Another 101 model Terminator is sent back in time...by John Connor to protect his own younger self.
This movie is the first film appearance of John Connor (he
previously appeared--as a blond man--in the
Terminator
comic books published by NOW Comics starting in issue #12,
"Night Convoy"). He is
briefly seen at the beginning of the film as an adult in
2029, portrayed by Michael Edwards. Edward Furlong plays the
10-year old John through the rest of the film (though in
Sarah's dream sequence, a toddler that is presumably meant
to be John was Linda Hamilton's own son, Dalton Abbott). In
Rise of the Machines, 19-year old John is portrayed
by Nick Stahl and Christian Bale plays 34-year old John in
Salvation. In yet another timeline, a 15-year old
John is played by Thomas Dekker in the Terminator
TV series The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
Linda Hamilton's twin sister, Leslie, appears in the film as
both a mirror reflection (in the scene where Sarah and John
remove and activate the learning function on the T-800's
CPU) and near the end when the T-1000 emulates Sarah while
the real Sarah comes up behind him.
James Cameron made a point that John Connor, because he is a
child, would never be seen pointing a gun at anybody
throughout the film.
There is a fair amount of discrepancy in evidence as to what
year the story takes place. John's police record states he
was born on 2/28/85 and that he is ten years old, making the
current year 1995. But the novelization states it is 1992.
And remarks by the T-800 suggest it is 1994 (he says he was
sent back from 35 years in the future, which we know was
2029, so his year of arrival would be 1994; he also states
that Cyberdyne becomes the nation's largest supplier of
military computer systems "in three years" and that Skynet
goes online in 1997, again making the current year 1994.)
At 0:35 on the DVD, a
Suzuki motor vehicle is seen on the streets of L.A.
At 0:59 on the DVD, a burned-out
Volkswagen Beetle is seen in the post-holocaust scene of
L.A. after Judgment Day.
In the prologue of the film, Sarah Connor states in her
voiceover that Judgment Day (when Skynet caused the nuclear
war that ended most of humankind) occurred on August 29,
1997. She states the lives of 3 billion people ended that
day. (In 1997, the world population of human beings is
estimated at about 5.8 billion.) Reese must have told her
the date of Judgment Day in an off-camera scene in
The Terminator, for a
date is never revealed in the film or novelization.
The Terminators in the opening future war scenes
carry the fictitious Westinghouse M95A1 Phased Plasma Rifle.
The shot of the adult John Connor scanning the battlefield
in 2029 at 3:23 on the DVD has him almost moving like a
Terminator himself with the way his head and eyes flick
around in an almost mechanical fashion to take in the battle
around him.
Adult John has a network of scars on the left side of his
face. Filmwise, it's not until the events of
Salvation that we see how
he got them, though in the novel
Rising Storm, he gets
the scars from the attack of a machine-controlled seal!
The post-apocalypse playground in the opening scenes appears
to be the same one from Sarah's visions later in the film.
The opening monolog of the movie by Sarah Connor ends with,
"The computer which controlled the machines, Skynet, sent
two Terminators back through time. Their mission: to destroy
the leader of the human resistance, John Connor, my son. The
first Terminator was programmed to strike at me in the year
1984, before John was born. It failed. The second was set to
strike at John himself when he was still a child. As before,
the resistance was able to send a lone warrior, a protector
for John. It was just a question of which one of them would
reach him first." This nicely leads the viewer, assuming
they've seen the first Terminator movie, into
believing that this sequel is merely aping its progenitor,
with another Schwarzenegger model Terminator striking at
John and another human warrior sent to protect him. And the
arrival scenes in 1995 reinforce it. But the film soon turns
the cliché of "sequelitis" on its ear.
The truck that pulls out of the bar parking lot at 6:34 on the
DVD has
Michelin Pilot XZA tires.
At 6:43 on the DVD, a
Dunkin' Donuts cup is among the litter displaced by the
wind of the impending chronoport arrival.
When the sphere of time displacement appears behind the
parked semis at 7:08 on the DVD, the semi-trailer on the
right-hand side is obviously a different one, as the
license plate disappears, a yellow sticker on it disappears,
and the contours of the trailer doors change. Also note that
the driver's side rear tires of the trailer have been
cleaved by the time sphere, yet they don't appear to have
lost air pressure!
The bar the T-800 enters is called the Corral. The novel
reveals it is in Acton, California (a town in Los Angeles
County).
As the T-800 approaches the bar, he scans the vehicles
parked in front as potential transportation. The
computerized POV identifies the motorcycles (from
left-to-right on the screen) as a Model 435
Harley-Davidson, Model 236
Yamaha, two Model 956 Harley-Davidsons, Model 382
Harley-Davidson Fatboy (this is the motorcycle the T-800
later takes), and Model 382 Harley-Davidson
Electroglide (sic, should be Electra Glide). The car
is identified as a Model 453GT Plymouth sedan, but it is
actually a Ford LTD Crown Victoria. The same car appears on
the freeway during the van/helicopter chase at 2:02:22 on
the DVD! The sedan has
the California license plate 2BRI564; this same plate has
since been in other Hollywood productions on different cars
(such as 2011's We Bought a Zoo and the 2008 TV
series My Own Worst Enemy).
The information presented on screen in the T-800 POV shots
is much more relevant to the actual scene than the mostly
computer gibberish seen on these occasions in
The Terminator.
As the T-800 enters the bar, the song playing on the jukebox
is Dwight Yoakam's 1986 song "Guitars, Cadillacs".
At 8:01 on the DVD, a sign for
Miller
Lite beer is seen, as well as a bottle of
Captain Morgan rum. The light fixture over the pool
table in the foreground (and one in the background) at 8:17
is also an advertisement for Miller Lite.
As the T-800 scans the men in the bar to find one wearing
clothing in a size that would fit him, the computer readout
of the individual's somatotype is shown: ectomorph,
mesomorph, or endomorph. These designations represent body
types: slim, muscular, or chunky. This particular T-800,
being a model 101, would want to find clothing on a tall,
mesomorphic, male specimen.
At 8:14 on the DVD, a neon
Pepsi
sign is seen. A Pepsi soda dispenser is also seen behind the
grill bar a few seconds later.
A Silver Bullet neon sign is seen in the background at 8:17
on the DVD. "Silver Bullet" is a nickname and marketing
campaign for
Coors Light beer, based on the silver color of the can.
At 8:19 on the DVD, a neon sign for
Miller
High Life beer is seen.
At 8:22 on the DVD, a
Budweiser neon sign is seen.
At 8:26 on the DVD, a waitress is wearing a t-shirt for
Willie and Family Live Tour 79. Willie and Family Live
was a live double album by Willie Nelson, released in 1978.
When the biker blows cigar smoke into the T-800's face at
8:59 on the DVD, notice that the computer POV readout shows
the smoke as a carcinogen vapor. A
carcinogen is a substance linked with causing cancer.
It seems odd that the T-800 does not kill anyone during the
confrontation at the Corral bar, seeing as how young John
has not yet met him to give him the order not to kill
anybody. It may be that in the present situation, the
programming of the T-800 tells it that killing a human at
this point would be likely to bring local law enforcement
into the picture which it can't afford right now.
If you use frame-advance as the biker stabs the T-800 (about
9:19 on the DVD), you can see that the knife is just a
rubber prop as it bends against Arnold's chest! Also notice
that the knife strikes just above his right nipple, but when
he enters the kitchen just seconds later, the minor injury
seen is significantly below it.
At 9:27 on the DVD, a man in the background is wearing a
Harley-Davidson t-shirt. The woman's t-shirt appears to read
"Good Guys".
At 9:35 on the DVD, a jug of
Formula
409 cleaner and can of Calumet is seen in the
background. Calumet baking powder is currently made by
Kraft Foods.
At 9:42 on the DVD, a box for Miller Genuine Draft beer is
seen behind the fallen biker.
The gun the T-800 takes from the biker is a
Colt
.45.
At 10:03 on the DVD, as the T-800 leaves the bar, notice
that the man the T-800 threw out the bar window is still
lying on the hood of the car on which he landed. (Although
notice at 10:46 that the man has now disappeared!)
The song that plays as the T-800 leaves the bar in his new
clothes is "Bad to the Bone" by George Thorogood and the
Destroyers, from 1982.
Why does the T-800 bother to take the sunglasses from the
bartender? In
The Terminator, that
T-800 had a reason to wear sunglasses because it had lost
its human eye in a firefight and needed to cover up the
robotic, red, glowing eye thus revealed. But here, it makes
no real sense, other than the audience has come to think of
the Terminator as wearing sunglasses, due to the popularity
of that first film.
The novel identifies the owner of the Corral as Lloyd. The
shotgun the T-800 takes from him as the cyborg leaves the
bar is a 10-gage
Winchester; however, the
interactive version of the movie on the Extreme DVD states
it is a 12-guage Winchester 87.
At 11:11 on the DVD, the police car appears to be a
Chevrolet. The novelization reveals the cop's name to be
Joe "Lucky" Austin. (The interactive version of
the movie on the Extreme DVD reveals that the "Austin" name
was in honor of T2 co-producer Stephanie Austin.) He reports back to dispatch that he is
investigating an electrical disturbance under the
Sixth Street Bridge at Santa Fe. The reference to Santa Fe
Avenue indicates he is on the west side of the Los Angeles
River, which flows under the Sixth Street Bridge.
Los Angeles police normally travel in twos, not singly as
seen here. The novelization reveals that Austin's partner
came down sick with food poisoning during roll call and
there hadn't been time to get a replacement.
The novelization reveals Austin is carrying a
Beretta
9mm pistol. The T-1000 soon takes it. This model of pistol
has actually been used by the LAPD at times.
After commandeering a police car, the T-1000 uses the car's
computer terminal to look up John Connor in the Juvenile
Automated Index. It lists his birth date as 2/28/85. We also
see a list of his past offenses; the code numbers listed
actually do conform closely to the police codes used for
various crimes. The Juvenile Automated Index is maintained
by Los Angeles and lists juveniles ages 14-17 who have been
a ward or dependent of the court. Since John is only 10
years old at the time, he would not actually be listed in
it. The novelization reveals the terminal to be an
Electro-Com MDT-870. MDT stands for Mobile Data Terminal.
I've been unable to independently confirm this particular
brand and model of the terminal, but the interactive version
of the movie on the Extreme DVD states it also.
John is listed as living with guardians Todd and Janelle
Voight at 19828 S. Almond Avenue, Reseda (the last two
letters of the city are off the screen, but the novelization
confirms it is the community of Reseda in the city of Los
Angeles). However, the address listed does not exist in the
real Reseda; there is no Almond Avenue running through it.
