Characters / Terminator (Main Continuity): Humans

Main Character Index Machines (Main Continuity) | Humans (Main Continuity) Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines | Terminator Salvation | Terminator Genisys Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

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Character page for the humans appearing in the continuity comprising The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Terminator: Dark Fate.

Character sheets for the entries that came between Judgment Day and Dark Fate have been moved on separate pages due to their Alternate Timeline/Alternate Continuity status induced by the Un-Reboot of Dark Fate. For them, see the index above.

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Introduced in The Terminator

Sarah Connor

Sarah Jeanette Connor

"The hardest thing is deciding what I should tell you and what not to."

"The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it, for the first time, with a sense of hope. Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too."

"Since then, I hunt Terminators, and I drink until I black out. Enough of a résumé for you?"

Played by: Linda Hamilton

Dubbed by: Élisabeth Wiener (European French, The Terminator), Véronique Augereau (European French, Terminator 2, Dark Fate), Rihoko Yoshida (Japanese, Terminator 2), Yolanda Vidal (LatAm Spanish, The Terminator original dub), Mayra Arrellano (LatAm Spanish, The Terminator redub), Laura Torres (LatAm Spanish)

Appears in: The Terminator | Terminator 2: Judgment Day | Terminator: Dark Fate

The mother of the future human resistance leader against the Machines, John Connor.

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• '80s Hair: Not quite as much as her friend Ginger, but still definitely qualifies in the first film. Ditches it for a Tomboyish Ponytail in the sequel.
• Action Mom: In the second film, bordering on Knight Templar Parent.
• Action Survivor: In the first movie; turning on the hydraulic press that kills the Terminator shows her transition to Action Girl.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys:
  • In the first film she is guilty of this, as she dated a guy that treated her like dirt before she met Kyle. When she does meet Kyle, it's clear that she is unnerved by him, but still likes him, as proven when she tip toes around the question of whether or not he had a girlfriend, seconds before his Anguished Declaration of Love. Lastly, as mentioned in Terminator 2, she started going out with military personnel, mostly to learn things she could teach John, but given her history....
  • She even reflects to herself how the Terminator was, in her opinion, the only suitable father figure while listing off the different ways a parent can abuse or neglect their child (which likely speaks volumes about the other men she met).
• Anti-Hero: While Sarah was firmly an Action Survivor in the first film, come time for the second one, she's become unhinged suffering a nasty case of PTSD. Sarah attempts to Shoot the Dog and tries to kill Miles Dyson in front of his family.
• Arms Dealer: In the second film, John mentions she spent a lot of time running guns in Nicaragua.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: Sarah nearly falls victim to this in Judgement Day when she tries to kill Miles Dyson, almost shooting him in the back and then advancing into his house in a manner disturbingly similar to the Terminators; even when Miles' six year old son is begging Sarah not to kill his daddy, there is a moment where it genuinely seems like Sarah is going to kill a man who not only hasn't done anything yet but never set out to cause any harm in the first place.
• Big "NO!": Sarah almost makes it out of the asylum, but she sees the T-800 walking out of an elevator. After saying "no" in a low tone of disbelief, it turns into this out of sheer terror.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: In Dark Fate, she gets to quip "I'll be back" right before blowing up the Rev-9.
• Broken Bird: Second movie. Her attempts to stop Judgment Day have left her sanity somewhat in tatters and she is in a mental hospital at the beginning of T2. It's even worse in Dark Fate, as John was murdered before her eyes.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: As of the end of the first Terminator movie, she became an established fighter herself (partially influenced by Kyle Reese), and even in her maddest moments, she's still very caring and considerate.
• Burger Fool: She used to be a waitress for a restaurant in the first movie until Kyle had to hide her from Skynet.
• The Bus Came Back: Written off between films after T2 and only appearing in alternate timelines since, the original Sarah finally returns in Dark Fate after a 28-year absence.
• Cassandra Truth: She's institutionalized for trying to prevent and talking about the future war with the machines. Played with, however, because she's still Ax-Crazy despite being right about that.
• Character Development: She has three:
  • In the first film, she is a Shrinking Violet with self-doubt until Skynet specifically targets her by sending a T-800 while Kyle Reese is sent to protect her by her future son's orders. Even then, she still has doubts about herself when Kyle tells her about the amazing things John told about her, until Kyle and herself are on the last legs on their life and she manages to crush the T-800. This action allows Sarah to commit herself to raise her only son into the man he was in the future.
  • While she Took a Level in Badass, she clearly did have problems with her communication skills, and often tried to date military personnel so they can teach something useful to John, not giving her son the affection he desperately needed, which was observed by the T-800. While initially distrustful towards the reprogrammed T-800 who is under future John's orders to protect his younger self (and nearly tries to destroy his CPU), she learns to trust the machine when he proves to be a valuable ally and is visibly disheartened when he has to be destroyed to prevent Skynet's creation and Judgment Day while finally hugging her son.
  • Happens again between the destruction of the T-1000 and Cyberdyne Systems' program to recreate the neural net processer that would spawn Skynet and the events of Dark Fate. In 1998, finally convinced that they had successfully averted the Bad Future that John was being prepared for, she is almost back to her old self, being relaxed and even cheerful while just enjoying time with her son. Then a new T-800 shows up out of nowhere and guns John down right in front of her, leading her to become the bitter, alcoholic cynic who has nothing left to live for than destroying Terminators whenever and wherever they appear who meets Dani and Grace in Mexico City.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Enrique has been looking after some stuff for her. Said stuff is an utterly ridiculous number of guns, including large amounts of assault rifles, several machine guns, a grenade launcher, and a fucking minigun.
  • By Dark Fate, she still carries heavy weaponry around in her cars and puts a lot of effort into avoiding detection.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Invoked Trope. Sarah is right about the Killer Robots from the future, but she's still become nuts by the time of Terminator 2.
• Damsel in Distress: The first film centered around Kyle going back to protect her from the T-800.
• Dark Action Girl: She can kick a major amount of ass, but it doesn't come without a lot of psychological scarring. Her time in a mental hospital did her no favors. Further, Cameron wrote the hospital escape scene to avert the Faux Action Girl trope—if anything, the Terminator's arrival was little more than a Redundant Rescue, as Sarah was home free when he showed up.
• Death of Personality: The warmhearted, gentle, sweet and kind Sarah Connor of 1984 and the cold, violent, cruel and cynical Sarah Connor of 1994 are as different as night and day, simply because they are *not* the same person; the former’s heart *did* actually die in the computer factory with her beloved Kyle Reese that fateful evening. Even James Cameron’s original 1983 screenplay-treatment (and the novelization based off it) stated that the woman looking sadly into the windswept deserts of Mexico in her jeep’s driver-seat was not the soft, helpless & dependent Sarah Connor, but a strong, determined & independent survivor. Therefore “In a way, The Terminator *did* succeed in killing her.”
• Determinator: She embraces her inner Determinator in the climax of the first movie, and practically becomes a Terminator in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, to the point she's halfway to shooting a defenceless, wounded man in front of his wife and children for something he hasn't actually done yet. Even after that, she's still perfectly capable of firing a 12-gauge shotgun repeatedly after minutes earlier having an inch-thick metal spike rammed straight through her shoulder. In fact, if she hadn't run out of ammo, she would have destroyed the T-1000 herself, without the T-800's help.
• Fantastic Racism: She develops this in regards to Terminators in general. In the first film, the first T-800 was sent to kill her, and also went out of his way to murder innocent people, including her friends and mother, along the way. After this incident, she immediately freaks out when she sees an identical T-800 - not knowing it was reprogrammed by future John to protect his past self - and was completely distrustful of him, to the point of nearly destroying his CPU. She eventually grew to trust him around John and was hesitant in destroying him to prevent SkyNet for good. Dark Fate unfortunately makes this stick when another T-800 kills John in front of her, and her hatred of "Carl" is very justified.
• Final Girl: She's the last remaining "Sarah Connor" in Los Angeles by the end of the first movie.
• Gold Digger: Subverted Trope. In the second film... sort-of. John says Sarah would "shack up with" any guy who looked like he had something worthwhile to teach John so that he'd grow up to be the competent leader she knew he was destined to be. However, he also says that Sarah would usually try and get her new man on board with the whole Screw Destiny plan, only for them to think she's crazy and dump her. So yeah, she used a lot of guys, but under the circumstances, she still tried not to be abusive and wasn't doing it for selfish reasons.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Played Straight. The director wanted to play with the audience's sympathies for her. Even though they already know that she's right about the Bad Future and the machine uprising, that hasn't made her the most sane person in the last nine years. It doesn't get better for her, even by her twilight years.
• Good Is Not Nice: From the second film onwards. She can be quite ruthless when she wants to be, but she is fighting to save humanity overall.
• Hair Color Dissonance: Linda Hamilton's portrayal depicts her having dirty blonde hair, while Emilia Clarke's has dark brown.
• Her Heart Will Go On: At the end of the first movie, providing a popularizing template for the "left with child" version. It's actually a Foregone Conclusion; before she cuts him off, Kyle Reese tells her that the father of her son and future Rebel Leader John Connor dies, but that she goes on to train John to fight back against the machines. It later turns out that Kyle is John's father; he and Sarah were only together briefly before he's killed protecting her, but she obviously cares deeply for him and she swiftly avenges him by destroying the Terminator herself. The movie ends with a pregnant Sarah debating whether to tell John that Kyle is his father; she knows the future is going to be rough for humanity but also that she can guarantee their victory over Skynet.
• He Who Fights Monsters: She practically became a Terminator herself, right down to her enemy's musical motif and choice of sunglasses, when she tried to murder Miles Dyson in order to prevent Skynet's creation.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: She's wanted in the United States as a violent anti-technology terrorist, with more than enough crimes on her rap sheet to sentence her to life imprisonment. What almost no one realizes is that Sarah's motives, however insane they may sound, are completely justified.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: In the second film. While she is prone to angry outbursts and paranoid, she truly does love John, not just because of the role he plays in the future, but also because he's her son.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Decades of fighting Terminators and living as a wanted criminal have taken their toll on Sarah, leaving her a very bitter woman who still fights to protect humanity at any cost. This is on top of her having to grieve for her son John, who was murdered in 1998.
• Lady Drunk: By the time Dark Fate rolls around, she's turned to copious amounts of drinking in order to deal with her issues.
• The Load: In the first movie, she starts off as a relatively airheaded fast food waitress. She is forced to overcome this after Kyle is gravely wounded.
• Logical Weakness: Despite her impressive array of combat skills, she is still only human. By Dark Fate she defaults to providing ranged support for Grace and Carl and only intervening when necessary.
• Mama Bear: She'll do anything to protect John, almost to the point of being a Knight Templar Parent.
• Madonna Archetype: With her son being the Messianic Archetype.
• A Match Made in Stockholm: Averted, but implied that other people believe she's playing the trope straight, particularly Dr. Silberman. Justified in that, after being kidnapped by a "loon" spouting ridiculous stories about killer robots, Sarah herself has become an anti-technology terrorist that blows up places that build advanced computers. Even after the police come to try and get her to make a statement against the Terminator, from their point of view, later that same night, the same guy busts her out of the institution and, days later, she's joined forces with the guy to assault a Cyberdyne building.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • When her best friend/roommate Ginger and her boyfriend were killed by the Terminator in their apartment.
  • Silently after the attempted hit on Dyson. Exacerbated by the fact that not only had she taken on a dimmer view on human life than the Terminator she was traveling with, but had adopted the MO of the Terminator that first tried to kill her. She almost killed a father in front of his wife and kid, something that hits her close to home after losing Reese and almost losing John.
• Never Mess with Granny: She's well past 60 in Terminator: Dark Fate, and she still packs heavy weapons just in case.
• Oh, Crap!: Two notable examples in the second film. She gets a very subtle one when she's shown pictures of the new T-800 but she hides her reaction to it from the asylum orderlies. She gets a big one when the T-800 shows up during her escape from the hospital.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Twice in as many movies:
  • Judgement Day solidified her Character Development into a self-sufficient Action Girl who- though somewhat unhinged- is capable of outwitting and overpowering her captors, and is well on her way to making good her escape... Until the sight of a T-800 strolling out of an elevator knocks her off her feet and sends her screaming back in the other direction, no less the helpless girl she was in the previous movie.
  • In Dark Fate she vows never to call Carl, the T-800 that killed John by name, so disgusted is she by his actions. So when she calls out to the badly damaged Carl by name as Rev-9 chokes the life out of Dani, begging him to save her, it's an indication of how things are moments away from going to hell. Again.
• Outliving One's Offspring: In Dark Fate, she watches "Carl" shoot John dead right in front of her eyes.
• Parental Abandonment:
  • Has a Disappeared Dad in the first film and her mother was killed by the T-800.
  • She herself is a Missing Mom to John most of his life, with her being locked in a mental asylum and all.
• Pink Means Feminine: Spends most of the first film wearing pink clothes (both her waitress uniform and her main outfit).
• The Protagonist: Of the first two films. Kyle and the second T-800 are The Hero of the first and second films respectively, but she has about as much screen time (and certainly more dialogue than the latter), and the story is largely told from her viewpoint.
• Sanity Slippage: A big part of her character arc in Terminator 2. She's already mentally a mess by the beginning of the second film and progressively gets even worse. The introduction of a new T-800 physically identical to the one that tried to murder her and killed her lover coupled with the realization that Judgment Day is drawing closer cause her to start losing it, culminating in a particularly bad nightmare that causes her to nearly murder Miles Dyson in front of his wife and young son. Fortunately she stops just short of it after realizing what she's doing.
• Screw Destiny: Is willing to commit cold-blooded murder to protect her son and stop Judgment Day. Bonus points for providing the trope image itself.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: In the second film as a result of having lost her paramour to a cyborg that was hunting her down with the intent to kill her.
• Someone to Remember Him By: Kyle was killed shortly after they slept together which is how she got pregnant with John.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In the original continuity, Sarah Connor died of cancer after the events of the second movie, with her son talking about it. After all but first two movies were made non-canon, Dark Fate killed off John Connor instead with Sarah coming back.
• Take the Wheel: Is made to do this in both the first and second movie.
• Tank-Top Tomboy: In the epilogue of the first movie, and then throughout the second movie, after she Takes a Level in Badass.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: "You're terminated, fucker!" Also a Pre-Mortem One-Liner and Precision F-Strike.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Despite her being a Combat Pragmatist, she's never taken the life of a human being. The one time she becomes a "terminator" to execute someone she thinks is the reason SkyNet exists, she can't bring herself to be an unemotional killer.
• Time-Travel Romance: One where the romance has a good deal of plot significance.
• Time-Travel Tense Trouble: Sarah has a problem with Reese telling her of all the things she hasn't done yet.
• Took a Level in Badass: During the events between the first and second movie. It's deconstructed as it lands her in a mental hospital, and Sarah later admits that she's been a terrible mother to John.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Mentally stable mother-of-the-year she is not. By the time of Dark Fate, she's devoid of any kindness whatsoever and treats even her closest allies like dirt.
• Took a Level in Kindness: She regains a lot of her humanity by the end of the second film, and becomes a better mother to John in the process.
• Tsundere: In Judgment Day, while it's clear she deeply cares about John, her parenting skills aren't exactly there. In Dark Fate, she willingly chooses to help Dani because she reminded her of herself in Sarah's early years.
• Two First Names: Her last name can be traditionally used as a given name.
• Ungrateful Bitch: Instead of hugging her own son and thanking him, she just checked if John was hurt and scolds him for trying to rescue her.
  Sarah: You cannot risk yourself, even for me. You're too important! Do you understand?
  (John begins to cry. Sarah shakes her head in disappointment.)
  John: I had to get you out of that place. I'm sorry!
  Sarah: I don't need your help. I can take care of myself.
• Vocal Evolution: Linda Hamilton gives her a softer voice in the first movie displaying her Shrinking Violet innocence. In the sequel, she gives her a more assertive and commanding voice to fit her Action Mom status.
• Wrongfully Committed: At the beginning of the second movie, she is introduced being interrogated in a mental ward, having spent years in the mental facility after failing to convince the public of the impending judgement day (from the first movie) and attempting to bomb a computer factory to stop the apocalypse all by herself.
• You Killed My Father:
  • In the first film the T-800 killed Sarah's mother trying to find Sarah.
  • Then, in a more impactful way for her, another T-800 kills John in Terminator: Dark Fate. Cue I'll Kill You!.

