Directed by:
James Cameron

Starring:
Arnold Schwarzenegger as T-800 (The Terminator)
Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese
Linda Hamilton as Sarah J. Connor
Paul Winfield as Detective Lieutenant Edward 'Ed' Traxler, LAPD
Lance Henriksen as Detective Vukovich, LAPD
Rick Rossovich as Matt Buchannan, Ginger's Boyfriend
Bess Motta as Ginger Ventura, Sarah's Roomate
Earl Boen as Dr. Peter Silberman, LAPD Criminal Psychologist
Dick Miller as Pawn Shop Clerk
Shawn Schepps as Nancy

The number above the front door on the first Sarah Connor's house is different to the number found in the phone book. - Quaid (Kinda hard to explain) Reese taught Sarah how to make plastique. John Connor taught Reese Sarah must have taught John how to make it with the knowledge that Reese gave her that she gave to... (my brain hurts!) - mikestratz@aol.com Whenever you see the view as seen by The Terminator you see stuff scrolling download the side of his view. That 'stuff' is actually 6502-chip Machine language instructions. That chip was used in the Apple II and Commodore 64. It looked pretty good and official looking in this movie. Unfortunately they decided to use more readable but less believable stuff in the 2nd movie. - Carkb

• When the terminator drives his car into the police station, the desk sergeant looks up as headlights shine through the entry. When the camera shot shows the car crashing into the building the headlights are off. - Ken Owens

• When the Terminator steals the car by hitting it's window, the sound comes in for about 2-3 seconds late, when the hand is already in! - Tuomaz

• The front of the diesel truck at the end of the movie blows up 4 times. - David

• When Arnie runs over the guy in the police station, the guy is obviously a dummy. - David

• When the Terminator goes to shoot the first Sarah Connor, he pushes the door open with his left hand, but the next shot shows he is pushing it with his right. - akr

• In the end after the Terminator gets blown up in the semi truck, you can see a prop man to the left pulling a lever as the Terminator gets up. - Bret
  • Addition: The prop man is more in the background than to the left, and all that you can see is his head moving around. - Chubb's

• Ok this one is a brain teaser. Kyle is sent buy his future son (also Sarah's) to protect Sarah from the Terminator. If it is so that Sarah needed protection so she could later give birth to John, there would not yet have been a future John to send Kyle back to save her. The future hadn't happened yet, so how was there a John from the future? And if there was no John from the future to send a terminator to protect her, Sarah would have died and there would be no John from the future. Whew I explained that as well as I could. - YoungJoizy

• The terminator's "Cut Out" eye can be seen through the sunglasses, while speaking to the desk sergeant.

• In the nightclub, the terminator fire's more shot's than his weapon can hold.

• When about to cut out his eye,when he raises it to the eye, it is obvious there is no blade in the knife.

• A prop man can be seen, briefly, when the terminator breaks down the door to the computer factory.

• When Sarah screams "No" because the terminator rises out of the ashes, her mouth does not move.

• In the scene where Reese and Sarah are in a car being pursued by the terminator and the police, a police car cruises alongside them trying to pull them over. Reese decides to bump the police car to ditch it, but watch closely, before he does this, the police car is dented already. - tochi

• In the tech-noir night club, the Terminator passes a dancer with long hair and a yellow blouse- When he spots Sarah, the girl is behind her- in the span of a second- James Cameron must be very cheap, to have to duplicate extra's! - The Big J

• When the Terminator has cut out his eye, he looks so fake. - Nicko

• In the police station shoot-out, a policeman gets shot and killed at the end of the corridor. When Arnie fires at someone off-screen, his gun is quite close to the 'dead' policeman. As he shoots, the corpse jumps out of his skin (in fright, of course). - Danny B

• After the truck explodes a large dumpster is seen to catch fire. It has obviously been covered in petrol (that's gasoline for all you Americans) to help it ignite, as I doubt a metal bin would burst into flame as quickly as it does, if at all. - Danny B

• In the scenes when the Terminator is hunting the heroes in the parking garage, his car has 'to care and to protect' on the driver's door. From the start of the chase to when he crashes into the wall at the end of the chase, it has 'dedicated to serve'. And they are peel-off stickers as well. Unforgivable. - Bruce
  

