History Literature / T2Trilogy

* ClarkKenting: Clea goes to great lengths to alter her appearance from that of her progenitor Serena, starting with hair dye and glasses. She also uses makeup and [[AbsoluteCleavage a very eye-catching dress]] [[DistractedByTheSexy to draw attention away from her face]]. She's helped by the fact that she is, personality wise, a completely different person than Serena.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: [[EnforcedTrope Enforced]] due to the trilogy conceit that history has an "inertia," and will mold events to play out as closely as possible. The more success John and Sarah have delaying or destroying [=SkyNet=], the more events push back to bring [=SkyNet=] about. [[spoiler: Taken to UpToEleven in the second book, when they attempt to simply stop [=SkyNet=] from ever becoming sentient. Wendy Dorset basically has to write an AI program, then write a program to prevent AI from happening. [[IdiotBall But she forgot to label the disks]], and ends up inserting the AI program first, and is promptly killed. Thus, Wendy, who was only involved because of her relationship with John Connor, actually makes [=SkyNet=] self-aware.]]

* MistakenForTerrorist: Both John and Sarah, for blowing up Cyberdyne in Terminator 2. Well, technically they ''[[HeroWithBadPublicity are]]'' terrorists, even if what they did was justified given the circumstances.

* {{Reconstruction}}: The novels take the impression lots of viewers of ''Film/Terminator2'' had of Sarah Connor ("[[TookALevelInBadass Wow, she's such a badass now]]!") and runs with it. As pointed out several places on that film's trope page, Sarah is far from good role model, being neglectful of John, emotionally distant, more than a little unhinged, and, in one of her biggest moments in the film, ''[[BecameTheirOwnAntithesis acting exactly like a Terminator!]]'' This Sarah is a lot more stable (though still flawed), having had time to cope with her assorted traumas, and is genuinely a good mother for John, and their relationship has vastly improved. Sarah remains a badass ActionGirl, but loses a lot of her very questionable personality traits from ''[=T2=]'' (see GettingSmiliesPaintedOnYourSoul).

* MeaningfulName: The I-950, "Serena." Two concepts immediately suggest themselves from the name: EnthrallingSiren, which fits as [=SkyNet=] deliberately chose the "donor" who supplied the genetic material to make Serena and her fellow I-[=950s=] because of her physical beauty, and Serena has no problem using her beauty and charm to advance her goals. The other is "serene," and Serena is indeed a very cold and calculating person by design. It was noted that, because of the genetic manipulation that went into growing her, Serena would have been inhumanly cold without the added cybernetics, which regulate her body's hormones and chemicals to keep her within a strict operational range. She'll feel fear and anger and excitement and happiness, but as mere shadows of what humans actually feel, and has to make up the difference through acting.

* PinPullingTeeth: John looks down on people who do this as engaging in macho bullshit that's [[RealityEnsues bad for your teeth]]. But when he finds himself needing to chuck termite grenades at Terminators while riding a motorcycle, he doesn't have another option.

* RealityEnsues: The books live on this trope. Dieter's main red flag that something truly bizarre is going on with Sarah Connor isn't just that pictures of ''him'' were taken with her, once when he was apparently trying to kill her and again when he was working with her (and Dieter is confirmed to be elsewhere during both events), but the fact that, while Dieter is a top-notch special forces agent and crack shot, even ''he'' couldn't nonfatally shoot people in the legs as often as the T-800 does. John and Sarah are wanted criminals for their previous antics and hiding out in Paraguay, and both have some pretty severe PTSD to deal with (the first time Sarah sees Dieter's face, and recognizes it as the T-800's, she '''runs'''). Numerous other examples abound, mostly deconstructing the common action movie tropes the Terminator series lives.

* SleepingTheirWayToTheTop: Played straight, then deconstructed. Serena fakes a truly impressive resume to land a job as Cyberdyne's head of security, so she can protect [=SkyNet=], but to add further incentive to hire her, during her interviews she subtly implies that some of her "upward mobility" was due to her "horizontal agility." The Cyberdyne directors find the implication very persuasive, but their security liaison [[RealityEnsues immediately sees it as a red flag]].

* AssholeVictim: Two men see young Alissa in a restaurant and decide to take the opportunity of her visiting the restroom to abduct her for unsavory purposes. Of course, despite her young biological age Alissa is still an I-950 with SuperStrength and [[SuperToughness Toughness]], to say nothing of being [[ElectronicTelepathy Wi-Fi linked]] to the three T-800s in the dining room, so this ends very badly for both would-be kidnappers.

* LesCollaborateurs: [=SkyNet=] actually has a small contingent of humans who serve it in various capacities, ranging from humans who sold out in hopes of having at least some small comfort to eco-nut zealots who actively seek the destruction of humanity.

* {{GIFT}}: John, monitoring Luddite chat rooms on the Internet and noting the movement is getting more mainstream -- and more violent -- every day, muses on exactly this trope, that people will say things on the Internet they would never say face-to-face. But it's still probably a good thing not to be in the same room with them when they ''are'' saying such things; who knows what could happen.

