Useless Movie Trivia For
The Terminator

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Memorable Movie Quotes

Kyle Reese: The 600 series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy, but these are new. They look human - sweat, bad breath, everything. Very hard to spot. I had to wait till he moved on you before I could zero him.

Kyle Reese: John Connor gave me a picture of you once. I didn't know why at the time. It was very old - torn, faded. You were young like you are now. You seemed just a little sad. I used to always wonder what you were thinking at that moment. I memorized every line, every curve. I came across time for you Sarah. I love you; I always have.

Kyle Reese: Listen. And understand. That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It 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.

The Terminator: I'll be back.

Trivia

O.J. Simpson was considered for the role of the Terminator, but the producers feared he was "too nice" to be taken seriously as a cold-blooded killer.

Michael Biehn's character gets bitten on the hand by another character. This happens to him in every James Cameron movie he's in - see Aliens and The Abyss.

Actor Trademark: [Arnold Schwarzenegger] "I'll be back!" (first)

Just after the first scene in the nightclub TechNoir, we hear a police radio report a "two-eleven in progress at Bob's Liquor, corner of Third and Cameron," a possible reference to director James Cameron.

Shots through the Terminator's vision shows a dump of the ROM assembler code for the Apple II operation system. If you own an Apple II, enter at the basic prompt: ] call -151 * p This will give you the terminator view. Other code visible is written in COBOL.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice is used in exactly 16 lines, with 17 sentences spoken. The terminator has two other lines on-screen, one with the voice of a police officer overdubbed, and one with the voice of Sarah's mother overdubbed. There are also many lines with the voice of Sarah's mother, and we learn that the terminator is actually saying them, but we don't see it.

Science fiction author Harlan Ellison sued Cameron, claiming that the film was plagiarized from the two "The Outer Limits" (1963) episodes that Ellison wrote, namely "Soldier" and "Demon With a Glass Hand". The concept of "Skynet" could also have been borrowed from an Ellison short story called "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream". The suit was settled out of court and newer prints of the film acknowledge Ellison.

James Cameron got the idea for The Terminator (1984) while shooting another film in Europe. His vision was of a metal endoskeleton emerging from flames and most of the script was written backwards from there. The endoskeleton would have to be futuristic, and Cameron couldn't afford to set the film in the future. The solution was to bring the future to the present, hence the 'time travel' aspect of the script was written in.

William Wisher Jr., who co-wrote the movie with James Cameron, is featured in a small role as the police officer who attempts to assist the Terminator who was left burned on the curb by Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese, but gets knocked unconscious for his effort.

Near the beginning of the movie, when Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) receives a message on her answering machine breaking her date, the voice on the machine is James Cameron's. Years later, Hamilton and Cameron got married and subsequently divorced.

Wolfie, James Cameron's German Shepherd dog can be seen at the Tiki Motel.

Michael Biehn almost didn't get the role of Kyle Reese because in his first audition he spoke in a Southern accent as a result of working on a part for a stage production of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (he didn't get the role), and the producers didn't want Reese to seem regionalized. After a talk with Biehn's agent, the producers called Biehn back for another audition and he got the part.

There is only one time that Michael Biehn and Arnold Schwarzenegger are in the same frame together. It is when Kyle blasts The Terminator the second time at Tech Noir. When they finally meet in the factory, it is not Schwarzenegger, just a metallic puppet.

Joe Farago, who plays a news anchorman reporting on the Sarah Connor murders, plays a similar role in another James Cameron film, The Abyss.

Linda Hamilton broke her ankle prior to production, and had to have her leg wrapped every day so she could do her chase scenes. Those scenes were also moved towards the end of the shooting schedule.

Although stereophonic sound existed in 1984, The Terminator (1984) was filmed in monophonic sound. This was because during the production, the budget for the movie was pretty low. The cost for everything else in the movie added up to the crew not having enough money to produce The Terminator in stereo sound. Although a stereo remix was produced later by the Hemdale VHS release, it was only until MGM acquired the rights to the film that they were able to create a fully recognizable 5.1 stereo soundtrack for the 2001 Special Edition DVD.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's famous debut line 'I'll be back' was originally scripted as 'I'll come back'.

One afternoon during a break in filming, Arnold Schwarzenegger went into a restaurant in downtown L.A. to get some lunch and realized all too late that he was still in Terminator makeup - with a missing eye, exposed jawbone and burned flesh.

The TechNoir set was actually a downtown L.A. restaurant, redressed to look like a nightclub.

Most of the car chase scenes were shot at normal speed and sped up slightly. To add more of a sense of speed, other cars rode along with them out of frame with revolving lights attached to them that made it seem like the car was passing other light sources faster.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was trained for weeks on weapons handling before he started the film, and wound up garnering a compliment in "Soldier of Fortune" magazine for his realistic handling of the guns on camera (whereas the magazine usually lampoons movies for their inaccurate depictions of weapons use).

