Line #131 Headscratchers/TerminatorSalvation


1	* How did the Harvester, a huge bipedal machine with a column of black some coming out of it (was it diesel powered or what?), approach unnoticed a hideout in the desert?
2	** It may have a "stealth mode", where its machinery operates more quietly or it produces some sort of noise-dampening field. If its stealth features build up a lot of heat, that may be ''why'' it has a column of black smoke coming out of it afterward as it uses some sort of venting mechanism. If a giant machine having a stealth mode seems ridiculous, just remember [[RealityIsUnrealistic we have stealth helicopters]].
3	*** The problems is that even with this sound-dampening stealth-mode, we still have a gigantic machine walking through a flat desert while approaching the rebels' hideout a very noticeable thing. I guess whoever had the guard shift at that time was in the restroom.
4
5	* How the blazes does the Skynet of ''any'' time-line (ESPECIALLY the ''Salvation'' one) know that Reese will be John's father?
6	** And for that matter, if Skynet knows Kyle is John Connor's father, why doesn't it just kill Kyle while it has the chance? If Skynet doesn't know that, why is Kyle the first target? The only thing that can explain the plot is if Skynet knows that Kyle is somehow important to Connor, but doesn't know that he's Connor's father. But even in that case, wouldn't it have been sufficient for Skynet's plans for Connor to ''think'' that Kyle is alive and well?
7	*** [[WildMassGuessing Couple of thoughts on this]]:
8	*** First possibility is that everyone's forgetting Skynet is a ''machine''. A self-aware machine, yes, but still ''not'' operating with the same level of creativity or perhaps intelligence than its human creators. Anyway, here's the theory: Skynet figures out Kyle Reese is Connor's father from (perhaps) tapes that remain of Sarah Connor's interviews in the psych wards, or even the old police tape when Reese had been detained in the first film. Skynet ''only'' sends a T-101 back when its defence grid was smashed and the Resistance had won -- the original Terminator being sent back to kill Connor before he was born was a desperation move on its part. Skynet doesn't consider the TimeTravel tactic until that last moment, mainly because of the available solutions to its problem it can't predict the likelihood of success and it knows that if something crucial happens in the past Skynet itself could wind up vanishing out of existence rather than John Connor. (In fact Skynet might realise that its efforts to kill Connor in the past are destined to fail simply because (a) it knows it will send 2 Terminators back but (b) Connor continues to exist.) Skynet ''does'' know that John Connor is Kyle Reese's son, but it cannot predict whether killing Reese will actually prevent any other leader from arising and doing the same thing. Skynet is thinking like a logic-blind machine: if I kill ''Connor'' -- not Reese -- then I win, because I know Connor is destined to lead the resistance to victory. If I kill ''Reese'' I ''may'' eliminate Connor, but I cannot predict how the timestream would be affected by that paradox, or whether Connor would disappear from this contunity. The better of these two choices is to seek to kill Connor since I can predict that outcome. However, after Connor eludes Skynet and the Resistance wins, Skynet logically shifts to the other remaining alternative: killing Connor now does not allow me to win, and Reese is not available as a target. Because I have no other alternatives available, I will attempt to kill Connor before he is born, since the best prediction I have is that this will change the result of my defeat.
9	*** Second possibility is that the John Connor we see in "Salvation" is an anomaly who's skipped from the universe of T1 and T2 into the "Salvation" universe where Skynet ''doesn't'' truly know ahead of time that Kyle Reese will become John Connor's father. Also explains why the Connor portrayed in T1 and T2 is [[TheOtherDarrin a different actor]]. Skynet in the ''Salvation'' universe only knows John Connor's a capable warrior with a lot of leadership potential, so it gives him a moral option to try and entrap him.
10	*** Here's a better idea, instead of wasting time and resources on these overly intricate schemes that never work out, why not just give the whole thing a miss and never invent time travel in the first place? If Skynet hadn't started trying to kill/prevent John Connor in the past, Kyle Reese would never have been able to go back in time (he uses Skynet's time machine, after all) and get Sarah pregnant, and the whole problem would just disappear. Surely a super-genius machine intelligence is capable of figuring out when it is time to stop shooting itself in the foot.
11	*** If it had been an infallible machine, it wouldn't have lost the war in the first place!
12	*** Because the first time Skynet sent a Terminator back, it didn't know it was going to create John Connor by accident - mostly because Skynet was destroyed and the resistance hijacked its equipment. After that, it pretty much couldn't stop the hilarity from ensuing. And besides, time travel is pretty damned useful as a weapon; T:SCC has shown just how much Skynet ended up using time travel for strategic assassination/resource gathering.
13	*** The first time Skynet sent a terminator back, John Connor already existed - why else would the terminator have been looking for Sarah Connor to kill?