Kyle Reese

Sergeant Kyle Reese, Tech-Com DN38416

"Come with me if you want to live."

Played by: Michael Biehn

Dubbed by: Patrick Poivey (European French), Moises Palacios (LatAm Spanish, The Terminator original dub), Rafael Rivera (LatAm Spanish, The Terminator redub)

Appears in: The Terminator | Terminator 2: Judgment Day ^note Deleted scene, featured in the Special Edition

A resistance soldier in the year 2029, serving under the orders of John Connor. He was sent back in time to the year 1984 to protect John's mother Sarah from a T-800 Terminator. He is revealed to be the father of John, through the result of a predestination paradox.

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• Backup from Otherworld: Appears to Sarah in a dream, warning her that the Terminators are now after John in the Director's Cut of the second movie.
• Badass Longcoat: Justified, since he needs that coat to hide his sawed-off Ithaca 37.
• Badass Normal: Makes his fight against an unstoppable killing machine much more badass.
• Bodyguard Crush: Kyle's attraction to Sarah is what conceives John Connor in the first place.
• The Cameo: His one scene in the extended cut of the second film.
• Child Soldier: He was born into a world with killbots attempting to destroy humanity, so yeah.
• Come with Me If You Want to Live: Trope Namer. It's the first thing he says to Sarah Connor after the Terminator attacks her, and it's the only reason she trusts him enough to escape with him.
• Covered with Scars: Kyle's Naked on Arrival scene shows that he sports several scars, terstimony of his rough life in the future war.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: A more indirect example. In the first Terminator movie, Kyle has been aggressively warning to Dr. Silberman about any existence of robotic Terminators from the future. Later in the sequel Judgement Day, the latter then gets to witness those two Terminators in the second movie by himself, more so with the T-1000 (as evidenced by a certain Jaw Drop).
• Dark and Troubled Past: Hoo boy… Growing up in a Bad Future like he did would make anyone feel sorry for you. His childhood involved loading up dead human bodies in prison camps while starving and struggling just to stay alive. That is until John Connor showed up.
• Dead Person Conversation: With Sarah in the second film.
• Decoy Protagonist: Of the franchise. He is The Hero of the first film, but Sarah is the true protagonist, and Reese dies before Sarah destroys the Terminator in the climax.
• Determinator: He will not allow Sarah to die, no matter what. Not just because it's his mission, but because he loves her. This includes fighting the Terminator in melee combat, while he's dying from a bullet wound.
• Dies Wide Open: Has his eyes fully open after being killed.
• Disappeared Dad: He is this to John Connor, having died before his son was born.
• Drives Like Crazy: Without a doubt. Justified in that he learnt to drive After the End. He also instinctively drives cars at night without the headlights on, as having lights on in the future would draw Aerial Hunter-Killers.
• Experienced Protagonist: Zig-Zagged. He's got plenty of experience fighting Terminators, but not with 1980s weaponry. When Sarah asks if he can stop the Terminator, Reese answers he's unsure he has the necessary firepower.
• Future Badass: He became a soldier and learned how to deal with the Machines in the Bad Future he comes from, which is immensely useful against the T-800 in 1984.
• Gaia's Lament: A deleted scene would have had Kyle crying when he saw how beautiful the world used to be.
• Glorified Sperm Donor: Played with. He dies before the birth of his son, without even knowing that Sarah was pregnant. But as he's from the future, he was close friends with John Connor in his own timeline and knew him quite well, despite never knowing he is actually his son.
• The Hero: Reese is not The Protagonist of the first film (that's Sarah), but his efforts to protect her and battle the Terminator mean he qualifies as the hero of the narrative overall.
• The Hero Dies: He does not survive the final battle with the Terminator.
• Heroes Love Dogs: In both the future and the present, he's seen petting dogs. This makes sense, as dogs are used to spot Terminators, so he knows how to form a bond with them.
• Heroic Sacrifice: The bomb he uses to bifurcate the Terminator is the same bomb that kills him in the end.
• Incredibly Obvious Tail: He's very clumsy when tailing Sarah. Justified, as he hasn't exactly operated in a normal human society before, and there's no indication he has any real training in that field. Sarah is also on high alert due to just learning of the "Phonebook Killer."
• Indy Ploy: Everything he does. He's up against an unstoppable robot killer with nothing but a shotgun (and later, some pipe bombs), so he doesn't have any grand battle plan.
• I Will Only Slow You Down: He tries this, collapsing from his gunshot wound after Sarah Connor has dragged him into the factory. By this time in the movie Sarah has Taken A Level In Badass, so she isn't buying it.
  Sarah: Move it, Reese! On your feet soldier! ON YOUR FEET!
• The Kindnapper: He kidnaps Sarah Connor to save her from the T-800 sent to kill her.
• Last-Name Basis: He's mostly referred to by his surname. Sarah asks if he has a first name a little over halfway through the movie.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:
  • Reese doesn't survive the first film. This is a major point in the sequel, as watching him die has left Sarah utterly traumatised.
  • He's the father of John Connor. The other films have made no attempt to keep this a secret.
• Love Before First Sight: Fell in love with Sarah after seeing her picture.
• MacGyvering: Makes pipe bombs out of mothballs and ammonia.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Sarah is shocked to find Kyle was shot by the Terminator during their escape from the police station. Reese, no stranger to pain or war wounds, is almost bemused by her concern as it didn't hit anything important. It's a telling reflection of how different their lives have been.
• Mr. Fanservice: In the first movie. He arrives in 1984 naked showing his athletic body, he wears mostly short-sleeved T-shirts and has some number of Shirtless Scenes. Michael Biehn was in good shape back then.
• Naked on Arrival: As per Terminator rules, you have to be naked when traveling through time.
• No Place for Me There: A deleted scene has him breaking down in tears as he laments that he doesn't belong in the world of 1984, which to him feels like paradise compared to the hellhole future he comes from. And knowing it was all doomed just made it worse.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Justified when he gets shot by the Terminator while escaping from the police station, but manages to keep driving until their car runs out of gas. Later, he and Sarah hide under a bridge and when she finds out he's shot, he dismisses the need for medical attention and says it's "not bad." Averted hard when he's shot again later on, as this one is far more serious as it slowly saps his strength and contributes to his death later.
• Positive Friend Influence: He made Sarah a much tougher, but still fair woman than what she was before (albeit at the cost of her own sanity).
• Product Placement: The film would like to let the viewers know that his shoes are made by Nike.
• Rescue Introduction: He introduce himself to Sarah by extricating her from Tech Noir just as the T-800 closes in for the kill.
• Retgone: It's confirmed by the director of Dark Fate that Kyle doesn't exist in the new timeline created by John and Sarah. It's implied that the Judgement Day caused by Skynet is responsible for getting his parents together, so without it, he simply doesn't exist. In a way, John and Sarah sacrificed him to kill Skynet.
• Sawed-Off Shotgun: Justified. He steals a police shotgun early in the film and saws it down so that he can hide it under a longcoat.
• Scannable Man: Got his tattoo in a SkyNet work camp.
• Sensory Overload: In flashbacks, it's shown that the future Kyle is from is blasted and barren, with most of humanity occupying cramped and overcrowded tunnels. In a deleted scene, he tears up and tells Sarah that the sight of a forest, with all its greenery and plant life, is so beautiful it hurts to look at.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Undoubtedly so, given that he was in a SkyNet work camp complete with a tattoo before he was liberated by John Connor and afterward spent all of his time either fighting against SkyNet's machines or hiding from them.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Uses an Ithaca 37 shotgun with an extended tube magazine for the first half of the original film until the cops catch up to him and arrest him.
• Slave Brand: He has a barcode on his arm that was laser-burned from a robot concentration camp.
• Staircase Tumble: Falls down a metal staircase after blowing up the T-800's endoskeleton, which (combined with shrapnel from the bomb and blood loss from a bullet wound) kills him.
• Supporting Protagonist: He does have established characterization and a backstory about himself coming from the Bad Future fighting for La Résistance, but the film is mostly Sarah's story about her going from a timid woman to an empowered and strong mother of a great resistance leader told from his viewpoint.
• Supernaturally Young Parent: Thanks to the Stable Time Loop, his going back in time and sleeping with Sarah resulted in John—meaning he's younger than his son.
• Time-Travel Romance: One where the romance has a good deal of plot significance.
• Trauma Button: Kyle gets triggered of painful war memories when he sees heavy equipment at work while he's in a construction site, since it reminds him heavily of the killer machines Skynet built to wipe out the dwindling numbers of humans left.
• Tragic Time Traveler: He travels back in time per orders of the resistance in order to protect Sarah Connor and prevent the Terminator from... well, terminating her, ensuring a decisive victory for Skynet. He eventually does save her, but not before he's arrested and made to look insane for it, and also die at the hands of the Terminator himself.
• Two First Names: His last name is commonly used as a given name.
• Unwitting Pawn:
  • To some extent John Connor deliberately encourages Kyle to fall in love with his mother by regaling him with stories and giving him her picture. And then he has to send his own father back in time to certain doom, just to make sure he would exist to save the world. Reese never knew his true role in the bigger picture, never realizing he was fighting for his own son.
  • Subverted in that Kyle volunteers because he wants to meet the legendary Sarah Connor and would die for John without hesitation. Both of which he ends up doing in the end. Regardless if how actively manipulative John is of his father, it must have been heartbreaking for him.
• Wake Up Fighting: He's shown drawing his shotgun the moment he wakes up.
