History NightmareFuel / Terminator2JudgmentDay

*** The horrific image that confirms it really was the T-1000 disguised as Janelle. The camera pans slowly to the right showing the T-1000's left arm formed into a sword '''impaling Todd through the milk jug he was drinking and into his mouth and out the back of his head'''. Good Lord. [[note]]Though there is some BlackHumor in the fact that even the ''T-1000'' can't stand people who drink milk straight out of the carton.[[/note]]

* Also, there's the T-1000's {{Leitmotif}}. It's starts as one long, single, ominous tone played repeatedly, almost coming off sounding like a slow alarm from {{Hell}} befitting the emotional void of the T-1000. [[https://youtu.be/sVTAe6bDCks Listen here]].

** This is even worse in context: T2 was made right after The UsefulNotes/ColdWar and takes place in 1995 with the RedScare still in people's minds. And it wasn't Skynet responsible for the nuclear holocaust; it was Russia, merely retaliating against the use of American weapons. ManipulativeBastard much?

** The last two officers freak out when they realize after unloading virtually everything they have at him, exposing metal endoskeleton, there's ''no way'' this [[{{Misblamed}} wanted suspect]] for the fatal 1984 police shooting is human [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere and try to flee]].

* Minor compared to everything else, but does anyone else feel a stab of terror and sorrow at what the T-800 does to a very effective, professionally trained, and experienced LAPD SWAT team? Imagine, you are the best of the best outside a military force, you are trained to handle the worst of society. The best gear, the best training, your years of experience as a peace officer, determined to stand and fight against the darkness inside humanity. But here is this unstoppable juggernaut, slowly walking through your combined fire that should be dropping him like a stone, calmly eyeing your positions before drawing a handgun and effectively crippling you with precise single shots, possibly ending your careers and leaving you with nightmares for years to come of what that...THING might have done to you and your fellow officers if it didn't even care about the concept of mercy. And it was never seen again. That's some next-level PTSD ruining lives, despite physically living. Death may have been a kinder mercy.

** Even its arrival in the film's present is NightmareFuel mixed with FridgeHorror, as we know it is made of liquid metal but only living tissue (or cyborgs surrounded by living tissue) can travel through time. So how was it "packaged" to arrive?
*** It most likely had the skin up until the fire engine it was chasing John in crashed and exploded. Were it a T-800, this would've been the endoskeleton scene, but since it's a T-1000, there's little difference that destroying the skin makes.
*** VideoGame/TerminatorResistance seems to hint at the reasoning why the T-1000 could travel back in time despite only organic matter (on the outside anyway) being able to survive the temporal portal. [[spoiler:The PlayerCharacter will find the disembowelled body of a Resistance soldier strapped to an operating table, clearly dead for quite some time, but bearing an uncanny resemblance to Robert Patrick [[note]]The actor who plays the T-1000.[[/note]] One has to wonder why they went through the effort to cameo the actor in this grisly scene if not to suggest that the T-1000 would [[GenuineHumanHide wear the corpse like a suit]] to travel to the past in the first place.]]

* Sarah's fate when we see her in this movie: Locked away in a mental institute where people treat her as crazy, even though she ''knows'' that the actual truth is coming. What's worse is the fact her psychiatrist, Dr. Silberman, was also present at the police station massacre and he keeps on insisting she's as crazy as he thought Kyle Reese was.
** Almost making things worse is the potential ParanoiaFuel. What if Silberman is deliberately stymieing Sarah's efforts to free herself because he knows she's ''not'' crazy, but the thought of having to admit that he was wrong, that the mechanical time-traveling monsters she spoke of really do exist, is just too personally horrifying for him? That is, he's ''choosing'' to [[HeadInTheSandManagement ignore reality]] and is forcing Sarah, one of the last hopes for humanity, to be imprisoned just so he can cling to his delusions of ignorant bliss?
*** And we can even see the effects on Silberman in [[Film/Terminator3RiseOfTheMachines T3]]. He has clearly been traumatized by seeing the fight between the T-1000 and the T-800; he speaks as though reality has flipped on its head and runs in terror when he sees the T-850.
** What if Silberman is ''on Skynet's side''?

