The Terminator (1984) Trivia
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49 free The Terminator (1984) trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
The Terminator is the 1984 film that turned James Cameron from a fired Piranha II director into a bankable one and made Arnold Schwarzenegger a leading man with just 17 lines of dialogue. A cyborg is sent back from 2029 to kill Sarah Connor before her son can lead the resistance against Skynet; a soldier named Kyle Reese follows to protect her. Made for about $6.5 million, it topped the US box office for two weeks and earned $78.3 million worldwide. This quiz stays with the first film only. It covers the cast and the actors who nearly had the roles, the fever dream in Rome that started everything, the one-dollar rights deal Cameron came to regret, the night shoots in Los Angeles, Stan Winston's endoskeleton, Brad Fiedel's synth score, the Harlan Ellison settlement, the critics' split verdict and the honours that came later, from the Saturn Awards to the National Film Registry. Fifty questions, four options each, with a short explanation after every answer. Play on your phone or print it for a quiz night.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed The Terminator?
James Cameron
James Cameron was an untested director, and the studios that liked his script wanted it without him; he refused to sell unless he stayed in the chair.
Q 02Who plays Sarah Connor in The Terminator?
Linda Hamilton
Linda Hamilton was a relative unknown; the bigger names floated for the lead roles all fell through, leaving her to star opposite the far more famous Schwarzenegger.
Q 03Who plays Kyle Reese, the soldier sent back to protect Sarah Connor in The Terminator?
Michael Biehn
Michael Biehn prepared by reading about the fighters who held out in the rubble of wartime Warsaw, a model for the film's hunted human resistance.
Q 04Why does the Terminator hunt Sarah Connor?
Her future son
Her future son will lead the human resistance to the edge of victory, so the machines send a killer into the past to stop him ever being born.
Q 05What is the hostile artificial intelligence in The Terminator called?
Skynet
Skynet is a defense network that becomes self-aware, sets off a nuclear war and then hunts the survivors with machines.
Q 06What is Sarah Connor's job when The Terminator begins?
Diner waitress
Diner waitress Sarah Connor shares her name with two other women in the phone book, and the cyborg simply starts killing its way down the listings.
Q 07Who produced The Terminator and shares its writing credit?
Gale Anne Hurd
Gale Anne Hurd was Roger Corman's assistant when she was shown the first sketches; she backed the idea and pitched it with the director to every studio in town.
Q 08What finally destroys the cyborg in The Terminator?
A hydraulic press
A hydraulic press finishes it: the cyborg has already survived a tanker explosion and been blown in half by a pipe bomb when Sarah Connor lures its crawling torso into the machine.
Q 09Which earlier film had taken The Terminator's director abroad when a fever dream gave him the idea?
Piranha II
Piranha II was a troubled low-budget horror sequel made with an Italian crew; sick, broke and far from home, its director dreamed the image that became his next film.
Q 10Which fever-dream image inspired The Terminator?
A flaming metal skeleton
A flaming metal skeleton came to the director in a fevered sleep in Rome; he sketched it on waking, and by his account those drawings became the film's finale almost exactly.
Q 11Which low-budget slasher hit did The Terminator's director say he hoped to emulate with his own script?
Halloween
Halloween had been made for next to nothing, and a stylish horror film like it was every young director's break-in dream; the cyborg began life as a slasher-film image.
Q 12Which football star did a studio executive suggest to play the Terminator?
O. J. Simpson
O. J. Simpson was then a much-loved sports star and pitchman, and that was the problem: the filmmakers thought him far too likeable to pass for a killer.
Q 13The first outline for The Terminator had a second cyborg made of what?
Liquid metal
Liquid metal was beyond the effects of 1984, so the shape-shifting killer was shelved and came back seven years later as the T-1000 of Terminator 2.
Q 21Why does the Terminator start wearing sunglasses partway through The Terminator?
To hide its ruined eye
To hide its ruined eye: after the nightclub chase the cyborg cuts out the damaged human-looking eye, which leaves the machine lens underneath on show.
Q 22What does Sarah Connor buy from a boy at a Mexican filling station as The Terminator ends?
Her own photograph
Her own photograph: the boy's instant snapshot is the very picture her son will one day hand to Kyle Reese, the one Reese carries through the future war.
Q 23Which effects artist built the cyborg for The Terminator after the veteran Dick Smith turned the job down?
Stan Winston
Q 14For how much did The Terminator's director sell the script rights to his producer?
One dollar
One dollar bought the script on a single condition: he would direct it. He has since called the bargain price one of his biggest regrets.
Q 15What did The Terminator's financier want cut during editing?
The last chase
The last chase, through the factory, would have gone: he wanted the film to end with the tanker explosion. The director flatly refused and kept it.
Q 16Which actor burst into The Terminator's financing pitch dressed and acting like the cyborg?
Lance Henriksen
Lance Henriksen kicked the door in wearing leathers, a fake cut and gold foil on his teeth, then sat staring at the money men; he was rewarded with a part as a detective.
Q 17What did The Terminator's distributor expect of it?
A quick fade
A quick fade from cinemas, within weeks, was all Orion foresaw; instead the film topped the box office for two weeks and earned about $78 million worldwide.
Q 18Which action star turned down the role of the Terminator?
Sylvester Stallone
Sylvester Stallone passed, and the part went to a man sent to discuss playing the hero: Schwarzenegger talked so keenly about how the machine should behave that the director switched him.
Q 19Which rock star was approached to play Kyle Reese in The Terminator?
Sting
Sting was one of several big names chased for the hero before the makers gave up on stars and cast a little-known actor instead.
Q 20Why did Schwarzenegger first resist playing the Terminator?
A villain's part
A villain's part with few lines was no job for a would-be leading man, by his account, until the director promised a machine so cool that some viewers would cheer.
Stan Winston came recommended by Smith himself when he turned the job down; Winston and the director went on working together for the rest of Winston's life.
Q 24In The Terminator, what does Sarah Connor come to realize about her protector Kyle Reese?
He will father her son
He will father her son: John Connor sends back the very man who becomes his own father, so the future leader exists only because of the mission meant to save him.
Q 25Schwarzenegger's commitment to which film delayed the start of The Terminator's shoot?
Conan the Destroyer
Conan the Destroyer came first under his contract with producer Dino De Laurentiis, so a shoot planned for 1983 slipped into early 1984.
Q 26While The Terminator's shoot was on hold, its director was hired to write which sequel?
Rambo: First Blood Part II
Rambo: First Blood Part II was a job for hire to fill the idle months; its star rewrote much of the draft before it reached cinemas in 1985.
Q 27What companion did studio executives want to give Kyle Reese in The Terminator, only for the director to refuse?
A robot dog
A robot dog was one of two studio notes; the other, to build up the romance between Sarah and Reese, he liked and took.
Q 28In The Terminator, which company built the defense computer that turns on humanity?
Cyberdyne Systems
Cyberdyne Systems also owns the factory where the chase ends, a deleted scene shows; in the sequel its engineers are building the computer from the wrecked cyborg's chip and arm.
Q 29What does the Terminator do instead of paying at the gun shop?
Shoots the clerk
Shoots the clerk, then walks out with the guns. The long pistol's red beam was a real laser, which the actor lit with a switch hidden in his coat.
Q 30In which city was most of The Terminator shot, largely at night?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles was the fallback: the shoot was first planned for Toronto, then moved, and most of it was done on the city's streets at night.