Headscratchers / The Terminator

• What did Reese mean when he said to Sarah, "from your point of view I don't know tech stuff"
  • Reese tells Sarah that the technology to build the Terminator won’t exist until 40 years from now. She responds “Are you saying it's from the future?” to which he replies “One possible future... from your point of view. I don't know tech stuff.” He seems to have a layman’s awareness of timelines and things like the grandfather paradox, but he doesn’t understand it enough to honestly answer her question.

• Which leads to the T1/T2 Paradox: We find out in T2 that the original Terminator's CPU was instrumental in developing the technology that became Skynet. So - Skynet sends the original Terminator back in time to kill Sarah, but Skynet's very existence depends on that mission failing. Had The Terminator succeeded, the CPU doesn't fall into Dyson's hands and Skynet doesn't happen at all. At least not that way in that timeline. But the central theme of the entire franchise seems to be that killer AI will happen, one way or another.
  • Most likely, Skynet programmed that particular Terminator with instructions to hand itself and its tech over to Dyson as soon as Sarah Connor was dead, thus allowing Skynet to be created and keeping the time loop stable. Maybe this Terminator can't self-terminate, but it can go to Dyson and say, "Hey, I'm a cyborg and here's the proof, now shut me down and use my tech to create Skynet."

• Why did the terminator start its killing spree during daytime and tip off later targets (ok, only the last target did, but still)? It would have been more advantageous to wait for night and kill all 3 while they are at home, possibly sleeping.
  • How much knowledge of the past did Skynet have? It may not have been aware of the then-modern technology that would allow a target to be tipped off in the first place.
  • The Terminator seems to suffer from tunnel vision and a lack of contingency planning. It arrived; its mission was to kill Sarah Connor and thus it does so, and only when a wrench is thrown in the works does it consider a plan B. But then again, as the police station scene shows it can handle pretty much anything you throw at it, so it really doesn't need much of said planning - 'go to target, take out anyone in your way' would work just fine in all situations unless it found itself up against the army or something.
  • It might have simply killed them as fast as it could find them. And considering they were in Los Angeles, traffic snarls could have made it take a while. Obviously if it could knock all three off within a couple hours, it would have. Additionally, it was not at all a guarantee all three would be at their homes at night.
  • Kyle mentions that a lot of records were lost on Judgement Day, presumably including John's date of birth. The Terminator likely had no way of knowing if Sarah was pregnant or not and, if she was, how far along she was, so it may have believed it was under time constraints to get the job done.
  • Another thing to take into account is that it's mentioned by Reese that it was unsafe during the daytime because the Hunter Killers were out, and that it was easier to move around during the night. Though it's talking about the post-apocalypse, it's possible that Skynet, in it's panic to send the Terminator back just before the Resistance succeeded in destroying it, had all Terminators programmed to run day and night hunting for humans, and didn't get the chance to reprogram that bit before sending it back in time (so, it was being just as much systematic about it's attacking Sarah Connors, it was being systematic in hunting during the day).

• Did Reese know he was John's father?
  • It's complicated. Reese volunteered, but in Salvation it's stated that John knew and sent Reese back for this specific reason. So Reese may simply mean he “volunteered” in that he was asked, not ordered, to go, and said yes.
  • Reese never seems to have any foreknowledge of what will happen on his mission, whether it be having sex with Sarah, fathering John, or dying.
  • He outright states that all he knows about John's father is that he dies before the war.

• If Reese didn't know he was John's father, wasn't he taking a helluva risk of causing John to not exist by sleeping with Sarah?
  • It probably didn't seem like a risk at the moment, since it was very unlikely that either of them would survive the next day or two, much less both survive and get into a committed sexual relationship that would prevent Sarah from meeting and sleeping with the guy who was supposed to be John's father. It probably didn't even occur to him that that was on the table.

