alt title(s): The Terminator
That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
I'll be back.
—T-800
A standard
implacable killer, given a
Sci Fi justification,
The Terminator has become a much imitated part of the pop-cultural pantheon. Arnold Schwarzenegger portrayed the titular cyborg for
three two films in the role that shot him to superstardom.
In the first film,
The Terminator, Sarah Connor learns that a serial killer is hunting down everyone with her name. After two people in her home are killed in an effort to find her, she hides in a nightclub. The killer catches up with her there, but she is rescued by a mysterious stranger, who explains the
Back Story.
In
the near future, men created SkyNet, an artificial intelligence, which
promptly turned on its masters, attempting to
Kill All Humans in a cataclysmic event called
Judgment Day. Mankind eventually defeated it, but at the last minute SkyNet sent a T-800 android assassin
back in time to kill Sarah to prevent the birth of her son John Connor, the future leader of the human resistance. In response, John sent back the stranger, Kyle, to
protect his mother, and the timeline.
After several dramatic battles, and Kyle's
Heroic Sacrifice, the terminator is eventually killed in a factory, but not before Sarah has slept with Kyle, conceiving John. This means John caused his own birth, in a
Stable Time Loop.
In the second film,
Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Skynet sends back a more advanced terminator, the
nigh invulnerable shapeshifting T-1000. In response, John Connor sends back a reprogrammed T-800 to protect his earlier self.
Both terminators arrive when John is 12 and living with foster parents because his mother was thrown in a loony bin for talking about "Killer Robots from the Future." The T-800 takes its place as John's bodyguard, who forces him to rescue his mother from the mental hospital. Sarah, now an
Action Girl, learns more details of SkyNet's history and decides to kill the man who will create SkyNet, but falters when she sees his family. They discover from this man that the company Cyberdyne built SkyNet using components from the destroyed T-800 from the first movie, making SkyNet part of a second
Stable Time Loop. Together, they infiltrate Cyberdyne, where they destroy all the computers and the T-800 remains. But the T-1000 is not far behind them and after several running encounters, both terminators are dissolved in a vat of molten steel.
The series then splits off into two canons:
- Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines: The third film begins with SkyNet's takeover apparently averted - the date Kyle gave has come and gone, but then another Terminator appears, this time female. Like before, a reprogrammed T-850 (functionally identical to the T-800, but slightly different to account for Arnold's age) arrives to protect John. Judgment Day was only deferred, not prevented. Sarah Connor is now dead, but John returns to the fight. He, and his destined wife end up in a military bunker, which they falsely believed held SkyNet's hardware core. In fact, SkyNet is software running on any computer network. As the film ends, SkyNet launches its takeover, decapitating the human governments with a nuclear strike. Fortunately, the bunker is a communications nexus, putting John in the perfect place to take charge of the nascent resistance.
- The Sarah Connor Chronicles: This television series accepts the first and second films (and is very similar in idea to the second) but ignores the third, a move appreciated by many fans. It follows the adventures of Sarah, John, and an attractive female Terminator named Cameron, who is his bodyguard and likely love interest.
A teaser trailer places a fourth movie,
Terminator Salvation, during the war with the machines. Whether it will draw on
Terminator 3 or The Sarah Connor Chronicles for its backstory is as yet unknown, but early reports suggested the former.
These films provide examples of:
- Action Girl - Sarah in the movies and the TV show, Cameron in the TV show
- Alternate Continuity - Terminator 3 (and possibly Salvation) and The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
- A Man Is Not A Virgin - Averted with Reese, who is a badass hero and a virgin for much of the film. He does lose his virginity to Sarah, but this is a legitimate plot point - John Connor's conception - rather than just to up Reese's badass credentials.
- As You Wish - "Come with me if you want to live" is what Kyle said to Sarah when they first met; in T2 and Chronicles, it's how Terminators identify themselves as good guys.
- Back Story
- Badass - Any of the Terminators, but particularly the T-800. Also, Sarah.
- Hey, don't forget Reese.
- And John. In fact, very little of the Terminator movies is not badassery. Except...
- Badass Decay - John Connor in T3
- Ballistic Discount
- Bluff The Impostor
- Canon Dis Continuity - Impending; either T3 or The Sarah Connor Chronicles will get written out of the main continuity when Salvation hits. Which one? Your guess is as good as anyone else's. It might even be both.)
- Cant Take Anything With You
- Catch Phrase: The original "I'll be back," and to a lesser extent "get out," "fuck you, asshole," and "hasta la vista, baby."
- Also "come with me if you want to live"
- Changed My Jumper - Avoided. Time travellers arrive naked, flashforwards show weary clothes.
- Chekovs Gun - The photograph in T1, and the T-800 arm/CPU and the ATM hacking machine in T2
- Chrome Champion - The T-1000's true form.
- Cool Shades - Played straight in the first two movies, where Schwarzenegger takes clothes and shades from burly biker-types, subverted in what was perhaps T3's greatest moment, where Schwarzenegger takes the clothes of a male burlesque dancer and puts on his shades, only to find that they are of the tacky pink variety. He quickly takes them off and crushes them Vegeta-style, and acquires his usual shades later on.