Tony Banks, keyboardist of Genesis, was considered to compose the soundtrack - he even was sent the script. But he was busy doing the score to Starship.

The future terminator who infiltrates the human camp in the dream sequence is played by Franco Columbu, who is a multiple Mr. Olympia title winner like Arnold Schwarzenegger and is a close friend of his.

The sunglasses worn by the Termintor were Gargoyles.

The Terminator uses the following weapons throughout the movie:
A AMT 1911 .45 Long Slide with Laser Pointer (pretty much everywhere)
A SandW classic type 2.5-inch barrel revolver, caliber .357Mag (during the tunnel chase)
An Uzi .9mm Submachine Gun (in the Tech Noir nightclub and the Tiki motel)
A SPAS-12 Automatic Shotgun (during the police station shootout)
An AR-18 Assault Rifle (during the police station shootout and the tunnel chase)
In James Cameron's original treatment, Sarah Connor has an old figure skating injury that was fixed with a couple of surgical pins and the terminator would cut the legs open of the first two Sarah Connors to find this identifying mark.

The beginning of production was postponed for nine months, due to Arnold Schwarzenegger's commitment to Conan the Destroyer. During this time, James Cameron wanted to be working but didn't have the time to do a whole other film so he took on a writing assignment, this turned out to be Aliens.

Mel Gibson turned down the role of the Terminator.

In the beginning of the movie, The Terminator drives over a toy semi truck..towards the end of the movie, The Terminator is run over by the same model of semi truck.

Goofs

The number 14239 appears above the entrance of the Alamo Gun Shop and above the front door of the first Sarah Connor. The address 14239 also does not match any of the addresses for Sarah Connor shown in the telephone directory.

As the Terminator is approaching Sarah in the Tech Noir nightclub, several other patrons can be seen behind her sitting in booths. These same people are in front of Kyle (he pushes them out of the way to get to Sarah before the Terminator does), yet he's on the other side of the club by the bar.

When the Terminator is stalking Kyle and Sarah in his police car, the sticker on the driver's door reads "To care and protect". When the car is later wrecked in a tunnel, the sticker has changed to "Dedicated to serve".

The police clerk looks up from his desk to see headlights coming at him. When we see the front of the car, the headlights are off.

During the police station massacre, the camera is positioned on the floor, and shows the Terminator shooting through a door on the left. As he fires his gun, the supposedly dead cop in the foreground can be seen to jump.

During the police station massacre, the fourth cop that the Terminator kills gets blasted by the shotgun, but we hear the sound of the machine gun instead.

Near the end when the truck the Terminator is driving blows up, it's obviously a model. This is made clear mostly by the front grill. Instead of a metal grooved and indented grill like on the real truck, during the explosion we see a front grill that is obviously a piece of silver cardboard with a few black strips of cardboard stuck on top of it.

As the tanker truck is pursuing Sarah near the end of the film, the parked car that the truck smashes is already badly damaged from a previous take.

The wire pulling the tanker truck is visible several times.

In the tanker truck scenes, the truck's wheels go from Daytons (five-spoke hubs), when it is running over the Terminator, to Budds (10 lugs) with aluminum wheels when the Terminator is chasing Sarah, to Budds, with five-hole steel wheels when the truck is burning. The truck also changes from an International Cabover, to a Kenworth Cabover (two round headlights change to four smaller round headlights).

In the parking garage Reese's shotgun goes from sawn-off to full length as he breaks the dashboard to hot wire the car. Before this and after this he is shooting at the terminator with a sawn-off shotgun.

At one point during Reese's explanation, Sarah begins to say "Ky..." and then stops herself. Linda Hamilton obviously forgot that Sarah doesn't ask Reese's first name until much later.

When the Terminator comes through the window after the police chase, he turns on a light to reveal his damaged right eye. However, when he sits down to fix his arm, which is also damaged, his damaged eye is his left one, and it remains this way during the rest of the movie.

When the Terminator finishes punching the hole in the door to the computer factory and walks in, a puppeteer's head can be briefly seen behind him.

The phone number that Sarah Connor gives the Terminator (impersonating her mother) for the Tiki Motel, where she and Kyle are staying, is 408-555-1439. However, after the Terminator hangs up with Sarah, we see him dial 555-1639 and get an answer from the Tiki Motel.

In the chase with the gray Ford LTD, dents, and hubcaps appear, disappear, and reappear on the vehicle throughout the chase.

At the end of the film, the paramedics load Sarah into the ambulance feet first. Paramedics always load a victim's body head first.

When the black pickup rolls over, it is obvious that it has no engine, transmission, or driveshaft.

Box Office Info USA

Budget: $6,400,000

Opening Weekend: $4,020,663 (USA) (28 October 1984) (1,005 Screens)

Gross: $38,371,200

Filming Dates: February 1984 - May 1984

Filming Locations