• After using a phone book to find where the various Sarah Connors live, the Terminator rips out the page and takes it with him. You don't just forget things when you have a hard drive for a memory, so why would he need to keep the page once he had the information?
  • The Terminator never ripped out a phonebook page, Reese did.

• The Terminator knows how to use a phone book and (as we see in Terminator 2 mimic police procedure, which are skills that would be worthless in the post-apocalyptic wasteland he was created in. SkyNet obviously provided him with "detailed files" on the era he was traveling to. So how could he not know that plasma rifles hadn't been invented yet in the 80s?
  • A phone book does not require foreknowledge, just literacy. Specifically, the script said the Terminator's got "detailed files" on human anatomy, because it makes them more efficient killers. But as to the era — Skynet only has partial postwar records and its collective knowledge from such of the Internet that it assimilated before the nuclear balloon went up.
    In T2 the T-1000 doesn't really mimic police procedure as such: it knows police are authority figures from its post-war records, accesses the police database through a computer, assumes the officer's form, and then simply asks authoritative questions while in that form. It doesn't really mimic police procedure beyond that.
  • In The Terminator verse, it's entirely possible that prototype plasma rifles did exist in the eighties but the work was probably kept highly classified until SkyNet uncovered the blueprints after being strategic control of America's defence network. The Terminator, lacking full access to complete records, was probably just taking a chance based on what it knew about plasma rifles.

• If Skynet hadn't sent back a Terminator to kill Sarah Connor, Kyle Reese wouldn't have been sent back, and then John Connor wouldn't have been born (at least not the same way). Time paradox, hello?
  • There are multiple time lines; the past can be changed without risking a paradox. This was at least implied in the first two films ("the future is not set...") and was made explicit in TSCC, which includes time travelers from at least two different post-Judgment Day futures.
  • The first film, at least, implies there's a Stable Time Loop as Kyle tells Sarah that she apparently raised...raises...will raise John "from birth" and enabled him to help the Resistance win in the first place, but it seems like it's only in later films that the timeline is actually changed.

• Wouldn't the "kill all Sarah Connors" plan involve killing all Sara, Sarah, Zara, Sarai and S Connors just to be sure?
  • Not if there aren't any Zara, Sarai, etc. Connors in the phone book. We see the page, and it only has three "Connor" listings at all. Plus, the T-800 was destroyed while it was still trying to kill the third and last "Connor, Sarah" listed, so we don't see what it would have done afterward had it not been destroyed.
  • In the original treatment, Sarah had surgical pins in her leg (ironically inserted after the Terminator injured her leg) that would have conclusively identified her to the T-800, and it cut open the legs of its previous two kills to check. Presumably that would have assured the T-800 that its mission was complete.

• Another question is why didn't the Terminator flip through the entire thing. It probably wouldn't take much memory and Skynet knew next to nothing about Sarah Connor. It would have been unfortunate for example if that was her maiden or married name and some event had or hadn't taken place yet.
  • It knew enough to know where she was and her name at the time. It may also know, based on John's age in the future, that the time the Terminator was sent back to was around when he was conceived; ergo since he's John Connor, she would be Sarah Connor at the time he's conceived and born.

• Why would the Terminator need a gun with a laser sight?
  • It uses visual aiming, just like humans do.
  • It's probably used to energy weapons and not the trajectories of conventional firearms. Also, the gun in question, the AMT Hardballer, was notoriously unreliable.
  • It may not have needed the sight, but didn't bother to remove it either (the sight is already mounted at the gun shop where the Terminator acquires it).
  • It could also allow Terminator to save some energy by not activating internal gun aiming system.
  • Rule of Cool

• Why didn't Kyle just show Dr. Silbermann his brand from the prison camp to prove his story? He shows it to Sarah earlier in the movie, but Silbermann claims he "doesn't [have] a shred of proof." He might not have believed him still, but it's better than just expecting him to take his word for it.
  • It wouldn't have done anything. It would've changed Silberman's view of him from "delusional whacko" to "delusional whacko with a tattoo." If anything Silberman would've just assumed Kyle did it to himself as part of his delusion. For all we know, he did show Silbermann the tattoo and he just dismissed it.