** Note also that Sarah's care and that of the other patients is entrusted to a facility where the psychologists are too unobservant to notice that [[OrderliesAreCreeps one of their own staff enjoys]] ''[[{{Squick}} licking stuporous patients' faces]]''.
** Silberman wasn't present at the massacre; he left the police station just before the massacre happened and didn't even spot the T-800 because he was checking his pager as it walked past him.

* [[https://youtu.be/vfZke069f4g?t=55 Sarah's nightmare]] (as seen in the picture to the right), which depicts a ''chillingly'' realistic portrayal of a nuclear holocaust. Even the crew was disturbed during filming.

** In fact, Creator/JamesCameron got ''fan mail'' from scientists who worked on atomic weapons ''thanking and praising him'' for the [[ShownTheirWork most realistic portrayal of a nuclear detonation in movies at that time]].[[note]]The only thing they pointed out as obviously wrong is that it would have also vaporized the skeletons.[[/note]] He was rightly horrified (and also a bit proud of it).

** To add one more bit of horror to this abomination (as if it needed more), ExpandedUniverse material and WordOfGod reveals WHY the T-1000 isn't the standard troop of Skynet: ''[[EvenEvilHasStandards Even Skynet is afraid of them]]'' because of how smart and fast-learning they are. [[note]]Per WordOfGod, the T-1000 has no processor, and thus can't be set to read-only. Skynet basically had to send it back in time and hope like hell that it did what they wanted it to do. Considering it took less than 24 hours for the thing to start developing its own (sadistic) personality, Skynet was right to fear it.[[/note]]

*** The horrific image that confirms Janelle really was the T-1000 in disguise. The camera pans slowly to the right showing the T-1000's left arm formed into a sword '''impaling Todd through the milk jug he was drinking and into his mouth and out the back of his head'''. Good Lord. [[note]]Though there is some BlackHumor in the fact that even the ''T-1000'' can't stand people who drink milk straight out of the carton.[[/note]]

* The T-1000, full stop, and also doubling as ParanoiaFuel. Let's recap: It can be anyone it touches, and impersonate your family and your friends to get to you. It can become ''other'' objects, so that chair or that table in the corner could well be him, and when someone sits down on it, it's sampled them so now it can look like them. It can perfectly mimic human expression and emotion to blend in perfectly with normal society. It understands how to actually ''look'' for you by getting pictures and asking people where you are and searching for your personal data on computers. It understands how to manipulate people, torturing them or playing on their fears. When it finds you, it doesn't need a weapon; it ''is'' a weapon, turning its fingers and hands into knives, blades, or hooks as it chases you down. Like the other Terminators, it ''will not stop'' until you are '''dead''', and destroying it is pretty much impossible unless you have a vat of molten metal nearby. And on top of it all, it poses as a cop chasing a child. Able to be anyone, anywhere, without being detected, never stopping, impossible to reason with, and all it wants to do is kill you--it's about as basic and terrifying as a boogeyman can be.
** Perfectly summing it up is when John calls his foster parents, Todd and Janelle, and the T-1000 has taken Janelle's place. The ''only'' reason John isn't lured into a trap is because the T-1000 [[BluffTheImpostor didn't know their dog's name]].
*** The horrific image that confirms Janelle really was the T-1000 in disguise. The camera pans slowly to the right showing the T-1000's left arm formed into a sword ''impaling Todd through his mouth and out the back of his head''. Good Lord. [[note]]Though there is some BlackHumor in the fact that even the ''T-1000'' can't stand people who drink milk straight out of the carton.[[/note]]

->''"It's like a giant strobe light... burning right through my eyes. Somehow I can still see. Children look like burnt paper. Black. Not moving. And then the blast wave hits them. And they fly apart like leaves... [...] It's not a dream, you moron, it's real. I know the date it happens. [...] On August 29th, 1997, it's gonna feel '''pretty [[PrecisionFStrike fuckin']] real to you, too!''' '''Anybody''' not wearing two million sunblock is gonna have a real '''bad''' day, get it?! God, you think you're safe and alive? You're already dead! Everybody! '''Him, you, you're dead already!''' This whole place! Everything you see is '''gone'''! '''You're''' the one living the '''FUCKING DREAM, SILBERMAN! BECAUSE I KNOW IT HAPPENS! IT HAPPENS!"'''''