The novelization reveals that John's young friend is named
Tim and he's two years older than John, though John is the
leader of the two.
The song playing in the background as John and his friend work
on the dirt bike at 13:00 on the DVD is "You Could Be Mine"
by Guns N' Roses. The song also plays during a portion of
the end credits. (It's also played by John on a boom box, in
an homage to this film, in Salvation.) In the novelization, the boys are listening
to the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" instead.
The interactive version of the movie on the Extreme DVD
reveals that John's dirt bike is a Honda XR100 (the novelization states that John's dirt bike is a 1990 Honda
125).
The car parked in the Voights' driveway may be a 1970's
model
Pontiac Trans Am.
Young John is wearing a Public Enemy t-shirt throughout the
film.
Public Enemy is a hip-hop group that started in 1985 and is
still performing today. It's possible the band's t-shirt was
used due to the presence of the band member called
Terminator X. It may also be intended as an ironic gag that
John Connor, who will grow up to be the savior of humanity,
is wearing a shirt labeled "public enemy". John's friend may
be wearing an L.A. Guns t-shirt, but I've not been able to
positively identify it.
The boom box carried by John's friend Tim appears to be a
Sony CFS-213.
Sarah is depicted as being confined to Pescadero State
Hospital. While the town of
Pescadero is real (a very tiny town about 45 miles south of
San Francisco), there is no state mental hospital there.
Possibly the name was used to suggest Atascadero State
Hospital, though it is an all-male hospital. The
novelization states that Pescadero is an all-female
hospital.
Dr. Silberman states that Sarah is suffering from acute
schizoaffective disorder. This is an actual mental disorder
featuring symptoms of psychosis and abnormal emotional
response. Dr. Silberman was previously seen as an LAPD
psychiatric advisor in
The Terminator.
Sarah asks Dr. Silberman, "How's the knee?" and he tells his
students that she stabbed him the knee with his pen a few
weeks ago. But later in the film, it's implied that she's
been well-behaved for the past six months, wanting to see
her son again. How can stabbing her psychiatrist in the knee
be accepted as part of being well-behaved?
Dr. Silberman tells Douglas to make sure Sarah is taking her
Thorazine. Thorazine is the brand name of chlorpromazine in
the U.S., an antipsychotic used to treat schizophrenia.
Sarah refers to Douglas as "Dougie".
As the T-1000 visits the Voight household and asks about
John, notice that the family dog (actually John's dog Max) is barking frantically in
the background. As revealed in previous Terminator
stories, dogs are able to sniff out Terminators.
Does the T-1000 know who the Voights are talking about when
they tell him a "big guy on a bike" came around earlier
looking for John. It almost seems like he does, but the
reprogrammed T-800 was sent by the resistance after
he was.
At 17:47 on the DVD, John is using his hacking skills to
steal money from a Federal Security Bank ATM. This appears
to be a fictional bank.
A restored scene of Reese visiting Sarah in a dream appears
at 19:10 on the DVD. Reese repeats the phrase "On your
feet, soldier," used by Sarah in
The Terminator, to
her. He also repeats a phrase from the message he delivered
to her for John, "stronger than you ever thought you could
be".
The skyline in the background of Sarah's holocaust vision is
that of Los Angeles.
At 23:55 on the DVD, Sarah is smoking a cigarette which the
novelization reveals is a Marlboro she convinced one of the
attendants to give her.
Notice that the computer graphic in the
Cyberdyne lab at
25:23 on the DVD is of the T-800 processor chip. A
large-scale physical model of the chip is seen seconds later
as the camera pans across the lab.
At 25:31 on the DVD, an inflatable dinosaur (a sauropod) is
seen in the Cyberdyne lab. A toy of a spiked prehistoric
synapsid is also seen on top of a computer monitor at 25:43.
At 25:40 on the DVD, the lab assistant is carrying a can of
Pepsi
balanced on his clipboard.
At 30:23, an employee at the Galleria mall is also seen
carrying a Pepsi. And a Pepsi vending machine is seen in the
back corridor of the mall at 30:25 and in Pescadero State
Hospital at 51:36. It seems likely that
Pepsi was a product-placement sponsor of the film.
At 25:43 on the DVD, one of the lab workers at Cyberdyne has
a sticker on the side of his computer monitor reading, "My
other computer is a
Macintosh."
At 26:10 on the DVD, notice that Cyberdyne does not appear
to have very good clean room procedures. Dyson is allowed to
walk straight into the clean room, among geared-up workers,
without any kind of clean gear himself!
When Sarah loses it during her review with Dr. Silberman, he
orders 10 cc's of sodium amobarbital for her. Sodium
amobarbital is a sedative with some hypnotic properties.
The girls the T-1000 speaks to at 28:29 on the DVD are
carrying drinks in
Subway soda
cups (what do you want to bet the cups are filled with
Pepsi?). The novelization reveals that the girls are
stopped by the T-1000 in front of the Subway sandwich shop. The girls tell him that John was headed for the
Galleria (the novelization refers to it as the Reseda
Galleria); this seems to be a fictional shopping mall, but it
was shot at the real world
Santa Monica Place. (At 28:43 on the DVD, the words
"Monica" and "Mall" can be seen in the background on the
wall of the parking garage.)
The motorcycle seen in the parking garage at the Galleria at
28:42 on the DVD appears to be a 1991
Kawasaki GPZ 500S.
As John and Tim visit the video arcade at the mall, the
following real world video games are seen: Rampage,
Missile Command, After Burner, Trog,
Arch Rivals, Space Invaders, and Hit
the Ice. It's ironic that John is seen playing
Missile Command, as the game depicts a
nuclear war scenario.
At 30:00 on the DVD, a boy at the video arcade is wearing a
shirt that appears to say something about "Zero Gravity"
sport. Not sure what that is referring to.
At 30:29 on the DVD, John seems to recognize the T-800
approaching him. It's probable his mother showed him video
or stills of the T-800 from police cameras as it assaulted
the police station in 1984 in
The Terminator. (This
is confirmed in the novelization.)
The T-800's hiding of a shotgun inside a box of long-stemmed
roses may have been inspired by a similar scene in Stanley
Kubrick's 1956 film, The Killing.
At 31:22 on the DVD, we see that the police officer's name
badge "worn" by the T-1000 is "Austin",
from the name of the cop he killed, though he does not look
like that cop.
If you freeze-frame at about 31:31 on the DVD, it can be
seen that there is already a hole in the wall in the spot into
which the T-1000 is bashed.
At 31:42 on the DVD, the two Terminators have crashed
through a wall of the Galleria, into a menswear store. A
sign for Hero Cologne is seen. This is a real world men's
cologne made by Prince Matchabelli (though the interactive
version of the movie on the Extreme DVD states the cologne
was from
Brut).
There's a nice joke about the T-1000's real look when he
looks at the store mannequin at 31:48 on the DVD.
At 32:01 on the DVD, notice that a bystander is taking
automatic shots of the T-800 with his
Pentax camera as the cyborg rises after his crash
through the storefront window. The photos show up later at
the police precinct house.
The T-1000 runs past a couple of
Toyota pickups parked in the mall parking structure.
If you do a freeze-frame at 32:40 on the DVD, as John jumps
his dirt bike out of the mall parking structure, it is
obviously a stunt man on the bike, not young actor Edward
Furlong. (Also at 32:48 and
33:36.) The
interactive version of the movie on the Extreme DVD reveals
the stunt rider to be Bobby Porter, who went on to play
Stink in the 1990s
Land of the Lost TV series.
The exterior of Robinson's department store is seen at 32:45
on the DVD. This was a department store name in the U.S.
southwest officially known as J.W. Robinson's. It merged
with the May Company department store chain in 1993 to
become Robinson's-May, and then bought out by Macy's in
2005.
At 33:07 on the DVD, we see that the Road Ranger Towing
truck commandeered by the T-1000 is a
Freightliner (in the novelization, a Kenworth). A
Public Storage facility is also seen in this shot.
During the motor chase at 33:18 on the DVD, John zooms past
a
Hyundai vehicle and then a
Honda
Accord LXi.
At 33:25 on the DVD, the street sign in the background as
the T-800 zooms onto the street is blurry, but appears to
say "Plummer". This is the same street name seen on the sign
when the T-1000 drives the tow truck through the cement
railing of the Hayvenhurst overpass into the concrete river
bed
at 34:02.
A
Mitsubishi Fuso truck is seen at 33:36 on the DVD.
The overpass at 33:57 on the DVD is stenciled with
Hayvenhurst Ave. This is an actual street running through
Encino, Reseda, and Northridge areas of greater Los
Angeles.
The shot of the tow truck driving
through the cement railing of the
Hayvenhurst overpass into the
concrete waterway at 34:02 doesn't
seem to make sense at first glance, as an overpass
does not (by definition!) have a
street running perpendicular into
it! The interactive version of the
movie on the Extreme DVD reveals that the production found an
overpass that had a street running at a diagonal into it, allowing
for the shot. The bridge railings were constructed at the end of a
ramp over the real railings, so the real railings were not damaged.
The bridge is part of Plummer Street, which is an actual
street in Los Angeles (it also crosses Reseda Blvd.). The concrete
waterway below is Bull Creek. |
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When the tow truck lands in the culvert, its two windshield
panes fall out in the impact. Yet they are still in place in
later shots until the T-1000 pushes them out himself during
the chase.
At 34:15 on the DVD, the front axle of the tow truck appears
to be broken, hanging in a "v" from the wheels. But, of
course, it's back to normal as the chase continues.
The exhaust stacks on the tow truck disappear and reappear
throughout the ravine chase.
At 34:29 on the DVD, the T-800 appears to crash right
through a chain-locked gate onto the access road of the
culvert! He doesn't even fire a shotgun blast at it first as
he does in upcoming locked gate scenes during the chase.
Notice that the handle of the cocking lever on the T-800's
shotgun is bigger during the ravine chase sequence, allowing
Arnold to more easily twirl it in the air to re-cock it as he
rides. Before and after the chase, the handle is normal
size.
At 34:37 on the DVD, the T-800's motorcycle is seen to have
the California license plate 9A7218.
When the T-800 jumps the Harley off the concrete ledge into
the culvert at 36:08, the ledge is much wider than it was
when he was approaching it.
At 36:28 on the DVD, the driver's side headlight is suddenly
missing from the tow truck. But it is back again just
seconds later.
Using freeze-frame at 36:30 on the DVD, one can see that
it's not really Arnold and Edward riding the motorcycles as
the T-800 reaches to grab John off his bike.
When the T-800 pulls John off the dirt bike, the dirt bike
falls under the pursuing tow truck's tires seat first. But
when the shot changes to another view at that split second,
the bike is hit rear wheel first.