• The fact that the Terminator walked around—in public, mind you—with an assault weapon and NO ONE thought to alert the authorities?
  • The Terminator doesn't initially walk around in public with assault weapons. It uses a pistol and an uzi (which it conceals under its jacket) while tracking Sarah. After the police have Sarah it retrieves the rest of its guns for the assault on the police station, and it drives there rather than walking.
  • When he leaves the apartment carrying the assault rifle and shotguns, one person does notice, says "Daaayumm!" and hides. Who's going to willingly tangle with a big guy with a pair of huge guns on their own?

• Why was Kyle Reese arrested? He was mistaken for a homeless nudist that stole another bum's pants and the Cop's gun, fair. They suspected him of being the "Phone Book killer" the cops were after, also fair. However Sarah gave a description of the real killer and most of what Kyle did, although illegal, was to save another. Even if the story was not believed, a Dr. Jerk like Silberman would believe that his actions were under extreme duress. So why keep him in cuffs?
  • At that point, he'd threatened a cop with a gun, trespassed and stolen from a department store, broken into the squad car and stolen a rifle, stalked Sarah, shot up a bar, shot Arnold in the chest (aggravated assault and witness to Arnold murdering people at the bar), stolen a car and driven with Arnold on the hood before running several red traffic lights (a hit-and-run felony and failure to stop at traffic lights as radioed in by William Wisher), stolen a second car and caused a crash that appeared to have killed the other driver, kidnapped Sarah, and generally pissed off the cops. Even at the beginning Kyle was nude while he stole a homeless man's pants (indecent exposure, assault and theft ^note the homeless man didn't give them up freely even if the fight was off-screen), fled from a police officer (a misdemeanor) and tackled another police officer before taking their gun (in some cases people have been shot dead by police for doing that). Those police officers had ample reason to arrest Kyle and consider him dangerous.
    Even if they believed Kyle has a mental illness or some other condition that mitigates everything he's done, that's a matter for a court of law, not police officers. Cops don't decide who goes free and who doesn't, judges and juries do - they just make sure people aren't going around disturbing the peace. That said, Silberman would likely be angling for Kyle to be sentenced to a mental institution rather than a prison, both to try and help this disturbed young man and make a big name for himself for working on such an unusual case. So, short answer, he's under arrest because he's under suspicion of committing a Long List of criminal activities, awaiting legal proceedings to determine his guilt, innocence, or extenuating circumstances.

• Why were the army so stupid when they installed Skynet? They create an artificial intelligence capable of learning at an exponential rate, then immediately let Skynet be in charge of their nuclear payload/internet?! Where's the testing?
  • Judging by the T-800's account in T2, they did do testing. But it's entirely possible, nay, likely Skynet worked fine and not evil under lab conditions until it spontaneously got smart some time after it had already been given control to everything.
  • Going by T3, they were panicking. They'd lost control of all computer enabled assets, which is everything beyond bucket and broom these days, and it was a classic "We must do something; This is something; Therefore, we must do this" panicked decision. They thought they would still have control of Skynet and that Skynet could rip control of stolen assets back. In their panic they could not see the obvious hole in that theory.

• When the police figure out someone is killing everyone named Sarah Connor, why are they content to just try calling her and not actually send a unit to check her apartment when no one picks up?
  • They did send a unit when Lt. Traxler asks this, but there was nobody home at the time. They then show the unit leaving, because there's something more pressing going on. Bad timing, because that's when Arnie shows up at Sarah's apartment.