*** Only one parent in the playground notices Sarah, and it's a younger version of herself. She's not the hardened figure we know but a more traditional motherly figure, likely a symbol of Sarah's fear of complacency (she's even wearing her waitress uniform from the first movie).[[note]]She's actually played by Linda Hamilton's twin sister, whose lack of the musculature Linda put on for this role sells the concept even more.[[/note]] The baby she's playing with is actually John. The confused glance she gives makes it seem like she can hear her real-world counterpart screaming, but can't actually ''see'' her.

*** Only one parent in the playground notices Sarah, and it's a younger version of herself. She's not the hardened figure we know but a more traditional motherly figure, likely a symbol of Sarah's fear of complacency (she's even wearing her waitress uniform from the first movie). The baby she's playing with is actually John. The confused glance she gives makes it seem like she can hear her real-world counterpart screaming, but can't actually ''see'' her.

* The T-1000's first attempt on John's life ends with the truck it's driving getting blown up in a nod to the first movie. Just like with the T-800, this doesn't kill it. Unlike the T-800, this doesn't even ''scratch'' it.

*** [[FridgeBrilliance It mimicked the basic chemicals that make up flesh.]]
*** That doesn't make any sense; metal made to look like flesh is still metal. It was probably packaged in a flesh-balloon, like a mercury-stuffed turkey.
*** Good thing that's an off-screen detail, then. Because few things could possibly invoke the UncannyValley more effectively than ''real human skin grown into an unnatural shape like a balloon''.

** Creator/RobertPatrick's performance as the T-1000 is what makes the character really come together. It can pull off regular human speech almost normally, but the tone and delivery are just barely cold and lifeless enough (even when it's trying to sound pleasant) that it doesn't quite sound human. It's like a vocal UncannyValley effect, and it works so well that it makes the T-1000 way more terrifying than if they had given it a [[Film/2001ASpaceOdyssey HAL-9000]] style conversational tone.

->''"It's like a giant strobe light... burning right through my eyes. Somehow I can still see. Children look like burnt paper. Black. Not moving. And then the blast wave hits them. And they fly apart like leaves... [...] It's not a dream, you moron, it's real. I know the date it happens. [...] On August 29th, 1997, it's gonna feel '''pretty [[PrecisionFStrike fuckin']] real to you too!''' '''Anybody''' not wearing two million sunblock is gonna have a real '''bad''' day, get it?! God, you think you're safe and alive? You're already dead! Everybody! '''Him, you, you're dead already!''' This whole place! Everything you see is '''gone'''! '''You're''' the one living the '''FUCKING DREAM, SILBERMAN! BECAUSE I KNOW IT HAPPENS! IT HAPPENS!"'''''

** While massively overshadowed by the nuclear explosion itself, even the first version of the nightmare can be pretty unsettling since, after Kyle's departure, it plays out like a textbook [[DreamWithinADream false awakening]] where one-by-one details just seem to be ''off''. Not only does Sarah wake up in an orderly room (she ransacked it in the real world) and wearing something different than what she fell asleep in, but the [[NothingIsScarier entire facility is deserted]] and seems to be bathed in perpetual sunrise/sunset. Then, she leaves the facility to find herself at the park...and, upon looking behind her, ''finds the building has vanished''. These experiences are often unnerving in RealLife, having you go through the usual morning motions (shower, breakfast, etc) while a sense of apprehension builds, eventually culminating in a CatapultNightmare.

* How about the first five minutes? Where you see human civilization at the dawn of [[TheNineties the 1990s]] as it appeared in Los Angeles. Cars on the freeway, people coming and going. And then a masterful MatchCut: Just the definition of a NightmareFuel wasteland, with a horde of T-800s and H-Ks hunting humans.
** In a MythologyGag to the first movie, there's a shot of the BadFuture early on, where we see actual disguise-free T-800s on the march. It starts with a focus on a bleached human skull under a dark sky seconds before a mechanical, skeletal foot crushes it to powder, and is almost as impactful as the scene of the Hunter-Killers rumbling through the ruins from the first film.