14	*** The Terminator-verse timelines are pretty tangled, but it seems like (disregarding everything else) the first movie relies on a StableTimeLoop, as Kyle mentions that Sarah trained John "since birth," which she could only have done if she knew the future war was coming, which could only happen if Kyle had come back to tell her because she was targeted for termination. Skynet assures its own destruction by trying to prevent it. Considering it seems like ''nobody'' knew who John's father was besides Sarah and John, Skynet somehow being aware of Kyle's significance (and knowing what he looks like, since it tracked him) makes no sense.
15	** Skynet's [[EvilPlan big damn plan]] is never really explained. If I were to guess, Skynet, at this point, is aware that Kyle Reese is important (somehow), but is not quite sure. Skynet is clearly apt to capture people rather than kill them. Perhaps it intended to transform Kyle Reese and the whole lot of survivors into T-800s -- or worse, infiltrators similar to Marcus Wright. All this said, I am disappointed that they didn't write a justification for keeping Kyle alive -- or if they did, that it wasn't shot or didn't show up in the theatrical cut.
16	** Also, just because it has someone named "Kyle Reese" it doesn't mean that he is ''the'' Kyle Reese. There's also the issue of killing Reese before Marcus can find him and thus alert John Connor; its worth noting that right after Marcus alerted John as to where Reese was, a T-600 showed up to shove Reese in the kill-o-matic.
17	** Again: Kyle Reese is at the ''top'' of Skynet's priority target list. Skynet could have accomplished the plan exactly the same by killing Reese and baiting John into going on a mission to rescue him.
18	*** And again: John wasn't going to go in until he had confirmation as to where Reese was. Marcus would have had a hard time getting Connor to come inside the complex if he couldn't find Reese in the first place. Leaving Reese alive allowed Marcus to confirm his location, which led to him bringing John inside the complex. After Marcus gave Connor Reese's location, a T-600 went after Reese to kill him. Skynet was being ''cautious.''
19	** Here is my problem : ''somehow'' (hate this word) Skynet know that there is some kind of link between Connor and Reese. Let's say he absolutely doesn't know anything more. He accurately predict that Connor will litteraly jump into its paws himself to save Reese. Now is the real problem: ''how exactly did Skynet get this knowledge in the first place ?'' As the movie begin, the only ones with a clue are John and Kate, thank to Sarah's tapes. I can't really think of a theory of an explaination that would allow Skynet to have only the tiniest bit of a microscopic hint that there may be a link between the badass that treaten its very existence and the kid in the middle of freaking nowhere, especially considering the whole time travel MindScrew, erasing of all records and post apocalyptic setting.
20	*** See, I thought of something, but it's really, ''really'' unlikely. Skynet stumble upon some police recordings and archives from the interrogation in T1. He see mention of a Kyle Reese and of a Sarah Connor on the same page, and go crazy from there onward. The only possibilitie at this point is that he somehow deduce ''the whole freaking plot from then onward'', probably shattering the fourth wall in the process. And of course, it made no sense. Skynet ''can't'' come to the conclusion that T1 Kyle Reese = T4 Kyle Reese. The best he could come up with is that it's an homonyme, so there's nothing useful to do with that intel. ''Or'' he already know that he's going to invent time travel. ''Then'' it could make sense...only to open the door to a MindScrew of galactic proportion that would probably result in Skynet very own BSOD...
21	*** I'd like to point out that during Kyle Reese's interrogation, he explained that he was from the future and that a computer network called Skynet sent a Terminator back in time to kill Sarah Connor. If Skynet were to get a look at records of that interrogation, it wouldn't have much trouble figuring out what happened. It wouldn't know that Kyle Reese was John's father, but it would know that Kyle had saved the life of John's mother. Given how far Skynet had infiltrated computers all over the world in T3, its not too hard to believe that it might have stumbled onto those police files at some point. It still should have been better explained in the film, though.
22	*** Or maybe Skynet used the time ''before'' Judgement Day to track down such information. Its very first act on becoming self-aware was surely to snoop through all of Cyberdyne's own computer records, and it would've found information on Sarah Connor the Crazy Anti-Tech Terrorist there. (Remember, she got arrested for attacking the company previously.) It's not much of a leap from there to records on Kyle Reese, who'd inspired her "insanity" with his own police-documented ravings, a dozen years before. Even if Skynet didn't yet admit the possibility of time travel, it would've worried about and investigated Sarah simply because she was still on the loose, and somehow ''knew'' it was hostile to humans.
23	*** A big problem with that is that a plot point in the first movie was that almost all pre-judgment day records were destroyed. Like, Skynet literally only knew Sarah's name and the city where she lived, nothing more. It is not 100% impossible that whatever police reports that were filed in the scant hours between Reese's arrest and the T-800's ramapage at the police station could have somehow survived the nuclear armaggedon, but the leap is big enough that it shouldn't have been ignored by the movie.