• The owner of the gun store where the Terminator goes to buy the guns not only proudly sells the merchandise to a huge creepy looking guy dressed like a stereotypical aggressive punk who could probably have used it for a killing spree but he even leaves the bullets on the front desk and not behind the cash register. Is he a bit dumb or maybe just an Horrible Judge of Character?
  • When you work at a gun store, you're probably used to the idea that you're safe if anyone tries anything because of all the weapons surrounding you. Plus, the Terminator was acting like a pretty standard customer - no making a fuss, no causing a racket, just asking about what guns he had, so if you don't judge by appearance nothing about him would tip alarm bells. The only really dumb thing he did was to leave bullets in the open, possibly ​because he couldn't see past the (metaphorical) dollar-signs in his eyes. Note how after the Terminator says it'll take "all" the guns, the owner chuckles and says "I may close early today." By the time he'd turned back around with the paperwork the Terminator had finished loading the gun and turned it on the gun store owner.
  • In addition to what's pointed out above, this is Los Angeles of the 1980s. Any large city in that time were a melting point of various styles and looks. So, basically, a guy dressed like a punk may not be out of place or uncommon (or, for the store owner, it may have been a new trend for all he knew). If you look at various works from that time, this film included, you can a mix of people who are still dressed like it's the 1970s and various trends that emerged from the 1980s.

• How the hell did Reese manage to sneak a shotgun into a nightclub? There was clearly a bouncer on the door and a shotgun would make a noticeable bulge even in a coat as long as Reese's.
  • The nightclub is obviously a bit of a dive bar, but it's on Pico, not a very dangerous area. They're likely not much worried about violence. The bouncer's job is 99% handling out of control drunks. The Terminator only attracted notice from the cashier and bouncer because he didn't pay the cover, not for concealed carry; Reese could easily come in through the front door carrying what he was carrying. The nightclub staff would instantly judge him to be a drunk planning to get plastered, and bars generally don't want to prevent such people from entering.
  • If you look closely after The Terminator crushes the bouncer’s hand and the woman in the booth attends to him, the ladies standing in line let themselves into the club with no one stopping them. There’s another woman seen in line that appears on the dance floor as The Terminator zeroes in on Sarah. It is believable that Reese used this opening to let himself inside as well.
    • There's another possibility not considered: Reese later hands Sarah a wad of money for the hotel room, with her telling him not to tell her where he got it. Seeing that it's the same jacket he was wearing during this scene, it's safe to say he had the wad of cash on him at the time he was following Sarah and he actually paid the cover to get in. It's not like the bouncer was checking for anything before the Terminator shows up, so that explains how Reese got his shotgun through the door.

• Where and when did Reese get that huge handful of cash that he pull out at the Tiki Motel?
  • He probably stole it from somewhere. Either from the cash registers in the same shop where he stole his outfit or the trucker that just gave them a lift.
  • John Connor might have taught Reese his little ATM-robbery trick from T2 at some point. To Reese, it'd be a training exercise in hacking simple computer equipment in-the-field; to John, it's a tactic he'd know Reese would one day find useful on his time-travel mission.

• How are Sarah and Kyle able to outrun a TRUCK on foot?
  • You ever get stuck behind an 18-wheeler? They do not accelerate fast. From a dead stop, it takes them forever to get up to even 25 MPH. That gives Kyle and Sarah plenty of time to sprint and get some distance before it starts to catch up. Plus, when the T-800 focuses on Sarah, she tries to put as many things as she can between them; the gutter on the footpath, a tree, a car, a building. It's likely the Terminator was just going to wait for her to get tired since it didn't know about the bomb Kyle put in the tailpipe and kill her.
  • Sarah was also running a very erratic path (possibly deliberately, possibly in panic, possibly both). 18-wheelers don't corner on a dime, either, they have a lot more momentum to redirect than a human.

• Why did the punk leader gets angry only when the Terminator orders him and his friends to give him their clothes? The biker in the second movie just laughed at him in the face.
  • They're two different people, different people react differently to situations. However, the biker in the second movie put a lit cigar out on the Terminator's skin after mocking it, which would've hurt a lot if the Terminator had been human.