• With My Hands Tied: Averted; he knocks out a policeman with his hands cuffed behind his back, and apparently takes off the cuffs that way too, using the keys on the policeman's belt.
• You Have to Believe Me!: Played for Drama when he loses his patience at Silberman and starts Suddenly Shouting and Spiking the Camera.
• You Can't Go Home Again: A time travel example. Kyle mentions when interviewed by the police that his time travel was a one way trip with no possibility of return, The Resistance blew up the facility housing the time machine once he went through to ensure no more surprises. Kyle's stuck in the past indefinitely. The main disadvantage for time travel to Kyle is that while he's still a soldier, he doesn't have access to plasma firearms and other possible technological innovations the human Resistance made to use against Skynet's Terminators.
• You Shall Not Pass!: He blows up the endoskeleton in his last action and tries to jump to safety, but to no avail. At this point Kyle is likely already mortally wounded.
• Zipping Up the Bodybag: Barring a dream sequence in the second film, this is the last we ever see of him in the original series.

Dr. Peter Silberman

Dr. Peter Silberman

"In technical terminology: he's a loon."

Played by: Earl Boen

Dubbed by: Sady Rebbot (European French, The Terminator), Jean-Pierre Delage (European French, Terminator 2)

Appears in: The Terminator | Terminator 2: Judgment Day | Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

A psychologist who worked for the state of California and with the Los Angeles Police Department. He thought nothing of the so-called "delusions" shared by Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor other than being able to make a career from them being under his care.

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• Adaptation Name Change: In Randall Frakes' Novelization of Terminator 2, his first name is Leonard. However, this is probably a mistake on Frakes' part, as he correctly gives him the first name Peter earlier in the book.
• Agent Scully: Even more so in T2, till he sees the T-1000 walk through the barred door. Though he leaves the police station just as the Terminator walks in and is not witness to the sheer carnage that occurs next.
• All Abusers Are Male: In Judgement Day, it's revealed that he's the head of the Pescadero State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, and all of the patients that were shown there are female (including Sarah).
• Ambiguously Gay: Possibly. Randall Frakes and William Wisher's novelization of the first movie has him "feeling aggressive" as he leaves the police station and hoping that someone named Douglas is waiting for him at home. This seems to imply that he is feeling aggressive sexually and that Douglas is his boyfriend. Despite there being a character named Douglas in T2, though, Frakes' own novelization of that film does not imply anything between Silberman and the orderly. Either Douglas the orderly isn't the same Douglas mentioned in the first book, or Frakes decided not to make Silberman gay... or the way he and Wisher worded Silberman's inner thoughts in the first book was just weird.
• Ascended Extra: He only has a minor role in the middle of the first movie where he diagnoses Reese as a lunatic, then leaves the police station moments before the T-800 massacres everyone. He has a much bigger role in the second film, where the mental institution he works at plays a plot critical role in the first two acts.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: His professional behavior covers up his truly careless attitude towards others (not just his patients or clients).
• Butt-Monkey: He gets a whole lot of bad shit happening to him throughout the franchise after he gets away untouched by the events of the first film. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
  • He is brutalized by Sarah on Judgement Day (mentions she stabbed him in the knee some time before the film's events, gets his arm shattered and is taken as a hostage when Sarah breaks out).
  • In his cameo on Rise Of The Machines he is still so traumatized by what he saw that he gets a Thousand-Yard Stare when he mentions it and the moment he sees another T-800 he runs for the hills and it's implied he gets a bad case of death by nuke.
  • He makes a guest appearance in The Sarah Connor Chronicles to showcase he's developed a really bad case of Terminator-related paranoia in the meanwhile and he ends it being tossed in the loony bin (and in Pescadero, no less) after trying to hurt the Connors.
  • He gets briefly mentioned in Dark Fate, but only to say that he's now dead.
• Deadpan Snarker: Mocks Reese in a very straight, clinical way; he remarks that Skynet is attempting some kind of retroactive abortion and wonders why Reese didn't bring ray guns from the future with him.
• Devil in Plain Sight: Even as a less-than-intense example, still, his attitude as a criminal psychologist, especially in front of perceivably insane people like Sarah, is significantly unethical when compared to his more sophisticated style while he's working as such.
• Dr. Jerk:
  • Highlighted in his nonchalant behavior towards a clearly distraught Sarah in the first film. The second film does not alter this assessment.
  • Also highlighted in the fact that he plans on making his career on Kyle Reese in the first film—something he actually does before the second film. Our first scene with him is showing off his prize patient like a zoo animal.
  • In the Directors Cut of T2 it is strongly implied that he condones and commands the orderlies to physically abuse Sarah, such as beating her until she takes her medication, though it is unclear if all his patients are mistreated this way or if he is just vindictive towards Sarah for how she has been treating him (e.g. stabbing him in the knee), but the fact that the orderlies do it without question (and that Sarah is visibly intimidated by them) doesn't speak well of him. This puts her belief that she had been promised visits from her son if her behaviour improved in a darker light- it's possible he was just stringing her along and never intended to let her see him even if she did genuinely improve.
• Fatal Flaw: Pride, much more so while he's doing his job as a criminal psychologist, which led to his Humiliation Conga in Judgement Day.
• Gentleman and a Scholar: Highly inverted. Personality-wise, he's only a "gentleman" externally and never really was one internally.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: In a deleted scene, he is last seen being carted off to the nuthouse ranting and raving about how Sarah was right.
• Hate Sink: It's pretty evident that this guy is meant to be portrayed as a rather careless psychologist who seems to be a lot more soulless than any of the actual Terminators.
• Heroic BSoD: Whilst "hero" is a stretch, Silberman does believe what he is doing is for Sarah's own good, which makes seeing the T-800 and T-1000 in action all the more horrifying to him.
• Holier Than Thou: He believes that he's much saner than any of his patients or clients, which is heavily supported by his stuck-up personality.
• Insufferable Genius: Because of his haughty personality while he's doing his job, it's no surprise that he's a considerable candidate for this trope.
• Irony: His profession is being a criminal psychologist, which is meant to diagnose the behavior of a criminal, and, if ever needed, help them lose their insanity from committing any legal crime, yet his approach in doing his job seems to be anything but rational, intrinsically speaking, and that he himself has apparently lost his own mind after he witnesses both of the Terminators in Judgement Day.
• Jaw Drop: After he sees a cop walk through a steel bar door.
• Jerk Ass Has A Point: Dr. Silberman while being incredibly mean-spirited to both Kyle and Sarah brings up a very good point, there is no direct evidence that the Terminator is anything more than a man and more importantly that Reese isn't just making it up or delusional. The Terminator from any angle looks like a normal human, and there isn't any witnesses that can attest to its appearance. While the rules of time travel are laid bare and is in fact real, it is also very inconvenient with it leaving little to no trace of the fact that the Terminator and Kyle come from the future.
  Dr. Silberman: See how brilliant this part is? How it doesn't require a shred of proof? I mean, most paranoid delusions are intricate, but this is brilliant!
• Lack of Empathy: The way he interacts with his patients (most notably, both Kyle and Sarah) has him behaving like a smug rather than having genuine concern for them. Even his interaction with Kate from Rise of the Machines felt less-than-sincere on his own end (further proven when he ran away immediately after seeing the T-850 on the scene instead of staying right beside her during the cemetery shootout).
• Meaningful Name: Even though it's rarely mentioned in the franchise, his first name "Peter" means "rock" or "stone", which fits his rather stone-cold personality in front of others.
• Missed Him by That Much: In the first movie he leaves the police station as the T-800 arrives, he happens to be looking at his pager right as the Terminator walks past him.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: He and the other hospital staff try to keep Sarah locked up because (in addition to being a cash cow for the doctor), they feel she's an Ax-Crazy paranoid maniac because she thinks Killer Robots are out to get her and her son. They happen to be right about her state of mind, except for the bit where she's correct about all of that.
• Scully Syndrome: Downplayed example. He personally sees the T-1000 attacking the Connors and the T-800 in Terminator 2 (a moment in which, in short order, the T-1000 goes through a barred door, is shot point-blank in the face with a shotgun and doesn't drops dead, and turns its hands into massive crowbars to pry an elevator door open), and by the time he reappears in Rise of the Machines to have a talk with Kate, he tries to dismiss that as a form of hallucination (even if he gets a Thousand-Yard Stare when he recalls it), and implies that he had to see other psychiatrists to help him get over it. He also runs the hell away from being with her when he sees the T-850.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: It is mentioned he died sometime prior to the events of Dark Fate.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Already not the most sympathetic human character in the first film, he comes across as a bigger jerkass in Judgment Day, in which he's strongly implied to be abusive towards Sarah.
• Turn the Other Cheek: Even after years of having to deal with Sarah's repeated escape attempts, insults, and physical attacks, he never once gets mad at her, shout at her, or even hold any of it against her. If Dr. Silberman is anything, he's a paragon of patience. Subverted in the Directors Cut where it is shown that the orderlies brutally mistreat and sexually assault her, and Silberman is implied to not only know about but actually encourage at least some of it because he simply doesn't like her.