At 36:39 on the DVD, a red cable can be seen on the right
side of the screen, apparently attached to the motorcycle,
just before the T-800 blows out the tow truck's tire with
the shotgun.
The T-800 blows out the left front tire of the tow truck
with the shotgun, and it appears to be ripping off the rim
seconds later. Yet, it appears to be fully on the rim (and
reinflated!) seconds later when the truck strikes the
concrete abutment.
A spark from the battery cable is seen to ignite the fuel
from the tow truck after the crash, causing the explosion.
But the semi-tractor truck would most likely be fueled by
diesel, which is not ignited by spark as is traditional
gasoline, but by high temperature and pressure in the
engine. In short, diesel is less flammable than gasoline and
unlikely to be ignited by a spark as seen here.
After the tow truck explodes, the T-800 cocks the shotgun,
thinking the T-1000 is emerging, but it turns out to be just
a rolling tire from the wreck, so he never fires it. But in
the next scene when he pulls off the street with John, he
clears an empty cartridge from gun!
A Goodhew ambulance is seen in a restored scene at 40:07 on
the DVD. Goodhew was an ambulance company in southern
California at the time the movie was shot and was seen in
many movies and TV shows shot in the L.A. area from the late
1960s through the 1990s.
At 40:43 on the DVD, the T-800 and John pass by a parked
semi with a
Coors
Light trailer on it.
As the T-800 and John pull into the liquor store parking lot
at 40:50 on the DVD, signs for
Marlboro
and the
California Lottery are seen. A billboard for Santos
brand of some product is also seen. A few seconds later, a
Pacific Bell phone booth is seen;
Pacific Bell is a telephone service company in California.
At 40:56 on the DVD, notice that, in the background, the two
young men who later attempt to help when John yells for it
against the T-800, are seen getting out of their car and
entering the liquor store.
At 41:06 on the DVD, it can briefly be seen that the pay
phone is already busted open on the bottom, before the T-800
breaks it to get at the quarters inside!
At 41:18 on the DVD, a can of Lady Lee canned tomatoes is
seen on the kitchen counter. Just seconds later, Todd takes
a
carton of Lady Lee milk from the refrigerator and drinks
from it. Lady Lee is a real world brand of grocery products.
John says the name of his German Shepherd dog
is Max, but the T-800 tricks the T-1000 into revealing
itself over the phone by referring to the dog as Wolfie.
Wolfie was also the nickname of James Cameron's German Shepherd,
Beowulf,
in 1984 and which appeared in the motel scenes in
The Terminator.
Some fans have speculated that John's dog here
is the same German Shepherd Sarah acquired before heading to
Mexico at the end of
The Terminator.
However, the novelization of that film reveals that dog was
named Pugsley, Jr.
A restored scene appears at 43:14 on the DVD. It features
the T-1000 killing John's dog and finding that the collar
bears the name "Max" instead of "Wolfie", so the Terminator
knows he was fooled over the phone.
Notice at 43:50 on the DVD that the police
investigator has a Wildcard Poker cup of coffee sitting on
the table during the questioning of Sarah. Obviously he got
it from the coffee vending machine at the hospital, just has
the security guard Lewis will later on, just before he is
killed by the T-1000.
A small bag of
Lay's potato chips and a Subway soda
cup are also seen on the table.
The novelization reveals the detective's name is
Weatherby. The other detective in the room is Mossberg.
The interactive version of the movie on the Extreme DVD
points out that the names were inspired by the firearms
manufacturers,
Weatherby,
Inc. and
O.F. Mossberg & Sons. In
"Judgment Impaired", Mossberg's first name is revealed
to be David.
During Sarah's questioning, the investigator tells her that
17 police officers were killed (by the Terminator) at the
police headquarters in 1984. This occurred in
The Terminator.
Young John is kind of a jerk. When he calls out for help
outside the liquor store when the T-800 won't let him go,
two guys come to help him and he says, "Take a hike, bozo,"
and then tells the Terminator to beat the guys up.
When one of the jocks calls John a dipshit, John says, "Did
you call moi a dipshit?" Moi is French for
"me".
John tells the T-800 that his mom was once shacked up with
an ex-Green Beret. The
Green Berets are U.S. Army Special Forces personnel who
conduct missions of unconventional warfare, foreign internal
defense, special reconnaissance, direct action, and
counter-terrorism.
After the encounter with the jocks in the liquor store
parking lot, the T-800's pistol is seen intermittently
cocked and uncocked throughout the "you can't just go around
killing people" lecture from John.
At 52:03 on the DVD, Lewis looks at his
Wildcard Poker
cup of coffee and tells Gwen he got a full house. But he
didn't! His cup shows two jacks and two aces on the side and
a queen on the bottom. So his hand is just two pairs. A full
house requires three of one rank and two of another (he
would have to have a jack or an ace on the bottom to get the
full house).
At 52:13 on the DVD, it's fairly obvious that Lewis' head is
just a model as the T-1000 stabs him through the eyeball. A
suture in the rubber or plastic is visible alongside the
ear.

The
Wildcard Poker cup that drops to the floor at 52:14 on the
DVD is not the same one Lewis was holding just seconds
earlier! The queen of diamonds symbol is missing from the
bottom of the cup; instead, it shows a crown symbol.
At 52:26 on the DVD, a number of cleaning products are seen
in the supply room, such as
Viva
paper towels,
Comet
cleanser,
Purex laundry detergent, and
Joy dishwashing liquid.
When Douglas opens the door of the maintenance room at 52:59
on the DVD, a can of Comet cleanser and box of
Spic and
Span household cleaner are seen on a shelf. (Cans of
Comet are also seen on top of a cleaning cart as Sarah uses the
baton on Silberman at 54:32.)
At 54:02 on the DVD as Sarah runs down the hallway after
escaping from her cell, her footfalls sound as if she's
wearing shoes, but she's actually barefoot! Later scenes
correct the problem with sounds of bare feet slapping the
floor as she runs.
At 54:17 on the DVD, the T-800 and John ride past a
Mobil
gas station.
After breaking his arm, Sarah tells Dr. Silberman there are
over 215 bones in the human body. Experts usually state that
there are approximately 206 distinct bones in humans.
Sarah fills a syringe with Liquid Rooter drain cleaner at
54:43 on the DVD. I believe this was a fictional brand at
the time, but there is currently a drain cleaner with that
name.
The female security guard who first spots Sarah holding
Silberman hostage on the security cameras appears to have a
name badge identifying her as Fisher.
Notice that the T-800's leather jacket loses and regains the
bullet holes in it numerous times throughout the film.
The female guard hits the T-800 in the face, damaging his
sunglasses. But immediately after the blow, the left lens is
still intact. In the next shot a split second later, the
left lens is half missing.
The T-800 shoves the female guard, Fisher, down the hallway
and she slides to a stop not far from the bars in the middle
of the hall. Her prone form disappears and reappears a
couple of times as the scene progresses.
If you freeze-frame at 59:44 on the DVD, you'll see that the
T-1000's head is already slightly separated before the
T-800's shotgun goes off.
At 1:00:39 on the DVD, notice that the T-800's Harley is
parked outside the parking structure elevator as he, John,
and Sarah exit.
The bullet hole Sarah puts into the windshield of the
security vehicle at 1:00:47 on the DVD, is missing some
subsequent shots.
At 1:01:27 on the DVD, we see that the hospital security
vehicle is a
Ford.
The light bar on the security vehicle changes back-and-forth
from all blue to blue and orange throughout the T-1000 chase
sequence. The license plate of the vehicle also changes
between shots.
At 1:02:04 on the DVD, production crew and equipment can be
seen on the right-hand side of the screen as the T-800
drives the security vehicle backwards through the Pescadero
parking lot.
At 1:03:50 on the DVD, Sarah's wound on her back (received
from the blade of the T-1000 in the elevator) is missing as
she checks John for injuries in the car.
The T-800 tells John that he can last about 120 years on his
existing power cell.
As our heroes pull into the closed gas station at 1:05:07 on
the DVD, the stylized BP logo of Benthic Petroleum can just
barely be made out on the gas pumps.
Benthic Petroleum is name of the company in James Cameron's
1989 film The Abyss.
Page 142 of the novelization also confirms the company name.
There is a restored scene from 1:06:26-1:09:51, detailing
the activation of the learning component of the T-800's
microchip. The T-800 reveals that Skynet sends independent
units out with the learning function deactivated so it won't
think too much.
At 1:08:20 on the DVD, a tool chest at the closed service
station seems to have a "Stack On" logo on it. This may be a
play on the real world manufacturer of high-end tools,
Snap-On.
At 1:09:42 on the DVD, the T-800's internal chronometer
reads 1:26 elapsed time since it was deactivated by the
removal of its CPU. But the movie time was actually around
1:50.
At 1:10:30 on the DVD, Sarah puts on a denim jacket that
appears to have the logo of Chett's Auto Parts sewn onto the
back. She must have found it in the service station (the
novelization confirms this). Chett's appears to be a
fictional business.
John teaches the T-800 to say "Hasta la vista, baby," and
"No problemo." These are both Spanish phrases. "Hasta
la vista" means "good-bye" and "no problemo" means "no
problem".
Our heroes pull into Cactus Jack's Market at 1:11:24 on the
DVD (another Pepsi sign too!). This was a fictional
establishment; the name may have been derived from the
character of Cactus Jack (played by Kirk Douglas) who
appears in an earlier Arnold Schwarzenegger film, 1979's
The Villain. Notice that a semi blows its horn as the
T-800 somewhat recklessly pulls across the opposing lane to
enter the store's lot. The scenes there were shot at this
forlorn
location in Lancaster, CA.
A restored scene is found from 1:11:53-1:12:57 on the DVD, as
John tries to teach the T-800 how to smile. The scene does
help to set up the later scene when the T-800 gives a
crooked smile after picking up a massive machine gun (meant
to be mounted to a helicopter) and John says, "It's
definitely you."
At 1:12:12 on the DVD a young woman is holding a...guess
what? Pepsi soda cup!
A stray Pepsi cup is seen at 1:12:21 on the DVD.
As two young boys play shoot-'em-up with toy guns, John
wonders if people are going to make it and the T-800
remarks, "It's in your nature to destroy yourselves." And
notice that the mother of the children pulls them apart,
saying, "Break it up before I ring both your necks,"
reinforcing the (often unintentional) human tendency to
express things in violent terms.
The T-800 reveals that Skynet came online on August 4, 1997
and became self-aware at 2:14 a.m. EST on August 29.