• After the chase in the parking garage, when the Terminator's car crashes into the wall and Reese gets arrested, why would the Terminator flee the scene when his target was right there?
  • The target, and also numerous heavily-armed police officers. And the Terminator's just been damaged. Better to retreat, do repairs, and then go track Sarah down at the station.
    • An entire building full of heavily-armed police officers were unable to stop the Terminator a few scenes later. The Terminator could have easily dealt with them and Reese and killed Sarah.
    • Yes but that's because he had proper weaponry for the task. He had a semi-automatic shotgun and an automatic rifle to assault the station. In the garage, all he had was a pump shotgun that was either empty or close to being empty. Also, all those cops are out in the open as well as the terminator. If the T-800 goes at them, it will take unaccountable hits from heavy concentrated fire. The cops in the police station were never able to concentrate their fire; they were killed too fast to organize. Even if you want argue that the cops couldn't harm the T-800, they could still stun it enough to keep it from being able to kill Sarah before she runs off, or worse, outright shoot its skin off, making it impossible to pass for human, which means the cops would probably call in backup.
  • Terminators are also infiltration units, which involves more than just relentlessly pursuing a target for termination. If it were programmed to carry out killing Sarah Connor above all else, it wouldn't have bothered with clothes or weapons.
  • One important thing to remember: The Terminator doesn't know what kind of weaponry exists in 1984. That was established when the Terminator asks the gun shop clerk for a plasma rifle (And the clerk only responded "just what you see here, pal", which would imply that Plasma rifles do exist, he just doesn't have them). As such, the Terminator may have been concerned that the police had weapons that were strong enough to destroy him, and thus he didn't want to risk taking them on when he was damaged and unarmed (he left his guns behind at the Tech Noir, and the shotgun in the police car he stole was out of ammo). He probably assumed it was safer to take them on after he repaired his damage and got some heavy firepower, just in case they do have weapons that can damage or wreck him.

• So did Traxler come to believe Kyle's story in the end (as could be surmised from a deleted scene where he hands his gun to Reese)? It seemed like he did not, but he nevertheless understood that Sarah was mortally endangered and under the then circumstances decided that she'd be better off with Kyle.
  • It would appear so. Traxler had just witnessed a single attacker mow down (according to T2) 17 armed police officers, taking multiple hits from handguns and assault rifles in the process, and not even flinching, grimacing or crying out. Not once. No amount of body armor, at least one that could be comfortably and non-visibly worn underneath a t-shirt and a leather jacket, can render a person invulnerable to intense gunfire. Traxler had earlier on been established as a Reasonable Authority Figure, and with a caring, almost fatherly demeanor towards Sarah.
  • Traxler may not believe the entire story, but as mentioned above, he just saw one attacker take out multiple officers without so much as acknowledging the multiple gunshot wounds it took. He knows something is seriously out of the ordinary with the Terminator and Sarah is safer anywhere that thing is not.

• What was the Terminator programmed to do if it had succeeded in its mission and killed the real Sarah? Without even getting into the time-loop disruption (if Sarah hadn't killed it in the Cyberdyne factory, they couldn't have based their future computer tech on its damaged chip and invent AI in the first place), wouldn't having a functional Terminator running around in the '80s raise all sorts of potential problems?
  • It's established in the later films that the T800 models cannot self-terminate, so suicide is out of the question. It could just find some hiding place and hide until after Judgement Day. Time means nothing to a Terminator, so it could just stand in one spot for however many years it takes.
  • It might've had secondary orders to ensure Skynet was created. It could give Cyberdyne schematics and other information and then check on their progress from time to time. Going by T3, it might target John Connor's lieutenants or other notable people from the war to make the Resistance weaker in this timeline.

• How did Reese have spare ammo to reload his shotgun during the Tech Noir shootout and subsequent car chase? We only see him take the shotgun from the police cruiser. We don't ever see him take or later acquire more shells.
  • We don't see the Terminator modifying the AR-180 and Uzi carbine to fire full-auto either, but it did in the novelization. For all we knew Reese was in the gun store first, bought a mess of 12 gauge slugs with part of that big wad of cash he had later in the film, and went on to get ready in private.