24	*** Here's why they didn't just snuff out Reese: They were going to make him into a Terminator like Marcus was. Think about it, assuming the above is true, they know they have the '''one person''' that John Connor will trust completely. So as a back-up in case Connor escapes, you've got Terminator!Reese, who can hook up with him later, say he "escaped" and then rip his lungs out.
25	** Given how the premise of Salvation is partially how John is still on his way to becoming the leader of the resistance, and more than a few people seem to know about his prophetic status as the man who will end the war, it seems like a more human answer is that some sort of pseudo-cult surrounding John has formed. This guy with no military training seems to know all about the machines, about Skynet and their plans. He made enough predictions about the T-800 that when they find the plans someone mentions they are exactly like John described. So, following that, I'm sure that Skynet puts captured resistance members through some sort of interrogation process for information, thus leading to how Skynet knows and cares about Kyle Reese. Not sure why that makes him their #1 target though.
26	** Maybe the Skynet of 2029 sent a terminator back in time to inform Skynet of 2018 to kill John and Reese before either of them really started doing harm.
27
28	* My dad's been in the health care industry his whole life. (Not as a doctor, to be sure) He walked away from T4 grumbling about the heart transplant in near battlefield conditions, performed without any stated concern for blood type, compatibility, etc.
29	** They were desperate to save the prophesied destroyer of Skynet. They were willing to take a gamble at that point.
30	** Field hospitals. They could have easily moved them both inside a field hospital for the transplant.
31	** It's stated in the film that they had a team of surgeons on the way to John's position. Kate wasn't the only one who would be performing the operation. The blood type problem is a valid complaint, though.
32	** Marcus could've had type O blood already, or (and I'm aware that [[ArtisticLicenseBiology I fail biology forever]]) Skynet could've replaced his blood with type O or artificial plasma while they were working on him - it's TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture after all, and Skyberdyne has nigh-unlimited reasources.
33	*** The latter possiblity is actually supported in canon. According to TSCC, terminators with artificial skin use a synthetic oxygen carrier in their blood, so the skin can survive without a bone marrow to create red blood cells. If they did this for Marcus (sure looked like he didn't have any human bones), then he probably would be type O, as he would have no red blood cell antigens.
34	*** If you're going by TSCC, John's blood type is ABNegative. So is Reese's.
35	*** And to be fair, this ending was apparently the result of a quick retcon, because the original ending was disliked by the testing audience. In the original ending, Connor die, Marcus somehow take on his face, and from then onward a Terminator is actually leading the resistance without nobody knowing it. Cool? Yes. Make sense? Nope. I can see why it was changed.
36	*** That ending would have been totally badass.
37	*** "Nope", what? It would have been approximately seventy trillion times more awesome than the revised ending. I hope the original ending gets published at some point, so I can watch it and pretend the movie actually ends like that.
38	** Possibly the reason the lady scientist from the opening scenes was so interested in Marcus signing over his body to medical research was ''because'' he was known to be type O- for blood, and low in other rejection-inducing antigens. His tissues were the ideal raw material from which to clone new transplant organs.
39	** While we're on the subject of Marcus since they obviously had enough medical supplies for heart transplant couldn't they have kept Marcus alive via machines till some poor O type Resistance fighter got his head blown off?
40	** I always thought the line about Marcus' heart being very powerful, meant that it was artificial or at least partially artificial.
41
42	* My big question is what injury did John suffer that would have required a heart transplant? Either his heart was punctured, or it wasn't. If the heart was punctured, he would have died. If the heart wasn't punctured, he didn't need a transplant. It has to be one or the other, unless my study of anatomy skipped an important chapter.
43	** It wasn't necessarily "punctured or not punctured". It might have been scratched or slashed by the metal, which could have caused serious damage to the musculature of the heart without it being instantly fatal.
44	** John seems to have suffered a blunt cardiac injury, a punch from a terminator hitting with the force of a small truck causing severe overpressure damage to the heart potentially weakening or rupturing one of the chambers. The former seams more likely since he was still consious but under those conditions it's unlikely a critically weakened heart with chamber tissue liable to tear under strain would be survivable. I'd hazard a guess that his heart was in the process of failing when the surgery began with the muscle tissue giving out as they worked.
45
46	* Who were the four hazy figures at the window in Skynet's San Francisco headquarters? Marcus is the only (surviving?) infiltrator prototype; they're too skinny to be the current Terminators or T-800s; the T-1000s obviously haven't been created yet, and I doubt any human Cyberdyne staff still exist.
47	** They may have been worker/medical drones who were doing human testing. [=SkyNet=] probably has needs of specialized science units to advance it's Terminator and Infiltrator projects.
