Funny / Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Funny moments in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

• The stiff and clumsy manner in which the Terminator takes his vow.
  Terminator: Why do we stop now?
  John: Now you gotta promise you won't kill anyone, right?
  Terminator: Right.
  John: You swear?
  Terminator: What?
  John: Just put up your hand and say "I swear I won't kill anyone."
  Terminator: (parrots) I swear I will not kill anyone.
  John: Alright, let's go.
  • Then, upon arriving at the hospital, after a guard tells John and the Terminator that the psychiatric hospital's visiting hours are "10 to 4, Monday to Friday", the Terminator shoots him in both knees. John is not pleased. The Terminator then breaks the window and opens the hospital gate, returning to John with this gem: "He'll live."
    • In the script, John said "Sorry" to the guard as they drive past him.
  • The Terminator almost seeming to genuinely be confused as to why he can't kill.
    John: Jesus, you were gonna kill that guy!
    Terminator: (seeming self-aware) Of course. I'm a Terminator.
    John: Listen to me very carefully, okay? You're not a Terminator anymore. All right?
    (Terminator doesn't respond)
    John: You got that? You can't just go around killing people!
    Terminator: (completely deadpan) Why?
    John: ...What do you mean, why?! Because you can't!
    Terminator: (with the camera zoomed in on him) Why?
    John: Because you just can't, okay? Trust me.
    • On a meta level it's also pretty hard to argue with the Terminator's response. He is a Terminator, after all.
  • And then there's this exchange between John and the T-800 as the cops close in on the Cyberdyne lab:
    Terminator: (carrying a minigun and grenade launcher) I'll take care of the police.
    John: Hey, wait! You swore [not to kill anyone]!
    Terminator: (smirking) Trust me.
• Shortly before giving the no-killing order, John yells at the T-800 to put his gun down after he nearly blows off a man's head with it. The T-800 complies by calmly turning and placing it on the ground.
• The T-800 rips open the steering column of a vehicle, ready to hotwire it — and then John finds the keys hidden in the sun visor.
  John: Are we learning yet?
  • Which sets up a Brick Joke later when the T-800 commandeers a SWAT van and does check the visor for the keys. Sure enough, there they are.
• After that, John teaching the Terminator how to speak in a more humanlike fashion.
  John: No, no, no, no, no. You gotta listen to the way people talk. You don't say "affirmative" or some shit like that. You say "no problemo." And if someone comes off to you with an attitude, you say "eat me." And if you wanna shine them on, it's "hasta la vista, baby."
  Terminator: (flatly) Hasta la vista, baby.
  John: Yeah, or "later, dickwad." And if someone gets upset, you say "chill out." Or you could do combinations.
  Terminator: (also flatly) Chill out, dickwad.
  John: That's great! See, you're getting it!
  Terminator: No problemo.
• When the T-800 suggests that letting Sarah kill Dyson might prevent Judgement Day, John angrily chides him and insists that killing people won't solve anything. The Terminator simply gives John a look that says "Hey, it was just a suggestion".
• It's very dark humor, but as Sarah is about to kill Dyson she's freaking out badly and raging furiously at him saying that "it" (Judgment Day) is all his fault. Miles, not even knowing who this person who just shot him in the shoulder is, can only ask, in a genuinely baffled tone, "What?"
• Sarah and the T-800 explaining to Dyson about Judgment Day.
  Voiceover: It's not every day you find out you're responsible for three billion deaths. He took it pretty well.
  Dyson: I feel like I'm gonna throw up.
  • All things considered, he really did take it pretty well. Far better than most would.
• "He's my Uncle Bob..."
  • "Uncle Bob?"
    • John shrugs.
• When John finds out the Terminator is programmed to do whatever he says, he tells the Terminator to stand on one leg. The scene follows with the Terminator standing on one leg whilst talking to some guys, until John quietly says "Put your leg down" out of the corner of his mouth.
  • He says it like such a mom to the tall robotic assassin.
• "I need a vacation."
  • What's also funny is that Arnold improvised the line.
