Did You Know?

Jürgen Prochnow was also considered to play the title role.

Shots through the Terminator's vision shows a dump of the ROM assembler code for the Apple II operation system. If you own an Apple II, enter at the basic prompt: call -151 * p This will give you the terminator view. Other code visible is written in COBOL.

The initial draft for the movie was sold to James Cameron's wife, Gale Anne Hurd for the price of $1 only.

According to an article from Hot Dog #10, April 2001, studio executives threatened to shut down the project if James Cameron filmed additional future war scenes beyond the script.

Wolfie, James Cameron's German Shepherd dog, can be seen at the Tiki Motel.

Near the beginning of the movie, when Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) receives a message on her answering machine breaking her date, the voice on the machine is James Cameron's. Years later, Hamilton and Cameron got married and subsequently divorced.

Linda Hamilton broke her ankle prior to production, and had to have her leg wrapped every day so she could do her chase scenes. Those scenes were also moved towards the end of the shooting schedule.

One afternoon during a break in filming, Arnold Schwarzenegger went into a restaurant in downtown L.A. to get some lunch and realized all too late that he was still in Terminator makeup - with a missing eye, exposed jawbone and burned flesh.

Most of the car chase scenes were shot at normal speed and sped up slightly. To add more of a sense of speed, other cars rode along with them out of frame with revolving lights attached to them that made it seem like the car was passing other light sources faster.

The future terminator who infiltrates the human camp in the dream sequence is played by Franco Columbu, who is a multiple Mr. Olympia title winner like Arnold Schwarzenegger and is a close friend of his.

The "screaming" sound at the end of the movie is Brad Fiedel and friends screaming in a microphone and Fiedel playing synth over it.

According to the original treatment (accessible on the DVD version), there were originally two protectors sent back to save Sarah Connor. However, this partner of Reese's would have received very little screen time, as when he traveled through time, he rematerialized right into a fire escape. It is interesting to note that this contradicts what the sequels show about the Temporal Displacement Field (matter in an orb-shaped space is replaced by its counterpart from the future).

The movie's line "I'll be back." was voted as the #37 movie quote by the American Film Institute (out of 100), and as #95 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007.

The "fog" in the scene after Sarah and Reese leave the bridge where they spent the night is actually bug spray, due to the big "fly scare" in the filming location at that time. The crew was going to wait until the spray dissipated, but decided to use it as fog for the effect instead. This is revealed in a DVD easter egg, which can be found by pressing the right arrow in the languages section until the square on the right is lit up.

Mel Gibson turned down the role of the Terminator.

Lance Henriksen was originally considered for the role of The Terminator. Writer/director James Cameron even made early sketches showing The Terminator looking like Henriksen. The original concept was for the character to be able to blend into a crowd. Cameron approached Arnold Schwarzenegger and wanted him to play the role of Kyle Reese, but after their meeting, Schwarzenegger and Cameron both wanted Schwarzenegger to play the title role, so Henriksen was cast in the role of Det. Vukovich. Curiously, Henriksen later got to play the part of a humanoid cyborg when he played Bishop in Aliens, also directed by Cameron.

The sunglasses worn by the Terminator were Gargoyles.

There was minimal interference from the film's financial backer, Orion, partly due to the budget offered. However, they suggested two things; the first one being a cyborg canine that accompanies Reese - an idea turned down by James Cameron; the other one is in improving the relationship between Kyle and Sarah, which was incorporated into the final film.

Arnold Schwarzenegger started work two weeks later than the rest of the cast. His first day of work was on the car garage scene where he was looking for Sarah on a police car that the Terminator hijacked.

According to a 2008 interview with Lance Henriksen, James Cameron had no agent and was living in his car when he wrote the script for the film.

The scene where the Terminator breaks into a station wagon was the very last scene shot and it was added a few weeks before the film's release due to insufficient funds. The scene was completed in 2 hours and filmed with just both James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger minus the crew (Cameron self-funded the scene). However, it was shot without a police permit. Fearing of possible police arrest, another set of Arnold's clothes was placed behind the wagon trunk and Cameron told him to change the moment the scene was deemed finished.

The Terminator is the only character to be listed in the American Film Institute's 100 Heroes and Villains as both a villain (for The Terminator and a hero (for Terminator 2: Judgment Day). Al Pacino and Arnold Schwarzenegger are the only two actors to be on the list as playing a villain and a hero but Pacino played two different characters. 13 other actors and actresses appear twice or more but either all as heroes or all as villains.

Debra Winger successfully auditioned and won the role of Sarah Connor. However, she later changed her mind and turned the role down.

Daryl Hannah auditioned for the role of Sarah Connor, but turned it down in order to play Madison in Splash.

Jennifer Jason Leigh was considered for the role of Sarah Connor, but director James Cameron feared she was too young for the part. She was later recast as Ginger but she was replaced at the last minute with Bess Motta.