A restored scene at 1:15:09-1:17:34 shows a bit of Miles
Dyson's home life, including a daughter not seen otherwise
in the film. During Sarah's attack on the house later in the
film, only the son, Danny, is present; Mrs. Dyson states
that Danny's sister has gone to bed. In the novelization
the daughter is awake and playing with Danny during the
attack; her name is Blythe.
At 1:15:37 on the DVD, Dyson has a poster for a Cyberdyne
symposium in
Monterey, CA on the wall of his home office.
Notice also that he has a large-scale version of the
Terminator microchip on his desk, with data cables running
to it; he is obviously trying to get the large scale version
working properly and then figuring out how to miniaturize
it.
At 1:15:51 on the DVD, Dyson has a piece of paper with the
words "Bit Happens" written on it taped to the top of his
computer monitor. This is a play on the colloquialism "Shit
Happens"; in computer parlance, a "bit" is the most basic
unit of information in computing.
Dyson's wife reminds him that he promised to take the kids
to Raging Waters
today. There is a Raging Waters park near L.A. in San Dimas.
Dyson's wife mimics back to him his own spiel about how
important the new neural net processor he's working on will
be. The term "neural net processor"
was invented for the movie.
A number of rattlesnake heads adorn the fence at the Salceda
compound and the one seen at 1:17:45
on the DVD has two fangs on its left side. This occasionally
happens, as rattlesnakes grow new fangs every 6-10 weeks,
and sometimes the previous fang is still functional as the
new one grows in to replace it.
The shot at 1:17:56 on the DVD, of the camera panning
through the windows of the trailer from inside as the
station wagon pulls up, seems like a character POV, an early
hint that the site is not as abandoned as it first appears.
When first meeting with Enrique in the desert, several
Spanish phrases are used by Sarah, Enrique, Yolanda, and
John (thanks to
AmericanBuddha.com for an assist with the translations):
|
-
"Enrique? Estas
aqui?" = ""Enrique?
Are you here?"
|
|
|
|
- "Siempre como
culebra." = "Always
like the snake."
|
|
- "Que bueno verte,
Connor." = "It's
good to see you,
Connor."
|
|
- "Te dije que va
regresar." = "I told
you I'd be
returning."
|
|
- "Y yo lo sabia,
carajo. Que bueno
verte. Yolanda,
venga, que hay
visita, carajo.
Traiga la pinche
tequila. Ey, Big
John, como te va?" =
"And I knew it, you
rascal. So good to
see you. Yolanda,
come out here, we
got visitors,
dammit. Bring the
damn tequila! Hey
Big John, how ya'
doin'?
|
|
- "Que grandote es
este?" = "Who's the
big dude?"
|
|
- "Que bonito! =
"How cute!"
|
|
- "Como estas?"
"How are you?"
|
|
- "Como estas? Que
grande estas, mi
hijito?" = "How are
you? How big you
are, my little boy."
|
Enrique and Yolanda at times refer to Sarah and John as
Sarita and Juanito. The suffix -ita (feminine) and -ito
(masculine) are used in the Spanish language to denote
affection when attached to names, and technically means
"little", i.e. little Sarah and little John.
Most of the rifles in the weapons bunker at Enrique's'
holdout appear to be AK-47s, and possibly a few M-16s.
At 1:20:24 on the DVD, John picks up what appears to be an
Uzi in the weapons bunker.
The general Uzi line of weapons was designed by Israeli
Captain Uziel Gal in the late 1940s and named after him.
The weapon examined by the T-800 in the weapons bunker at
1:20:24 on the DVD is an M79 grenade launcher. We see him
use it throughout the Cyberdyne/chase scenes later.
The truck taken by Sarah from Enrique's holdout is a
Ford
Bronco.
While he repairs the Bronco, Sarah tells Enrique she's going
to wait until dark to cross the border. This would seem to
imply that they are in Mexico now, with her planning to
cross the border into the U.S. to strike at Cyberdyne that
night. But other sources imply that Enrique's holdout is in
California, just north of the Mexican border. It may be that
Sarah is tricking her cohorts into thinking she is crossing
the border into Mexico to make contact with other friends or
acquire equipment rather than her actual plan to kill Dyson.
While raiding the weapons from Sarah's stash at Enrique's
holdout, John tells the T-800 how different his upbringing
was from the typical kid, "...I grew up in places like this,
so I just thought that's how people lived, riding around in
helicopters, learning how to blow shit up. But then when my
mom got busted I got put into a regular school. All the
other kids were into Nintendo." "Nintendo" is a reference to
the home video games systems made by the Japanese
electronics company
Nintendo.
At 1:21:45 on the DVD, a box with a Mountain House label is
seen in the storage bunker.
Mountain House is a maker of freeze-dried foods for long
term storage and survival.
The massive six-barreled machine gun the T-800 finds in the
bunker appears to be an M134 Minigun, manufactured by
General Electric from 1962-present. It is normally intended
to be mounted to military helicopters. The novelization's
statements that it fires 7.62 mm shells and is capable of
firing 6000 rounds per minute are accurate. The same gun was
wielded by actor Jesse Ventura in an earlier Arnold
Schwarzenegger film, Predator.
The crooked smile delivered by the T-800 when he hefts the
M134 Minigun is similar to that of John, indicating he is
learning to smile from the boy.
Several dogs are seen running around at the Salceda's property.
Why do they not bark at the T-800 as other dogs are seen to
do in the presence of a Terminator? I suppose there could
have been an off-screen moment when the dogs did notice and
start barking at him, but came to accept him when they see
that their human masters have already done so.
The rifle Sarah carries at 1:23:05 on the DVD appears to be
an M16.
The knife Sarah uses to carve "NO FATE" into the picnic
table is said to be a Ka-Bar bayonet in
Infiltrator.
Ka-Bar
makes a variety of knives, most popularly the combat knife
used by the United States Marine Corps. However, PopApostle
reader Richard K. has pointed out that Sarah's knife is not
a Ka-Bar at all, but a
SOG
Specialty Knife, a replica of a knife designed for
personnel of the U.S. Studies and Observations Group in
Vietnam during the Vietnam War. |
 |
|
Sarah's knife |
Sarah's knife |
|
|
|
SOG replica knife |
During Sarah's dream sequence at 1:27:35 on the DVD, notice
that she is wearing her waitress uniform from Big Jeff's as
seen in
The Terminator.
At 1:33:24 on the DVD, Dyson's son, Danny, is seen wearing a
Raging Waters shirt, obviously a souvenir of the day's
recreation at the water park with his dad. He is also
wearing a
Minnesota Twins baseball cap; this may be an in-joke to
the fact that former Twins relief pitcher Jeff Reardon, who
threw the final pitch when the Twins won the 1987 World
Series, was nicknamed "The Terminator" for his closing
abilities on the mound.
According to Dark Futures,
Danny was born in 1988, making him about 6 years old here.
Notice that the music soundtrack as Sarah attacks the Dyson
home is similar to the Terminator theme music,
indicating how she has become something of a killing machine
herself in her quest to prevent Judgment Day, in danger of
sacrificing her own humanity.
At 1:34:51 on the DVD, issues of
Interior Design are seen on a coffee table in the
Dyson home.
On another coffee table in the Dyson home at 1:34:54 on the
DVD, issues of
Traditional Home,
House Beautiful, and Estate are seen. The
positions of the magazines change from shot to shot. I've
not been able to confirm the existence of an actual magazine
called
Estate.
The time on John's watch fluctuates during the shots of him
comforting his mom after her aborted attempt to kill Dyson.
An Evil Hour reveals that the raid on Cyberdyne
headquarters took place in May of 1994.
In its entry on Sarah Connor, the
Terminator Wikia speculates that the duster worn by Sarah during the raid on Cyberdyne is the same
one Kyle Reese wore in
The Terminator.
Indeed, they do look similar! |
 |
 |
At 1:42:00 on the DVD, the camera screens at the security
station inside Cyberdyne are made by
Panasonic.
The badges of the two security guards at Cyberdyne reveal
their names as Gibbons and Moshier. Dyson refers to Gibbons
as Carl; in the script (and book and comic book adaptations)
his name is Paul. For some reason, the Cyberdyne logo on the
sleeves of the security uniforms has two black triangles and
one silver, whereas the logo seen everywhere else is two
silver and one black.
The book reveals the magazine Gibbons was
reading when the Connor crew walked in was Westways. He was
reading an article about the origin of yucca trees.
Westways
is a magazine published by the
Automobile Club of Southern California for its members.
Dyson remarks that the automatic fire extinguishers in the
Cyberdyne lab use halon. This refers to halomethane, a real
world gaseous compound often used in the extinguishing of
fires.
As the T-1000 comes upon the remains of Dyson's home office,
a police dispatch call comes over his police radio stating a
211 in progress at the Cyberdyne building. "211" is police
code for robbery. At this point the police assume the
break-in at Cyberdyne is for theft.
The novelization
reveals that Cyberdyne is located in
Irvine, CA. This is a city in Orange County, not far from
L.A.
While the T-1000 is searching the remains of Dyson's home
office, a police dispatcher on the radio states the address of Cyberdyne as 2144
Kramer Street. Just seconds later, as police pull up to the
Cyberdyne complex, the dispatcher says 2111 instead. Also,
there is no such street as Kramer in Irvine.
The police helicopter that arrives outside of Cyberdyne
appears to be a
Bell 206B JetRanger II.
At 1:46:55 on the DVD, notice that as Dyson is looking at
the large prototype model of the microchip, a vector graphic
of the chip is rotating on the computer screen next to him.
The large, yellow metal drums set to explode by the T-800 at
1:49:15 on the DVD are labeled "polydichloric euthimol".
This is a fictional compound. In the director's commentary
on the DVD, James Cameron says he borrowed the name from the
1981 science-fiction film Outland, where the compound was a
hallucinogen (Outland's director, Peter Hyams, is a
friend of Cameron's).
The machine guns used by the SWAT officers at 1:51:31 are
Heckler & Koch MP5s, often used by U.S. SWAT teams. The
T-1000 is also carrying one while riding his police cycle
through the building at 1:59:25. (The novelization
mistakenly refers to the maker as "Keckler and Koch" and "Hoechler
and Koch" and "MPK").
Realistically, the destruction of the files at Cyberdyne
headquarters would be of limited use since a well-run
company would have a policy of backing up files to one or
more offsite locations on a daily (if not more frequent)
basis. In the later novel Infiltrator, the U.S.
government liaison to Cyberdyne chastises the president and
CEO of the company for not having offsite backup.
At 1:55:13 on the DVD, I believe that the piece of debris
Dyson is holding over the remote detonator is actually a
piece of the microchip prototype. (In the novelization, he
is holding a thick technical manual instead.)
What may be a film crew for the production is visible at
1:56:01 on the DVD, as the police helicopter flies around
the exploding Cyberdyne building.