• As Sarah is breaking out of the hospital, the guards try to reason with her and insist she's not a killer. Sarah snaps back that as far as she's concerned they're all dead anyway and they know how strongly she believes it, "so don't fuck with me!" Slow learners, this bunch...
• When they break into Cyberdyne:
  John: We got company.
  Dyson: Police?
  Sarah: How many?
  John: Uh, all of 'em, I think.
  • To make it even funnier, it is all of them. When the security guard asked the cops to send everything they had in the area, they took him seriously.
    • This in itself is both a bit of Fridge Brilliance and a Call-Back. The police interviewing Sarah earlier in the film remind us that the first Terminator 11 years ago murdered seventeen police officers. Of course they are going to send everything they have.
    • And even that's still not enough (but at least none of the cops die this time).
• John needs money from the payphone to make a call. He asks the Terminator for a quarter. The Terminator smashes the bottom of the payphone, breaking open the coin collection box. Then he hands John exactly one quarter, as requested.
• When the Connors are planning to flee to Mexico, the Terminator sees a baby, then picks it up and looks at it like it has no idea what it is.
  • Maybe it's never seen a live one before. After all, a war of genocide doesn't allow for any survivors, regardless of age.
• The way the T-1000 stabs both John's foster father and the Cryoco truck driver. It's just so casual about it.
  • To elaborate, the T-1000 kills Todd after the later is shouting at the dog Max constantly barking and drinking milk out of the carton. The T-1000 (disguised as Janette) gives him a noticeably annoyed look before casually shifting the phone to its other hand and transforming its arm into a blade to punch through the milk carton and Todd's head.
  • As for the Cryoco truck driver, the T-1000 just walks right up to him while he's asking if it's alright from the crash and runs him through before dropping him and going for the truck, as if silently saying, "Shut up, gotta take your truck."
• For all the tension in the scene, the T-1000's Finger Wag is pretty darkly hilarious, especially combined with Sarah's facial expression. You can tell she's mentally going, "Seriously? Seriously?"
  • It's even homaged in the sequel - when the T-X's head does a 360 after being hit, and she replies with a Quizzical Tilt and a reproving expression. The Terminator's expression is a clear "Oh, Crap!".
  • This also subtly foreshadows some of the events in Salvation: leave it to SkyNet to be such a Smug Snake that it would program its killing machine to go silently taunting one of its worst enemies before terminating her.
  • As much as a Moment of Awesome it is, one can't help but giggle at the scene immediately afterwards. After the T-800 comes in and fires one last grenade into the T-1000, the latter snaps his head up to the former with an expression that can only be summed up with "holy motherfucking shit I'm gonna die!"
• John tries to explain what a smile is to T-800 - he then looks at a passer by and scans his smile to imitate it himself - this is the result.◊
  • The T-800 only scanned the lower half of the person's face. The weird smile is a logical result of trying to smile while the rest of his face does not adjust to it naturally.
  • Even better, when John tells the T-800 to practice in front of a mirror, it returns to its standard scowl like it knew it had been insulted.
• John teaches T-800 to do high-fives and puts his own palm for T to swat it... with, basically, a metal rod. The T-800 doesn't break his arm, but we can see John smarting from it and saying "Owww...!" even though (since we're watching from Sarah's perspective) we can't hear him.
  • The annoyed/hurt look on the T-800's face when John does the old "too slow" trick when asking for another high five.
  • Afterwards, the T-800 pulls the same "too slow" trick John just taught him.
• The security guard before right before the T-1000 kills him in an Eye Scream moment. He just got a full house on his coffee cup poker game. "Must be my lucky day!"
• After throwing the T-800 through a window at the mall, the T-1000 does a Double Take at the shiny, silver, smooth, featureless shop window dummy before leaving, as if to say "okay, that looks pretty neat" or "Uhm, is that one of ours?".
• When the T-1000 spots John, he shoves the kid (John's fellow delinquent) who was trying to distract him out of his way halfway through his spiel. Blissfully unaware that he just had a close brush with death, the kid is insulted. "Hey!"