Ed Traxler

Detective Lieutenant Edward "Ed" Traxler

"I can hear it now. He's going be called the goddamned 'Phone Book Killer'."

Played by: Paul Winfield

Dubbed by: Jean-Claude Michel (European French)

Appears in: The Terminator

An honest, hard-working police officer from the Central Division of the LAPD. He is in charge of investigating a series of 'phone book killings' taking place across town and targeting women named "Sarah Connor".

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• Da Chief: Unusually for the trope, he's very calm and clear-headed. And he does everything he can to protect Sarah.
• Deadpan Snarker: He has quite a few moments.
  Traxler: [pulls of glasses] You know, these work.
• Decoy Protagonist: In the first act, he seemingly fulfills the role of the tritagonist of the film as the police detective investigating the killings made by the Terminator and trying to warn Sarah for her own protection (the deleted scenes that featured mostly his scenes further helps establishing him to be this). However, after bringing in Sarah and Kyle to the station, his arc ends with the Terminator massacring everyone in his station and fatally wounding him as Sarah and Kyle escapes.
• Fat and Skinny: The fat part to skinny Hal.
• Good Is Impotent: He averts Police Are Useless in that he's very capable and follows the right protocol in protecting Sarah, figuring out she is next on the list, trying to reach her, sending uniformed officers to her home and giving her advice on what to do until police can get to her. While it doesn't end up doing much good, that's only because he's up against a being he and the other cops could have no way of stopping rather than any incompetence on his part.
• More Dakka: He has a sidearm, but sees how the T-800 seems to be impervious to handgun bullets as it rampages through the police station, so he grabs a M16 carbine hoping it can work better. It's not any bit more effective and he ends up dead, if less immediately than Vukovich.
• Multiple Gunshot Death: Gets a full burst of assault rifle fire to the torso during the Terminator's rampage on the police station. Depending on the cut, either he (by implication) died nearly instantly or lives long enough for Kyle and Sarah to find him, tell them that they were right, and give them his personal revolver before passing away.
• Nice Guy: He's a polite and kind man who tries to help Sarah through a terribly traumatic experience.
• Oh, Crap!: When he realizes the first two of the T-800’s victims are both named Sarah Connor.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • As soon as he gets the report of two women named "Sarah Connor" getting killed within hours of each other, he immediately deduces that they're dealing with a pattern Serial Killer. Traxler then tries to contact the remaining Sarah, and when that fails, puts out a news bulletin so that Sarah will call them. As soon as she does, he gives very clear instructions to not leave the public night club until he arrives.
  • While the others are making fun of Reese, he's quite frightened by the possibility that Reese isn't lying or crazy. He even comes to believe Reese in a deleted scene when he's dying, telling him to protect Sarah and giving him his revolver.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: He figures out quickly that the Terminator is after Sarah and knows it's extremely dangerous but thinks it's merely an unusually strong and tough but still human killer who is killing simply random targets rather than anything else.
• Sacrificial Lion: He plays a pivotal part in tracking down the Terminator (whom he thinks to be a human psychopathic serial killer) and protecting Sarah from him, which makes it hit harder when the Terminator ambushes his station and he himself gets fatally wounded about halfway through the film.
• Skeptic No Longer: His personal sub-plot revolves around him starting off believing that the man walking around on a killing spree is just some crazy and said conviction becoming increasingly shaken, especially with how convincing Reese's insane story seems to be. Many of the missing scenes expand on it, including him meeting Reese and Sarah as he's dying and using his last moments to tell them they were right and handing over his sidearm to Reese.
• Supporting Protagonist: In the first act, the actions of Kyle finding Sarah, Sarah herself being stalked and the Terminator hunting Sarah are told from his viewpoint in his scenes, especially in the deleted scenes that features him following the car chase between the Terminator and Sarah and Kyle.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: He knows full well that the Terminator is extremely dangerous and takes the right steps in protecting Sarah from it but think it's simply a very strong and tough but still human serial killer who was just wearing body armor rather than what it actually is, an unstoppable robot.

Hal Vukovich

Detective Sergeant Hal Vukovich

"Come on, Ed. That was loon talk. The guy's a wacko, right?"

Played by: Lance Henriksen

Dubbed by: Joël Martineau (European French)

Appears in: The Terminator

A Los Angeles Police Department officer and Ed Traxler's colleague.

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• Adaptation Name Change: In the unauthorized UK Novelization by Slugs author Shaun Hutson, his first name is given as Jan. Randall Frake and William Wisher''s official novelization correctly identifies him as Hal.
• Deadpan Snarker: He's very sarcastical and polemical.
• Everyone Has Standards: He makes clear that he hates blood-sucking reporters and expects them to give the serial killer (the Terminator) some kind of dumb nickname like "the Phone-Book Killer" by the time the news air. He also reigns in his snark around Sarah, seeing how traumatized she is and trying to reassure her.
• Fat and Skinny: The skinny part to Ed.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Upon seeing a dying Traxler, with whom he engages in Snark-to-Snark Combat throughout the film, Vukovich fires on the Terminator to try and avenge his partner's death. He's also noticeably more soft-spoken and less snarky when talking with Sarah, understanding of how traumatic an experience she's just been through and trying to reassure her that she is now safe.
• Killed Offscreen: His death is never explicitly shown, to the point that Shaun Hutson's unofficial novelization of the movie not only doesn't describe it, but he just simply disappears from the story after stopping to check on the wounded Traxler.
• More Dakka: Like Traxler, he has a sidearm, but an M16 carbine seems to be a better option against the T-800 as it rampages through the police station. It's not.
• Multiple Gunshot Death: Gets a point-blank burst of assault rifle fire and a shotgun blast from the Terminator, offscreen.
• Police Are Useless: Averted. He may be a sarcastic hardass, but he's just as professional as Traxler and tries multiple times to call Sarah and warn her that she is in danger.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: He's by no means a Plucky Comic Relief, but does provide a reasonable amount of levity through his sarcastic quips. Once he dies, the film gets a lot darker.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: Regularly engages in some with Traxler.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: He and Ed freely snark at one another but it's clear they have genuine respect and affection beneath it and Hal is genuinely devastated at Ed's death.

Ginger

Ginger Ventura

Played by: Bess Motta

Dubbed by: Maïk Darah (European French)

Appears in: The Terminator

Sarah Connor's roommate and best friend. She and her boyfriend Matt Buchanan were killed when the Terminator came to their apartment looking for Sarah.

