Timey Wimey Ball / Terminator

General

• One persistent law of Time Travel across the franchise is that things can only Time Travel if they are made of meat (so people, but not the organic fibers of clothing), wrapped in meat (i.e., Cyborg Terminators), can do a reasonably good imitation of meat (i.e., "Liquid Metal" Terminators) or sneak in when nobody's looking (Cromartie's head, which was still covered in meat). Which is to say, the mechanism here appears to be exactly analogous to airport security. The jury still is out on what would happen if you tried to bring a Ham and Fusion Grenade Sandwich with you.
  • Certain works (like Terminator 2 3-D: Battle Across Time and the video-game Terminator 3: The Redemption) dispense with this tenet of the franchise by necessity — characters can jump through time portals at will and retain their clothing along with any weapons or vehicles they may have, mostly due to them being engaged in a chase sequence or in a Race Against Time.
  • This actually gets answered in RoboCop Versus The Terminator. A group of skinned-up Terminators gets sent back, but bring along an extremely fat human they captured because he's literally a meat bag. Full of guns. Whom the others have to kill to open.
  • The theory they use is that only living tissue can travel back in time. A deleted scene from the second film indicates that the T-1000 traveled back in a sack of living flesh and cut its way free before killing the cop. One inconsistency is a scene originally in the script for the first film indicates that Kyle Reese's partner, who travels back with him, gets fused into a fire escape and is instantly killed. This was removed from the film, as it doesn't much affect the time portal energy cutting through things in the 2nd film.
• The only other consistent element of time travel in the Terminator series is that there are no stable time loops. Each change to the past creates a new and different timeline. This is notably the only way to reconcile all of the changes and alternate continuities necessary from the creation of each of the sequels. ^note  while the first film pretty solidly implies that it is a Stable Time Loop, it also notably does not preclude the notion that Kyle Reese's timeline had a different history than Sarah Connor's. Kyle's limited grasp of history due to Judgement Day causes him to be something of an Unreliable Narrator. Notably, he doesn't know that he is John's Father, which could be because John deliberately withheld that info from him, or could be because, in Kyle's history, John had a different and comparatively "mundane" father

Specific Films

Almost every installment of the Terminator franchise uses a different theory of Time Travel, though it's at least consistent within each movie. To note, a writer from Entertainment Weekly attempted to make sense of the various timelines and causality loops, while others (like RedLetterMedia's "Scientist Man Explains Terminator: Genisys") put a more humorous spin on the trope.