• The exploding tanker truck effect at the end of the film is obviously a wooden mock-up, as evidenced by the blatantly obvious painted plywood front end that falls away so unconvincingly. I am astonished that the other rabid nit-pickers haven't noticed this. (VHS) - bloop

• This is not really a goof but did you ever notice that Arnold has no eye brows in the movie. But, in Terminator 2 he does have eye - brows, how can this be. The only way is the Terminator in T2 has to be a different model. - Chubb's

• The scene of the nightclub shoot-out, Arnold has straight, flat, parted hair. When he is shot through the window and gets up, it's spiked and longer in the back. - aegix

• Right, many might not agree with this but I believe it's a goof with the storyline. The T-800 series chases Sarah and Michael Biehn from the car park to eventually smashing into the wall. When Sarah and Reese are arrested why doesn't the terminator chase them or go after them, after all they are so close. In other parts of the films especially Reeses description of the 800 series to Sarah back this point up. Reese says it absolutely will not stop, EVER until you are dead! So why did the terminator let them get away? Also, he takes the whole cop team on later in the film when he breaks into the cop station. Why was he bothered about less cops with handguns and with Sarah so close at hand? The only explanation I have ever found to this was that he goes to repair himself, but why repair a broken eye and slighly broken arm when later on in film he is hit by a truck and doesn't go repair himself. Perhaps the terminator was cleaver and knew that he could force himself into the police station where Sarah was being held with greater success if he was repaired, perhaps, but I am still sceptical, I think that had the terminator went after Sarah and Reese immediately as they were getting arrested, it would have been harder for Sarah to escape whilst the police were unaware of what was happening, and Reese was in cuffs, and that the terminator would have killed Sarah! - Benners

• Reese and Sarah are in the sewer pipe and while she is patching up his arm she says "tell me about where you are from." He starts to tell her about it, then he flashes back. He is walking with his troops back to the hideout and on the way, you can hear radio chatter,something like ("traversing your sector in search mode, 7-5-0 meters north of your position"...etc) if you listen close, by the time Reese arrives to the hideout, the voice chatter repeats itself, starting with what I just quoted above. - arusho

• (Audio/visual unsynchronised) In the factory scene, when the Terminator backhand slaps Reese to the ground, I've noticed that the sound of the slap and Reese groaning doesn't come on until at least half a second after Reese has been slapped. I haven't really measured officially how long the sound appeared after he was slapped, but I do know that the sound was not in sync with the action. Maybe close, but not perfectly. - Max Gardner

• (Plot holes) Like Austin Powers, the terminator movies are to be watched, and not thought about. Confused about the time travel, are ya? I'm not confused about it at all. I'm more interested in why it was that they sent the Terminator to the point in time when they did. Fact is, if they needed to rid the future of the offspring of Sarah Conner, they could have killed any of her ANCESTORS and done the same thing, because without THEM there would be no Sarah. They therefore could have sent a Terminator back in history to (say) the 18th Century, when state-of-the-art weaponry was the flintlock rifle, (no match for a Terminators ability!) and killed her great-great-great grandfather, and hence secured their future with no mess and no bother. Kinda makes you wonder just how smart the people in the future are, doesn't it? - geedubs

• (Audio/visual unsynchronised) In the big shoot-out in the police station, the Terminator raises his weapon to fire at someone from inside a doorway. The weapon he raises is his SPAS-12 shotgun but the sound effect that is used is the one for his AR-18 assault rifle in full auto mode. - RaFollower

• (Crew/equipment visible) Near the end when the tanker truck explodes and burns the Terminator's flesh off, as the truck is burning and moving forward, you can see a cable that is attached to the front of the truck that was used to tow it in the scene. - RaFollower

• (Audio/visual unsynchronised) In the scene when Arnie is shooting up the police station, his shotgun makes a machine gun noise several times! They are all when he is shooting offscreen. - Dragonfly

