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Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) More at IMDbPro »

The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.

For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for Terminator 2:Judgment Day can be found here.

Reese believed that once he had used the Time Displacement Field to go back to 1984, it had been destroyed by his fellow soldiers. This information is described in the prologue of the official Terminator 2 novel. However, after Reese was sent back in time, his unit (including an older John Connor) found liquid metal residue in Skynet's factories. It is implied that the T-1000 is an experimental unit at this point and that even Skynet is not fully sure of whether or not it can be controlled (due to how advanced it is, it may actually be more intelligent than Skynet, and has the potential to turn on its master). It is only to be activated as an act of desperation or a last resort should the humans actually destroy Skynet. John then decides to send a reprogrammed T-800 model back to wherever the liquid metal creation was sent before destroying the Time Displacement equipment.

One must also keep in mind that during the events of the first Terminator film,Reese and Sarah are only together for around 48 hours. Reese does not have a great deal of time to give a full description of future events and the full extent of the enemy's arsenal, and he is not even aware of the T-1000's existence (as it is a secret weapon). John Connor is the only one that is aware of it, and only because it was sent back in time to kill him. Why he could not himself have given this knowledge to Reese before the time journey depends upon the (as yet unproven) way in which time travel to the past would work, i.e. if there would be multiple, revised iterations of events, or if all events would piece together into a single continuity.

An early T2 script also contained a comparable opening scene in the future, where the human resistance defeats the machines, enters the Skynet building, and sends Reese to the past. After he is gone, the men want to blow up the Time Displacement equipment, but John Connor tells them there is still one more thing to do. He goes into a cold storage room where several inactive T-800 Terminators are stored; one is already missing (an Arnold model). John looks at another, knowing he still needs to send this one to protect himself in the past. This scene was never shot for budgetary and pacing reasons.

According to the James Cameron/Bill Wisher original script draft and the official novelization by Randall Frakes, as well as creative consultant Van Ling, there were hundreds of different-looking T-800's in Skynet's terminator storage facility. However, the adult Connor went looking specifically for the T-800 that he remembered protecting him when he was ten years old. By sending back his father Kyle Reese and the protector terminator, John was fulfilling his role in the predestination paradox (causal loop). When John entered the Terminator Cold Storage Facility to locate the deactivated "Arnold" model, Frakes writes:

John panned his light around. There were hundreds of men and women, in rows of ten. Within each row, the bodies were absolutely identical. John quickly walked along the synthetic bodies to the end of a row and hesitated. He scanned the faces. No, not there. Then he gazed down the other row. All the same. Strange to him. Then...he turned to another row and stopped. It was filled with identical, familiar faces. The broad, brutally handsome features sent a shock of recognition through John. It was him.

Both from the official Terminator 2 companion book and on the special edition T2 DVD, James Cameron and Stan Winston state that an unfilmed part of the script involved the rebels in 2029 destroying Skynet but finding a chamber where the T-800 model terminators were built. This chamber housed a sophisticated assembly line where the terminator parts were transported to a central point. Here they were welded together, programmed and placed inside a press that coated the outside of the endo-skeleton with a organic tissue. The point of this sequence was to show how the rebels managed to not only find the terminators but also the time displacement equipment that they could use to send back the reprogrammed T-800. This sequence was ultimately excised from the movie due to financial constraints, but Stan Winston liked it so much that he recreated it for the main trailer for T2.

The Schwarzenegger model is commonly referred to as the T-800 model 101, T-800 referring to its series number or endoskeleton type and 101 referring to its model number or physical appearance. A T-800 Model 102 would look like somebody else, and so forth.

The T-1000 knows that in order for John to come out of hiding, he needs to put Sarah in danger, because John came to her rescue at the psychiatric hospital. Afterwards, the T-1000 is then able to mimic Sarah just like he did with his other victims. In doing so, all he needed to do was call out John's name and let John see "his mom" hurting so he would go to her, therefore exposing himself to the T-1000. Luckily for John, the real Sarah was able to get back to him in time.

