the boy takes a photograph of her a split second after her last word, yet the microphone isn't pictured in the photograph. [He takes the picture as she is lowering the recording device away from her face. Since the photo is of her from the upper waist and up, the microphone should not, and does not, appear in the picture.]
Entry When Kyle and Sarah have changed cars and the Terminator is chasing them, they exit the car park with their headlights on, but in the next shot and the rest of the chase they are off. [Since headlights have an "off" switch, and they remain OFF for the remainder of the scene, there is no continuity mistake made. Only if they were alternating between OFF and ON between the scenes would this be counted as a mistake. He quite simply turned them off.]
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. [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.]
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. [If you need to slow the shot down, it doesn't count as a mistake.]
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 [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.]
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. [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.]
Entry During the first night when the Terminator chases Sarah her shoes are yellow with green laces. The next morning her socks are yellow but the shoes are now white with green laces. [White shoes can appear yellow under street lighting.]

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You may also like: Terminator 2: Judgment Day | Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines | The Dark Knight | The Wizard of Oz | Pulp Fiction

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