The Terminator, also known as a Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 or T-800, is the name of several film characters from the Terminator franchise portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Terminator itself is part of a series of machines created by Skynet, an artificial intelligence, for infiltration-based surveillance and assassination missions. It is a cyborg, with a tough computer-controlled metal endoskeleton covered in living tissue.
The first appearance of the Terminator was as the titular antagonist in The Terminator, a 1984 film directed and co-written by James Cameron. While the original Terminator was destroyed, other machines with the same appearance are featured in the sequels. In Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), Schwarzenegger's Terminator serves as the main protagonist, while in Terminator Genisys (2015) and Terminator: Dark Fate (2019), it serves as a supporting protagonist, and is pitted against other Terminators sent by Skynet and its successor Legion.
In Terminator Salvation (2009) and Dark Fate, the character also appears briefly as an antagonist. In the context of the stories, the plot device of having various robots looking the same provides a certain continuity for the human characters by exploiting their emotional familiarity with a particular "human" visage associated with each "model". The "Terminator" title is also used as a generic name for other human-simulating characters in the Terminator franchise, such as the liquid-metal T-1000 antagonist in Judgment Day.
The Terminator is Schwarzenegger's best-known role, and resulted in two catchphrases, "I'll be back" and "Hasta la vista, baby", used in the first and second film respectively.
Fictional background A Terminator is an infiltration-based assassin, described in the films as a cybernetic organism. They are built in the future by Skynet, an artificial intelligence engaged in a war against humans. This model, often designated as the T-800, is the successor to the T-600 series, which had artificial rubber skin and was easily spotted by members of the human resistance.
T-800 models are all identical in appearance: a muscular, male human exterior made up of living tissue, covering a metal endoskeleton actuated by a powerful network of hydraulic servomechanisms, which provide superhuman strength. In the Terminator sequels, armies of skinless T-800 endoskeletons are shown to be used by Skynet during future war sequences, serving as soldiers rather than infiltrators. With the exterior appearance applied, they are the first Terminator model capable of blending in with humans; as a result, the resistance began using dogs to detect them, since the animals became agitated and barked loudly in their presence.
In the first film, a Terminator travels back in time from 2029 to 1984 to alter the past by killing Sarah Connor, retroactively ensuring victory for Skynet. Kyle Reese, a future soldier sent back to stop the Terminator, describes the latter as such:
"The Terminator is an infiltration unit, part man, part machine. Underneath it's a hyperalloy combat chassis, microprocessor-controlled, fully armored, very tough. But outside it's living human tissue. Flesh, skin, hair, blood, grown for the cyborgs."
Reese adds that Terminators are capable of exhibiting behavior such as sweating and bad breath, in order to more effectively pass as human. The skin is prone to aging and injury related deterioration, but can heal itself with enough time.According to the Terminator, when asked by Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Also stated in Terminator Genisys. According to early drafts for the original film, a Terminator must consume small amounts of food to maintain the human skin, a detail that is absent in the finished film.
A Terminator can withstand normal 20th century firearms, crash through walls with little to no damage, and survive explosions to some degree. Repeated shotgun blasts have enough force to knock down and temporarily disable the cyborg, while heavy amounts of automatic fire are able to compromise the organic disguise layer. Terminators can continue functioning even after losing one or more limbs. Reese describes the Terminator's relentlessness to Sarah in the first film:
"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!"
The Terminator's CPU is an artificial neural network with the ability to learn and adapt. For instance, in the original film, it learns how to swear from a group of punks it encounters. In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the character states, "The more contact I have with humans, the more I learn." A deleted scene from the second film, restored in the Special Edition, provides more backstory on the Terminator's learning ability; the character says that Terminators are set to read-only, a measure taken by Skynet to prevent them from "thinking too much". Sarah and John then activate its learning ability, after which it becomes more curious and begins trying to understand and imitate human behavior. It ultimately learns "the value of human life" as mused by Sarah in the closing narration of the theatrical cut. Later films in the series further humanize the character.
Throughout the series, the Terminator is typically depicted wearing sunglasses and a leather jacket. Another trait persistent throughout the series is the faint red glow of the "eyes" when the cyborg is online; the lack of the glow has been used to show when one is out of action. The Terminator has an Austrian accent but can also copy the voice of others.
In the second film, the Terminator states that he can operate for 120 years on his power cell. In the third film, the Terminator is slightly modified, operating on two hydrogen fuel cells; when damaged, these explode with enough force to produce a small mushroom cloud. This iteration of the character also has an understanding of basic psychology.