When the T-800 steps out of the smoke to confront the SWAT
team at 1:57:03 on the DVD, his grenade belt is in a
different position than it was seconds earlier in the
elevator.
At 1:57:46 on the DVD, the T-800 picks up a SWAT
Hawk MM-1 grenade gun (a similar weapon was used by
Detective Sloane in "The Enemy Within" Part 3).
At 1:58:13 on the DVD, one of the police cars has a D.A.R.E.
bumper sticker on it. This is the international
Drug Abuse
Resistance Education program founded to prevent the use
of controlled drugs by minors.
Sarah picks up a
Remington 870 shotgun from the gun rack of the SWAT van
during the escape from Cyberdyne.
The struts of the side view mirror on the driver's side of
the SWAT van get bent inward when the T-800 smashes through
the lobby at Cyberdyne. But the struts are straight again
when he drives the van out of the building.
When the T-1000 crashes his police motorcycle through the glass of the second
story of Cyberdyne headquarters to intercept the helicopter,
the motorcycle's windshield flies off. But it's intact again
when the bike hits the asphalt.
After oozing into the police helicopter at 2:00:07 on the
DVD, the T-1000 tells the pilot, "Get out."
This same scene was also played out in
The Terminator when
the Terminator climbs into the cab of a tractor-trailer and
tells the man in the passenger seat, "Get out."
The helicopter scene may also be a callback to a scene in
Cameron's script (co-written with Sylvester Stallone) for
the 1985 film Rambo: First Blood Part II in which a
Russian helicopter pilot jumps from the hovering aircraft
rather than face the wrath of Rambo.
Dark Futures reveals that the pilot of the police
helicopter survived his jump, though he was badly injured
and has no memory of the events.
The hole in the helicopter windshield that the T-1000 oozed
in through comes and goes throughout the copter chase.
During the copter/van chase, the same white sedan is seen
spinning out of control at 2:01:18 and at 2:02:03.
At 2:01:21 on the DVD, Sarah fires an M16 at the pursuing
helicopter piloted by the T-1000.
The handle on the passenger side rear door of the SWAT van
comes and goes throughout the copter chase sequence.
At 2:01:49 on the DVD, notice that the T-1000 has grown two
more arms so he can pilot the helicopter while also
reloading his MP5 submachine gun.
Notice that the Cryoco liquid nitrogen truck first appears
on the freeway in the background at 2:02:02 on the DVD, well
before it comes to center stage at 2:03:00.
At 2:03:48, the truck is seen to be a Freightliner. Cryoco
appears to have been a fictional company.
When the SWAT van flips over, the driver's side windshield
pane falls out at 2:02:54 on the DVD. But at 2:04:16, the
passenger side pane is the one that's missing.
The Chevy pickup truck taken by the Connor party after the
SWAT van overturns has BOL-L-GOL GARDENING 555-8141 painted
on the doors. This appears to be a fictional business, but
it sure is a strange name to give it!
The 555
prefix of the phone number is a long-time convention in
Hollywood TV and film.
The T-800 is supposed to be wearing black gloves throughout
the freeway chase sequence, but occasionally is seen driving
barehanded.
At 2:05:46 on the DVD, the Cryoco truck strikes some yellow
barrels on the freeway off-ramp. The barrels are known as
Fitch Barriers, filled with water or sand and designed to
attenuate the impact of an out-of-control vehicle and slow
it down with minimal injury to the passengers. They were
invented by race car driver John Fitch (1917-2012), inspired
by sand-filled cans he used to protect his tent from
airplane strafing during WWII.
Our heroes crash through the gates of a foundry that appears
to be owned by CSI Steel. This is
California Steel Industries. The scenes were shot at the
company's steel mill at 14000 San Bernardino Ave, Fontana,
CA. (In the comic book adaptation, the foundry is called
simply Steel Industries.) "Lost & Found" reveals the mill to
be located in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Wilmington
within the Terminator universe.
At 2:06:22 on the DVD, the T-800 grabs up an M16 rifle in
his fight to slow down the T-1000.
At 2:06:50 on the DVD, the cable dragging the overturned
Cryoco truck across the pavement at the foundry can be seen.
A worker at the steel mill hits an alarm after the nitrogen
truck overturns and a siren begins to blare. Yet it only
lasts a few seconds as a background noise before vanishing.
It is a common trope in films to have alarms and other
annoying sounds fade away, to avoid irritating the audience,
even though the sound would realistically continue
indefinitely until someone shut it off or the crisis was
past.
The extent of the damage to the T-800's left arm after it's
caught in the giant gear changes from scene to scene.
As the T-1000 boils in the molten metal near the end of the
film, notice that it morphs through all of the human bodies
it took the forms of throughout the movie.
The T-800 self-terminates in the novelization and comic book
adaption by simply jumping into the vat of molten metal. In
the film, he states he cannot self-terminate and must be
lowered into the vat on a chain rig by Sarah.
As the T-800 is submerged in the molten metal at 2:27:51 on
the DVD, notice that the POV data screen says things like
"ambient temperature overload", "system failure", "neural
net misfire", and "imminent shutdown".
 |
Notes from the novelization of
Judgment Day by Randall Frakes
(The page numbers come from the 1st
printing, paperback edition, published July 1991) |
The chapters in the novel do not have chapter numbers, only titles.
The first chapter of the novel, "Day One Twenty-Six" picks
up where
The Terminator left
off, with Sarah Connor driving across a Mexican desert
highway, away from the gas station where she refueled and
obtained the photo of the herself that would later be given
to Kyle Reese decades in the future. It is 8:58 a.m. on
Thursday, July 19, 1984.
On page 1, Sarah is described as holding her Walkman to her
ear to listen to what she had previously recorded. But in
the movie version of
The Terminator, she is
not recording with a Walkman recorder; it is a larger
cassette recorder with a wired, handheld microphone.
Page 2 reveals that Sarah had a high school science teacher
named Mr. Bowland.
Also on page 2, Sarah pops out the cassette she'd been
listening to, placing it in the glove compartment with a
growing stack of C-90s. C-90 refers to an audio Cassette of
90 minutes length.
Page 4 reveals that Kyle had referred to the future time he
came from as Upthen.
On page 5, Sarah thinks of her smile in the Polaroid picture
as a Mona Lisa smile. The Mona
Lisa is a famous painting by Leonardo Da Vinci, painted
in the 16th Century. The smile on the woman in the painting
is considered enigmatic by many.
The second chapter of the novel, "Upthen", gives the date of
Wednesday, July 11, 2029, 9:01 a.m. It seems to depict much
of the events of the future prologue of the film, with
additional material revealing this day to be the day Skynet
was defeated.
On page 8, a Series 800 Terminator carries a Westinghouse
M-25 forty-watt phased plasma pulse-gun. The M-25 was also
referred to in the novelization of
The Terminator, near
the beginning of the book, when
Reese wishes he could have brought one back with him through
time. It may also be the same
weapon to which the Terminator refers in
The Terminator when it
asks the gun store owner for a Phased Plasma Rifle in a 40
watt range (which, of course, the owner has never heard of).
The description of it being in the 40 watt range seems
unrealistically small, as 40 watts is the equivalent of that
used by a typical light bulb! In
The Future War,
author S.M. Stirling uses the description of "40 megawatt
range" instead.
Page 9 reveals that Skynet has realized in 2029 that human
reproduction is outpacing its manufacturing capabilities and
that there would soon be more human soldiers than
mechanical.
Page 9 also reveals the war is entering its 31st year
(counting from 1998, a year after Judgment Day).
On page 9, Pico and Robertson is an actual intersection in
Los Angeles.
Page 10 notes that most of the human survivors of Judgment
Day come from the southern hemisphere since the nuclear
exchange triggered by Skynet was between the northern
hemisphere superpowers of the United States and the Russia.
Page 10 reveals that, in addition to
the Terminators and aerial and tank
HKs, Skynet uses four-legged,
running gun-pods called Centurions
and moving centipede-like bombs
called Silverfish. These two designs
appeared in production art for the
movie but were not realized. The
Silverfish is obviously named for
its superficial resemblance to the
insect known by that common name. |
 |
 |
 |
Production art of
Centurion (from the
Terminator Wiki) |
Silverfish bomb
(from the
Terminator Wiki) |
Silverfish insect
(from
Wikipedia) |
On page 10, an aerial HK is targeted from the ground by a
hand-launched Stinger missile.
This refers to the FIM-92 Stinger portable
homing surface-to-air missile developed by the U.S. in 1981
and still produced today.
Page 10 describes the human soldiers as
bleeding, frostbitten, and dressed in rags...Valley Forge
with better weapons. "Valley
Forge" is a reference to
Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where
the American Continental Army led by General George
Washington during the American Revolutionary War was forced
to spend a harsh winter in 1777-78, in conditions of
disease, exposure, and starvation with few supplies.
A 17-year old guerilla named Cowan is a
member of the future fighting force. It's unknown if he is
in any way related to Jordon Cowan, who committed suicide at
John Connors' high school in the Sarah Connors Chronicles
episode "The Turk".
Page 13 reveals that, by 2029,
New York had
been overrun by the machines years ago.
Page 13 also reveals that most of the human
fighters come from the countries least damaged by the war
and speaking many languages.
Page 13 reveals that Skynet's mainframe is
located in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado and its
second-largest underground complex is in the former Westside
Pavilion in Los Angeles.
Cheyenne Mountain is a government nuclear war
bunker and command center. The
Westside Pavilion
was a
shopping mall in West Los Angeles, opened in 1985, but is
being converted to mostly office spaces to open in 2022.
Page 15 introduces Lt. Fuentes, one of John's closest
associates as leader of the human forces.
Page 16 describes that even though Skynet has been taken
down, hundreds of autonomous Terminators still roam and seek
out human targets for elimination.
Page 18 reveals that Sarah had survived into the war times
as one of John's high-placed officers. She was killed
leading a convoy when John was in his mid-twenties, placing
her death in approximately 2010. (Of course, in the
Rise of
the Machines timeline, Sarah died before the war, of
leukemia.)
As Reese is being prepped to make the jump back in time to
1984 on page 21, it's revealed that he's only met John
Connor five times before. Here, John reveals to Reese that
Sarah told him who he would send. Reese now knows he is a
part of history he hasn't lived yet.
Page 22 reveals that many men have paper copies of the
famous Sarah Connor photo that they carry with them for
inspiration. Reese has the original, as given to him by
John.
Page 23 describes the time
displacement generator quite
differently than that depicted in
the various Terminator
comic books. The description is
similar to the one seen in
preproduction artwork for the movie.