• Who is the girl soldier who gets killed by the tank thing in Reese's flashback? Just a random fighter or what?
  • Just a random fighter there to show that War Is Hell. Not everything has or needs a backstory.

• How did Reese survive the bunker massacre in the second flashback? The implication is that the Terminator that got in killed everyone, and the last we see of Reese he is lying on the ground (and playing dead would probably be unable to fool a Terminator).
  • The bunker massacre seemed to just be Sarah's dream, being influenced by whatever Reese was talking about at the time. There were always little details in it that seemed odd for Reese to note when they'd just be business as usual for someone raised in a Crapsack World. Like some survivors sitting in front of a TV body serving as a fireplace, or the effort at finding that one rat. For Kyle and the others that's mundane everyday life. For someone like Sarah those details are horrifying and sharply contrast with what she'd regard as mundane everyday life.

• If the Terminator had so many useful scanners, why did it need to use its finger to find some names in a phone book?
  • It is programmed to emulate humanity, so it emulates the human way of finding names in the phonebook. Just how it was programmed.

• Out of all characters whose outcomes we know, Pugsley the Iguana is never seen or heard from again after seen startling Ginger. What happened to him?
  • What happens to all abandoned animals? Either he is collected by animal control and rehoused, or starves to death and his body found when the apartment is finally cleared out.
    • Considering Sarah and Ginger's apartment pretty much became a crime scene due to Matt and Ginger's murders, it could be possible that maybe animal control got him to keep from disturbing the crime scene.

• Why does the Terminator make so much noise after its "façade" is burned off? Yes, its flesh would probably muffle the sound somewhat, but it doesn't make any robot noises until it's burned to a "skeleton". Does it have some kind of "silencer" device that broke during the crash?
  • It could be possible the cloned flesh and whatever muscle that might have been there muffles the sound for human ears. This would also explain why dogs continue to react to them (because dogs have better hearing and could still hear the sounds).
  • It's damaged enough that it has a pronounced limp. It could be that parts are scraping together. Or possibly, all the empty spaces in its form were sound absorbing foam or whatever.
  • Rule of Cool

• How does the whole "dogs can tell if someone's a terminator" thing work? Yes, they would be able to smell its metal parts but a lot of things are made of metal so how would a dog be able to figure out the significance of this fact?
  • It may be a scent version of the Uncanny Valley and less about the metal than the infiltration bits - the 800-series Terminators can pass as human, but they don't smell human. The artificial skin may smell off to dogs. It could also be possible that dogs can hear the sounds of the mechanisms that are being muffled by the skin and muscle covering the T-800 (see above Headscratcher).
  • In other spin-offs (such as comics), it is often sound that sets dogs off. For example, in the fourth issue in the four-issue series RoboCop Versus The Terminator, RoboCop, constructed from Terminator parts in the future, is seen petting a dog. Flo notes that dogs typically react to the sounds of the servo mechanisms emitted from the Terminators and that for Robo, it's unusual because the dog he was petting wasn't reacting to hearing them come from him (and his face was likewise made from cloned flesh too). For the second film, the reason why the dog doesn't react to Uncle Bob might be because the dog was deaf. Max likewise might have found the T-1000 smelled and/or sounded off that we humans aren't privy to.
  • Mortal Kombat gives us an answer. Dogs can smell the chemicals in the Terminator's skin, and it smells wrong, so dogs bark like hell.

• Did SkyNet know for sure Time Travel in the Terminator universe operated on Back to the Future mechanics AKA Overwriting a Timeline? Otherwise, why go through the trouble of sending Killer Robots into the past if it virtually won't make any difference? If an A.I. as smart as SkyNet is able to develop hyper-advanced nanotech liquid-metal terminators or even time travel itself, then surely it would have an understanding of how it functions. Alternatively, it could've known it goes the way of Avengers: Endgame (not overwriting a timeline, but creating another) so that they have a chance to win even if its not in their reality.
  • The way Reese tells it, time travel was a late development in the war against the humans, with only one machine created. It's possible Skynet did not have time to test the machine and discover if the timeline could actually be altered, but since it was losing to the humans it thought it had nothing to lose by trying.

