49 Fun Facts About Terminator

A fever dream in Rome gave James Cameron the idea for The Terminator; which film had taken him there?

Piranha II: The Spawning had gone so badly that Cameron was in Rome, broke and sick, when he dreamed of a metal figure dragging itself out of a fire; he sketched it, and it became the Terminator.

Which studio distributed The Terminator in 1984?

Orion Pictures released The Terminator in October 1984 with modest expectations and little marketing push, yet it opened at number one and topped the US box office for two weeks.

Roughly how much did The Terminator cost to make?

Made for about $6.4 million, The Terminator grossed roughly $78.3 million worldwide, more than twelve times its budget, and launched Cameron's career.

Which football star was suggested for the Terminator, only for James Cameron to find him unbelievable as a killer?

O. J. Simpson was a studio chief's idea for the Terminator, but Cameron thought the likeable star of the Hertz adverts would never be believable as a killer; Schwarzenegger was meant to play Reese.

Which actor did James Cameron first picture as the Terminator, before casting him as a police detective instead?

Lance Henriksen suited Cameron's first idea of a killer who could vanish in a crowd; once Schwarzenegger took the part, Henriksen played Detective Vukovich, and later the android Bishop in Aliens.

In The Terminator, where is the cyborg when it first says 'I'll be back'?

A police station: turned away by the desk sergeant, the Terminator says the line, then drives a car through the front doors. Schwarzenegger had asked to say 'I will be back', and Cameron refused.

Who plays Kyle Reese, the soldier sent back to protect Sarah Connor, in The Terminator?

Michael Biehn nearly lost the part by reading with a trace of Southern drawl, left over from rehearsing Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that morning; told he seemed 'too regional', he went back and read again.

What is Sarah Connor's job at the start of The Terminator?

Diner waitress: when a boy drops ice cream into her apron at Big Jeff's, a co-worker tells her, 'In a hundred years, who's gonna care?', and that night Sarah learns the future depends on her.

What is the name of the nightclub where Reese first fires on the Terminator?

Tech Noir is the club where Reese first opens fire; the name was later borrowed by critics for the blend of film noir and science fiction that Blade Runner and The Terminator typify.

Harlan Ellison threatened to sue over The Terminator, claiming it borrowed from his episode of which anthology series?

The Outer Limits episode 'Soldier', in which a fighter from a future war lands in the present day, was the one Ellison named; the makers settled, and later releases carry an acknowledgment of his works.

Who composed the synthesizer score for The Terminator, including its pounding main theme?

Brad Fiedel, who once played keyboards for Hall & Oates, said he wanted the music to be a metallic heartbeat for the cyborg; James Cameron brought him back to score Terminator 2 and True Lies.

What accident gave The Terminator's theme its 13/16 beat?

A mistimed loop: the composer stopped the rhythm pattern on his Prophet-10 a split second early, liked how the beat seemed to fall forward, and kept it, never writing the theme down in notation.

Who added The Terminator to its National Film Registry in 2008?

The Library of Congress names 25 films a year for preservation; its 2008 citation began by noting that few had expected much from The Terminator, and Terminator 2 followed in 2023.

How did press reports in 1991 say most of Schwarzenegger's Terminator 2 fee was paid?

With a Gulfstream III jet, the reports said: a Carolco aircraft handed over in place of cash. His spokeswoman denied it was in lieu of pay, and FAA records showed he had bought the studio's stake in the plane's owner.

Who played the liquid-metal T-1000 in Terminator 2?

Robert Patrick was cast as a lean, fast contrast to the muscular T-800; he reprised the T-1000 for a gag cameo in Wayne's World, asking Wayne 'Have you seen this boy?'

Which rock star was up for the T-1000 until injuries from a motorcycle crash ruled him out?

Billy Idol read for James Cameron, but the leg he nearly lost in a 1990 motorcycle crash was still healing; as Idol tells it, Cameron needed a T-1000 who could run, and he could barely walk.

Where was Edward Furlong discovered before being cast as John Connor in Terminator 2?