The scene of the machine's discovery
by the resistance and transport of
Reese was written in the script but
never filmed. (Production art from
the
Terminator Wiki.) |
 |
On page 29, bar patron Dana Shorte is driving a
Kenworth
semi-tractor-trailer along the 14 Freeway near Vasquez
Rocks. Dana gets off at the Sierra
Highway exit and pulls into the parking lot of the Corral
bar. The 14 Freeway is also known as the Antelope Valley
Freeway and it does cross Sierra Highway just as
described.
Vasquez Rocks is a Los Angeles county park which has
been seen in numerous Hollywood productions since the silent
film era. It is, perhaps, most recognized as the off-world
setting of the "Arena" episode of Star Trek in
which Captain Kirk fought the reptilian Gorn.
Dana is revealed near the end of the novel to be the
driver of the Cryoco truck who is killed by the T-1000 on
the freeway.
Page 30 describes the electrical precursors of the T-800's
arrival in 1995 as looking similar to St. Elmo's Fire and
page 31 as like a thousand Instamatic cameras going off.
These same descriptions were applied in the novelization of
The Terminator.
The chapter heading reveals the T-800 to have arrived in
Acton at 3:14 a.m.
As the naked T-800 takes in his surroundings after arriving
in 1995, he is described in the narrative as a Promethean
man. Prometheus was one of the Titans of Greek mythology;
the use of "Promethean" here is presumably a reference to
the cyborg's chiseled body being like that of a Greek god.
Page 32 describes some of the patrons of the Corral as
wearing CAT hats. This is a reference to the ubiquitous
baseball-style caps with the "CAT Diesel Power" logo on them
popular among blue-collar working men, especially in the
1970s-1990s. "CAT" is short for
Caterpillar, Inc., a leading manufacturer of tractors,
bulldozers, and diesel engines.
Page 33 mentions I Love Lucy reruns.
I Love Lucy was a sitcom that ran from 1951-1957.
Page 33 reveals the name of the cigar-smoking biker from
whom the T-800 takes his clothes is Robert Pantelli.
Page 34 describes using a pool cue against the T-800 like a
Louisville Slugger. The
Louisville
Slugger is a famous model of baseball bat made by the
Hillerich & Bradsby Company.
Page 36 describes the bar crowd parting
like the Red Sea
for the T-800 as he
leaves the bar. This is, or course, a
reference to the parting of the Red Sea by Moses in the
Biblical Book of Exodus.
Unlike in the film, the T-800 has to try the ignition key in
two motorcycles before finding the one it fits.
On page 39, the T-800 takes the 14 Freeway to the 5 south
into L.A. This corresponds to the route on a map of southern
California.
The chapter heading reveals the T-1000 to have arrived in
L.A. at 4:58 a.m.
On page 40, the graffiti "History Is Dead" is spray-painted
underneath the Sixth Street Bridge. The narrative describes
this same phrase appearing in various locales around the
city, including the East L.A. barrio near
Dodger Stadium and on a wall outside the Griffith
Observatory in the Hollywood Hills. Strangely perhaps, the
phrase does appear
on a wall outside the
Griffith Observatory in the
novelization of
The Terminator, but
that was more than 10 years earlier, in 1984! No one has
removed the Griffith graffiti in all that time? Or is
someone constantly going back to spray-paint it again
over-and-over?
On page 41, officer Austin is musing on the recent increase
in activity by the White Fence gang and the MAC-10 wielding
homeboys.
White Fence
is an actual East L.A. street gang. The gun referenced is
the Ingram MAC-10 machine gun
(designed in 1964 by Gordon B. Ingram).
Also on page 41, the author refers to the electrical
disturbance of the T-1000's arrival as a "lightstorm". This
may be a nod to James Cameron's production company,
Lightstorm Entertainment, which produced this film.
On page 43, a cat observes the T-1000's actions as it morphs
its body to form a police uniform around it. The cat does
not understand what is happening, its brain described as
being "pea-sized". Actually, a cat's brain is much larger
than a pea, being about 2 inches in length.
Page 44 describes a light wind pushing the L.A. smog all the
way back to San Bernardino.
San
Bernardino is a city about 60 miles east of Los Angeles.
Page 44 describes John as wearing artfully ripped
Levi's.
Page 45 reveals that Janelle is 33 and is unable to bear
children, which is why she and her husband signed up for the
foster parent program.
Page 45 describes John as the future general of a vast
multinational army. John is referred to as a general in many
other
Terminator stories in books and comics.
On page 46, Todd Voight is watching a baseball game, with
the
Mets' Howard Johnson up to bat as his wife nags him
about John not cleaning his room. Johnson played Major
League baseball for several teams
from 1982-1995, including the Mets, however, in 1995 when this story takes place, he
was playing with the Colorado Rockies, not the Mets; one of
an author's disadvantages of writing stories set in the near
future is not foreseeing such changes in popular culture.
Page 61 also mentions pitcher Dwight Gooden; again, Gooden
was not playing for the Mets by 1995. (In the film, Todd is
watching a boxing match instead.)
The novelization states that Sarah is Patient 82 at
Pescadero State Hospital.
The novelization states that
Pescadero State Hospital is three miles outside of
Chino,
CA, off Happy Camp Road. There is no Happy Camp Road in
Chino, though there is one in Moorpark in Ventura County,
north of Los Angeles. It seems the author chose to mix
locational references for the site of Pescadero State
Hospital.
Page 50 states that Pescadero State Hospital is surrounded
by a chain-link fence topped with concertina wire.
Concertina wire is the coiled type of barbed wire often seen
on prison fences or on freeway signs to prevent graffiti
vandalization.
Page 50 states
that Pescadero State Hospital looks about as inviting as KGB
headquarters. The KGB was the national security agency of
the Soviet Union before its fall in November 1991.
Page 52 describes the small window in the door of Sarah's
cell as Plexiglas. This is the trademark name of transparent
thermoplastic of polymethyl methacrylate made by the Rohm
and Haas Company (now part of Dow Chemical).
Here, Dr. Silberman says Sarah stabbed him in the knee with
a screwdriver, rather than a pen as stated in the movie.
Page 56 reveals the portable terminal used by John to hack
the pin number of an ATM card was made by
Radio
Shack. However, the interactive version of the movie on
the Extreme DVD states it to be an
Atari
Portfolio, the first IBM-compatible palmtop computer.
Page 56 also reveals that John used a can of
Arrid
Extra Dry deodorant to spray the lens of the ATM camera and
block the view of the user.
On page 60, Janelle is carrying a
People magazine.
On page 61, the T-800 is said to be driving through the
Valley on the stolen Harley. The "Valley" is a reference to
the San Fernando Valley, where Reseda is located.
Page 72 reveals that Cyberdyne is located in Irvine, CA.
This is a city in Orange County, not far from L.A.
Chapter 12 of the novel is titled "Rosetta Stone", a
reference to the ancient Egyptian stele transcribed in 196
BC, featuring a text in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs,
Demotic script, and the ancient Greek, becoming a
translation tool for Egyptian hieroglyphics. Since then the
term "Rosetta Stone" has come to stand for anything that
promotes translation from one form of description to
another; later in the novel, the recovered Terminator
microchip is referred to as "the Rosetta stone
microprocessor".
The sprawling three-story headquarters of Cyberdyne is
nicknamed the Monolith.
The novel reveals that Dyson is a brilliant microphysicist
and chemist and supervisor of the Special Projects Division
at Cyberdyne. Originally, all he'd wanted to do was play
basketball. He attended high school in
Detroit
and college at
CalTech.
On page 73,
Greg Simmons is named as being the owner and CEO of
Cyberdyne. This was first suggested near the end of the
novelization of
The Terminator when he
and his associate Jack Kroll discovered the Terminator's
remains in the factory they worked at. Kroll is revealed to
have died from a brain tumor five years later on page 75. Page 75
also reveals that the company Simmons and Kroll had worked
for back in 1984 was Kleinhaus Electronics. Kleinhaus
appears to be a fictional company.
On pages 78-79, Cyberdyne's recovered
robotic arm and
microchip are labeled as Lot One and Lot Two, respectively.
Page 79 compares the care taken of the microchip remnant
with that of the Turin Shroud. The
Turin Shroud is an ancient length of linen displayed in the
royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in
Turin, Italy, believed by some to be the burial shroud of
Jesus Christ, though radiocarbon dating seems to place its origin in
the Middle Ages.
On page 81, we are informed that Sarah realizes she fits the
profile of someone with a messianic complex perfectly: she
named her son to have the initials J.C., like Jesus Christ;
her son is going to be the savior of humanity; her son was
fathered by a phantom from the future, a stand-in for the
immaculate conception.
After musing on her own version of a "messiah complex", she
watches Dr. Silberman come back into the room, wearing his
"reptilian smile". This may be an inference to the serpent
in the Garden of Eden, i.e. Satan.
When the T-800 spots John and Tim on the dirt bike, he
positively identifies John from his files, but is able to
find no information on the passenger.
As John and Tim arrive at the video arcade on page 88, the
Aliens video game is mentioned. This game is based
on the 1986 film co-written and directed by James Cameron.
Also on page 88, John plays a video game called Desert
War. As far as I can tell this is a fictional arcade
game at the time the novel was written. However, there was
an arcade game distributed by Jaleco by the name
Desert War
in 1995, when the story of T2: Judgment Day takes
place! The novel describes F-14s involved in the game
scenario; the F-14 is a fighter craft
of the U.S. Navy introduced in 1974 and retired in 2006.
Page 89 mentions a Perry's Pizza in the Galleria. There is a
local chain of Perry's Pizza restaurants in the L.A. area
since 1974, but none in Reseda that I can find.
Also on page 89, John plays Missile Command, featuring ICBMs
deploying MIRVs. An ICBM is an Intercontinental Ballistic
Missile and a MIRV is a Multiple Independently Targetable
Reentry Vehicle, often associated with nuclear payloads.
Page 89 describes the T-800 as striding through the shoppers
in the mall like Paul Bunyon through the forest.
Paul Bunyon is a North American folkloric character of giant
size and lumberjacking skill.
Page 90 describes John shooting down MiGs at Mach 2 in the
Afterburner (sic) arcade game.
MiGs were Soviet military planes
during the Cold War, mostly fighter jet models. MiG is the
abbreviation of "Mikoyan and Gurevich", the founders of the
Russian Aircraft Corporation who built the planes.
After Burner
is a 1987 arcade game released by Sega.
Page 93 reveals that the programming about the T-1000 in the
T-800 was made by a man who had only memory to go on. This
would seem to be a reference to the future John Connor
himself.
Fleeing from the T-1000 on page 97, John angles around a
Jeep.
Page 97 describes the T-1000 as driving the tow truck
through the traffic like a drunken dinosaur. Dinosaurs are
known to have been unrepentant alcoholics.