48	** EpilepticTrees Answer: They were [[LesCollaborateurs human traitors]] being kept to do research, or willing and waiting to be "cyberdyned" like Marcus was. Considering that Reese and Co were being kept in a room full of CAT scan look-alike machines, [=SkyNet=]'s next phase in world conquest may have been a full scale wave of post-human infiltrator models. Of course, Marcus' refusal to FaceHeelTurn would probably have put the kibosh on the whole thing.
49	** In one draft they were supposed to be human-centric Cyborgs that were like Marcus, including Dr. Kogan (Cancer lady)but were supposed to be cruder looking, due Marcus in the draft being the first successful prototype for the skin grafting the T-800s onwards used.
50
51	* Near the beginning of ''T4'', a crawling Terminator skeleton is killed with plain old, regular machine-gun fire. One of the heroes (Connor, Reese or Marcus, I can't remember who) simply fires enough bullets into the Terminator endoskeleton, and it stops moving. Um, HELLO? Wasn't the whole POINT of the first movie about how damn near impossible it is to kill a Terminator? You know, "That thing out there, it can't be reasoned with. It feels no pain, no emotion, and it won't stop until you are dead". They blow the thing up TWICE, and even after that, the remnants of the skeleton continue to chase after Sarah Connor until she crushes the damn thing in a hydraulic press. In ''T4'', a Terminator is KILLED WITH BULLETS. Did [=McG=] even WATCH any of the Terminator movies? It kind of makes the whole first film anticlimactic if a Terminator can be killed with plain old, regular bullets, doesn't it?
52	** There's a difference between the bullets available to the military and the types available to civilians and police forces. Armor-piercing bullets fired from an M249 SAW at point-blank range in the head would naturally be more effective at killing a machine than would, say, buckshot fired from a shotgun, or 9mm rounds fired from a submachinegun or pistol at twenty to fifty meters into center mass. In fact, SCC actually posits this same thing as well; Cameron uses solid slugs in her shotgun when she brings down Cromartie, Derek Reese uses a .50 caliber sniper rifle to bring down a Terminator in two shots, and in the second season finale, after Cameron wades through dozens of police officers' fire, she herself is at least partially damaged. You fire enough armor-piercing bullets at a Terminator, and it ''will'' be damaged and it ''will'' go down. That's a simple case of metallic stress.
53	*** Really, it's far from impossible to take down a Terminator with standard firearms. If you can find a weakpoint (joints in the limbs, eye sockets, etc.), a well aimed small-caliber bullet ought to be able to do some considerable damage. Heck, in ''Salvation'' Reese was able to disable one by jamming a knife in the back of its neck. It didn't ''kill'' the thing, but it shows that even something as simple as a hunk of sharpened metal can be used against them. The difficulty of fighting Terminators is the same as it is fighting zombies: All the ways we're ''used'' to killing things just don't work, so you have to figure out new ways.
54	** It's worth noting that in the first three movies, the humans armed with firearms were dealing with Terminators that they generally had never fought before (exception being Sarah Connor), and are generally police officers. The humans in ''T4'' are trained, well-armed military, and have been fighting Terminators for at least a decade. The idea that they ''haven't'' adapted to the Terminators and haven't started fielding high-caliber firearms with rounds capable of penetrating their armor (especially when they've got the resources to maintain a fleet of A-10 Warthogs, Black Hawks, and a freaking ''submarine'') is simply absurd. The humans are simply adapting to their enemies' capabilities, which is normal and expected in a time of war.
55	*** Agreed. In ''T1'' it's strongly implied that the soldiers of Reese's time had methods and weaponry with which to take out a Terminator -- in one of Reese's flashback scenes they damn well charge in with hand weapons, which presumably they wouldn't do if the weapons were ineffective at stopping Terminators. When asked by Sarah Connor if Kyle can stop the Terminator, his reply is "I don't know. '''With these weapons''' ... I don't know."
56	*** That last line is particularly telling. There's some ambiguity there as to whether they can kill the Terminator with vanilla firearms. Not an outright "no, we can't." Kyle thinks that there is ''some'' possibility that he can kill the Terminator with normal firearms; otherwise, he wouldn't have said "I don't know." It would have been a flat "No."
57	*** In ''T1'' they also had those awesome plasma cannons that melted through Terminator armor. But yes, it's not implausible that they switched ordnance.
58	** The terminators from the beginning of Salvation were T-600s. A single T-800 shows up at the end, and it's every bit as indestructible as the ones from the other movies. The T-600s just had less advanced armor, that's all.
59	*** I'm consistently astounded at how many people missed that...
60	*** The scene in question has John Connor's helicopter land right on a T-600 that's apparently been disabled by a missile detonation. He then puts a round in its head. Later he finds out that it's apparently survived all that punishment and killed the helicopter's crew. He proceeds to battle it out with the torso of the terminator, firing .45 caliber rounds that just harmlessly bounce off its face, struggling until he can turn an M60D on it and pepper it with 7.62mm rounds, likely armor piercing. That much gunfire from that kind of weapon will make Swiss cheese of layers of steel the terminators use for armor. And considering all the damage the thing put up with, it seems like even the older models are as hard to kill as anything else we've seen.