Debated Goofs

• If only living things can travel through the time portal, how can the terminator's skeleton travel through time? It is made of metal, after all. - DrEvil07
  • Comment: DrEvil07 asks how the Terminator's skeleton can travel through time if only living things can go through the time machine. Very true indeed. Also if only living things can go through the time machine why didn't Reese's hair and fingernails come off since they are practically "dead" material. Another thing, if dead objects can travel through a time machine with organic material over it, (like the Terminator's skeleton) why didn't Reese carry a small gun up his butt? Or why didn't the Terminator put the flesh that covers his skeleton over some futuristic weapons? Hmmmm... lazy writing Mr. "King Of the World" Cameron. - David
    • Explanation: Simple-only the machines have access to growing human skin, human's don't.
      • Comment: While the Terminators may only have the ability to make organic skin, it still doesn't explain why the Terminator didn't put fake skin on some futuristic weapons. It also doesn't explain how Reese's hair and fingernails were able to travel through time. - David
        • Comment: It is an unstoppable cyborg that can kill anything, it didn't think it would need one, as it is so skilled, or, it simply didn't think that far ahead. - The Big J
    • Correction: According to most sources, Skynet was on the brink of defeat. It probably just grabbed the first Terminator it could find, programmed him, and launched him into the past. No time for a gun. According to T2, Reese, Good and bad Arnie, and T-1000 were all sent back to the same time. Here's the reasons for the choices. 1) John knows Reese is his dad, so he has to send him back in order to be born. 2) Obviously, the Terminators can be killed by people, albeit with difficulty. However, the T-1000 is experimental and almost invincible therefore, sending Arnie against Jello-Tron was the way to at least have a chance at victory. Fell free to abridge this all you want. - snooz
      

Commented Goofs

• Kyle tells Sarah that he has a picture of her that John Connor gave him and since nothing non-living can travel through the time machine how did he get the picture to Sarah's time without the picture being created yet? - coolness008
  • Comment: Concerning the picture of Sarah, the reason why the Terminator was able to travel through time is that it is wrapped in human skin, so maybe Kyle pulled the old prison smuggling trick to bring it with him if you know what I mean. - reno
  • Comment: The picture of Sarah that Reese has is only shown in flashback as he tells her about it. It gets burned in the future before Reese comes back to 1984. Later at the end of the movie when Sarah pulls into a gas station in the middle of the desert a little Indian/Mexican boy takes the picture of her and that is why Reese is able to see it in the future. - Wendi

• There is no way this movie can work. If Sarah is John Connor's mother and Reese is the father, this means that this has happened already, so this is a never ending circle. He will go back and see John, then John sends Reese back in time to be his father, so it must have happened already before Reese goes back in order for John to be alive. I'M GOING CRAZY! - Arusho
  • Comment: O.K., I'll explain it to you folks.. The ONLY reason that Reese was sent back in time was so he could impregnate Sarah Conner. John KNEW that if he didn't send Dad back then he wouldn't be born. The whole thing with the Terminator was just an excuse to do so. Or am I being a cynic again? - Darkfox

• This is a brain bender - the Terminator could not have killed Sarah because if he did John would have never existed, and you can't be sent back in time to kill someone who never existed! - Da Mikestar
  • Comment: Ah yes, this happens everytime you start messing around with time in time-travel movies - The paradox. In this case however, it helps if you think of these events as having taken place in the characters lives for the very first time. I refer to the bit in Back to the Future II when Doc Brown tells Marty (and illustrates on a blackboard) that time is a straight line and anytime we leave that line it then skews off to a new line... (but I think the original line must keep going forward). So knowing this, we can consider that IF the events in Terminator hadn't happened, Sarah might have met a man and made whoopie and had John who then learned from a nice mentor who taught him everything and became the human's last defense when Skynet came into power... Skynet sends the T-800 and John sends Reese - A new line is then skewed from the original timeline. Nothing is mentioned (that I recall) in the first movies about Reese knowing he's John's father. In the second movie John mentions this but I don't recall the exact line, but the second movie is now moving forward under the premise that it exists within this skewed timeline. In fact the guy working on the chip found at the site of the crushed terminator (actor's name is Joe Morton but I can't remember the character... Sorry, right now I do not have "Detailed Files..."), anyway... His wife says "aren't we changing all that right now?" when the Terminator and Sarah and John explain the whole shabang to them. The ending of the movie leaves you with the impression that a new era may have begun (yet a third skewed timeline) and in fact the special edition VHS offers the bright and cheery alternate ending with Sarah playing with her grand children in a park. It helps to think of time as linear, and it also helps to take the Austin Powers way of looking at time travel... Don't worry about it, just enjoy the ride. I'm interested to see how they'll bend our minds with the third movie coming out next summer. - rayxgraham