A Boys & Girls Club in Pasadena is where casting director Mali Finn spotted Furlong, who had never acted; he won the part at his last audition, less than a month before shooting began.

Who shared Terminator 2's Oscars for makeup and visual effects?

Stan Winston won for both makeup and visual effects, half of Terminator 2's four Oscars; he had landed the 1984 original only after makeup legend Dick Smith turned it down and passed on his name.

Which band did Schwarzenegger recruit for Terminator 2's theme song and tie-in music video?

Guns N' Roses offered 'You Could Be Mine' after Schwarzenegger asked for the biggest band in the world; as Cameron recalls the pitch, they fitted because the film has a rose and bloody guns.

Which effects house created the liquid-metal T-1000 for Terminator 2?

Industrial Light & Magic had made the water creature for Cameron's The Abyss; asked whether a chrome version could be a whole running figure, its effects chief Dennis Muren said yes, but only for a few shots.

Who doubled for Linda Hamilton in the Terminator 2 scenes where two Sarah Connors appear at once?

Her identical twin sister, Leslie Hamilton Gearren, stood in so that two Sarahs could share a shot in the steel mill; twins Don and Dan Stanton pulled the same trick for the hospital guard.

What does the T-800 say just before it shoots the frozen T-1000 to pieces in Terminator 2?

Hasta la vista, baby is slang John Connor teaches the T-800 on the road, as a way to brush people off; the cyborg files it away, then delivers it over the frozen T-1000 before firing a single shot.

In Terminator 2, how does Skynet respond when humans try to pull its plug?

Fires missiles at Russia: self-aware at 2:14 a.m. on August 29, 1997, Skynet knows the Russian counterattack will wipe out its enemies in America, the T-800 explains; three billion people die.

Who plays Miles Dyson, the engineer whose work will lead to Skynet, in Terminator 2?

Joe Morton purposely kept away from Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger off camera, so that the pair who burst into Dyson's home with news of the future would feel alien to him.

T2 3-D: Battle Across Time, co-directed by James Cameron, opened at which park in 1996 before being copied in Hollywood?

Universal Studios Florida got the show first; its 12-minute 3D film reunited the stars of Terminator 2 and cost about $24 million, more per minute than the notorious budget-buster Waterworld.

Who directed Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, the first entry made without James Cameron?

Jonathan Mostow took over after Cameron declined, saying later that he had told the story he wanted to tell; Schwarzenegger, unwilling at first to return without him, signed on with Cameron's blessing for about $30 million.

Who plays the T-X, the 'Terminatrix', in Terminator 3?

Kristanna Loken prepared for the T-X with weight, fight and weapons training, and took a mime movement class so that the 'Terminatrix' would move like a machine.

Which actor took over as John Connor in Terminator 3?

Nick Stahl plays an older John Connor, a drifter in his twenties who has lived off the grid since his mother's death; Edward Furlong had signed to return but was replaced before filming.

What twist ends Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines?

Judgment Day begins after all: Crystal Peak turns out to be a sealed fallout shelter, not Skynet's core, so John and Kate can only listen as the missiles fly. Terminator 2 had merely postponed it.

Who directed Terminator Salvation, the 2009 film set during the future war?

McG at first asked himself why anyone would flog a dead horse, then sought out James Cameron, who gave neither blessing nor scorn but pointed to Aliens as proof a sequel to a masterpiece could stand apart.

Which actor plays Marcus Wright, the death-row inmate who wakes up as a cyborg in Terminator Salvation?

Sam Worthington got the part on James Cameron's word: Cameron had just cast the little-known Australian as the lead in Avatar and recommended him to the film's director in a phone call from New Zealand.

Which Game of Thrones actress plays Sarah Connor in Terminator Genisys?

Emilia Clarke watched Alan Taylor, a director she knew from Game of Thrones, get 'eaten and chewed up' on the shoot, and said she was relieved when weak box office spared her the planned sequels.

What did a Terminator Genisys trailer give away?

John is a Terminator: months before release, the second trailer showed the resistance leader remade as a machine. Director Alan Taylor said he had 'a few unpleasant conversations' about it.