61	*** Which raises the other question of why John, who has been trained on the strengths and weaknesses of the T-800 and has learned through experience what it takes to put down a T-600, brought a bunch of weapons to his assault on Skynet that were about as effective as a baseball bat against a Terminator.
62
63	* HOW is there still a Cyberdyne Systems? They blow up Cyberdyne in T2, and it's established in T3 that the military ends up creating Skynet, not Cyberdyne. Unless Salvation is in a different timeline.
64	** If you were to blow up most ''modern'' corporate offices, it wouldn't end the company. That's what they have insurance for.
65	** Additionally, Cyberdyne was probable being employed by the US Military for the purpose of making kill bots. The US does use the odd civilian contracter, after all.
66	** And finally, in T2 they weren't out to destroy ''Cyberdyne.'' They were only trying to destroy Miles Dyson's work on the recovered Terminator components, and what he extrapolated from them. T3's assertion is that there's "No stopping Judgment Day". That suggests Dyson's work, if it had developed into the creation of Skynet, would have been a 'shortcut' on the original sequence of events in which Skynet was an original military design rather than Dyson's "stand on the shoulders of giants" creation.
67	** Alternately, Cyberdyne became a shell corp for Cyber Systems Research. Imaginary competition's great, man. Chocolate Skittles didn't compete with M&Ms because Mars Co owns both of them. Same thing. Branding.
68
69	* A relatively minor thing, compared to some of the stuff on this page, but is Salvation a prequel or a sequel? It takes place before the war finished and before anyone traveled back in time, but after the events of the "present day" sequences of the rest of them. So, yeah... Whee! Time Travel!
70	** More of a sequel, since it's not the same timeline that Kyle came from in ''T1'' thanks to the change in ''T2''.
71
72	* 1) How was it possible that during the first nuclear blast, Connor's helicopter crashed after being hit by the EMP, but during the 2nd nuclear blast, the helicopter flew away without a problem? Does [=McG=] not understand how this contradicts itself, for how nukes work? Also, 2) did [=McG=] even watch ''T2''? At the end of the movie, both terminators were destroyed by molten steel, but in Salvation, the T-800 has molten steel dumped on it and this doesn't cause ANY damage. None, whatsoever.
73	** 1) Who said those detonations were nuclear, instead of conventional? 2) Being dunked completely in molten steel != as having molten steel dumped on you.
74	*** To clarify: having some rapidly-cooling molten metal poured over you for a few seconds is not going to do the same kind of damage as being fully immersed in molten metal for a prolonged period. Note that the T-800 in ''T2'' was still working and functional for a comparatively long time -- several seconds -- even ''after'' it was immersed. There's also the possibility that Skynet may have up-armored the Terminators it's using in this timeline if it has knowledge provided from previous timelines; there's a reason why the Terminators in ''SCC'' are using coltan alloy to strengthen their body structures against melting.
75	** Not as powerful of an explosion. Nuclear weaponry sets off a chain reaction of atoms to increase the power, if every fuel cell and reactor was just as powerful, meltdowns would be much worse than they already are.
76
77	* In ''T4,'' where does the Resistance get the infrastructure/fuel needed to fly Ospreys, Hueys and Warthogs... ah, stuff it -- I admit [[RuleOfCool I enjoyed]] seeing something bigger than hand weapons being used for once. More to the point is the annoying habit the Resistance has of [[{{Exposition}} openly discussing their plans]] on the radio. Presumably they're using scrambled communications, but would they really take the chance an artificial intelligence couldn't crack it?
78	** The further future of 2029 (shown in the other three film's flashforwards) show cities are even more desolate, so most of what the Resistance uses would be destroyed in the 11 (or more, considering Judgment Day was postponed) following years.
79	** Also, the fuel is {{Handwaved}} as being from biofuels developed since Judgment Day. It's been canon since ''T1'' that a lot of scientists and engineers survived to fight the war.
80	** The moment you realize that all of the TimeTravel has actually been one long game of XanatosSpeedChess between John Connor and [=SkyNet=]. Connor is trying to keep the timeline the exact same (which includes lying to his own mother in order to keep the date of Judgment Day stable) and [=SkyNet=] is doing everything it can to change it.
81
82	* The cameo from a young-looking Arnie was a nice moment in the cinema... but unfortunately it kind of implies that [=SkyNet=] is manufacturing hundreds and hundreds of ''identical'' terminators. Which, uh, gravely undermines the value of disguising them in the first place. Unless [=SkyNet=] has a ''separate'' factory cranking out hundreds of spectacles, fake beards, etc... or they program the terminators with a "Oh, no, I get that all the time, I just ''look'' like the implacable killing machine guy, that's all" subroutine.