Corrected Goofs

• In the police station, Arnie fires his shotgun twice without cocking it. - David
  • Correction: This goof is wrong. The gun he uses is a SPAS 12 a foreign shotgun that you can both cock and fire automatically. This way if you are firing the gun automatically and it gets jammed, you can cock it therefore un-jamming it. - David

• At the end when the Terminator skeleton gets blown up it shatters into many small pieces. But then the scene cuts and only its legs are gone. - David
  • Correction: I just happened to have watched the movie last night and saw that when he blows up, it seems that he is blown to bits, but when all his pieces are flying everywhere, you can see the whole top half of him fall to the ground as well (intact), hence all the debris must have been from his legs only. - myname

• Kyle states he couldn't spot the Terminator, until it made a move on Sarah. We learn in No.2 that all model 101's look like Arnie - it couldn't have been that hard to spot, as they all look like Arnie.
  • Correction: Right, well this is completely wrong! Not all Cyberdyne system Model 101's are the same at all. Take for example the two terminator 101 that break into the rebel base during Reeses dream, with the picture of Sarah Conner being burned! These two men look nothing like Arnie and are clearly Terminators, with the rebels shouting "Terminator Terminator" in the background. (VHS Special edition). Also, John Connor re-programmed this particualar terminator, perhaps there are a few variations on the T-800 series, maybe more, but as Arnie was signed up for the second film then it would be pretty hard to write him into the storyline using any other explanation. - Benners

• Ok, this one is a little deep, but here goes: If they (the machines) are already in the future, they know that the humans are gaining an advantage. This is why they send a robot back. But they know at the moment they are losing, so they must therefore know that when then sent a machine back in their past future?? the terminator didn't kill Sarah Conner, and this is why they are losing. So this must mean that no matter what they do they will always lose, because Sarah Conner never gets killed in 1984. I think I need a lie down, because I have just totally confused myself. - jeff
  • Correction: If you remember what the message that John made Reese memorize (Also John mentions it in T2) The future is not set, there no fate but what we make for ourselves. - Chubb's

• (Plot holes) Kyle tells us all the time displacement equipment was destroyed after he went through-if that's the case, how did the terminator's go through in the sequel? - The Briggster
  • Correction: We are dealing with a time machine here! There is no reason why the terminators in the second film couldn't have left BEFORE Reese and the first terminator! - Tallon Trooper

Explained Goofs

• Soon after entering the year 1984, Kyle Reese approaches a police officer, and asks him what the current date is. The cop says the date is Thursday, May 12. However, May 12, 1984 was a Saturday.
  • Explanation: Since the police officer had his own gun pointed at him by Reese, and was apparently scared, he can be excused for any error. However, he was actually correct when he said it was Thursday because the next day proved to be a Friday. So this means he incorrectly said it was the 12th of May. He probably meant the 10th or 17th of May since both of those dates were a Thursday in May of 1984. - Michael R.

• (Factual errors) Ok, no matter what anyone says, this is a goof. I have said it many times. If they stop the war in this movie, John will no longer exist. They can't change it. It's like this: Reese goes back in time, has sex with Sarah, then she gives birth to John. If they stop the war, Reese will no longer go back in time and get Sarah pregnant. How is John supposed to be born? He wouldn't. So like I have so many times before, the timeline is in one big loop. They can't change the future. They can't change the past. It's all happened before, it's one big loop. John goes back, and has sex with Sarah, who has John, who grows up to send his father back to do it all over again. IT'S IN A LOOP. Let's say that someone goes back and kills someone in the past. From our view, this person would already be dead, because in our point and time, even though nobody has gone back yet, someone WILL go back, so it's already happened. I hope I made sense. I know some of you are going "WHAT?!". But it's like this, the movie is flawed, even though I love it. - Mac
  • Explanation: Once Reese was sent back and has already impregnated Sarah Conner, it is at that point that the future changes... so John will be born. They do not stop the war from happening at this point in time. Killing the Terminator, only ensures that Sarah Conner has John Conner to help with the future war against the machines. - mamacita