What does the young Sarah Connor call the reprogrammed T-800 that raised her in Terminator Genisys?

Pops is Sarah's name for the T-800 that an unknown party sent to 1973 to protect her after a T-1000 killed her parents when she was nine.

Who directed Terminator: Dark Fate after leaving Deadpool 2?

Tim Miller, who had directed the first Deadpool and left its sequel over creative differences, made Dark Fate with Cameron back as producer; the story ignores the third, fourth and fifth films.

In Terminator: Dark Fate, which AI replaces Skynet as humanity's destroyer?

Legion, built for cyberwarfare, rises in a future where Skynet never existed: Sarah Connor's victory in Terminator 2 erased one machine uprising, and humanity went on to build another.

What name has Schwarzenegger's Terminator adopted while living quietly with a human family in Dark Fate?

Carl is the name the T-800 took once Skynet was gone and it had no more orders, settling in Texas with a human family; Sarah Connor's answer in the film is that she is never going to call him that.

Who plays Grace, the augmented soldier sent to protect Dani Ramos in Terminator: Dark Fate?

Mackenzie Davis plays a soldier with a secret the film saves for late on: in her future the grown-up Dani took in the young Grace and raised her, so she has come back to protect the woman who brought her up.

On which network did Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles air for its 31 episodes?

Fox aired two seasons and cancelled the series in May 2009 as ratings slid despite good reviews, days before Terminator Salvation opened in cinemas.

Who plays Sarah Connor in The Sarah Connor Chronicles?

Lena Headey beat some 300 actresses: creator Josh Friedman watched her on tape from London after a director friend recommended her, and called her 'a tough, tough woman' who had trained as a boxer.

Summer Glau, the protective Terminator in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, was best known for which Firefly role?

River Tam had already cost the show's creator his star once: Josh Friedman tried to cast Glau in an earlier pilot, lost her to the Firefly film Serenity, and kept her in mind for his Terminator.

Which rock singer joined The Sarah Connor Chronicles as Catherine Weaver, a company boss who is secretly a T-1001?

Shirley Manson of Garbage joined for the second season, and also sang the cover of the gospel song 'Samson and Delilah' that plays over the premiere in which her liquid-metal executive first appears.

The Netflix anime Terminator Zero is set in 1997 in which city?

Tokyo in 1997 is the setting, on the eve of Judgment Day, and Netflix released all eight episodes on August 29, 2024, the 27th anniversary of the day Skynet strikes in the films.

In The Terminator, Reese says Cyberdyne built Skynet for which military body?

SAC-NORAD is the body Reese names under questioning; hooked into everything and trusted to run it all, its new computer, he tells Sarah, saw all people as a threat and 'decided our fate in a microsecond'.

For how much did James Cameron sell his Terminator rights to Gale Anne Hurd before directing the first film?

$1 was the price, on the condition that Hurd would produce the film only with Cameron as director, which locked in the unproven filmmaker's job before any studio could replace him.

Which company published the first Terminator video game, a 1991 MS-DOS title?

Bethesda Softworks took the licence in 1990 and built a free-roaming Los Angeles long before Grand Theft Auto III made the idea standard; its director, Julian LeFay, went on to make Arena, the first Elder Scrolls game.

Midway's 1991 arcade game Terminator 2: Judgment Day was what kind of game?

A light gun shooter: players fired cabinet-mounted guns at digitized images of the film's actors and models, a look Midway used here a year before the same technique made Mortal Kombat famous.

What does the real Japanese robotics company Cyberdyne sell?

A powered exoskeleton suit called HAL, for Hybrid Assistive Limb: sensors on the skin pick up the faint signals of a wearer trying to move and motors at the joints do the rest, helping patients with spinal injuries to walk.

Terminator producer Gale Anne Hurd, who began as Roger Corman's assistant, later became an executive producer of which long-running TV series?

The Walking Dead had Hurd as an executive producer from its 2010 debut; she also produced Aliens, The Abyss and Armageddon, and was married to Cameron from 1985 to 1989.