* The opening credits ''very'' much count, showing the world (even a park) in flames that never seem to extinguish, showing the horrors that will be entailed if Skynet is to go online and self-aware, putting a capstone to the above examples. Hell, the close-up of the T-800 skull is the header image of [[NightmareFuel the general Nightmare Fuel page]].

** Almost making things worse is the potential ParanoiaFuel. What if Silberman is deliberately stymying Sarah's efforts to free herself because he knows she's ''not'' crazy, but the thought of having to admit that he was wrong, that the mechanical, time-traveling monsters she spoke of really do exist, is just too personally horrifying for him? That is, he's ''choosing'' to [[HeadInTheSandManagement ignore reality]] and is forcing Sarah, one of the last hopes for humanity, to be imprisoned just so he can cling to his delusions of ignorant bliss?
*** And we can even see the effects on Silberman in ''Rise of the Machines''. He has clearly been traumatized by the events of ''Judgment Day'' and seeing the fight between the T-1000 and the T-800. He speaks as though reality has flipped on its head and runs in terror when he sees the T-850.

** Note, also, that Sarah's care and that of the other patients is entrusted to a facility where the psychologists are too unobservant to notice that [[OrderliesAreCreeps one of their own staff enjoys]] ''[[{{Squick}} licking stuporous patients' faces]]''.
** Silberman wasn't present at the massacre. He left the police station just before the massacre happened and didn't even spot the Terminator because he was checking his pager as it walked past him.

* You spend your youth under the care of a "survivalist/terrorist" who insists that machines from the future will try to kill you. Then, when she is finally captured and institutionalized, you are thrust into the world of foster care. THEN, one day, in the narrow confines of a mall's service corridors, you come face to face with the very thing she certainly described to you in detail. And it just pulled out a shotgun.

* John decides to playfully take advantage of the T-800's programming to follow his orders. First he has him harass a couple of guys who were fed up with his bratty attitude. John was satisfied with himself at first... until the T-800 pulls out a gun and nearly shoots one of them for fighting back. John had to order him to stop, and it was at that point he realized that he was ''not'' [[EvilIsNotAToy dealing with a toy]]. It's a chilling reminder of the Terminator's lack of human morality, even with its new programming:

'''T-800:''' Of course, I'm a terminator.\\
'''John:''' ...Listen to me very carefully okay? You're not a Terminator anymore, alright? ''You got that?'' You just can't go around killing people!\\

'''John:''' What do you mean "why"? [[ThouShaltNotKill Cause you can't]]!\\

** The background music, John's stern distress and the close ups of Arnold's complete lack of emotion all help make this moment unsettling. One [=YouTuber=] puts it best;
--> "I love how the camera zooms into his face more with each "Why." Normally it'd be funny, but his complete misunderstanding of basic human morality is painted in an almost horrific light."

* Sarah's encounter with the Terminator as she tries to escape the mental hospital. She's just pulled off a daring escape, but seeing him--the face of a decade of running and the thing that's going to bring about the apocalypse--come out of the elevator sends her right back to her captors.

** As she runs away, she hears the voice of her son. Given the Terminator's ability to [[VoiceChangeling mimic voices]], and what it does to the people it mimics, imagine [[AdultFear what she is thinking]].
*** Especially when you recall that in the first film, the Terminator killed Sarah's mother and mimicked her voice. Sarah had no idea at the time.
** It's also noteworthy that this scene was also the ''only'' time in the entire film she's [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness completely paralyzed by fear]] [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere to the point of trying to run away]]--even when facing the T-1000, she was still looking for ways to defend herself or fight back.

* The T-1000 commandeering the police chopper at Cyberdyne after charging at it ''from the top floor on a motorbike''. Confronting the pilot, he doesn't even quite finish his return to "human" form or even bother skewering him like all the others; instead, he, in a CallBack to the first movie when the T-800 commandeers a semi; simply tells him this:
-->'''T-1000: Get out.'''