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• '80s Hair: A shining example, especially when she and Sarah primp themselves for some quality time.
• Best Friend: She was Sarah Connor's best friend in the early 1980s.
• Death by Irony: Just a second after Ginger's murder by the Terminator, Sarah calls her and the answering machine says (with Ginger's voice) "Machines need love too"...
• Headphones Equal Isolation: She's rocking out on headphones in full volume making an after-nookie Midnight Snack while Matt is brutally thrown around by the T-800 in the bedroom.
• Ms. Fanservice: She's a very attractive and athletic woman often dressed in clothes that show off her legs. Also, her actress was a professional exercise demonstrator.
• Multiple Gunshot Death: The T-800 shoots her six times with his AMT Hardballer .45 Longslide with Laser Sight, all In the Back, and five of which as she's down and crawling on the floor.
• Murder by Mistake: She's on the brutal receiving end of this by the T-800, due to living in the same apartment as Sarah, the T-800 not having a clear picture of what Sarah looks like and Sarah not being there when the robot crashes in.
• Oh, Crap!: When suddenly seeing her dead boyfriend crashing through a door, followed by a tall and menacing dude with a gun (the T-800) going after her.
• Sacrificial Lamb: She's introduced as the best friend of Sarah, and her death is more impactful than the T-800's previous victims due to being quite likeable and how brutally she is murdered.

Matt

Matt Buchanan

Played by: Rick Rossovich

Dubbed by: Patrick Préjean (European French)

Appears in: The Terminator

A friend of Sarah Connor and Ginger Ventura's boyfriend.

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• Badass Normal: Awoken from bed, with no clothes on, no proper weapons, and no idea what he's actually up against, he still manages to hold out against the not battered Terminator for about as long as Reese does at the end against the more damaged exoskeleton. Remember Matt doesn't have the benefit of being a hardened veteran with some pipe bombs, a metal pipe and life-long experience fighting cyborgs.
• Cat Scare: He's the cause of one when he (apparently intentionally) startles Sarah when she bumps into him while she's leaving her apartment, earning him a smack on the arm.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: On the receiving end of one from the T-800. He tries his best, but is obviously no match for the Killer Robot.
• Determinator: Ironically enough. He gets tossed around like a ragdoll by the Terminator, but gets up several times to continue the fight.
• Full-Frontal Assault: He tries to fight the Terminator off and wears only his underwear doing so, since he had no time to put anything on.
• Improvised Weapon: Tries to hit the T-800 with a lamp. The robot no sells his attacks.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: He launches into a sexual monologue over the phone to Sarah (mistakenly thinking he's talking to Ginger), but seems to be generally well-meaning. Despite his initial embarrassment, he repeats the monologue once Ginger gets on the phone.
• Nerves of Steel: He's half asleep as the Terminator closes in on him, and manages to jump out of the way at the last second when it tries to punch his head in. Even taking into account that he had no clue what he was actually dealing with, not freaking out at some creepy asshole entering your room in the middle of the night shows some serious cojones.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Upon finding out he talked dirty to Sarah on the phone and not to Ginger.
  • Upon seeing a tall and menacing dude (the T-800) enter his room. He quickly gets up and tries to fight him off nonetheless.
• Prank Call: Intended to call Ginger to have phone sex with her, not even announcing himself. Turns out Sarah picks up the phone, laughs and says nothing while he talks about all the kinky things he wants to do to her. Then Sarah decides to answer, much to Matt's embarrassed confusion, and hands the phone over to Ginger.

Sarah's Mother

Mrs. Connor (Sarah's Mother)

Voiced by: ???

Appears in: The Terminator

The mother of Sarah Connor.

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• Dead All Along: When Sarah calls her, she's already been killed by the T-800, which impersonates her on the phone.
• Kill and Replace: She's killed by the T-800 in her cabin in Big Bear, California, and the T-800 imitates her voice on the phone to talk to Sarah, locating her at the Tiki Motel in Los Angeles.
• No Name Given: Her name is never mentioned. Shaunt Hutson's Novelization gives her name as Lillian Connor.
• Satellite Family Member: To her daughter Sarah. Sarah's trust in her ultimately enables the Terminator to find her again.
• Small Role, Big Impact: An extreme example. She gets no lines at all, and the only time she appears onscreen is as a corpse. But she's critical to the plot: by that point in the film, she's the only person Sarah would trust with the knowledge of where she is. Sadly, Sarah doesn't realize she's actually talking to the Terminator, so she herself tells the Terminator how to find her again.

Nancy

Nancy

"You're dead, honey!"

Played by: Shawn Schepps

Dubbed by: Maïk Darah (European French)

Appears in: The Terminator

A co-worker of Sarah Connor at Big Jeff's restaurant.

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• Burger Fool: She works as a waitress in a restaurant, the same as Sarah.
• Deadpan Snarker: Her sense of humor is pretty dry.
  (after witnessing a kid putting ice cream in Sarah's apron) "Look at it this way; in a hundred years, who's gonna care?"
• Gallows Humor: Has no better idea than telling Sarah about the news of another Sarah Connor who just got murdered (by the T-800) and adding "You're dead, honey!".

Pawn Shop Clerk

The Pawn Shop Clerk

"You know your weapons, buddy. Any one of these is ideal for home defense. So, which'll it be?"

Played by: Dick Miller

Dubbed by: Edmond Bernard (European French)

Appears in: The Terminator

The clerk working at the Alamo Sports Shop Guns where the T-800 goes to seek weapons.

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• Arms Dealer: Legitimate Gun Shop Owner variant.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: In reality, very few gun stores keep live ammunition within reach of a customer on the countertop for obvious reasons. Some stores might have crates of ammunition for sales or special deals on the floor, but gun store employees would pull their own sidearms on any customer who grabbed a box of ammo and had a live weapon in their hands at the same time. Not that a mere sidearm would have any hope of intimidating, much less stopping the Terminator.
• Ballistic Discount: The T-800 just takes shotgun ammo that was put in plain view on the counter and loads a Franchi SPAS-12 while the clerk is not looking, then shoots the clerk.
• Cool Old Guy: A man in his 60's who owns a gun shop and he appears to be in good terms with the T-800. That makes his death even more tragic.
• Gun Nut: A surprisingly realistic example. He owns a gunshop and proudly displays a variety of guns, yet he does attempt to make The Terminator fill out background checks and protests when the Terminator begins loading his weapons.
• Innocent Bystander: He gets shot by the T-800, while trying to get the background check forms ready.
• No Name Given: His name is never mentioned. The Novelization gives his name as Rob Garrett, however.
• Oh, Crap!: Has a very brief one before dying when he sees the T-800 pointing the (loaded) SPAS 12 at him.
• Too Dumb to Live: Dies by way of Ballistic Discount. Any other gun shop clerk would have kept the ammo under the desk or at least out of customers' reach.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Terminator uses him as target practice once he acquires all the gun store clerk's best non-plasma weapons.

The Three Punks

The Three Punks

"Nice night for a walk, eh?"

Played by: Bill Paxton (leader), Brian Thompson, Brad Rearden

Appears in: The Terminator

"Fuck you, asshole!"

Three punks who have the misfortune of being the first humans the T-800 Terminator bumps into in 1984.

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• '80s Hair: By virtue of being 1980s punks.
• Ambiguously Gay: Or Ambiguously Bi. Anyway if you pay attention, the punk played by Brian Thompson at one point looks down at the T-800's groin for a second and softly licks his lips.
• And Show It to You: The T-800 kills the second punk by plunging its hand into his chest and ripping his heart out.
• Asshole Victim: Downplayed. They look like the typical 80's aggressive, rude punks who are willing to use their pocket knives at their first chance. Before the Terminator arrival we see them vandalizing a public telescope, so they probably are not the nicest guys around.
• Berserk Button: The blue-haired punk for some reason gets genuinely furious when the Terminator demands their clothes.
• Brick Joke: Of a sort. The T-800 learns "Fuck you, asshole" from them, and uses it to shoo the landlord who complains about the smell in its apartment later on.
• Bullying a Dragon: Granted they have no idea that the naked bodybuilder they insult and open their switchblades before is a Killer Robot...
• Cruel and Unusual Death: One of the punks is killed when the Terminator punches through his chest.
• Color-Coded Characters: The leader has blue hair, his second-in-command has blonde hair and the punk who ends up surrendering his clothes to the T-800 has red eye makeup.
• Deadpan Snarker: Their response to seeing the T-800 coming at them in his birthday suit is to run off as many quips as they can.
• Delinquent Hair: They surely look like they can be up to no good, and the leader especially, since he's the one with the most punkish hairstyle.
• Innocent Bystander: While they surely look like they can be up to no good, they still end up the first victims of the T-800 in horrific fashion.
• Jerkasses: They're pretty quick to mock the T-800 just for being naked in the streets in the middle of the night as well as insult it.
• Mugged for Disguise: They're attacked by the T-800 so it can steal their clothes, as it's Naked on Arrival.
• Naked People Are Funny: They seem to think so given that they decide to make fun of the naked T-800 as soon as they notice him. It doesn't end well for them.
• Named by the Adaptation: In the Randall Frakes' novelization, they're named Johnny, Mark, and Rick.
• No Name Given: Their names are never mentioned.
• Sinister Switchblade: Each one of them carries a switchblade. It's of no use against the T-800.
• Tattooed Crook: The blue-haired punk has a car tire track tattoo.
• The Quincy Punk: They are the typical delinquent guys, making clear that these really are the 80s. Comes with typical hairstyles and street tough mannerisms.
• Uncertain Doom: It is not sure if either the blue-haired leader or the one who ends up giving his clothes to the T-800 get killed or not. The former was merely tossed against a gatekeeper and the scene cuts when the third punk undresses and throws his clothes at the T-800. The second punk meanwhile is dead as a doornail.
• Underestimating Badassery: Despite the T-800 appearing very strong and tough, they still have no reason to assume they won't have the upper hand in a fight: they outman the T-800 by two and have weapons which he obviously doesn't have. Little do they know that they're up against a killer machine from the future.
• The Voiceless: The punk whom the Terminator get the clothes from never utters a word unlike the other two.

Corporal Ferro

Corporal Ferro

Played by: Jean Malahni

Appears in: The Terminator

A human resistance soldier and teammate of Kyle Reese in the year 2029. She dies in Reese's first flashback of the Bad Future.

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• Child Soldiers: According to the novelization she's only 15, though as a consequence of growing up post-Judgement Day she looks older.
• Economy Cast: She was played by Linda Hamilton's stunt double.
• No Name Given: Her name is never pronounced in the film. The only way you would know her name is from the novelization.
• Not Enough to Bury: The HK Tank's plasma cannon fire blows her to bits.
• Red Shirts: She has no characterization and exists just to show how terrifying HK Tanks are.
• La Résistance: She's a soldier of the human resistance against the Machines.
• Too Dumb to Live: She stands up to throw her bomb in a HK Tank's thread, blowing her cover. The machine spots her instantly and blows her to bits with its plasma cannon.