83	** It doesn't necessarily imply that. We only see ''one'' Arnie, and the reason we see him is probably the same reasoning given by the T-850 in ''Rise of the Machines'': Skynet knows of Connor's childhood attachment to that particular model, and would have thought it wonderful irony to have Connor be killed by the "same" robot that saved his life as a kid.
84	*** Can a machine be "ironic"?
85	*** Why couldn't it?
86	*** ''Terminator 2'' shows that once a mere T-800 gets his in-built inhibitors removed, it can quickly develop a dry sense of humor on his own. So it's entirely possible that [=SkyNet=], being a more sophisticated AI that has become self aware and has been active for several years, could understand and employ irony.
87	** I thought the idea that [=SkyNet=] bulk-manufactured Arnie models was confirmed when three separate ones appeared in the past over the course of the three previous movies.
88	** [=SkyNet=] probably has multiple templates it bases physical features on; SCC pretty much confirms that [=SkyNet=] can manufacture a terminator's skin to look like whatever it wants, it just uses the same model's facial features for ease of construction. You don't need to get close enough for your facial features to be recognized to get the drop on a group of humans, and if your face is covered by a helmet/hat, cloth face-covering, and/or goggles, it would be hard to tell you've got one standardized face.
89	*** The very first Terminator we see in the original movie is not played by Schwarzenegger, so it's obvious that Skynet does have more than one template.
90	*** This is actually confirmed in the novelization of ''T2''. John Connors goes through several T-800 fabrication lines and pick up the one model he remembers from his youth (i.e. looking like Arnie).
91	** The T-RIP is chronologically the first bot with Arnie's face on it, so maybe it could've just been intended as a one and done model. The only 101 model we know of that might've stuck out in a bad way for Skynet is "Uncle Bob" (the original T-800 portrayal was sent back to a time where no-one would compare it to a robot so its model is irrelevant, and the T-850 was supposed to use the 101 model to exploit Connor's emotional attachment to "Uncle Bob) since he was captured and reprogrammed in the future war, but even then only Connor and those he's informed would be suspicious.
92
93	* So many things about TS bug me.
94	** The very first scene, Connor's unit goes down into the lab, then Connor goes up, sees his mates dead, and a Terminator flyer taking off, somehow derives that the prisoners must be aboard and attempts to pursue it, and then the machines blow up the lab. Why didn't they do it earlier? How did they manage to kill the topside humans without them alerting the underground ones? Why didn't whoever killed the topside humans stay to make sure that nobody escapes from the lab or, better yet, went in and kill them all? Why wasn't the lab protected? When did they have time to transport prisoners to the surface and load them into the flyer and moreover why did they bother -- it's not like they have shortage of slaves/test subjects? Was Connor intent to take that tansport on alone? How the hell did Marcus survive the explosion completely unscathed?
95	** [=SkyNet=] wanted some of the soldiers attacking the lab to survive and send the fake signal so that they could locate the Resistance Headquarters. Of course, their plan relied on Command broadcasting the signal from their sub, instead of an off-site transmitter.
96	*** They thought it was a fool-proof way to shut down Skynet's machines. Assuming it's true, as they did (and went out of their way to verify, remember), how is it a bad idea to broadcast it from your base of operations? Even if Skynet could track it, from their perspective it wouldn't matter because the signal would shut down any attacking machines that got close.
97	*** Idea: Send the signal off from your headquarters where all of your senior leadership is. Best case scenario: Skynet crashes like it was running off of Vista and the war is over. Worst case scenario: It doesn't work, and your entire senior leadership becomes dead. Even if they were absolutely sure, it wasn't worth the risk.
98	** The scene in the Skynet facility. Why did the Skynet feel the need to explain its plan to Marcus and ''show him the location of the chip in his head''? What was the point of the chip, if it could simply be torn out? Why didn't the Skynet dispose of Marcus after he'd outlived his usefulness? Why wasn't there a remote controlled "Off" switch in him? When Connor got inside, why didn't Skynet flood the chamber with gas? Or fire? Or swarm several Terminators on him? Or give that one Terminator a gun? What was the need to clad that Terminator in human skin? Why do the machines, who have heat vision, need spotlights?
99	** If Skynet could make such creatures as Marcus, what was all that crap with rubber-skin, easy-to-spot and emotionless Terminators about?
100	*** At the same time they were developing regularly, they were experimenting with a prototype. And considering how a full-fledged cyborg proved hard to control, going on for hard-to-spot emotionless robots instead of more humans turned into Terminators seemed the best Skynet could do.
101	*** Skynet did not make Marcus, the cancer lady did. After she died of cancer, Skynet simply "improved" upon her design. It probably did not or ''just'' learned how to make another Marcus from the ground up.