Some consider this point in the story a plot hole, claiming the T-1000 did not imitate any of its earlier victims until they were dead. However, the T-800 explains that the T-1000 can mimic anything it samples via physical contact; it does not require the individual to be dead before it can take his/her form. The guard at the psychiatric hospital was sampled when he walked on the T-1000, who fully copied him before killing him. One can presume he was preparing to kill Sarah when the T-800 intervened, giving her time to escape.

The T-1000's decreasing efficacy is explained in a scene which was cut from the theatrical version of the film but is able to be viewed as part of the director's cut or on most versions of the dvd as a deleted scene. After being frozen in the liquid nitrogen and then shattered, the T-1000 starts to show evidence that it may be malfunctioning. As it is walking, its feet, up to about the knee, involuntarily imitate the floor, and its hand bonds with and imitates a railing. The T-1000 itself seems confused by this but is unable to stop it. In the theatrical version, the only evidence of this is the slight flutter that you see after it crushes Arnold's arm in the gear. This may explain why it moves much more slowly during the final conflict, which allows Sarah to escape while it is dealing with the T-800.

He doesn't:

Terminators are manufactured on an assembly line. Many different models are produced. These models (e.g. the 'model 101' Schwarzenegger type) are then mass produced.

The T-1000 has at least three hand-to-hand encounters with the T-800. At no point does the T-1000 seem to understand how to efficiently disable the T-800. The reason for this is not clear. The fact that the T-1000 is a prototype may indicate it has incomplete programming dealing with the anatomy of the T-800 or it simply wasn't programmed for confrontations with fellow terminators.

The efficiency of the T-1000's design and programming may dictate that it need not worry itself spending time killing the T-800. Its primary objective is to kill John Connor - everyone else is an obstacle of little threat and undeserving of its attention.

Besides, every moment spent fighting the T-800 gives John more time to escape. Losing track of John would make his mission more difficult. The T-800 was merely a distraction; however, in the final hand-to-hand battle, the T-1000 may have allowed itself some time to dispose of T-800 first, knowing that John could not escape the bowels of the factory.

Yes; according to James Cameron, Judgment Day, the nuclear war and Skynet are completely eradicated from all future timelines by the end of this movie.

Basically, what I wanted to say in Terminator 2 was that everything is meant to be a certain way, everything has already been written. You can call it karma or destiny, whatever. So I asked myself a hypothetical question: what if you could you grab a line of history like it's a rope stretched between two points, and just pull it out of the way? If you can pull it just a little bit out of the way then cut it at that moment, maybe you could change it and history could go in a slightly different direction. Like the catastrophe theory. If you could actually do that you would get a future that no longer exists except in the memories of the people who are here now. They have a memory of a future that will never happen, which is curious, because it defies our Newtonian view of the world. But couldn't it be possible? That became my point of departure. It's like the Terminator is an anomaly of our time because he's the only one who has memories of a time that will never exist. His particular future does not exist anymore. - James Cameron

However, this was changed in Terminator 3, and in the accompanying television series, neither of which were made with any input from the writers of the first 2 films. T3 introduced the idea that Judgment Day is inevitable; it was merely postponed when Cyberdyne was destroyed. Humanity will eventually seal its fate by continuing to develop artificial intelligence, which one day will overthrow mankind.

Cameron did shoot an alternative ending almost 40 years in the future, where Judgment Day did not happen and the Earth was safe, but he deleted it because it was too cheerful compared to the rest of the movie, and not in line with the powerful message of the movie: that the future is not set. He chose a more ambiguous ending instead.

However, we must also note that due to the films after T2, we must look to the predestination paradox to explain this answer. The predestination paradox explains that whatever has happened was meant to happen. A time traveller attempting to alter the past in this model, intentionally or not, would only be fulfilling his role in creating history as we know it, not changing it, or that the time-traveler's personal knowledge of history already includes his future travels to his own experience of the past. Effectively, it means this: the time traveller is in the past, which means he was in the past before. Therefore, his presence is vital to the future, and he does something that causes the future to occur the same way his knowledge of the future knows has already happened.