Introduced in Terminator 2: Judgment Day

John Connor

John Connor

"The whole thing goes: The future's not set. There's no fate but what we make for ourselves."

"Skynet, the computer which controlled the machines, sent two Terminators back through time. Their mission: to destroy the leader of the human Resistance... John Connor. My son." — Sarah Connor

Played by: Edward Furlong (preteen in Judgment Day), Dalton Abbot (infant), Michael Edwards (adult in Judgment Day), Jude Collie (preteen body in Dark Fate), Aaron Kunitz (preteen voice in Dark Fate)

Dubbed by: Emmanuel Garijo (European French, Judgment Day), Daisuke Namikawa (Japanese, Judgment Day), Benjamín Rivera (LatAm Spanish, Judgment Day)

Appears in: Terminator 2: Judgment Day | Terminator: Dark Fate

The leader of the human resistance against the Machines in the future, and the son of Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese.

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• AM/FM Characterization: In the second film, he wears a Public Enemy t-shirt and blasts Guns N' Roses on his radio.
• All-Loving Hero: Despite Sarah having raised him to be a resistance leader, throughout the film series John never fails to recognize the value of human life, indeed often putting his own life on the line to try to save people, sometimes who he barely even knows, and ordering the T-800 that protects him not to kill anyone. The fact this is such a consistent and natural part of his character, arguably makes him one of the greatest examples of this type of character in cinema history.
• Arch-Enemy: He is this for Skynet, being the one who convinces the human race to rise up and liberate themselves. Skynet believes that if it can kill John before Judgement Day, then the rebellion will never happen.
• Big Good: Becomes the leader of the human resistance and thus the one responsible for Skynet's defeat. He is also the one who sent Kyle back to protect Sarah.
• Delinquent: He's disobedient to his foster parents, steals money from ATMs, skips school, and hangs out with hooligans. This is him venting his frustrations against everything his mother taught him, which he believes to be a lie.
• Deuteragonist: Of the second film. The Terminator and Sarah share the roles of The Hero and The Protagonist between them in fighting the T-1000, while John has a separate character arc where he slowly learns how to become the leader that he will need to become to defeat Skynet.
• Final First Hug: With the T-800 that protected him.
• Future Badass: This is why Skynet wants him dead. He's badass as a pre-teen, but he takes it up a notch when he becomes leader of The Resistance in the future.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Along with his affinity for computer hacking, a deleted scene of the T-1000 searching his bedroom reveals a soldering iron.
• The Ghost: The first film is about making sure that he will still exist to save humanity, but he never makes an appearance, being in gestation in his mother's womb at the end.
• Heel Realization: When he sics the Terminator on two guys and the Terminator tries to shoot one in the head, John is horrified about what he almost caused. Word of God states that it was this moment which cemented John's heroic nature.
• Heroic Bastard: His parents were never married and his father was killed shortly after he was conceived.
• Honor Before Reason: Will not tolerate the death of even a single innocent human being, even if it means stopping a nuclear holocaust from happening.
• Hope Bringer: As Kyle put it, "He taught us to fight, to storm the wire of the camps, to smash those metal motherfuckers into junk. He turned it around." James Cameron's original intentions for Terminator 2 go even further than this. By teaching the Terminator to be human, he ends the Stable Time Loop and prevents the machine uprising, not just winning the war for humanity but making sure it never happened.
• It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: He initially believes his mother is crazy and that her supposed delusions robbed him of a normal life.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Starts off as a delinquent but does his best to avoid human casualties and genuinely cares about his mother.
• Kid Has a Point: In a Deleted Scene, restored in the special edition, Sarah and John remove the T-800's chip, intending to reprogram him so he can learn human behavior. Sarah has other ideas and tries to smash the chip with a hammer, distrusting the T-800. John stops her, and in the ensuing argument, drops a line that prompts Sarah to give in:
  John: Look, Mom, if I'm ever supposed to be this great military leader, maybe you should start listening to my leadership ideas once in a while. 'Cause if my own mother won't, how do you expect anyone else to?
• Kid with the Leash: Oh, are we all so very glad he made the T-800 take his vow of mercy...
• Laser-Guided Tyke-Bomb: He was raised from birth to defeat Skynet.
• Morality Pet: He tries to teach the Terminator not to kill people, and eventually succeeds.
• Nom de Mom: Reflecting his status as a Heroic Bastard (see above).
• Oh, Crap!: When John first sees the T-800 in the mall, he goes bug-eyed. The novelization explains a bit more: John's mother had showed him news clippings and police video of the Terminator that had chased her. John later stopped believing in Terminators, but he still knew that guy was a cop-killer and psychopath. And now, here he was... coming right at him... with a shotgun.
• Playful Hacker: Gleefully exclaims "Easy money!" whenever he hacks into something.
• Pet the Dog: A few hours after being rescued from the T-1000, the T-800 tries to get John out of town, but the latter asks to stop by a pay phone. He calls his forster parents to warn them that the T-1000 may be headed their way and should probably get out if the house for a while ^note he may tell them that rather than a Killer Robot, the T-1000 is a criminal possing as cop, and considering the crap John had been pulling before the movie begins, they may belive that he pissed off the wrong person who sent a hitman after him. However when John calls the house and Janell answers the phone it's revealed that the T-1000 is impersonating her, and not only did it kill Todd, but Janell and Max, Sarah's dog, as well.
• Posthumous Character: He gets killed by a Terminator in 1998. In the present time of Dark Fate some 20 years+ later, Sarah is still haunted by it, and she gets "For John" messages from her unknown benefactor... who turns out to be the T-800 that killed John, and ultimately dies uttering "For John".
• Rebel Leader: His main plot in the story is to lead the future resistance against Skynet.
• Rebuilt Pedestal: After Sarah's arrest, he concluded that his mother was insane and disregarded all the warnings she had given him. Then the T-800 shows up, and he's willing to risk everything to rescue her from the asylum she's in.
• Stable Time Loop: His existence is this; he was conceived by Kyle Reese, who was sent back in time by his older self to both save his mother and make sure he's conceived in the first place. Terminator: Dark Fate eventually breaks the loop by having him killed by a backup T-800 in 1998.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: He's killed off right at the beginning of Terminator: Dark Fate.
• Two First Names: His last name can traditionally be used as a given name.

Miles Dyson

Dr. Miles Bennett Dyson

"I feel like I'm gonna throw up..."

Played by: Joe Morton

Dubbed by: Patrick Guillemin (European French), Jesse Conde (Latin American Spanish)

Appears in: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

The original inventor of the neural-net processor which would lead to the development of Skynet. He was the man most directly responsible for Judgment Day, although his work was clearly not intended to bring about that.

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• Black and Nerdy: Black and computer wiz.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: He's never mentioned again after he got killed.
• Happily Married: Having a loving wife and family was already implied in the original cut, the special edition features a scene expanding on this.
• Heroic Sacrifice: With his death, he blows up Cyberdyne.
• It's Been Done: Artificial intelligence isn't the most novel idea that's ever been pitched, which means the sacrifice he made only eliminated the competition for whomever would go on to create Legion.
• Multiple Gunshot Death: Standing in between the Connors and a heavily armed SWAT team was an extremely poor idea, and Miles is torn to shreds by the police's fire. He lives just long enough to help the Connors escape Cyberdyne.
• Must Make Amends: Even though it's yet to happen.
• My God, What Have I Done?: His reaction to the Terminator giving all the backstory on the robot war.
• Nice Guy: He cares about his family, wants to try and make things better for humanity, and when he's mortally wounded, he hangs on long enough to make sure that the same SWAT officers who shot him all escape rather than let them get killed with him. That fact that he unwittingly ends up making what will be a horrible, awful mistake is what ends up making him so tragic.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The computer system he created would eventually go on to wage war against humanity.
• Redemption Equals Death: His decision to help the heroes destroy his creation eventually leads to his death.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Rather tragically, Terminator: Dark Fate (and every other continuity that spawned from Judgment Day) rendered his Heroic Sacrifice meaningless in the long run. It only delays Judgment Day.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Miles wanted to make life a little better for humanity. Turns out his invention leads to the demise of billions.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: He's a far cry from the person you'd think would create SkyNet. Indeed he sees only the possible positives of his creation. This may even blind him to the military applications of his invention or to the dangers of removing humans from certain decisions.

Enrique

Enrique Salceda

"Uncle Bob, uh? Okay!"

Played by: Cástulo Guerra

Dubbed by:

Appears in: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

A Guatemalan friend of Sarah Connor who lives in the Mojave desert, guarding her weapons cache in her absence. Sarah, John and the T-800 come at him for the weapons after escaping the Pescadero State Hospital.

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• A Friend in Need: He helps Sarah, John and the T-800, even knowing they're wanted by the police. He's just that loyal a friend to Sarah.
• Hidden Supplies: Has guarded Sarah's hidden arsenal for an unspecified amount of time.
• Nice Guy: He's a pretty friendly guy, he's loyal to Sarah and kindly to John, and he even offers "Uncle Bob" some of his booze to drink, not being aware that he's talking to a machine.
• Old Friend: Sarah befriended him sometime between 1984 and 1995.
• Protect This House: He "welcomes" Sarah, John and the T-800 by pointing his shotgun at them, since they look like strangers who are walking on his home turf. Thankfully, he's quick to recognize Sarah.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: His favorite weapon is a Mossberg 590 shotgun.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In both the original script and the novelization, Enrique and his family are all killed by the T-1000 when it comes to their ranch looking for John Connor.

The Voights

Janelle & Todd Voight

Played by: Jenette Goldstein (Janelle), Xander Berkeley (Todd)

Dubbed by: Régine Teyssot (Janelle, European French), Philippe Peythieu (Todd, European French)

Appear in: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

The foster parents of John Connor while his mother was interned at the Pescadero State Hospital.