• Say, hypothetically, the machines succeeded in assassinating Sarah or John Connor in the past. What made SkyNet think another Determinator human wouldn't establish La Résistance? Just keep sending back terminators?
  • It probably didn't. Skynet may be a sentient AI, but it still analyses the situation like a machine would. Skynet determines that John Connor is the main reason humans were able to win - remember that Kyle mentions there was resistance before John came along, but they never made any substantial progress against the machines until he became the leader. As far as Skynet was concerned, it was only logical that if not for John Connor, humans would have remained in slave camps or fighting it in pointless and futile skirmishes at best.

• The Terminator searches for Sarah by looking in the phone book and sets out to kill all the Sarah Connors that he finds. But suppose that the Sarah he was trying to kill had an unlisted number? He would have killed the other two Sarahs and assumed that his mission was completed. The phone book method seemed like a very unreliable way of ensuring the job was done.
  • The phone book is probably only the initial method the Terminator would use, as it was the easiest and most readily available. It gets destroyed before it finishes killing all of the S Connors in the phone book, so who knows what it would have tried next?
  • In addition to taking out the Sarah Connors listed in the phone book, the Terminator may have also been programmed with possible secondary targets listed that become Sarah Connor through marriage. In one of the Dark Horse Comics, Terminator: One-Shot, a T-800 using a female exterior, is sent after a fourth Sarah Connor (formerly Sarah Lang) in San Francisco (which Sarah and her husband Michael from Los Angeles are visiting for their honeymoon). And seeing that Skynet only knew the name Sarah Connor, it probably compiled a list of all Sarah Connors as far back as possible (which probably ended in 1984 (back when information was going from hardcopy paper to the first data entry period), making it the earliest it could find anything with that name. So, that means it not only had the information of a Sarah Connor existing in Los Angeles, Skynet took into account the possibility of women whose first name is Sarah getting married to men with the last name Connor after the earliest notation they could find on Sarah Connor (Reese himself said that the Terminator "just knew the city", which makes sense considering all the maps made of the city for local government over the years due to expansion and changes). So, that means that if the T-800 had killed all three Sarahs in the time it arrived in 1984, it would have gone onto it's secondary mission of keeping an eye out for other Sarah Connors that turned up after it arrived in hopes that one of them might have been the Sarah Connor Skynet was looking for, up until Judgment Day.

• During the police station shoot-out scene Kyle escapes custody by knocking a man out and getting the handcuff keys to free himself. The strange part is that he does this just by kneeing the guy in the stomach. I understand that would hurt but would that really knock a man completely unconscious? It didn't even look like a particularly hard hit either.
  • I always assumed that Kyle hit the guy in the solar plexus or diaphragm, just below the ribcage. If you punch someone there hard enough, it can cause the diaphragm to spasm, which makes breathing difficult. Even if the man was still conscious, he really wouldn't be moving anytime soon.

• How was the Terminator's cpu not destroyed by the crusher thing? His arm was reaching out to grab Sarah, so it makes sense it survived. However, the rest of him was crushed flat, and if the crusher was powerful enough to crush the thing's titanium-alloy body, it's hard to believe a mere comptuer chip wouldn't get crushed.
  • It was crushed, yes, but not, like, sheet-thin flat. It makes sense that the CPU would be its most protected part, so its case held even as everything around it was smushed. Even then, it ended up only partially intact.
    • Miles says in the sequel that it was smashed and didn't work, but just the design of it led them in new directions. The architecture of the chip would be more than enough to keep them occupied for years, and would put them on track to develop processors that could handle quantum computing and allow for AI to develop.