What this means is that Judgement Day never really happened in 1997. Sarah Connor said that it would be in 1997 because she did not know what would happen in the events of T2. So, conclusively, if we look at the Terminator saga as a whole, the answer to this question is no. When time-travelling happens in the Terminator saga, nothing really changes, because what is done in the past has already affected the future in which the time-travellers came from.

This is called an ontological paradox. It's not clear how these would resolve in reality. While it may be logically confusing to track exactly where and how Skynet originated, understanding of time and space in the future may have advanced enough to accept that Skynet needed to send terminators back through time, not to ensure its seeds were planted, but to protect its inevitable creation from its enemies like John Connor. This reasoning, however, goes deeper than what the movie descibes about Skynet's ambitions. Assuming that mankind will one day, be it in the near or distant future, invent microchips and machines smart enough to take over control, Judgment Day will also happen sooner or later. As a result of the human resistance, Skynet sends Terminators to the past to kill their leader and protect its own existence. However, they leave traces of their technology behind in the past, causing the creation of Skynet to occur earlier and the date of Judgment Day to be pushed backwards in the timeline. So Skynet's technology does not directly influence its own creation per se, but merely the time of its creation. Basically, despite the message of the film being that there is no fate, some things are inevitable, and even if the events of The Terminator (1984) hadn't taken place, Skynet would eventually have been built somehow. The placing of the original arm only built the foundations quicker.

The movie and the novel are in conflict concerning this question. In the novel, the T-800 immediately commits suicide by stepping into the molten steel once the T-1000 has died. In the movie, this moment is drawn out to generate emotional issues about the T-800's mortality. However, as a soldier doing a duty, the T-800 probably would not have required others to end his life when the future was at stake.

The T-800's death sequence from the official novel: "[The] Terminator put his hand on John's shoulder. 'I must complete my mission.' And as he said that, the human side of his face came back into the light. He reached toward John and his metal finger touched the tear trickling down his cheek. It was the revelation. 'I know now why you cry, although it is something I can never do.' He turned to Sarah and said, 'Goodbye.' 'Are you afraid?' There was the briefest instant before he responded. 'Yes,' he said. Not because he was going to cease functioning as a terminator, but because he had sensed a vision beyond his programming of a cosmic order vast beyond Skynet's comprehension. And it gave him a sense of his first feeling. Fear. Of where he was going next, if anywhere. Of course, he hadn't been asked for further details on his answer, so he didn't say any of this. He simply turned and stepped off the edge." [page 235]

The T-800's mission is to ensure the survival of John Connor. The fact that the future John Connor didn't reprogram the T-800 to consider such a side mission derives from an obvious inability to predict what Skynet might already have planned. It was better to simply escort the young John Connor into indefinite seclusion. Another possibility is that the future John had simply accepted the fact that, despite what he made Kyle memorise on the subject, while the future can be altered, the big picture remains pretty much the same. Also, there is the fact that if the Terminator did somehow purge Skynet's existence, John never would have been born.

The 3rd and 4th film, along with the television series, can be alternative interpretations/spin offs, as James Cameron considered the story closed, with his own original ending featuring an elderly Sarah surrounded by grandchildren and John becoming a Senator.

According to the writers of the new films, while Skynet was physically destroyed, the idea of Skynet (i.e. A.I.) is irreversible and therefore the creation of Skynet was merely postponed. This is explained more clearly in a deleted scene from T3, which can be found on the DVD.

Also, when the T-800 loses its arm in the gears during the fight at the steel mill, it is still there at the end of the movie; it wasn't destroyed in the molten steel like the rest. Another possibility is that Dyson wasn't the only one who brought work home, and other Cyberdyne workers could have the data for the chip on their home computers. There could also have been an offsite server that kept the files saved, so if the building was lost the files wouldn't be lost as well.

It should also be noted that if the future war never happens, then the Terminator never came back for the first movie, and neither did Kyle Reese. If Kyle Reese never came back, then there is no John Connor. If someone from the future changes the past, and then the present is changed to one in which that future never happened, then theoretically you unmake the past, as well.