Page 98 describes the tow truck crashing through the bridge
railing and ricocheting off the culvert wall, bellowing like
a gunshot stegosaurus. The dinosaur species should be
written as "Stegosaurus", as per the Latin name of
the genus.
Page 103 opens in Studio City.
Studio City is an affluent neighborhood of L.A. where many
celebrities live.
On page 105, the T-800 and John turn onto Ventura Blvd. This
is a real street in Los Angeles running parallel to the
Ventura Freeway (101).
On page 106, the T-1000-as-Janelle tells John she is making
a casserole for dinner. In the movie she says she's making
beef stew.
Page 108 reveals that John had a Tandy home computer in his
room at the Voight house. Tandy was a company started in
1919 for producing leather goods which branched off into
electronics in the 1960s. It produced a popular line of
personal computers from 1977 through the early 1990s. The
company went defunct in 2000, though
the brand name is now
in use again in the U.K. since 2012.
Page 109 reveals that John has cut out a small
hole in the wall of his bedroom, hidden behind a Public
Enemy poster, in which he has stashed his mom's audio tapes,
photos, and letters. Presumably this is what John was
referring to in the movie when he told the T-800 he wanted
to get some things from home.
Among the photos are: Sarah teaching John how to aim
an RPG launcher; Sarah standing next to a case of Stinger
missiles; John and Sarah in a Contra camp. RPG stands for
Rocket Propelled Grenade; Stinger missiles were explained
earlier in this study; the Contra camp is a reference to the
Contras, Nicaraguan rebels opposing the Sandinista
government in the country of Nicaragua from 1979-1990.
Page 113 reveals that the most recently dated
letter from Sarah
was just two weeks ago. From this letter, the T-1000 learns
that she is incarcerated in the isolation ward at Pescadero
State Hospital.
Page 114 describes the still shots from the surveillance
camera at the police station in 1984 as the T-800 carrying
an AR-180 and 12-guage shotgun, just as depicted in
The Terminator film
and novelization.
Page 115 reveals that Sarah had been in a few plays in
junior high school. Her drama teacher was Mrs. Kolb.
On page 117, Douglas thinks of Sarah as "Ms. Hardcase".
On page 119, the hospital guard Lewis is said to carry a
Browning 9mm. The gun has been produced since 1935 and
still is widely used by numerous militaries around the world
today.
Page 120 describes the pointed, liquid metal index finger of
the T-1000 penetrating past Lewis' eyeball like a
transorbital lobotomy tool. A lobotomy is a neurological
procedure that severs the prefrontal cortex of the brain,
believed in some mental cases in the past to relieve certain
disorders. Transorbital lobotomy is performed by using a
slim tool to penetrate the thin bone of the eye socket to
reach the prefrontal lobe.
Page 121 indicates that Sarah is held in cell #19 at
Pescadero.
Page 123 mentions
Drano
and has Sarah filling a syringe with
Liquid-Plumr (in the movie she fills the syringe with
Liquid Rooter).
Page 128 refers to a syringe with a full load of "trank".
This is a reference to "tranquilizer" and is usually
abbreviated as "tranq" rather than "trank".
On page 129, Dr. Silberman witnesses the actions of the two
Terminators and comes to the realization that Sarah Connor
was right all along...everything she said was true and she
was not insane. Later stories in the Terminator series
depict Silberman as either sympathetic to Sarah's
predicament or having been committed to an institution
himself. (Page 140 states that Silberman's days as a
psychiatrist were over.)
Page 130 compares the T-1000's morphing through the bars of
the door at Pescadero State Hospital with Jell-O and PlayDoh
(sic).
Jell-O
is a gelatin dessert made by Kraft Foods.
Play-Doh is a children's modeling compound.
Page 137 reveals that the T-800, Sarah, and John are driving
on Highway 33. This is California State Route 33, which goes
from Ventura north to the city of Tracy.
Page 137 also refers to the restaurant at which Sarah
formerly worked as Big Buns, though it is referred to as Big
Jeff's in
The Terminator. Sarah
does seem to refer to the statue mascot of Big Jeff's as
"big buns" in that movie, though.
Page 140 states Dr. Silberman's first name as Leonard, but
both
The Terminator and
Judgment Day scripts refer to his first name as Peter.
Page 142 reveals that the closed service station the T-800,
Sarah, and John stop at after escaping from Pescadero is
outside La Mesa, California.
La Mesa is a city just east of San Diego. Their presence in
La Mesa suggests they must have doubled back from their
previous course on Highway 33 to head south, probably on the
I-5 south to San Diego and then I-8 east to La Mesa.
On page 143, a sign at the gas station reads CLOSED SUNDAY,
suggesting that "today" is Sunday since no one else shows up
in the morning when our heroes wake up at daybreak.
As Sarah tends to the T-800's flesh wounds on page 144, she
recalls clumsily dressing the wounds of a young man years
ago. This is a reference to treating Reese in
The Terminator.
On page 145, Sarah uses an
X-Acto
knife to cut open a portion of the skin on the T-800's
skull, to expose the CPU (Central Processing Unit) port.
As John gives language lessons to the T-800 as they drive
through the desert, page 152 reveals it is Sunday, June 9,
1992, 9:46 a.m. on Highway 215. However, the year should be
1995! Also, June 9 does not fall on a Sunday on either of
those two years! Highway 215 is actually Interstate 215, but
it never has the two-lane structure seen in the movie during
this scene; I-215 is a full-fledged freeway running from
Murrieta to San Bernardino in California.
In the novel, the food and fuel stop is called Jack's Cafe
instead of Cactus Jack's.
The novel states that Dyson's home is in South Laguna. This
is an area of the city of
Laguna Beach.
The novel reveals that Dyson's wife is named Tarissa.
On page 163, Tarissa muses that her husband's obsession with
his work was beginning to make her feel like a Stepford
Wife. The term "Stepford wife" has come to be used to
describe a wife who is a docile and submissive homemaker to
her husband. The term derives from Ira Levin's 1972
satirical novel (and later film adaptations) The
Stepford Wives, in which the husbands of the town of
Stepford, Connecticut have somehow turned their wives into
almost robotically docile homemakers.
Page 165 reveals that the stripped down helicopter hulk at
Enrique's holdout is a Huey. Hueys are
a family of helicopters built by the
Bell Helicopter company.
Page 166 reveals that Enrique's last name is Salceda and he
is Guatemalan. The book describes him as armed with an
AK-47, but in the movie, he wields a shotgun (a Mossberg
Model 590 12-guage, according to the interactive version of
the movie on the Extreme DVD).
The AK-47 is a Russian automatic rifle
designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov in 1947.
Page 167 reveals that Enrique's childrens' names are Franco,
Juanita, Jamie, and Paco (the toddler the T-800 picks up in
the movie). Franco is said to be armed with a MAC-10 A; this
refers to an Ingram MAC-10 machine gun
(designed in 1964 by Gordon B. Ingram).
On page 171, Sarah muses on her past, when she briefly
thought humankind might not be worth saving, thinking,
Let mankind wind down. Hell, maybe it was natural selection
anyway. Darwin mechanized into an efficient killing machine
that mowed down its original creators. "Natural
selection" is Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by
natural selection as introduced in his 1859 book On the
Origin of Species.
On page 172, John spins a Sig Saur (sic) 9mm on his finger
backwards and forwards like Bat Masterson.
SIG Sauer is a German manufacturer of firearms. Bat
Masterson (1853-1921) was a renowned gunfighter and lawman
of the American old west.
Page 178 reveals that Skynet had hesitated until the last
minute before making the T-1000, due to the thing's
unpredictability in longevity and ability to process
commands, and sent it back in time only at the very last
microsecond before Skynet's shutdown.
Page 178 quotes Einstein as saying that God didn't play dice
with the universe. Einstein
(1879-1955), of
course, is a reference to Albert Einstein, the renowned
German theoretical physicist who refused, during a visit to
America in the 1930s, to return to Germany after Hitler came
into power, and became an American citizen. He did say
something similar to this.
On page 178, the T-1000 takes a Kawasaki 1100 motorcycle
from a police officer to continue his pursuit of Sarah and
John Connor in a scene not presented in the movie. Some
police departments of the time were known to use this model
of motorcycle.
Page 182 states that Sarah is carrying a CAR-15 assault
rifle as she heads out to confront Dyson. The CAR-15 is a
Colt variant of the M16. Page 185 describes it using .223
rounds, which some models of the CAR-15 do.
Page 185 describes Dyson's monitor as a CRT type. CRT stands
for Cathode Ray Tube. CRT monitors
were commonly used on computers for decades before being
largely replaced by slimmer LCD (liquid crystal display)
monitors since 2000.
Page 185 also describes Danny's radio-controlled toy truck
as a Bigfoot. Bigfoot is a line of monster trucks built by
off-road enthusiast Bob Chandler and his company
Bigfoot
4×4, Inc. (though page 186 refers to the toy as a
Bigfoot station wagon rather than the traditional pickup
truck).
 |
As Dyson listens to the relating of
his role in the history of the
future, page 193 describes him as
looking like the damned soul on the
Sistine Chapel wall. This is a
reference to the so-called "damned
man" being pulled down to Hell by
demons as painted on the front wall
of the Sistine Chapel by
Michelangelo. |
Page 200 explains that the T-800 uses an H.E. 40mm grenade
in the M79 grenade launcher to blow open the door of Dyson's
lab at Cyberdyne. H.E. (High Explosive) 40mm grenades are in
fact the type normally used in an M79.
On page 200, Sarah tapes Claymore
mines to the top of solvent drums to
blow up Dyson's Cyberdyne lab.
Claymore mines are rigged to fire
metal balls in a blast in a certain
direction. At 1:49:11 on the DVD, we
see Sarah insert a detonator cord
into one of the Claymores. |
 |
On page 202, the T-800 attaches blocks of C-plastic
explosive to the computer cabinets. "C-plastic explosive" is
a reference to C-4 or Composition C type plastic explosive.
Page 205 references a
Mars bar. This is a chocolate and almonds candy bar made in
the U.S.
Page 210 refers to the gas canisters fired by the SWAT team
as CS gas. This is a type of tear gas.
Page 220 refers to the M79 grenade launcher as a blooper.
This is a nickname given to the M79 by American soldiers who
used it in the Vietnam War due to the sound it makes when
firing.
On page 223, when the Cryoco truck crashes, the temperature
of the liquid nitrogen that spills out of the tanker is said
to be -230 degrees. The unit of measurement is not stated,
but is incorrect in either Centigrade or Fahrenheit
temperature measurements. At 230 centigrade, the nitrogen
would be frozen and at Fahrenheit it would be a gas.
