Sarah Connor's first scene. Seeing this young woman driving down a peaceful neighbourhood becomes quite sad upon rewatching, knowing that this life of hers will soon be taken away by tragic events that will haunt her for years to come.
When Sarah finds out that her closest friends, Ginger and Matt, have been murdered. It's sort of Narmy, but it's difficult not to tear up to it, especially if you lost someone close to you.
To clarify, Kyle and Sarah are on the outskirts of L.A., near a forest reservation. It's most likely the first forest Kyle has ever seen in real life, as he breaks down crying over how beautiful everything looks in the past and that in his future all of it will be destroyed either by nuclear war or the machine's uprising.
In another deleted scene, Kyle and Sarah are making their escape from the police station when they come upon Lt. Traxler, who has been mortally wounded by the T-800. He gives Reese his sidearm, telling him, "She’s got to stay alive. Do whatever you have to do." The look Traxler gives Sarah... Also, Sarah manages to hold his hand for the briefest moment before she's pulled away by Reese.
Sarah: In the few short hours we had together, we loved a lifetime's worth.
Reese telling Sarah his story of the future while she bandages his shot arm. What happens at the end with the Terminator infiltrating is bad enough. However, the beginning of the story is even worse: Here we have Reese going to the nearest safe base after a night of touring the battleground, weak and weary. As he finds a resting spot in the base, he slowly walks along the corridor. We hear sounds of moaning and crying in the background. We then see kids eating what little food the human race has left. Two kids scavenging for rats, presumably to eat them. Two other kids looking like they are relaxing and watching an old movie on TV. Only to find that the TV they are watching is really a hollowed-out screen with fire burning inside it. It can make one wonder: if they did win the war, what was left for them?
And then it gets worse. Next, we see soldiers lead refugees to safety from whatever hellhole they were in before, and then the dogs start barking since one of the refugees is actually a disguised Terminator, which begins blasting everything in sight. It kills soldiers, civilians young and old, and it even shoots the dogs. None of them were even given a chance to defend themselves.
A Significant Background Event moment. In the Tiki Hotel Sarah is talking to her mother as the shot of her mother's cabin reveals it's been trashed and she is talking to the Terminator copying her mother's voice and doing an convincing impersonation of a concerned parent. It's heavily implied that the Terminator has killed her mother.
Fridge Brilliance: Which makes her hatred of Terminators in the second movie even more personal and tragic.
The main theme by Brad Fiedel. It gives that sensation of a world completely destroyed by the uprising of the machines perfectly. It feels tragic, haunting and depressing, because humanity has been almost completely destroyed and now, the last hope of humanity surviving the machine uprising is being hunted down by a killer robot sent to the past so that he's never even born.
A subtle one but there is one scene where Sarah asks Reese what women in the future are like (to which he just replies "good fighters") and asks if he had anyone special, to which he just sadly looks away. There is an earlier flashback he has to the future where he is fighting alongside a girl soldier who dies right before his eyes, and the implication is that he is thinking about her.
Kyle: I came across time for you, Sarah. I love you. I always have.
The fates of the other two Sarah Connors, innocent women killed by the T-800 simply because of their names. One of them is even mentioned to have two children.
Although it could be just the movie lighting, as some viewers have noticed, when Sarah and Kyle are leaving the motel, Kyle seems to look cleaner than any other point in the movie, implying that he had taken possibly the first and only bath/shower in his life. Another mundane activity that people in the future will seem to never get to experience.
The collapse of Sarah's old life can be seen as this. Because of the T-800, Sarah loses all her friends and family, witnesses the death of Kyle, and she is forced to deal with the guilt of innocent bystanders and police officers being killed during the T-800's massacre. By the end of the film, Sarah is forced to go on the run to raise John to prepare for the coming storm ahead.
. When you stop and think about how much of a Crapsack World Kyle lives in...it gets to you.