He does so to destroy all technology from the future that could lead to the development of Skynet, since the threat from the T-1000 was at an end. This would, in effect, be the greatest protection John could ever be afforded. Should Skynet pursue further assassination attempts to alter the time-line, the human resistance would most likely send a protector back in time to make sure the survival of the human resistance is not jeopardized; hence the release of Terminator 3, where the human resistance finds out a "Terminatrix" has been sent to destroy John's fellow lieutenants. Another protector, a model 101 terminator (this time reprogrammed by future Kate Brewster) is sent through time to defuse the threat against her life.

John shows an interest for hacking ATMs and manages to bypass the security systems at Cyberdyne. This could be why he is a threat to Skynet. Unfortunately, this character trait failed to be elaborated on in Terminator 3. This may indicate that the time-line has been altered with the destruction of Cyberdyne. However, it was Reese who said in The Terminator that it was John who taught the human resistance to fight and physically destroy the machines. The opening scene of T2 shows adult John coordinating the battle against the machines, and according to young John, he was instructed in all kinds of weapons in order to become a great military leader. This would suggest that tactical skills are still John's major talents.

Here are some clues from the official novel as to the nature of its design:

"It didn't have a wafer-circuit brain to think with. It was something on a completely new level of artificial intelligence. The molecular brain acts like the rest of the thing, a liquid. And now it bubbled with possibilities. All of them lethal. "[page 101]

"The concept of pain had never factored into the sensory sphere of the liquid machine. Pain was an indicator of damage to a part of the organism. But this 'organism' didn't have parts, except on the molecular level. And its molecules were each primitive, miniaturized versions of the total machine. If any section parted, the separated halves would revert to metal poly-alloy. The only default command it had in molecular memory was to find the main mass again and rejoin it. Each molecule had a range of fourteen kilometres." [page 132]

"Skynet itself had hesitated before making this latest weapon. There were unpredictability factors related to the thing's longevity and ability to process commands without interpolating its own priorities. It was so volatile a construct, that only in the last throes of utter defeat, when the plug was about to be pulled, had Skynet sent the terminators through time to change the outcome of the war. And only in the very last micro-second before shutdown, had the hypercomputer sent the T-1000... Skynet had no choice. "[page 178]

From the official novel: "The T-1000 walked down the dark hall, passing the bathroom. The real Janelle's legs were through the half-open door. The shower was running. Her blood mixed with water in the white tile floor."

A T-800 is composed of solid armor, so it is resistant to small arms fire. It may be possible to damage or even destroy a T-800 with armor piercing bullets, but the movies never address this. Unlike the T-1000, the T-800 is unable to reform its chassis if it is damaged. Because of this, a T-800 can be destroyed with any type of explosive weapon, such as a grenade, a grenade launcher, a pipe bomb, a rocket launcher, etc. A directed energy weapon like a plasma rifle is probably the most common way to kill a T-800 in 2029. The characters in the movies did not have access to weapons like these for obvious reasons. Any significant damage to the structural integrity of the chassis will either disable or destroy the T-800, as is shown in the first movie with the hydraulic press.

The answer for the T-1000 is more unclear. No type of firearm will permanently damage the T-1000. The second movie does give us a few hints. When Arnold shoots the T-1000 with the grenade launcher, it seems to damage the T-1000 so significantly that it cannot reform its original shape. Explosive weapons are a vague possibility. The T-1000 is sensitive to extreme heat, therefore a plasma rifle or any other type of energy based weapon could either damage or destroy it. Exposing it to extreme heat, as is shown in Terminator 2, will kill it as well.

From the official novel: "As the chromed skeleton was dissolved into the same primal stew as the T-1000, Sarah and John watched [the] Terminator sink into the lava, the metal hand going last... At the last second it formed into a fist with the thumb extended... a final thumbs-up. Then it was really gone. Mother and son watched the molten metal for a while. Then John remembered [the] Terminator's other arm back down the row of smelters, and ran to get it. It was a pile of useless, twisted metal, but the metal was from the future and this time they weren't leaving anything to chance. When John tossed the pieces in, one by one, he and Sarah felt a shudder deep within the bowels of the earth. As if a massive pivot was turning. Of course, later, John would think back and assume it was merely the huge machines pounding away in the mill. He would be wrong. History had been reborn." [page 236]

Yes. In the steel mill, when the Terminator fires his final grenade into the T-1000, globules of liquid metal can be seen flying free off the central mass. It is unknown what become of them.