Page 226 refers to the O.S.H.A.
yellow-and-black safety tape on the guardrails at the steel
mill. This is a reference to the U.S.
Occupational
Safety and Health Administration which enforces work
safety standards at U.S. businesses, part of the Department
of Labor.
Page 229 describes how the T-1000's spiked finger threatens
to pierce Sarah's eye through the upper medulla into her
frontal lobe. The upper medulla and frontal lobe are parts
of the human brain.
Page 233 reveals that Strategy 9,085 for a Terminator is to
play dead.
After destroying the original Terminator arm and chip, and
the current T-800 sacrificing itself in the vat, John also
tosses in the pieces of the current T-800's arm, broken off
during the battle with the T-1000 in the steel mill.
However, in Infiltrator, the arm has survived and
was recovered by the government.
At the end of the book, in a scene from the original script
that was cut from the final film, John is seen to be a U.S.
senator, achieving victories for human rights in a very
different way than in the Skynet timeline. Judgment Day was
averted, thanks to our heroes actions in 1995. In most of
the Terminator timelines, Judgment Day was simply
delayed by a matter of years, but still took place.
Page 237 takes place in the now idyllic 2029 in a park near
Washington D.C.,
with the
Capitol and
Washington
Monument on the skyline.
Page 238 mentions that instead of Judgment Day occurring on
August 29, 1997, Michael Jackson merely turned 40. Jackson
was born on
August 29, 1958, so he would have turned 39, not 40.
Page 238 reveals that, in the novel's timeline, Sarah never
married as of 2029. She did search for the young Kyle Reese
(and even hired a private investigator) but then stopped it,
realizing he would be a very different person in this new
timeline and could not love her the way she did him.
 |
 |
 |
Notes from the 3-issue comic book
adaptation published by Marvel Comics
Adaptation by Gregory Wright
Based on the screenplay by James Cameron & William Wisher
Art by Klaus Janson
Covers by Klaus Janson |
Marvel Comics published a 3-issue mini-series adaptation of
the film. Each issue has its own subtitle: "Arrival",
"Escape", and "Departure".
Issue 1: The Voight address is shown as 523 S. Almond St. In
the movie it is
19828 S. Almond Avenue.
Issue 1 (and 3): The recovered microchip appears essentially
whole, unlike the visibly damaged one seen in the film.
Issue 1: Deciding to phone his foster parents to warn them
about the Terminator, John refers to Todd and Janelle as
dorks. In the movie he says "dicks".
Issue 1: After killing Janelle and Todd at their home, the
T-1000 finds the address of Pescadero State Hospital there:
1416 W. Knoll, Los Angeles. There is no such address in Los
Angeles. The novelization states the
hospital is a few miles outside of Chino.
Issue 1: Page 21 shows Sarah's cell number at Pescadero as
#19 (as does the novelization).
Issue 2: On page 9, panel 4, the panel border appears to be
bisecting the T-1000's head!
Issue 2: On page 13, after fleeing from Pescadero and
the T-1000, Sarah asks John if he's okay, to which he
responds, "Aye-firmative." Obviously, he's saying
"affirmative", but the use of "aye-firmative" may be intended
as a reference to James Cameron's 1986 film, Aliens, in
which the characters of both Hudson and Newt use the term
"aye-firmative".
Issue 2: While giving the T-800 language lessons, John says
"junk" instead of "shit", "stick it" instead of "eat me",
and "jerkwad" instead of "dickwad".
Issue 2: This issue reveals that Enrique's holdout is
located on Charon Mesa, near the Mexican border. The script
indicates this is in California and the novelization states it is
northwest of Calexico. Charon Mesa appears to be a fictional
location. Calexico is a California city just north of the Mexican
border.
Issue 2: The car driven by the T-800 after leaving the
service station in which he and his human charges spent the night
seems to alternate between being a station wagon and a truck
throughout this issue.
Issue 3: The security guard at the front desk when Dyson and
friends enter Cyberdyne is a white guy named Paul; in the movie, it
is a black guy named Carl.
Issue 3: As they retrieve the microchip and arm from the
Cyberdyne vault, John says they've got Skynet "by the brass" instead
of "by the balls" as in the film.
Issue 3: On page 15 of the story, our heroes and their
pursuer exit the freeway on Bill Road to enter the foundry grounds.
Their is no Bill Road in Irvine.
Issue 3: On page 17, the T-800 shoots the frozen T-1000 with
the M79 grenade launcher instead of a .45 pistol as in the film.
Notes from the Director's Commentary on the Extreme DVD by
James Cameron and William Wisher
The Corral bar was shot just across the street from where Rodney
King was beaten by LAPD officers on the night of March 2, 1991 (the
film was shot before the beating occurred). This would place the
location at the corner of Foothill Blvd. and Osborne St. in Los
Angeles.
When the T-1000 arrives in 1984, actor Robert Patrick's willy had to
be removed digitally.
Co-writer William Wisher is the man taking photos of the T-800 at
about 32:00 on the DVD.
When Sarah picks the locks on her restraints and cell door, actress
Linda Hamilton actually did pick the locks!
Linda Hamilton received permanent hearing damage in one ear during a
scene in the elevator at Pescadero State Hospital when Arnold fires
the 10-guage shotgun near her. She had removed her earplugs between
scenes and forgot to replace them during this shot.
At 1:02:13 on the DVD, a stunt driver's head can be seen in the
backseat of the security car as our heroes make their escape from
Pescadero.
Cameron states that he later learned from his younger brother Mike
(a Marine) that the scene of the T-800 blowing out the laboratory
door at Cyberdyne with the M79 at 1:44:50 on the DVD would not have
worked in real life. The T-800 was standing too close; the grenade
must spin seven times before it arms and is able to explode when
striking the target. (The interactive version of the movie on the
DVD reveals that Mike Cameron appears briefly as one of the soldiers
greeted by John Connor in the tunnel in 2029 near the beginning of
the film.)
Notes from the interactive version of the movie on the
Extreme DVD
The soldier who blasts the downed Terminator at 2:48 on the DVD is
Pasha Afshar, who was also the stand-in for the T-1000 throughout
the filming.
Edward Furlong's stand-in is the woman seen at the jukebox in the
Corral at 8:11 on the DVD.
The sunglasses worn by the T-800 in this film are made by
Oakley.
Theories as to how the T-1000 could travel through time, considering
only organic or organic-covered matter could go through (as stated
by Reese in
The Terminator),
abounded on the set during filming. It was speculated that the
liquid metal molecules of the T-1000 were able to pass as organic or
that it wore a skin of living tissue for the transport which it shed
after arrival.
The Voight house was filmed at an actual house on Valerio Street in
Winnetka, CA.
Pescadero State Hospital was shot at Lakeview Terrace Medical
Center, Sylmar, which had been shut down by 1991 due to earthquake damage.
The scenes of John stealing money from an ATM were shot at a
closed-down bank in Panorama City, CA (a neighborhood of L.A.).
The park scene of Sarah's visions was actually an on-location set
filmed at a landfill above Elysian Park in Los Angeles.
The personal computers seen in the Cyberdyne labs were manufactured
by Northgate Computers, a real world company from 1987-2005.
The girl who speaks to "Officer Austin" (the T-1000) at 28:29 on the
DVD is Nikki Cox, who went on to star in several TV series.
The kitchen knife used by "Janelle" to chop vegetables at 41:16 on
the DVD is the model the T-1000 soon uses for his arm knife to kill
Todd, as seen about a minute later.
The pistol used by the T-800 when he nearly kills one of the jocks
at the liquor store is a Coltonic, a hybrid of a Colt Government
Model frame with a
Detonics
Score Master top, a custom made prop gun for shooting blanks in
close proximity to actors. The gun was made by Stembridge Gun
Rentals, a company specializing in guns for Hollywood productions,
founded in 1920 by James Stembridge and Cecil B. DeMille.
The driving scenes after our heroes escape from Pescadero feature
footage shot on Bouquet Canyon Road, north of L.A.
The rifle used by Sarah outside the Dyson home in her assassination
attempt is a Colt XM-177 E2 5.56mm machine gun. Her pistol is a
Special Detonics Speed Master handgun.
The freeway chase after our heroes escape Cyberdyne with the T-1000
in pursuit was shot on the Terminal Island Freeway. This is a short
stretch of freeway between L.A. and Long Beach.
The gun used by Sarah during her final confrontation with the T-1000
is a Remington A70 police model folding-stock shotgun.
And, last but not least...

"pretzelman" is the melting T-1000 in the vat of molten steel.
Unanswered Questions
What did our heroes do with the security car in which they
fled from the Pescadero hospital? They are seen driving it
to a desert service station at night and then steal a
station wagon from there in the morning. But if they left
the Pescadero security car behind, it would provide a clue
to the authorities of which direction they had headed.
How is the T-800 able to resist John's order not to
sacrifice himself at the end of the film? Is it due to a
newfound humanity from the activated learning chip?
Memorable Dialog
Judgment Day.wav
clothes, boots, motorcycle.wav
she's not my mother.wav
the delusional architecture is fairly unique.wav
how's
the knee.wav
she's a total loser.wav
on your feet, soldier.wav
there is no fate but what we make.wav
there's not much time left in the world.wav
anybody not wearing two million sunblock is going to have a
real bad day.wav
you're the one living in a fucking dream.wav
don't
ask.wav
don't take this the wrong way.wav
who
sent you?.wav
your mom's a psycho, didn't you know?.wav
my
own Terminator.wav
you were gonna kill that guy.wav
you just can't go around killing people.wav
I swear I will not kill anyone.wav
he'll
live.wav
you know I believe it.wav
come with me if you want to live.wav
so, what's your story?.wav
that's a nice bike.wav
watch it, lug nuts.wav
I have detailed files.wav
does it hurt when you get shot?.wav
can
you learn.wav
a learning computer.wav
great military leader.wav
are we learning yet?.wav
no
problemo.wav
it's in your nature to destroy yourselves.wav
you're pretty jumpy, Connor.wav
Uncle
Bob.wav
she always plans ahead.wav
it's definitely you.wav
I wish I could have met my real dad.wav
all
right, my man.wav
of all the would-be fathers.wav
no fate.wav
no fate but what we make.wav
three billion deaths.wav
we need to be a little more constructive here, okay?.wav
the
chip.wav
making up history.wav
we
got company.wav
trust
me.wav
we got Skynet by the balls.wav
I'll be
back.wav
step on
it.wav
hasta la vista, baby.wav
I
need a vacation.wav
terminated.wav
there's one more chip.wav
I cannot self-terminate.wav
I order you not to go.wav
it's something I can never do.wav
the value of human life.wav
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