  • It's even funnier when you consider that kid is never, ever mentioned again. He basically got shoved out of the franchise!
    • It's hard to feel sorry for Budnick.
  • Before he shoved John's friend, the T-1000 shoved a random kid while glaring with a menacing look.
• The bar scene in the beginning, the female patrons look down and are duly impressed. Apparently, the T-800 is rather well-endowed.
  • Watch the platinum blonde who smiles at him when he first enters. She's spreading her legs wide under the table. An invitation...?
  • The entire fight scene in the bar is hilarious and awesome, from the main biker's confusion at the T-800 not reacting at all to being burned with a cigar to him being thrown across the entire bar, into the kitchen, and onto a hot stovetop, to another biker smashing a pool cue against the T-800's head and being flung out through the front window, to a knife being driven into the T-800's chest (and promptly used to pin its wielder to the pool table), to every other biker in the bar backing away.
  • Followed by the bartender confronting it with a shotgun in the parking lot. What line did the T-800 cross to inspire this man to go up against him? It was about to steal someone's bike. The instant the T-800 snatches the gun out of his hands, he looks as if he's about to wet his pants.
  • And after snatching the bartender's gun, the Terminator helps itself to the guy's sunglasses. Keep in mind this whole scene was at night, so wearing sunglasses while riding a motorcycle would seem a bit conspicuous.
  • A meta example: while filming the bar scene, a female passerby walked in on the set. When she asked what was going on, Arnie replied that it was "male strippers' night". This becomes Hilarious in Hindsight in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines when the T-850 walks into a bar that held a male stripper show. On top of it all, Arnold was actually wearing a pair of ridiculous-looking Hawaiian shorts and not naked, which adds a little extra hilarity to when you watch it again and see everyone checking him out downstairs.
• "Say, that's a nice bike." Apparently, even the T-1000 thinks some bikes are cooler than others.
• The escape from Cyberdyne.
  T-800: *hands a cop his tear gas grenade launcher* Here, hold this. *proceeds to rip the gas mask off the otherwise occupied officer's face*
• The final scene, where the T-800's hand sinks "thumbs up" into the fire. It can cause a small giggle amidst an otherwise massive Tear Jerker.
• In T2 3-D: Battle Across Time, when a T-800 takes John to the future, one of the highlights is John screaming orders to the T-800 while being chased by an HK. The T-800 quips with "John, you're not helping".
  • After the T-800 destroys an endoskeleton T-800, we get this exchange:
    John: Friend of yours?
    T-800: He was my college roommate. *tosses head*
• While the protagonists are escaping from the mental hospital in the hijacked police car, the T-800 performs an Offhand Backhand with his shotgun to get the T-1000 off their backs, with the assistance of the rearview mirror, all while still driving the squad car.
• "Gibbons, come on man, you can't leave the desk like that!"
• Meta: While filming the first chase at the mall, Robert Patrick actually ran so fast that he caught up to Edward Furlong on his bike (or at least his bike being pulled by an offscreen cart, anyways) and tapped him on the shoulder. As the crew puts it, they obviously had to redo the take with the cart going faster because otherwise "John Connor just died and the world just ended."
• The fact that the T-1000 disguised as Janelle apparently knows how to make beef stew. Props to SkyNet for home economics lessons included with the T-1000's knowledge base!
• When the T-1000 phases through the cell bars, he actually forgets that the gun he's carrying isn't made of him, which gets stuck in the bars, forcing him to pause and move his hand so the gun can pass with him.
• If you listen carefully, you can hear one of the SWAT officers scream "HOLY SHIT!" as the T-800 drives their van through the Cyberdyne building.
• When Sarah is trapped in the Cyberdyne clean room, the Terminator does a quick save by smashing right through the wall next to her, then pulls her out with enough force to send her spinning like a ballroom dancer.
• The "Waugh!" scream the gardening truck driver makes when diving off the bridge before the T-1000 runs him over.

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