As shown on the movie, when the T-1000 shifts into new shape it is fully clothed. This would lead to the conclusion that any clothing it might appear to be wearing would be a part of its poly-alloy material, thus making it unnecessary for it to acquire any new clothing after being damaged. This does not apply for the T-800 model. You can spot several bullet holes in the T-800's clothing in the end part of the movie.

Probably. This is suggested by a few shots that were cut from the Theatrical Version, and were restored in the Special Edition. After the T-1000 is frozen and thaws up again in the steel mill, he follows John, Sarah and Terminator. As he walks he grabs onto a steel yellow/black striped bar, and something strange happens: his hand automatically 'fuses' with the bar, mimicing the striped color pattern. He pulls himself loose, looks somewhat confused, and changes his hand back with a fast flick. He then enters an area with a metal profile floor, and his feet uncontrollably take over the color and texture of that floor. The last shot shows John with the two Sarahs, noticing that the feet of the first Sarah seem to be fused to the grated floor. These scenes show that the T-1000 has indeed been damaged by the nitrogen freezing, as he has difficulties maintaining his current shape; his shapeshifting abilities seem partly out of his control. This indicates that the T-1000, although extremely resilient, still consists of fragile microtechnology that can be damaged. Being metal, he could be vulnerable to certain acids as well. Also, because of the heat from the steel mill, it is possible that the extreme heat was assisting in the adhering to the metal railing and grated floor.

The T-1000 is liquid metal; only living human tissue will go through the time machine. The T-800 can go through because the metal endoskeleton is surrounded by human tissue. But the movie leaves some mystery as to what the machine actually is; when in its human form, the T-1000 might actually mimic human flesh. However, since the film really never specifically explains on the situation, it's considered a plot hole. Reese states in the original film that it has something to do with the field generated by a living organism, which is probably bioelectromagnetism, but doesn't elaborate further. That doesn't necessarily mean that only human or animal tissue can travel through time intact. It may mean that anything (machines included) that generates the proper kind of field can time travel. Since the T-1000 is so far advanced, it may generate the right type of field that earlier models could not without human flesh.

Another option is that the T-1000 was outfitted with a simple layer of epidermis just before it was sent back through time. T-800s have a complete, fully functional skin with blood supply to keep the epidermis in shape and to ensure that wounds will heal, in order to keep the Terminator passable as a human. However, all the T-1000 may need is a simple layer of skin without blood vessels to get him across time, which he can dispose of after time-travel. Technically, we never really see in what state he arrived, and there was some time, maybe up to half a minute or so, between the electrical disturbances from the time-travel and T-1000's first on-screen appearance, where he kills the police officer. Perhaps he shed the skin in that short time.

The first Terminator film takes place in 1984. This film was made in 1991 but takes place in either 1994 or 1995, since John is supposed to be ten years old. On the police car monitor, the T-1000's search on John's background information showed his date of birth as February 1985. In order for him to be ten in the film, that would mean T2 would have to take place in 1995, since it takes place in the summer. But if that's the case, it contradicts the T-800's claim that it was sent back 35 years in time (it was sent from 2029), which would place the film in 1994.

Also, because Edward Furlong was thirteen at the time of filming and didn't look ten, they changed the character to be thirteen years old in T3. However, that would mean that the film took place in 1997, which is when Judgment Day occurs. This also generates problems with Sarah's age: Dr. Silberman refers to her in this film as a "twenty-nine year-old female." However, if John is thirteen, this would imply that Sarah was a mere fifteen years old in the original film (again, allowing nine months for John's birth), which is clearly incorrect. One could conceivably postulate that Silberman was referring to Sarah's age at the time of her admission to the hospital.