Tom Selleck was rumored to be cast as The Terminator, but was forced to turn the role down due to his commitment to the TV series Magnum, P.I.. Kevin Kline and Michael Douglas were considered to play The Terminator.

James Cameron revealed that Glenn Close was originally chosen to play Sarah Connor, but Close wasn't available prior to the project began.

In the original script the Terminator was supposed to steal a car at the beginning of the film. The scene involved the Terminator observing an elderly woman getting into a car and as she saw the Terminator she panicked and put it into reverse hitting a trash can then correcting herself put it into drive and sped off. The Terminator then enters the car, puts it into reverse then into drive mimicking the woman's actions. This was cut from a later script.

Sarah Connor's answering machine message is a recording of Ginger saying "Hi there...ha ha fooled you. You're talking to a machine. But don't be shy, it's ok, machines need love too. So talk to us and Ginger, that's me, or Sarah will get back to you. Wait for the beep."

Sarah Connor is 19 years old in the movie. This is proved in the sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day where Dr. Silberman says Sarah is 29 years old and T-1000 checks Sarah son's, John Connor's, profile which states he's 10 years old.

Sarah causes the hydraulic press to shut twice, once by accident and once on purpose. Both times the remastered soundtrack uses a completely different sound effect when this occurs than what was originally presented in the mono soundtrack.

The teaser trailer for this film was narrated by Peter Cullen, best known to fans as the voice of the robotic hero Optimus Prime from Transformers.

The Terminator's line "I'll be back" is commonly repeated as "I'll be bock" or "I'll be back!" However, Schwarzenegger delivers the line calmly and with very little accent: "I'll be back."

The tanker truck that explodes at the end is a model, not a real truck. Most people can't tell the difference. It was filmed twice because the wire pulling the truck tugged too hard initially, pulling the front axle off ruining the shot.

The gun Reese gives to Connor at the motel is Traxler's. Traxler gave it to him after being shot by the Terminator from a deleted scene. He finally believed Reese's stories about the future, and how imperative it was that Sarah stay alive.

During the final chase, as 'Reese' tosses pipe bombs at the 'Terminator', there is a single white frame spliced in just before some of the explosions. Director James Cameron would later use this trick to heighten the visual impact of gunshots in Aliens. The pyrotechnic charges can be seen on the street, each with a pressure-sensitive strip for triggering the explosion when run over by either the Terminator's motorcycle or the heroes' truck.

James Cameron:  [feet]  the Terminator often steps on objects, crushing them. In the future, there is a close-up of tank treads rolling over human skulls.

James Cameron:  [nuke] 

A scene in which a person picked up the CPU of the terminator after it was crushed, was filmed but not included in the movie. Another reference to the time paradox whereby the events in the film directly lead to the creation of Skynet was also cut: in the scene where Sarah is driven away in the ambulance following the destruction of the terminator in the hydraulic press, after the cut seen in the theatrical release, the camera pans up to reveal that this took place inside Cyberdyne's production facility.

Please note -- also a spoiler for Terminator 2: Judgment Day) Two deleted scenes gave Skynet and the Future War some more background. The first was a scene where Sarah discovers that a company called Cyberdyne will be responsible for building Skynet and the Terminators. She tries to convince Reese that they should destroy this company, in order to prevent the dark future from ever happening. Reese tells her that his mission is conserving the future, not changing it. The second scene shows that Cyberdyne owns the factory where Sarah battled the Terminator, and one of their employees finding the Terminator's microchip (this event actually causes Skynet to exist in the first place). Both these ideas became major plot points for the sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Director James Cameron cut the scenes because he wanted to leave some questions yet unanswered, which he never regretted as he could make an entire sequel out of the unused ideas.

The Body count in this movie is 28 people. There were 30 cops in the police station, but in the 1991 sequel, we find that the Terminator was only wanted for killing 17. Also killed were Kyle Reese, one of the three punks (the second (Brian Thompson) who was punched through the stomach - the punk leader (Bill Paxton) got knocked out and of course the third (Brad Rearden) lost his clothes), the first two Sarah Connors, a man and a woman in Tech Noir, the gun store clerk, Sarah's mother, Sarah's friend Ginger and her boyfriend, and of course, the Terminator himself.

There is only one time that Michael Biehn and Arnold Schwarzenegger are in the same frame together. It is when Kyle blasts The Terminator the second time at Tech Noir. When they finally meet in the factory, it is not Schwarzenegger, just a metallic puppet.

The smoke that is flowing out of The Terminator when it is crushed in the hydraulic press at the end of the film, is actually cigarette blown by one of the crew, out of camera view on the right.

Kyle Reese smiles only once during the entire movie, when Sarah makes to playfully throw the bag of dynamite at him after their night of intimacy.