Nomenclature Commonly known as the Terminator, the character is also given more specific designations, which help distinguish from other mass-produced Terminators seen in each of the sequels.
In the first two films and Terminator: Dark Fate, the character is referred to as a "Cyberdyne Systems Model 101", referencing the Cyberdyne Systems company which created Skynet. In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (T3), he is referred to as a "T-850". This name also occurs throughout the T2 novels. A slight variation, "T101", was used as early as 1991, in the Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum versions of the Terminator 2 computer game.
The name "T-800" had been used off-screen in news articles and reviews for Terminator 2, differentiating from the film's other Terminator character, the T-1000. The T-800's heads-up display in the film specifically identifies him as a "Cyberdyne Systems Series 800 Model 101 Version 2.4". The novelization of the third film refers to the character by a different designation: a T-850 rather than a T-101, described as a newer, upgraded version of the T-800. Both T-800 and T-850 were used in merchandising for the film series. Terminator Salvation has the first on-screen usage of the term T-800, which is also used in Terminator Genisys.Guardian: "As a T-800, I lack the mimetic skills to appear as anyone else." Terminator Genisys.
Because the Terminator is portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the character is sometimes referred to as the Arnold Terminator, distinguishing from other Terminators played by different actors. Some of the Terminators portrayed by Schwarzenegger are also given on-screen nicknames. In Terminator 2, John Connor introduces the Model 101 to his mother's friends as his "Uncle Bob". In Terminator Genisys, Sarah Connor refers to the T-800 as "Pops", while the end credits list him as "Guardian". In Terminator: Dark Fate, the character goes by the name "Carl".
In the Terminator 2 DVD commentary, director and franchise creator James Cameron states that all Model 101s look like Schwarzenegger, with a 102 resembling someone else, leading to fan speculation that the 101 refers to the physical appearance while the 800 refers to the endoskeleton common to many models.
Character origin The origin of the Terminator's physical and vocal templates is provided in the 2001 novel T2: Infiltrator, in the form of former counter-terrorist Dieter von Rossbach, who meets and joins forces with the Connors in the present. The novel reveals that he was never questioned about the Terminators' actions, as his superiors always knew that he was somewhere else during the rampages. The reason stated for copying Dieter was that Skynet was looking in the old military files for someone whose body could effectively conceal the Terminator's massive endoskeleton. The voice was provided through Kurt Viemeister, the scientist that taught Skynet its sentience.
A different origin is provided in a humorous deleted scene for Terminator 3, removed by director Jonathan Mostow who found it too comedic. In the scene, the Terminator's human appearance is said to be based on that of Chief Master Sergeant William Candy, also portrayed by Schwarzenegger but with a dubbed-over Southern accent, which would be replaced in-universe by the more menacing Austrian-accented voice of one of the developers.
When asked in 2017 why all T-800s look the same, Cameron suggested that Skynet had harvested the DNA from a human who had the same appearance, stating "it has flashed through my mind that there has to have been a prototype. [...] Now, the question is, did that person have some sort of meaning to Skynet on why they chose that one? Or was it like a whole rack of Terminators and the one that happened to be the Arnold model just happened to be closest to the door going out to the time displacement center and all the others looked different? I've asked myself these questions but it's never been resolved".
Appearances The Terminator appears in all six films of the franchise, each one featuring a different individual with the same likeness. The Terminator is an antagonist in the original film, and generally portrayed as a protagonist in the sequels. Every iteration of the character is destroyed at the end of each film, with the exception of Terminator Genisys.
The Terminator (1984)
The Model 101 is sent back in time from 2029 to 1984 to terminate Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), thereby preventing the birth of her son, John Connor, the future leader of the Human Resistance. Lack of surviving records in the future meant that it was limited to only knowing Sarah's name and that she lived in Los Angeles at the time, with the result that it killed two other Sarah Connors in the city before finding its target. As a result, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), a soldier sent from 2029 to protect Sarah, is able to find her before it does.
During several skirmishes, the Terminator withstands contemporary gunfire with only superficial damage to its exterior tissue. It is later caught in a fuel tanker explosion, which burns away its flesh covering to expose its mechanical nature and causes minor damage to one of its legs, slowing it down. Kyle sacrifices himself to damage the Terminator with a pipe bomb that destroys its legs and one hand, and Sarah crushes the remaining endoskeleton in a hydraulic press to shut it down permanently.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)