* The T-1000, full stop, and also doubling as ParanoiaFuel. Let's recap: It can be anyone it touches, impersonate your family and your friends to get to you. It can become ''other'' objects, so that chair or that table in the corner could well be him, and when someone sits down on it, it's sampled them so now it can look like them. It can perfectly mimic human expression and emotion to blend in perfectly with normal society. It understands how to actually ''look'' for you by getting pictures and asking people where you are and searching for your personal data on computers. It understands how to manipulate people, torturing them or playing on their fears. When it finds you, it doesn't need a weapon; it ''is'' a weapon, turning its fingers and hands into knives, blades, or hooks as it chases you down. Like the other Terminators, it ''will not stop'' until you are '''dead''', and destroying it is pretty much impossible unless you have a vat of molten metal nearby. And on top of it all, it poses as a cop chasing a child. Able to be anyone, anywhere, without being detected, never stopping, impossible to reason with, and all it wants to do is kill you--it's about as basic and terrifying as a boogeyman can be.
** Perfectly summing it up is when John calls his foster parents, Todd and Janelle, and the T-1000 has taken their place. The ''only'' reason he isn't lured into a trap is because the T-1000 [[BluffTheImpostor didn't know their dog's name]].
*** The horrific image that confirms Janelle really was the T-1000 in disguise. The camera pans slowly to the right showing the T-1000's left arm formed into a "sword" ''impaling Todd through his mouth and out the back of his head''. Good Lord. [[note]]Though there is some BlackHumor in the fact that even the ''T-1000'' can't stand people who drink milk straight out of the carton.[[/note]]

** Creator/RobertPatrick's performance as the T-1000 is what makes the character really come together. It can pull off regular human speech almost normally, but the tone and delivery are just barely cold and lifeless enough (even when it's trying to sound pleasant) that it doesn't quite sound human. It's like a vocal UncannyValley effect, and it works so well that it makes the T-1000 way more terrifying than if they had given it a HAL-9000 style conversational tone.
** Even its arrival in our time is NightmareFuel mixed with FridgeHorror, as we know it is made of liquid metal but only living tissue (or cyborgs surrounded by living tissue) can travel through time. So how was it "packaged" to arrive?

** To add one more bit of horror to this abomination (as if it needed more), ExpandedUniverse material and WordOfGod reveals WHY the T-1000 isn't the standard troop of Skynet: ''[[EvenEvilHasStandards Even Skynet is afraid of them]]'' because of how smart and fast-learning they are. [[note]]Per WordOfGod, the T-1000 has no processor, and thus can't be set to read-only. Skynet basically had to send it back in time and hope like hell that it did what they wanted it to do. Considering it took less than 24 hours for the thing to start developing its own (sadistic) personality, they were right to fear it.[[/note]]

* The T-1000's first attempt on John's life ends with the truck it's driving getting blown up in a nod to the first movie. Just like with the first terminator, this doesn't kill it. Unlike the first terminator, this doesn't even ''scratch'' it.

** When it blows up, it looks like a mangled abomination like something straight out of ''[[Film/TheThing1982 The Thing]]''.
** We see it thrown into a vat of molten metal, and the thing undergoes a hideous ShapeshifterSwanSong, shifting rapidly between its previous forms in an effort to escape. Finally, it becomes just this bubbling, distorted face that ''turns itself inside out'' before it finally sinks into the molten metal and dissolves.
** And then there's the [[HellIsThatNoise horrific screeches]] it makes. It may be a machine, but it could be interpretated that the T-1000 is experiencing ''absolute agony'' as it fries.

* Also, there's the T-1000's {{Leitmotif}}. It's starts as one long, single, ominous tone played repeatedly almost coming off sounding like a slow alarm from {{Hell}} befitting the emotional void of the T-1000. [[https://youtu.be/sVTAe6bDCks Listen on You Tube here]].
** This creepy droning soundtrack is present almost constantly when the T-1000 is on screen; upon rewatching you'll probably notice it's also playing even just when it's talking to Todd and Janelle in the beginning. A constant audio cue that something is very wrong with this "cop".
** The noises the T-1000 makes when transforrming also count as nightmare fuel. They range from [[HellIsThatNoise weird gloopy metallic sounds]] to AudibleSharpness effects when forming bladed weapons. Somehow all of these noises manage to nail the uncanny valley.

** This is even worse in context: ''Judgment Day'' was made right after The UsefulNotes/ColdWar and takes place in 1995 with the RedScare still in people's minds. And it wasn't Skynet responsible for the nuclear holocaust; it was Russia, merely retaliating against the use of American weapons. ManipulativeBastard much?