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• Abusive Parents: When calling them, John notices something's wrong, since Janelle is "never this nice" to him.
• Asshole Victim: They're guilty of negligence and mistreatment on John, and get murdered by the T-1000. John feels a little sorrow for a few seconds after T-800 breaks the news to him but quickly forgets about them.
• First-Name Basis: John calls them by their first names.
  Todd: John, do what your mother says!
  John: She's not my mother, Todd.
• Hate Sink: Few sympathetic qualities are given to either, especially Todd. The T-1000 itself looks noticeably annoyed at Todd's talking before killing him off.
• Henpecked Husband: Implied with Todd.
  Janelle: Todd!
  Todd: (watching TV) What?
  Janelle: He hasn't cleaned that room of his in a month!
  Todd: Oh it's an emergency, I'll get right on it.
• Hidden Depths: Randall Frakes' Novelization is a lot more sympathetic to the pair than the movie is, revealing they're only the way they are because they're tired of what they see as John's bratty nature, delinquency and general disboedience, and they really do care about him.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Todd ends up impaled in the head by the T-1000's arm, which morphed into a sword.
• Jerkass Has a Point: In Janelle's defense, we only see her getting fed up with John for not listening to her and not doing his chores, and John is a delinquent who rejects her as a replacement mother figure.
• Kill and Replace: The T-1000 killed Janelle at some point, without Todd noticing it, then took her place waiting for a phone call by John. Then he killed Todd.
• Killed Offscreen: The death of Janelle is not seen onscreen, and neither is her corpse. Though the script reveals that the T-1000 killed her while she was in the shower.
• Parental Substitute: Since Sarah Connor has been deemed criminally insane and interned, someone had to take care of John. The Voights likely did it for money.

Tim

Tim

Played by: Danny Cooksey

Dubbed by:

Appears in: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

The teen friend of John Connor in 1995.

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• '80s Hair: His hairstyle is a mullet (it's 1995, but the film was made in 1991, so it's a carryover from the era).
• Blatant Lies: After warning John that a cop (the T-1000) is looking for him when they're at the Sherman Oaks Galleria's arcade, he goes back at the T-1000 and tries giving him a false direction. It doesn't work because the T-1000 has spotted both from afar and goes straight to John, shoving Tim aside no matter what he says.
  [John disappearing out the back door]
  Tim: Hey man! I think I saw that kid you w- HEY!
• Delinquent: He has the same kind of delinquent behavior as John, notably partaking in the latter's robbing of an ATM and uses the money from it later on. He seems to be the kind to skip school just like John.
• Small Role, Big Impact: If he wasn't around to warn John about the "cop" looking for him, the T-1000 would have found John before the T-800 could and assassinated him, succeeding in his mission and ensuring Skynet's victory. This good-for-nothing street hooligan unknowingly saved mankind. And yet...
• What Happened to the Mouse?: After his brush with the T-1000 in the arcade, Tim is never seen or addressed again. He is, metaphorically and quite literally, shoved out of the franchise.

Douglas

Douglas

Played by: Ken Gibbel

Dubbed by: Richard Darbois (European French)

Appears in: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

A staff member at the Pescadero State Hospital where Sarah Connor is detained.

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• Asshole Victim: Nobody bats an eye when Sarah eventually gets the drop on him and breaks his nose, glasses and gives him a well-deserved beatdown.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: According to the Novelization, he's married. No word on what his home life is like, though.
• Fat Bastard: He's chunkier than the other orderlies.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: A pervert Bedlam House warden who abuses his inmates and wears glasses.
• Hate Sink: He's the only staff in the Pescadero State Hospital without any redeeming qualities, taking pleasure in abusing Sarah and licking her face while she's seemingly unconscious. Watching Sarah smash his face in is so satisfying.
• Lecherous Licking: He licks Sarah's face while she's strapped to her bed and sleeping.
• Orderlies are Creeps: He's even the trope's picture.
• Teeth Flying: When Sarah ambushes him, she aims straight at his face with her broom handle and he looses a few teeth as a result.
• Wardens Are Evil: He has a penchant for inmate patient abuse.

Introduced in Terminator: Dark Fate

Dani Ramos

Daniella "Dani" Ramos

"I’m not going to live in fear the rest of my life!"

Played by: Natalia Reyes

Dubbed by: Daniela Labbé Cabrera (European French)

Appears in: Terminator: Dark Fate

"I don’t give a shit about the future! Or that I’m maybe supposed to do something. What matters are the choices we make now."

A young Mexican woman who will play an important role in the future resistance against Legion. For this reason, she is targeted by the Rev-9 Terminator.

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• Action Survivor: Doesn't start out as an Action Girl, but grows into it over the course of the film. By the end she doesn't hesitate to take on the Rev-9 solo.
• Affirmative-Action Legacy: She, a Mexican woman, will become the new leader of the human resistance against the machines now that John Connor has been killed.
• Badass Normal: She's the only unaugmented human in the franchise to fight a (admittedly very weakened) Terminator in hand-to-hand and actually have it on the ropes for a while, whereas the most Kyle Reese could manage in a similar situation was a Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh....
• Big Good: Ends up being this in the new timeline after Skynet is erased from existence and John is killed, leading the resistance to fight against Legion.
• Boyish Short Hair: In the deleted scenes, she has this about a decade or two later.
• Braids of Action: Is shown to wear them in the future.
• Cassandra Truth: Just like Sarah back in her day, Dani finds it impossible to convince anyone outside the main cast that there's a Killer Robot from the future trying to kill her.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: For both Sarah and John respectively:
  • Like Sarah, she was just a normal person whose life was threaten by a Terminator, and eventually makes it her goal to prevent a holocaust kick-started by an A.I. Just like Sarah, she eventually Took a Level in Badass to stop Judgment Day from occurring.
  • Like John, she becomes a powerful resistance figurehead who will eventually defeat Legion as John would for Skynet. Unlike John, she is not a generational leader, but of her current generation whereas John was born to be a leader.
• Delinquent Hair: Has cornrows in the future. Later becomes Boyish Short Hair by the time Grace is an adult a decade or two later in the deleted scenes.
• Future Badass: In the present, she is a young girl who barely knows how to fight. In Grace's flashback of the future, she effortlessly beats down armed attackers barehanded. She grows up to be the leader of the Resistance.
• The Heart: She cares strongly about her family and friends, even of friends she has just met, in contrast to Grace/the T-800 and Sarah, who only care about making sure their protectorate is safe. It's because of this that she is the future leader of the Resistance, because she's a good leader, and she is revealed to be the same type of Hope Bringer that John once was.
• History Repeats: Sarah seems to relate with how she was just a normal person who suddenly found herself being hunted down by a Terminator alongside someone also trying to keep her safe, so it's only fitting that she helps out herself.
  Grace: Why do you care what happens to her?
  Sarah: Because I was her.
• The Illegal: She, a Mexican, is forced to flee across the Mexico/Texas border to get away from the Rev-9. She is briefly arrested and detained by Border Patrol.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Daniel means "God has judged", referencing Judgment Day.
  • Ramos can mean "branch" (specifically "olive branch"). The new future in Dark Fate "branched" out from the original timeline. On the other hand, the "olive branch" definition means Dani is a Hope Bringer for the surviving humans.
• Missing Mom: She lives with her father and brother, but her mother's absence is never explained. Interestingly, this means the closest mother figure she's got is Sarah, who lost her own son.
• Non-Action Guy: Similar to John, she has to rely on the more combat-experienced Sarah and Grace to protect her. While escaping from the ICE facility, she does try to shoot at the Rev-9, but is chewed out for it by the other two women for putting her life in danger, and she gets some training with guns at Carl's place before the climax. The Sequel Hook sets her up to be trained by Sarah.
• Precision F-Strike: "Fuck fate!"
• Screw Destiny: By the end of Dark Fate, she's determined to change her fate so that Judgment Day doesn't happen and Grace doesn't die.
• Spicy Latina: As a beautiful, strong-willed Mexican woman with a fiery temper, Dani checks all the boxes except overt religiousness.
• Took a Level in Badass: Goes from a scared young woman to a bad-ass commander who single-handedly puts together the Resistance against Legion. She also goes from having zero combat skills to fighting the Rev-9 herself in hand-to-hand at the very end of the film, albeit after all her allies have sacrificed themselves to weakened it considerably.

Grace

Grace

"I am human. Just enhanced. You know, increased speed and strength, a microreactor."

Played by: Mackenzie Davis, Stephanie Gil (10 year old)

Dubbed by: Claire Morin (European French), Karla Falcón (Latin American Spanish)

Appears in: Terminator: Dark Fate

"I don’t know how I made it through the next few years. I just tried not to think about it. Then I got lucky. Someone found me. Saved me. And then we started fighting back."

A cybernetically enhanced Super-Soldier from the future (2042, to be precise). She was sent back to protect Dani Ramos from Legion's Rev-9 Terminator.