102	** Why is every Terminator in the movie such a wuss? Why keep tossing the humies around instead of just snapping their necks?
103	*** Besides not being that advanced, the PG-13 rating prevents a carnage...
104	*** Ever get smacked with a backhoe and shrugged it off with some cold compresses and tylenol? If it weren't for PlotArmor, anyone getting thrown around by one of these Terminator units would've suffered lethal internal injuries upon landing.
105	** How the hell can a Resistance be successful, when it has no idea about discipline or chain of command, and when a direct order from high command can be overruled with a heartfelt speech from a lowly officer?
106	*** It does seem to know about discipline and chain of command, but it wasn't just a heartfelt speech but a heartfelt speech about "You are going into a trap!" with the added appeal of it being from who some regard as the chosen one.
107	** How the hell could Kyle Reese survive in the post-apocalyptic world while being such a wuss, who cannot shoot a guy and approaches his quarry face to face?
108	*** This troper assumes that the people who would be non-confrontational and run and hide (wuss tactics), would likely survive longer than those that fought every battle. Kyle also may have never need to actually shoot another human; perhaps the threat of harm had always been enough before.
109	** Whose dumb idea was it to bradcast the Signal from the HQ? Wasn't it painfully obvious that it could be tracked back to them?
110	*** While broadcasting from HQ was not the best idea, everybody else was supposed to be broadcasting as well IIRC; so pinpointing HQ would not have been that easy. Also, if you expect your enemy to be completely and utterly disabled, what risk is there?
111	*** The risk is that just because you expect it to work doesnt mean it will, and if it doesnt then the consequences woukd have been, and in fact ended up being, the loss of the leadership.
112	** If Skynet controlled all the military assets in the USA at the least, including nuclear weaponry, how could the humans still possess such extensive warfare, including airfields, especially since they didn't seem to bother about camouflage. Why didn't the machines bomb them? Where did the human crafts get the fuel?
113	*** The world has a lot of hiding places. The Resistance may very well control large areas of land.
114	*** Skynet possesses all automated military assets not all military assets. And as the troper above alluded to, the world is huge. The US alone has enough bases all over that bombing every single one would be impossible. As for fuel, again the world is huge, the humans can get fuel from other continents. We don't exactly know how widespread the machine are, but we do know that by 2029, the humans win. So, it is not likely that they control all fuel sources.
115	** In the end Connor bestows Reese with a Resistance uniform, saying that "you earned it"? Excuse me? Did I miss the part when Reese actually did something useful for the Resistance? Moreover, for the duration of the whole movie Connor keeps harping about Reese's importance. Well, apparently nobody, his superiors included, cares enough to inquire, otherwise what exactly would Connor say? "He's destined to bang my mom in the past, so I have to wrap him in cotton-wool, or else I'm screwed out of existence"?
116
117	* Why was John only worried about Kyle getting blown in the work camp?
118	** Go back and rewatch the first film. Who does John Connor send back to protect his mom? Kyle. And who ends up fathering John Connor? Kyle.
119	** John isn't certain that that particular Kyle's actions would result in the creation of his past self. But he's not certain it won't. He can't take that risk.
120	*** I understand that; but in the movie, it makes him seem like he was only interested in going to [=SkyNet=] Central because Kyle was there and he just happened to rescue a bunch of people.
121	*** Again, because him (John) existing is crucial to the survival of the species. He has to rescue Kyle because he can't take the chance that this Kyle isn't going to be his father. Needs of the many, and in this case the many is the entire race.
122
123	* [=SkyNet=] had the opportunity to converse with John Connor. I find it hard to believe that it couldn't have produced an image on a wall or have spoken to him over the loud speakers. I only mention this because these figures are supposed to be the leaders of both sides of the Human-Machine War and enemies across the fabric of time itself. Skynet can't even take a moment out of its time to gloat at its worst enemy?
124	** I don't think [=SkyNet=] was given a "Gloat" function, or saw the need to develop one.
125	*** Yes it does. That's exactly what it does to Marcus when he's reborn into his second cyborg body. It goes over the entire plan up to that point and how Marcus was a pawn leading Connor to the facility.
126	** That wasn't gloating, that was congratulations. Skynet was too dumb to know that taking the form of his last kiss and congratulating him on something he didn't want to do would anger Marcus... much like why it sent a terminator instead of leaving a bomb, but to be fair, that would have worked if John did not learn a terminator killed him that way in T3.
127	*** Admittedly, [=SkyNet=] gloating at John Connor would have made the movie more interesting. It is supposed to be "self aware", so why not give [=SkyNet=] some personality?