* Miles' situation. Even without finding out that his work was indirectly responsible for the rise of a malevolent machine out to exterminate humanity and the nuclear holocaust it unleashes, this was just your regular office worker, working late at home, surrounded by his loving family, when a violent escaped mental patient starts ''shooting up his home with an assault rifle with his young boy just barely outside the line of fire''. Then Sarah breaks into the house, hell-bent on killing him (and, for all he knows, his family) and he has absolutely no idea why this nightmare is happening to his family.
** Not to mention Miles's ''son'''s situation: having the only home he's ever known shot to pieces, being rushed from the room by his terrified mother, seeing his father injured, trying to shield him from an oncoming killer as he pleads for his father's life, being shoved away for his own protection by his bleeding dad. Danny is ''eleven or twelve'', tops.
** This is an oft-overlooked aspect of any time travel story. Your future is completely fucked and the only way you can see it being fixed is to go back in time and kill the man who caused it, regardless of how long ago that was and what the man himself was like or what his intentions were. [[AdultFear Maybe the best time to kill him is the rare occasion he leaves the office to spend time with his family, playing with his children in the park...]]

** Even worse (and confirmed in the T2 novel trilogy by SM Stirling), Silberman's (probably) well-intentioned treatment with loads of drugs is actually making Sarah crazy.

*** And can easily be mistaken as Sarah ''still'' screaming even as a skeleton.

** The background music, John's stern distress and the close ups of Arnold's complete lack of emotion all help make this moment unsettling. One YouTuber puts it best;

** This creepy droning soundtrack is present almost constantly when the T-1000 is one screen; upon rewatching you'll probably notice it's also playing even when it's talking to Todd and Janelle in the beginning. A constant audio cue that something is very wrong with this "cop".

-->'''John:''' Jesus, you were gonna kill that guy!

''John:''' ...Listen to me very carefully okay? You're not a Terminator anymore, alright? ''You got that?'' You just can't go around killing people!\\

* John decides playfully taking advantage of the T-800's programming to follow his orders. First he has him harass a couple of guys who were fed up with his bratty attitude. John was satisfied with himself at first... until the T-800 pulls out a gun and nearly shoots one of them for fighting back. John had to order him to stop, and it was at that point he realized he was ''not'' [[EvilIsNotAToy dealing with a toy]].
** What makes this more chilling? Aside from the background music, even with its new programming the Terminator's lack of human morality is apparent in this conservation:
-->'''John:''' You can't just go around killing people!\\

'''John:''' ...What do you mean "why", [[ThouShaltNotKill cause you can't]]!\\

-->''"It's like a giant strobe light... burning right through my eyes. Somehow I can still see. Children look like burnt paper. Black. Not moving. And then the blast wave hits them. And they fly apart like leaves... [...] It's not a dream, you moron, it's real. I know the date it happens. [...] On August 29th, 1997, it's gonna feel '''pretty [[PrecisionFStrike fuckin']] real to you too!''' '''Anybody''' not wearing two million sunblock is gonna have a real '''bad''' day, get it?! God, you think you're safe and alive? You're already dead! Everybody! '''Him, you, you're dead already!''' This whole place! Everything you see is '''gone'''! '''You're''' the one living the '''FUCKING DREAM, SILBERMAN! BECAUSE I KNOW IT HAPPENS! IT HAPPENS!"'''''\\
-- '''Sarah Connor''', explaining the horrors of Judgement Day if and when it comes

-->''"It's like a giant strobe light... burning right through my eyes. Somehow I can still see. Children look like burnt paper. Black. Not moving. And then the blast wave hits them. And they fly apart like leaves... [...] It's not a dream, you moron. It's real. [...] On August 29th, 1997, it's gonna feel '''pretty [[PrecisionFStrike fuckin']] real to you too!''' '''Anybody''' not wearing two million sunblock is gonna have a real '''bad''' day, get it?! God, you think you're safe and alive? You're already dead! Everybody! '''Him, you, you're dead already!''' This whole place! Everything you see is '''gone'''! '''You're''' the one living the '''FUCKING DREAM, SILBERMAN! BECAUSE I KNOW IT HAPPENS! IT HAPPENS!"'''''\\