* TheSpartanWay: [=SkyNet=]s efforts at rearing the I-950s, which started when they were babies; they would be given hologrammatic toys to chase and compelled to chase them as long as possible to build up physical conditioning and stamina. Those who failed were punished and eventually eliminated. Serena actually kills one of her brothers during puberty after he is judged "emotionally compromised".
* TheStoic: I-950s do feel emotions, and [=SkyNet=] concedes that this is necessary for their function, but between their training and the chemical-regulating neural implants they sport, they are inhumanly cold and logical by nature.
* ThoseWackyNazis: Dr. Kurt Viemeister, the Austrian scientist who is integral to [=SkyNet=] developing into a full-fledged AI, is a full-blown Neo-Nazi. Initially, Cyberdyne's government liason doesn't want anything to do with him, but is eventually forced to accept him because he is [[BunnyEarsLawyer just that good]]. ''Infiltrator'' contains a chilling scene of him teaching the infant [=SkyNet=] to vocalise by reading aloud ''Literature/MeinKampf'', calling it "one of my favorite books". Serena can barely resist smirking, noting that this, more than anything, is laying the foundation for [=SkyNet=]'s future genocide of the entire human species. ''Not'' because the AI was persuaded by Nazi propaganda, but because it showed the AI how dangerous and insane humans were, that they believed things like that. And let's not forget when the Cyberdyne executives tried to excuse his political leanings by dismissing them as "airy-fairy notions of how things should be run," Tricker is ''appalled''.

* OnlySaneMan: When it comes to talking about Judgment Day, at any rate. Even Sarah's friends who genuinely like her just politely put with her delusion about time-traveling robots, and to the wider world she's a psychotic terrorist and source of "can you believe this crap?" humor. And of course, young John was raised in this insanity, of course he'd give his dear, crazy mother the benefit of the doubt. Dieter, on the other hand, has an absolutely impeccable reputation as grounded and level-headed, so when ''he'' starts backing up Sarah's claims, some people start paying attention. After all, mental illness isn't contagious, and no one's '''that''' good in bed.

* PinPullingTeeth: John looks down on people who do this as engaging in macho bulletin that's [[RealityEnsues bad for your teeth]]. But when he finds himself needing to chuck termite grenades at Terminators while riding a motorcycle, he doesn't have another option.

* HeroicBSOD: John has a huge one after [[spoiler:he realizes that the computer code he uploaded into Skynet's database at Cyberdyne's Antarctic base was tampered with by the I-950, and that he has, in fact, made Skynet sentient instead of sabotaging it.]]

* InexplicablyIdenticalIndividuals: The T-800s; as Serena realises all too late, this makes them more remarkable amongst humans, making it much harder to deploy multiple ones at a time and go unnoticed. She attempts to get around it by artificially styling and coloring their hair to make them look at least a little different on a cursory inspection.

* SextSoakedShirt: As a result of overenthusiastically hugging John after he'd been on the deck of the yacht acclimating to Antarctica's weather, Wendy gets one of these. At her insistence, John is quick to help her out of it.

* RealityEnsues: The books live on this trope. Dieter's main red flag that something truly bizarre is going on with Sarah Connor isn't just that pictures of ''him'' were taken with her, once when he was apparently trying to kill and again when he was working with her (and Dieter is confirmed to be elsewhere during both events), but the fact that, while Dieter is a top-notch special forces agent and crack shot, even ''he'' couldn't nonfatally shoot people in the legs as often as the T-800 does. John and Sarah are wanted criminals for their previous antics and hiding out in Paraguay, and both have some pretty severe PTSD to deal with. Numerous other examples abound, mostly deconstructing the common action movie tropes the Terminator series lives.

* SleepingTheirWayToTheTop: Played straight, then deconstructed. Serena fakes a truly impressive resume to land a job as Cyberdyne's head of security, so she can protect [=SkyNet=], but to add further incentive to hire her, during her interviews she subtly implies that some of her "upward mobility" was due to her "horizontal agility." The Cyberdyne directors find the implication very persuasive, but their security liaison immediately sees it as a red flag.

The books are out of the main continuity of the series following ''Film/Terminator3RiseOfTheMachines'', which chose a rather different path for the universe to take, though they arguably inspired (or at least predicted) certain ''elements'' of that film. On the [[http://terminator.wikia.com/wiki/Terminator_Wiki Terminator Wiki]], they are treated as an alternate timeline, similar to the reboot and alternate continuity entries in the film series. In any case, the trilogy consists of three novels:

* GambitPileup: John and Dieter go to some GoodOlBoy gunrunners to buy stock for Judgment Day caches. Unfortunately, those gunrunners also fancy themselves bounty hunters, and just saw a TV spot about the guy who shot up a police station some years ago (the T-800, who's appearance was based on Dieter). So they call the show ask about the reward, and prepare to try and snag Dieter at the planned arms deal. The Sector was monitoring the show and its phone lines to try and figure out what the hell's going on with one of their top retired agents, and I-950 Alissa was monitoring the show and the Sector.

* OnlySaneMan: When it comes to talking about Judgment Day, at any rate. Even Sarah's friends who genuinely like just politely put with her delusion about time-traveling robots, and to the wider world she's a psychotic terrorist and source of "can you believe this crap?" humor. And of course, young John was raised in this insanity, of course he'd give his dear, crazy mother the benefit of the doubt. Dieter, on the other hand, has an absolutely impeccable reputation as grounded and level-headed, so when ''he'' starts backing up Sarah's claims, some people start paying attention. After all, mental illness isn't contagious, and no one's '''that''' good in bed.