• The original film is the easiest to follow, with a Stable Time Loop being the endstate. In 2029, Skynet (having become aware that it will be destroyed) sends a T-800 back in time to kill Sarah Connor and ensure its own survival. Conversely, the human Resistance sends back Kyle Reese to ensure that Sarah survives. What results is that, in the process of saving Sarah, they conceive John Connor during their night together, and the T-800 is destroyed... save for its arm and CPU, which are later used by Cyberdyne Systems to jumpstart development of Skynet (as seen in a Deleted Scene and in the sequel). The ending suggests that You Can't Fight Fate.
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day pins down the exact date of the titular event as being on August 29, 1997, and initially subscribes to the same You Can't Fight Fate theory. It is revealed that Skynet had a backup plan, as it sent an additional Terminator back to kill the young John Connor (and the Resistance subsequently sent an additional T-800 to protect John in 1995). However, the film later reverses its stance and has the characters adopt the mindset "no fate but what we make", seemingly destroying Cyberdyne Systems and its backup copies for good (not to mention that Miles Dyson, the creator of Skynet, perishes during the raid on the building in the third act). There had been plans to include a scene that established that this had prevented Judgment Day entirely, but eventually they just ended the film with a monologue about hope, indicating that the heroes might have saved the world...but maybe not.
• Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines goes back to the original film's way of thinking — all outcomes lead to Judgment Day, regardless of the actions in the past, and many of the actions taken were All for Nothing. Both John Connor and Skynet are seemingly destined to take over major roles in the future, as the computer system is created in a completely different capacity in 2004 (this time, by the U.S. Government), while John Connor and Kate Brewster are strategically guided to Crystal Peak, where they will have control over operations and communications within the country (setting up John's role as a leader). The film also creates a Temporal Paradox — it's just about possible to buy that Skynet had time to send back two Terminators before it was destroyed, but the narrative makes it clear that it was aware they'd failed when it sent back the third. Never mind that it's now a totally different Skynet doing all this since the first was never built.
• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:
  • The show implicitly ignores the events of 3 by throwing the characters twenty years into the future and taking a Broad Strokes approach. Sarah may have a risk of cancer, there is a female Terminator and Skynet is still being worked on in one way or another, but there are now several factions who have time-traveled to the past (including Resistance fighters, several Terminator models and a friendly T-1000 working to help the heroes), who are all working to further their own agendas under the assumption that the future can be changed.
  • The episode "Complications" is particularly troublesome. It introduces a new stable time loop and strongly implies that Derek and Jesse don't come from the same version of the future.
  • In general, the show introduces so many timeline alterations (caused by the aforementioned factions and various victories the heroes have over Cyberdyne/Skynet) that major plot points are moved forward by characters using the ever-shifting date of Judgment Day to figure out which timeline they originally came from.
  • There's also the terminator that was sent to the wrong year and ended up having to build a building. Things get complicated when you try and work out how such an early intrusion into the timestream plays out with all the time-travel shenanigans already going on. Being a new model terminator at the earliest point in time raises many questions. Did that one with new orders cause the current events? Would it still arrive in the past if that chain of events were excised?
  • The second-season finale also establishes that you can change the future — and it will stay changed. Paradoxes will not rip the universe apart or erase important characters from the present. John Connor time-travels several decades into the post-apocalyptic future, and learns that while he seemingly hasn't existed since he left the current time of 2009, other characters are still operating as normal without him.
• Terminator Salvation disregards The Sarah Connor Chronicles and uses Time Travel as part of the plot — John Connor, now several years older but not in a position of overall authority, realizes that the Stable Time Loop originally stated by his mother in her audiotapes is beginning to break apart, with Skynet's forces gaining greater sophistication and progress ahead of schedule. Skynet knows that Kyle Reese will be an important member of the Resistance in the future (how is not made clear), and is trying to pre-emptively kill him before John can get to him.
• Terminator Genisys:
  • The film is the first in the series to suggest that there are multiple alternate timelines, via the character of the T-5000/Avatar of Skynet, who suggests that he leapt through several timelines looking for John Connor. Kyle Reese comes from the future to a past where a Terminator further in his future tried to kill Sarah Connor when she was just a child. It is also revealed that whoever programmed Pops/The Guardian had full knowledge of the original altered timeline, and was aware that Kyle is John Connor's father, and also knows that Judgment Day would happen in 1997. As a result of killing the 1984 "original" T-800, this sets up a scenario where John Connor/the T-3000 must travel back from 2029 to 2014 to ensure Skynet's survival.
  • The Gambit Pileup of the various time-travel shenanigans results in a situation where Kyle (a man fated to die yet survived, and who hasn't yet sired John Connor), Sarah (who never took up arms against Skynet directly) and John himself (a nano-converted remnant of a future timeline which may or may not exist due to prior actions) are in a parking garage, and John himself points out that they are all an example of a Temporal Paradox, which means that he could kill them with no impact to the timeline. Furthermore, he points out later that Pops (a T-800 model sent by the unknown benefactor to 1973) is a "relic of a deleted timeline".
  • The series also integrates a Ripple Effect Indicator, which motivates the plot — Kyle realizes that his memories of 2017 do not have any moment where Judgment Day occurs, which motivates Sarah and Pops to realize the future has changed — and with it, the timing and nature of Judgment Day. At the end, Kyle seemingly reinforces a Stable Time Loop by asking his younger self to remember specific Arc Words.
• Terminator: Dark Fate:
  • The film is a direct sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and overrides the Screw Destiny message that Sarah Connor relayed in the ending of the film. Three years after the events of that film, John Connor is ambushed and killed while he and Sarah are hiding out in Guatemala, thus overriding the effort keeping him alive for the past two films. The rest of the film, which takes place in the present, once again suggests that You Can't Fight Fate, as Judgment Day is still set to occur — only this time, Skynet is replaced by a new AI, Legion, while the savior of the apocalypse becomes Dani Ramos, a Mexican woman who eventually rises in prominence to become the leader of the Resistance.
  • The film also subverts the Ripple Effect Indicator — the Terminators created by both Skynet and Legion exist in the same time period. In the interim between the prologue scene and the rest of the film, Carl, realizing that killing John Connor was All for Nothing because Skynet was already destroyed, gives Sarah Connor coded instructions on where to find other Terminators so that she can kill them. By the time Sarah meets Carl, he outright tells her that he is the Last of Its Kind. The film also doesn't address the point that the Stable Time Loop created by Kyle Reese being sent into the past by John, thus fulfilling destiny and becoming Kyle's son apparently doesn't exist anymore/never happened.
  • Skynet's capability to send Terminators to the past is also rewritten. Whereas in T1 and T2, it is suggested that the AI sent out one (later two) Terminators in a last-ditch effort to save itself, Dark Fate suggests that Skynet sent numerous Terminators, including Carl, to a period of time spanning at least thirty years (from the original T-800, sent in 1984, to a time shortly before the events of Dark Fate). Carl is also explained as having full knowledge of where the other Terminators would arrive, which is in stark contrast to the villains of the previous films, who all appear to have been sent one after the other to later points in the timeline (though this isn't knowledge Carl has from the future, but knowing how to detect incoming time-travellers, the implication is still that Skynet sent approximately five Terminators all at once to different points in the past).
  • Legion and its terminators, meanwhile, are not aware of the other timelines, or the existence Skynet and the other Terminators until they meet Carl, but seem to at least to be aware that this was a possibility.