- Cue Cullen - Terminator Salvation features Christian Bale as John Connor.
- Darkened Building Shootout: in that factory in the first film. Even darker than most darkened buildings.
- Deceptively Human Robots
- Determinator - no pun intended.
- Everything Is Online
- Evil Detecting Dog
- Eye Scream - Terminator removing his eye in the first movie.
- Fan Service - Any of the female Terminators, and probably the time-traveling dudes, if we're honest.
- Fish Out Of Temporal Water
- Final First Hug - John and The Terminator's heartbreaking farewell.
- Go Out With A Smile - The Terminator's encouraging final "thumbs up."
- Grays Sports Almanac - The first Terminator remains.
- Heroic Sacrifice
- Honor Before Reason - John Connor of Terminator 2 is an admirable example this trope: He stops Sarah from killing Dyson even believing it would prevent Judgment Day, and his idealism allowed a war for humanity's future to be waged and won without murdering a single innocent human being.
- I Cannot Self Terminate - trope namer
- Impersonating An Officer - T-1000
- Implacable Man
- The Juggernaut
- Kid With The Leash - John Connor in T2
- Kill All Humans
- Laser Guided Tykebomb - John Connor
- Lowered Monster Difficulty - the first Terminator and T-X are damaged until they become only endoskeletons, and after that even lose their legs
- Manly Tears - "I know now why you cry, but it's something I could never do."
- Nigh Invulnerability - T-800 is Made Of Diamond, while T-1000 is a regenerating Made Of Air.
- Nightmare Fuel - The fleshless skeleton of The Terminator "rising like Death Rendered in Metal from the fires" of a burning wreckage; a nightmare of the director that inspired this entire franchise.
- Nightmare Fuel Unleaded - The nuclear holocaust scene of Terminator 2 Judgment Day, holds the dubious honor of being praised by scientists as the most horrifyingly realistic portryal of a nuclear attack committed on film; to date. In today's volatile political climate, where Sarah's nightmare could become reality at any moment, it is more horrifying than it was 16 years ago.
- No OSHA Compliance (the factory in T1, the steel mill in T2)
- Out Of The Inferno
- Password Slot Machine - T2
- Pre Mortem One Liner - By Sarah in T1, and the Terminator in the other 2.
- Railing Kill - T-1000 in T2
- Recurring Character - Dr. Silberman, who shows up in all of the movies (to date) and The Sarah Connor Chronicles
- Redshirt Army - any member of the L.A. police
- Ridiculously Human Robots - Two examples go even further: the T-800 in T2 starts understanding feelings, and the T-850 from T3 has psychology in his programming)
- Ripped From The Phone Book - The Terminator doesn't just rip out the page, he begins to kill everbody on it.
- Robo Cam - Which shows 6502 assembly language code in T1, and Macintosh commands in T3
- Robot War
- Rousseau Was Right - Terminator 2, surprisingly enough. This Troper was amazed to watch an action movie in which the entire goal of the protagonist was to save the wworld without killing a soul. The Heroic Sacrifice of Skynet's creator really hit the point home.
- Scannable Man - Kyle Reese and his concentration-camp tattoo.
- Screw Destiny - The point of Terminator 2.
- Self Fulfilling Prophecies
- Shape Shifter Swan Song - The T-1000
- Slow Doors - T3
- Spock Speak
- Stable Time Loop
- Stat O Vision - Standard for Terminator Robo Cam's.
- Tear Jerker - When Reese dies in the first film, and when the Terminator wipes John's tears away in the second.
- As Sarah was about to murder Dyson in cold-blood in front of his family, she realizes that she has become exactly like what she hates the most, and collapses weeping in guilt.
- "I know now why you cry, but it's something I could never do." Grown Men Cry.
- Terminator Twosome - Trope Namer. Seen in all three movies, and the first episode of the TV series (apparently).
- The End Of The World As We Know It
- The Other Darrin - John Connor was portrayed by many people
; T4 will also have a new Kate Brewster and Kyle Reese (though in his case, due to being younger)
- Time Travel
- Took A Level In Badass - Sarah Connor in T2
- Truth In Television - The British Ministry of Defence actually operates a satellite network used to coordinate unmanned vehicles - including "Hunter Killer drones" - called Skynet. I Am Not Making This Up.
- This link further cements that the previous troper did not, in fact, make that up.
- The US Air Force has a unit readiness tracking system called, I shit you not, Skynet. During exercises, announcements come over the loudspeakers for group commanders to "update numbers in Skynet". I Am Not Making This Up.
- Turned Against Their Masters
- Ultimate Showdown Of Ultimate Destiny - The Terminator vs. Robocop
- Voluntary Shapeshifting
- Waif Fu - Cameron, The Sarah Connor Chronicles; mildly subverted and partially justified, as she does not fight like a waif and her endoskeleton gives her all the mass she'd need.
- You Cant Fight Fate - the point, in so many words, of Terminator 3, and likely the first film as well given the Stable Time Loop. T3's rejection of the Screw Destiny message of T2 was largely what made it one of the first entries on the Wiki for Dis Continuity.