128	** For all we know, Skynet is ''terrified'' of John Connor. Think about it: A relentless figure, shrouded in myth. Unkillable. Unstoppable. From the past, he comes. And no matter what you do, no matter what you throw at him... He has no pity. He has no remorse. He will not stop. He will not give up. Until you. Are. Terminated. Kinda sheds a new light on the whole series, doesn't it?
129
130	* Given that General Ashdown is a former Commanding Officer of the U.S Military and John Connor's uniform as of 2029 shows him with the rank of 4 Star General are we to assume that the Resistance is a continuation of the United States Military? I ask this because once the Human-Machine War is over someone is going to have to rebuild the country and assume command. Are we to assume the U.S Government and all its important members like the President have no authority anymore?
131	** The U.S. Government and its important members kind of, you know, were blown up.
132	*** Highly improbable, the President and his cabinet would have been given advanced warning of an incoming nuclear strike and would be notified to go to a high security bunker. Important Military personnel like Generals, intelligence officers, etc. would be given this treatment as well. The U.S Government and Military faced the threat of nuclear attack from the Soviet Union during the Cold War for decades, they would have contingencies to keep the structure of their organization together even after a nuclear war.
133	*** The Cold War had been over for a decade and a half by the time the bombs dropped in ''T3'', and the end of that movie pretty clearly shows that they ''did not'' get to those bunkers -- because John Connor is there, and they're not. [=SkyNet=] had shut down most/all communication lines, that's a running plot thread in that movie.
134	*** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Weather_Emergency_Operations_Center The bunkers for the executive leadership of the United States]] are nowhere near where John ends up at the end of T3. They're also maintained and ready despite the end of the Cold War, and were actually used as an evacuation point for the congressional leadership during the September 11th attacks. Of course, they're also publicly known and almost certainly a target for multiple [=ICBMs=], so actually riding out a nuclear attack there is pretty dicey. In any case, in T3 it's probably got enough control over alert systems by that point to prevent its targets from getting to their bunkers in time.
135	*** [=SkyNet=] would have to keep tabs on where the civilian leadership were presently located, it would be critical to its intended role. Even if it hadn't taken over all the communications, it would be extremely easy to launch American missiles at the American government (much less time to get to a bunker that way) and still have more than enough to incite a MAD response from Russia.
136	** The Resistance is basically an alliance of surviving military units from different countries. Ashdown (and later Connor) was entrusted with command by the leadership of this alliance.
137
138	* When the T-800 encounters Connor near the end, why does it bat him around instead of just snapping his neck? Is there a trope for this activity? Specifically one for powerful hand-to-hand combat characters who needlessly prolong their fights.
139	** Yes, JustHitHim
140	** Two possibilities. 1) Skynet is gloating. It knows that for the first time, it has John Connor within its grasp, with no backup, against a machine that even with all his weaponry may not be killable, and with hundreds of other Terminators as backup if this one fails. It can't be begrudged a few minutes of tomfoolery. 2) The AI is not yet perfect. Remember, literally every single other Terminator we see in the movie has a weapon. The AI might be specialized for aiming and accurate judgement of trajectories, that could even be why it keeps on launching Connor elsewhere, it doesn't know any other way of killing.
141	*** The problem with that is that literally a minute later, the SAME T-800 not only accurately assesses the weakness in Marcus (his heart), but takes him out with a single punch to the heart. The fact that he didn't do this exact thing to Connor is simply a glaring plot hole because they wanted to have their big climactic confrontation and didn't actually think it through. The physical fight between Reese and the T-800 in T1 works because the original T-800 doesn't actually care about killing Reese, he's unimportant, the target is Sarah, so it makes some amount of sense that he'd shrug off Reese and ignore him. In this movie, since Connor IS the target, it's simply inexcusable that the T-800 pointlessly throws him around instead of grabbing him and crushing him, or striking him in the head/throat/heart.
142
143	* Why was Marcus Wright allowed by the authorities to donate his body to science following his execution by the state? Many, if not all, prisons expressly prohibit their incarcerated to do so, making this a case of ArtisticLicenseLaw. One reason is that widespread infectious diseases in prison populations can lead to diseased organs -- not a good choice for medical transplants or research. Another is one that applies to executed criminals. Methods of execution (electric chair, firing squad, lethal injection, hanging, etc.) lead to the vital organs being damaged or even outright destroyed, making them completely unusable. That also raises more questions about how valuable Marcus would be after his execution, considering the state of his vital organs afterwards.
144
145	* How is it that a T-800 here can withstand a grenade launch, when a shotgun was enough to knock it down in T1?
146	** The T-800 from the first movie was taken off guard by getting shot several times at point blank range. He could not prepare for incoming fire. The T-800 in this movie was expecting to get shot.
147	** Well a 40mm grenade only travels around 250 fps, whereas a 12 gauge shotgun slug travels 1,200-1,600 fps.

Context Headscratchers / TerminatorSalvation