On the Terminator TV series, the first episode takes place in 1999, with all the events from this film described as happening two years earlier, supporting the theory that T2 takes place in 1997. However, there are further contradictions, as the show also mentions that Sarah gave up John to foster care in 1995 and that the events of T2 took place a couple of months later.

The only real argument against is that in this film they keep referencing the date "August 29th, 1997." If it took place in 1997, they would likely not keep repeating the year; they would simply say "of this year," or just the day and month. One could split the difference and say it takes place in late 1996, as at night time it appeared cold in some scenes, suggesting it was wintertime in L.A.

The humans had not yet won the war in the future when the Terminators were sent back. They had Skynet "on the brink," but hadn't yet finished it off. One can presume that all of the Terminators were sent back at the same time, each targeted at a specific point in the past. Why Reese only appears to know of the one sent to 1984 is another matter.

The obvious answer is that's how Arnold Schwarzenegger talks. A movie answer is that Skynet captures humans, replicates their flesh/likenesses and voices in order for the Terminators to be better at infiltrating. So however the captive they replicated spoke would be their default voice pattern.

No T2 sequel has officially addressed this matter yet. In Terminator: Salvation the prototype T-800 is seen, but no explanation about the origin of its appearance is given. However, there was a scene deleted from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines which explained that the T-800s were modeled after sgt. William Candy, who was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, but had a very heavy southern American accent. When one of the military commisioners voices his reservations about the use of the accent, one of the scientists (with Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice) says that it can be fixed. But this scene was omitted from the film so cannot be counted as continuity. But it can be counted as a temporary answer.

In the first two films, it is referred to as the model 101, as in "Cyberdyne Systems T-800 model-101." This is referring to the physical appearance (i.e. Arnold), whereas the model 100 or 102 would look different from Arnold. The T-800/850 likely refers to the endoskeleton structure. It is unknown what the difference between the 800/850 is; perhaps it's the same model with certain updates in its programming, such as having "update 1.41 from 1.34" for a video game or program. If you wanted to try and distinguish the two, it could be said that the Terminators we see in Terminator: Salvation and the original Terminator are T-800s, and in Terminator 2 and Terminator 3 they are T-850s. One difference between the T-800 chassis and the T-850 is the type of fuel cells used. The T-800 uses an iridium power cell and the T-850 uses dual hydrogen cells. (The only visible differences are their hairstyles.)

It is possible he did; however, the machine he sees is nothing like the one Sarah had described. Therefore, it's doubtful that he jumped immediately to the conclusion that Sarah was sane and telling the truth about everything. In Terminator 3, Silberman has an appearance as the trauma counselor for Kate Brewster after she was 'kidnapped.' He says, "When you're in a traumatic situation you find yourself imagining things. Crazy things...insane things...takes years to get over it...." So he obviously dismissed the events as traumatic hallucinations; however, it's clear that he wasn't totally convinced that it didn't happen. Moments later, the T-850 appears and Silberman flees the scene, as it was the third time he had crossed paths with this "man" right before something bad happened. It's possible after that incident he was convinced it was real. Also, in Terminator The Sarah Connor Chronicals, we do see Silberman again (played by a different actor) and he very much believes in the machines from the future. Though this is a completely separate continuity from the 3rd film.

Either it wasn't noticed and simply discarded as garbage/rubble, or it's an error/plothole on the part of the film makers. It is possible that all of the pieces of the terminator were collected by Cyberdyne for top secret research, but that the arm and the smashed chip were the only pieces worth keeping on display, as they were the pieces being studied. It's also possible that they ran tests, carbon dating; all sorts of things on the other pieces, causing them to be destroyed. But unless it was some sort of rare metal currently unheard of on the periodic table (which would necessarily make it radioactive), it was likely considered scrap.

7256

02/25/1985 (seen on the police computer when the T1000 looks him up).

1. trespassing, 2. shoplifting, 3. disturbing the peace, 4. vandalism (seen on the police computer when the T1000 looks him up).

Todd and Janell Voight live at 29828 S Almond Ave. (The first number of their street address is not fully visible on screen, but you can see the right side of it a little, and based on the way numbers are printed, it can only be a 2; this is also seen on the police computer when the T1000 looks him up).