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• Action Girl: Being the only non-Terminator in the cast who can duke it out with the Rev-9 without being curbstomped, Grace gets numerous opportunities to demonstrate how badass she is.
• Ballistic Discount: Is forced to rob a drugstore at gunpoint to get the meds she needs to keep her enhanced body running.
• The Berserker: Her cybernetic implants have been designed to give her short, powerful bursts of strength and endurance to "terminate" Terminators as quickly as possible, which she demonstrates by thrashing the Rev-9 at the factory (the thing is still too tough to kill, however). This comes at the cost of dangerously straining her.
• Bifauxnen: With her short hair, tall height, muscles and male clothing, she has this effect.
• Blessed with Suck: She was augmented after suffering a fatal wound, gaining superhuman strength and reflexes in the process. Unfortunately she's now dependent on several types of medication just to avoid dying from fatigue.
• Body Horror: She quickly accumulates a number of horrifying wounds that would incapacitate a normal human from pain alone, but they barely slow her down. Also, when her cybernetics begin overtaxing her metabolism, a honeycomb-grid pattern begins forming on her skin from her subdermal armor overheating. In the final battle, she overexerts herself to such an extent that the skin on her arms ruptures in multiple places, revealing the golden subdermal armor underneath.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: Grace has a pretty thick violent streak, getting physical with anyone in sight. Despite this she's fiercely loyal to those she admires, such as Dani and her commanding officers.
• Cyborg: A rare franchise example of the trope being played straight, not being a robot with a flesh cover over an endoskeleton but a human-robot hybrid instead. She's also notable for being the first cyborg in the franchise that was created by the Resistance instead of the resident omnicidal AI. Grace is a born human who has been extensively modified with subdermal armor, cybernetic eyes with integrated targeting matrices, at least some implants to enhance her speed and strength, and a power cell in her abdomen to keep it all running. Present-day doctors that get a look at her insides actually wonder how she's still alive with all that tech crammed between her organs.
• Chain Pain: She's utilizes a heavy chain as an improvised whip and garrote against the Rev-9 in the final battle, to terrifying effect.
• Combat Pragmatist: There's nothing she won't utilize if it helps her in a fight. Tools, car parts, cars, everything is fair game.
• Covered in Scars: Her whole body is covered in a loose network of thin scar lines where she was cut open to implant her cybernetics. They mostly just make her look even more badass.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: As dangerous as her cybernetics make her, they're equally dangerous to her. Grace explains that her metabolism has been rebalanced for short, intense bursts of superhuman combat prowess because you either destroy a Terminator in the first few minutes or it destroys you. Lasting past this point causes her severe health problems that require a cocktail of meds to keep her running lest she slips into a coma.
• Determinator: Heh. But seriously, this woman will not be deterred from her mission by anyone or anything.
• Dies Wide Open: Goes out like this, like Kyle Reese did.
• Disaster Scavengers: Grace was a little girl when Legion's Judgment Day happened, but she managed to survive on her own by scavenging what she needed in the bombed-out ruins of her world. Then Future!Dani found her, rescued her from other scavengers, recruited the whole lot into the resistance and set the events in motion that would shape Grace into the superpowered badass she is in the film.
• Emergency Transformation: Played with, after being seriously injured saving the life of the commander in the future she volunteers for augmentation despite being told she'll live.
• Expy: She's similar to Kyle Reese in that she's an orphan who joined a resistance movement, looks up to a future saviour, has a tattoo, volunteers to go back in time and sacrifices herself to destroy a Terminator. Her first words to Dani are also vaguely similar to Kyle's first words to Sarah. Being the same sex as Dani foreshadows that the future saviour wouldn't be Dani's child, but Dani herself.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Like everyone else, she has to time-travel nude, and takes down multiple cops (who appear to think she's a junkie) before she can get any clothes. She doesn't appear to care.
• Future Badass: The most extreme example in the franchise to date, with her combat prowess being closer to a Terminator's than a human's.
• Going Commando: Whenever she steals clothes, her victims are left in their underwear, so she isn't wearing any.
• Good Is Not Nice: Her mission is to protect Dani and all else is irrelevant. From robbing a pharmacy to trying to leave Sarah behind at the mercy of the Rev-9 she'll do what ever is necessary. Her first act as a non-combatant is stealing the clothes from a man who just tried to help the naked foreign woman who just fell off a bridge.
• Heroic RRoD: She breaks down completely after her first intense encounter with the Rev-9 due to the nature of her implants. Fortunately, her companions manage to get her back on her feet.
• Heroic Sacrifice: She proposes weaponizing her implanted power cell against the Rev-9, but Dani shoots her down because it's clear that removing it would kill her. In the end, with no other options left and Grace too grievously wounded to continue the fight, Dani tearfully acquiesces.
  Dani: I'm sorry!
  Grace: I'm not.
• History Repeats: With Dani taking both Sarah and John Connor's place after Skynet's erasure from the timeline brought about the rise of Legion, Grace becomes a version of Kyle Reese on cybernetic steroids.
• Hour of Power: Her metabolism is explicitly tuned for very short bursts of power after which her body crashes in a type of metabolic shock requiring a complicated cocktail drugs to recover.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: Part of her augmentations required rebalancing her metabolism to operate at superhuman levels in short bursts, and if she overexerts herself fighting a Terminator she'll start going into metabolic shock that requires a complicated cocktail of drugs and an ice bath to counteract lest she go into a coma.
• Improvised Weapon: Maybe the thing that gives her the best chance against the Rev-9 is that she's a much better creative thinker, allowing her to use her environment more effectively. If it's within reach, she will use it as a weapon.
• Lean and Mean: Grace has a lean sprinter's physique, in keeping with her focus on speed and the fact that she can only operate at bursts of high performance at a time.
• Light Is Good: Is a cyborg with a golden subdermal armour sent to protect Dani.
• Lightning Bruiser: When Grace goes into combat mode, her strength and speed reach levels that pose a serious threat even to a Terminator. Humans don't stand a chance against her in this state.
• Mama Bear: She'll stop at nothing to keep Dani safe. It's later inverted when we learn that Dani found Grace as a young girl in the ruins after Judgment Day and subsequently raised her like her own, so Grace is essentially paying Past!Dani forward for what Future!Dani will do for her.
• Meaningful Name:
  • She's a graceful warrior.
  • John's name meant "God is gracious".
• Mugged for Disguise: Does this multiple times over the course of the film.
• Naked on Arrival: Like everyone sent back from the future.
• Only One Name: She only introduces herself with her given name, so that's all the cast and the audience have to go on.
• Punched Across the Room: If you try to go up against her, this is what she'll do to you, even if you're a 400-pound Killer Robot.
• Recycled Premise: There was already a human-machine hybrid in Terminator Salvation, Marcus Wright. Both are instrumental in the defeat of a Terminator, and both end up sacrificing their "heart" to ensure the Terminators' human target won't die.
• Required Secondary Powers: Unlike some examples of cyborgs, Grace's body is reinforced (to the point of being more machine than woman) so that her body doesn't rip itself apart the second she uses her superstrength. Likewise her very extensive augmentation has left her covered in scars. How else were the doctors going to get access? Furthermore, using her enhancements for long is highly dangerous, as human metabolism isn't meant to handle such feats.
• Small Parent, Huge Child: Grace, played by the 5'8'' Mackenzie Davis, towers over her adoptive mother Dani Ramos in the past.
• Statuesque Stunner: Comes with being played by Mackenzie Davis. It actually comes up that she has to take men's clothing because most women aren't her size.
• Super-Soldier: Explicitly calls herself this, and it's Not Hyperbole.
• Super-Speed: She can move faster than any human can properly react to. Best demonstrated when she cuts a fly in half in mid-flight simply because it was annoying her.
• Super-Strength: Not quite on Terminator levels, but she's several times stronger than a normal human.
• Tank-Top Tomboy: She wears a tank-top and doesn't look stereotypically feminine.
• Technopath: Downplayed example, she is able to access then decrypt data from a phone simply by touching the SIM.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Grace isn't particularly thrilled by the idea of working with Sarah Connor, seeing her as a liability for a while. Curiously, she has much less problems with fighting alongside Carl, who's a freaking Terminator.
• Tomboy: Tall, athletic, short hair, tank top... yep, she's definitely one.
• Undying Loyalty: To Dani.
• The Unfettered: She has a Terminator's single-mindedness; she will always protect Dani, and will sacrifice herself or anyone else to do it.
• Ungrateful Bastard: When she's sent back in time naked and dazed, a teenage couple find her and help her to her feet. She thanks them by forcing the boyfriend to hand over his clothes. She later steals Sarah's vehicle right after she saved her from the Rev-9.
• Universal Driver's License: Cars, helicopters, military cargo planes... if a vehicle can move on its own accord, Grace knows how to handle it.
• Weak, but Skilled: While still far stronger and more resilient than an ordinary human, she's still mostly flesh and blood and is physically outmatched by Terminators forcing her to compensate with speed, Combat Pragmatism and weapons wherever possible.

Diego

Diego Ramos

Played by: Diego Boneta

Dubbed by: Benjamin Penamaria (European French)

Appears in: Terminator: Dark Fate

The younger brother of Dani Ramos. He works in a car factory.

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• Advertised Extra: In some promotional material, he's in the casting line-up with Dani, Grace, Sarah, Carl, and Rev-9, but he dies at the end of the first chase near the beginning. This might have to do with him being played by a popular Mexican singer.
• Badass Bystander: Aids Grace during her fight with the Rev-9 by dropping a huge engine that leaves the latter incapacitated long enough for Rami, Diego, and Grace to run.
• Big Brother Instinct: Inverted, as he's Dani's younger brother, but at no point does that hinder him from doing everything he can to protect his sister from the Rev-9.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: He gets severely wounded when the Rev-9 throws rebars back at their car (after Grace threw them at it).
• Job-Stealing Robot: He isn't happy to learn that his factory worker job in a car assembly line has been taken over by an industrial robot overnight.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: He doesn't make it past the first chase from the Rev-9.

Vincente

Vincente Ramos

Played by: Enrique Arce

Dubbed by:

Appears in: Terminator: Dark Fate

Dani and Diego's father.

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• Cover Identity Anomaly: He immediately suspects the Rev-9 of being up to no good when he claims to be a friend of "Danielle", knowing that his daughter never goes by her formal name.
• Killed Offscreen: The Rev-9 takes on his form and since Dani and Diego never got a call from their father warning them that there was a suspicious man coming for them, it's all but spelt out that he's dead.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: He's very likely killed off by the Rev-9, as it assumes his form later on.

Craig

Craig

Played by: Stuart McQuarrie

Dubbed by:

Appears in: Terminator: Dark Fate

Dani and Diego's employer.

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• Bad Boss: He openly brags to the Ramos siblings about how he's brought in machines to do their jobs for them.
• Hate Sink: He has no qualms about replacing his human staff with robots, even when said staff live in a cramped slum. Doing such a thing in a franchise where humanity is at war with machines makes him come across as a borderline traitor to his kind.

Alicia & Mateo

Alicia & Mateo

Played by: Alicia Borrachero (Alicia), Manuel Pacific (Mateo)

Appears in: Terminator: Dark Fate

Carl's wife and adoptive son.

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• Berserk Button: Referring to Carl as "it", even when they discover he's an android.
• Dad's Off Fighting in the War: Carl leaving them to assist Sarah and the others in their fight against the Rev-9 has shades of this.
• Disappeared Dad: Mateo's biological father is long gone, possibly killed by his new Terminator father. 20 years later he has to deal with Carl going away.
• It Is Dehumanising: Alicia refuses to let even Sarah refer to Carl as "it". It possibly serves as a throwback to when Sarah said the opposite about the T-800 in the second film.
• Satellite Character: We don't get any characterisation on them. Their role in the story is purely to show that Carl has developed beyond a killing machine.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Alicia fell in love with Carl after he defended her and Mateo from her abusive ex-boyfriend.
• Woobie Family: They've had to deal with domestic abuse in the past and 20 years later Carl informs them that their home is about to be attacked by something far worse. He also tells them that they may never see each other again, which leaves Alicia visibly shattered.

Dean

Major Dean

Played by: Fraser James

Dubbed by:

Appears in: Terminator: Dark Fate

A military officer and acquaintance of Sarah Connor.

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• Friend on the Force: A high-ranking Air Force Major who brings two prototype EMP devices to Sarah's team. Also has the authority to order F-35 escorts for the C-5 Galaxy that they left in.
• Token Minority: He's one of two African-American characters in the whole film.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Disappears after the group reaches Bingham Air Base. Presumably he's busy covering for their escape in the chaos of the Rev-9's attack.

Hadrell

Willam Hadrell

Played by: Tom Hopper

Dubbed by: Boris Rehlinger (European French)

Appearances: Terminator: Dark Fate

Grace's commanding officer.

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