Video Games

• Terminator: Resistance, despite being released in the same time period as Terminator: Dark Fate, uses the "original" Future War timeline, and utilizes Time Travel as part of its plot:
  • The plot is motivated by the Player Character, Pacific Division soldier Jacob Rivers, being aided from the first moment of the game by "The Stranger," an unnamed individual who seems to have awareness of future events, saves Jacob's life at several points and suggests he knows much more about the Future War than he's letting on. Near the end of the game, it's revealed that he's a future version of Jacob, sent from the end of the Future War, to ensure Jacob's survival, and ends up perishing to save his life. Notably, this game also features Multiple Endings, and allows the player to Screw Destiny by refusing to utilize the time-displacement machine, instead opting to leave the critical task in the hands of another soldier.
  • This game also sets up a possible Stealth Prequel situation, as a key choice in the game (opting to refuse Commander Baron's task to kill Dr. Mack, and instead help him recover the brainchip of a T-800 Infilitrator unit) has momentous consequences for the entire chronology of the franchise. Notably, if you help Dr. Mack, he becomes the one responsible for ensuring the reprogrammed T-800 was readied and prevented the T-1000 from fully completing its objective in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Notably, the game does not give the player a Non-Standard Game Over if Mack's sidequest isn't completed, and the question of if/what changes have been caused to the timeline are never addressed within the game itself.
  • The game also sets up a rationale for why Terminator models who utilize Dual Wielding and are much more advanced than their normal counterparts are showing up in greater numbers — Skynet has been utilizing Time Travel itself to send intel and designs from the future to its past self, ostensibly to give itself an edge in the Future War. Additionally, the game suggests that multiple timelines are in effect, as the Infiltrator comes from a future where Skynet lost the war and managed to send three units back — the T-800 in 1984, the T-1000 in 1995 and the Infiltrator to pursue Jacob in 2029.
  • The Infiltrator DLC (which follows an unnamed T-600 Infiltrator Unit) more-or-less relegates Salvation into discontinuity, as the overriding plot of the DLC is for the Infiltrator to find and ascertain the identity of John Connor's mother. When he finds the data he's looking for, the Resistance entry on John's father (Kyle) is unlisted/unknown, while detailing Sarah's name — a far cry from Salvation's plot, where Skynet is already aware of Reese years earlier than the plot of this DLC.

Fan Fiction

• The Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles fic "Born to Fight" ultimately deconstructs this idea. The show gave the impression that there were actually constantly changing futures in play, such as Derek killing a younger version of someone who would have played a part in Skynet's rise to power while he was in the past, and yet this person is still alive in the future. As it turns out, there is only one singular timeline, and the apparent conflicting memories of travellers such as Jesse and Derek the result of various parties not knowing all the facts; a particular example of this is Derek having his memory wiped to escape certain painful recollections.
• The Last Connor is a crossover with the Alien series set after the events of Aliens and Terminator Genisys.
  • A key part of this plot is that Rebecca "Newt" Jordan is the child of the version of Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese who travelled in time, while Dwayne Hicks is a descendant of the Kyle Reese who only ever lived in the new version of history created by their time travel.
  • Skynet still exists in the present, but it is initially "just" a computer program trying to manipulate Weyland-Yutani on a path that will ensure its rise to power, possessing only a limited number of Terminators that it received when a possible future version of Skynet where it achieved power sent it back in time.
  • Later, the questions of Pops’ existence are explained when one of Skynet’s new Terminators is revealed to be Pops’ past self; Skynet avoids destroying it even after it learns Pops’ identity because the temporal consequences can’t be initially predicted. As a result, Ripley, Hicks, Newt and Pops are able to capture that Terminator and reprogram it to go back in time to protect Sarah Connor, thus setting up the origin of this timeline.

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