Goofs for
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: As John and Kate take off in a blue Cessna it has the registration number N3035C. In flight it is N3973F and when they land it is back to N3035C.
  
  
• Continuity: The same silver Volvo 740GL sedan is destroyed several times during the crane chase. Each time it is seen, damage from previous hits in earlier scenes is clearly visible.
  
  
• Continuity: In the Hearse scene, the hub caps get knocked off, then reappears several times during the chase.
  
  

• Revealing mistakes: Near the beginning of the film, the T-X uses a mobile phone to track down the identities of the people she needs to kill. However if you look at the phone as she's dialing the number, you can see there's no signal on it.
  
  
• Continuity: During the crane chase, the boom and winch switch from the front of the crane to the back several times.
  
  
• Continuity: When the T-X climbs back into the crane vehicle, it is passing the building with the blue front that was wrecked by the crane earlier in the chase.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: When the T-X, in the guise of Scott Peterson/Mason, starts driving the police detectives' car from the back seat, she is able to control the accelerator and brakes although at that point she has not (as shown with the police cars earlier and the military machines later) been seen to inject her nanotechnology controllers into the vehicle.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When the Terminator and friends are in the RV in the desert, when the camera is outside the RV while it’s driving, you can see blue screens covering the windows inside! As you know the blue screen is a wall for computer simulation as when an actor is in a car or truck the car never moves yet the outside world does.
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene were Katie destroys the Flying Machine with the AK, when the camera switches behind her you can hear the gun firing but there is no muzzle flash.
  
  
• Continuity: According to the Police database in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) John Connor was born in 1985 and is established as being 10 years old, therefore the film was set in 1995. However, at the beginning of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) John's voiceover says he was 13 during the events of Terminator 2. In the cemetery scene John tells Katherine that his mother, Sarah Connor, had fought with leukemia for 3 years before dying in 1997. This would have meant she was diagnosed in 1994, before the events of Terminator 2 which made no reference to this. According to promotional material, John Connor is 22 years old in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), meaning that this film should have been set in 2007 instead of 2003/2004. In addition, in Terminator 3, Sarah Connor's grave marker in the mausoleum states that she was born in 1959, dying in 1997; this further conflicts with the timeline set in Terminator 2, in which Dr. Silberman states that Sarah Connor is 29, and since Terminator 2 was established as taking place in 1995, this would place Sarah Connor's birthdate in 1965 or 1966, not 1959.
  
  
• Continuity: When Kate Brewster is thrown from her car by Terminatrix, she has blood on her hands. But later when she is dialing 911 from in the back of her van, her hands have no blood and no cuts to prove it.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Most of the other cars destroyed during the crane chase are already severely damaged.
  
  
• Continuity: The tire iron reappears on the back of the truck for one shot after it has been removed.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: At the AM/PM gas station, when the Terminator drops the tire iron after letting Kate out of the back of the Vet truck, the sound of clanging metal is heard before he drops it.
  
  
• Continuity: When the Terminator and John Connor are driving the veterinary truck into town, notice the grab handles on the front door frames. In early shots the grab handles are missing the small, square, screw covers which reappear a minute later.
  
  
• Continuity: At the animal hospital again, when the T-101 smashes the TX through the wall with his truck, you can see briefly on the next shot that there is no driver in the truck. Moments later the T-101 appears from the door.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: Actor Jay Acovone (Cop - Westside Street; the cop who pulls over the T-X) is listed as "Jay Acavone" in the end credits.
  
  
• Continuity: The headlight illumination on the crane vehicle throughout the chase.
  
  
• Continuity: In some of the action shots, the hearse is shown minus both the front and rear right-hand side wheel covers; however, when the hearse comes to rest near the RV, the right-rear wheel cover has reappeared.
  
  
• Continuity: Inside the mausoleum, after Kate Brewster grabs the gun, the Terminator is standing with his right shoulder towards Brewster; they cut away, then immediately cut back, and his left shoulder is towards her.
  
  
• Continuity: The stripper's hand just before and after the Terminator grabs it.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: In the end credits, the character of Kate's fiancé is listed as 'Scott Petersen'. Actually the character's name is Scott Mason (mentioned by the two L.A.P.D. detectives in the movie).
  
  
• Continuity: During the sequence when the terminator is in the convenience store, he is seen throwing items (bags of chips) in the basket which is nearly overflowing. After the cutaway, the items are neatly stacked in the basket.
  
  
• Continuity: The naked Terminator squeezes the stripper's hand to get his clothes, while "Macho Man" by the Village People is playing. When he walks out the front door all dressed up, after what should have been several minutes, the song on the P.A. system hasn't skipped a beat.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The window smashes just a split second before the the Terminator punches through it during the beginning of the terminator battle.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the second film, John is said to be 10 years old when he gets attacked (on the screen on his criminal record). But at the beginning of this one, he says he was attacked when he was 13. Is there an attack we don't know about yet?
  
  
• Continuity: Damage to the hood of the Jeep when the Terminator is trying to shut itself down.
  
  
• Continuity: When the Terminator is trying to shut himself off by hitting the Jeep, the tires and rims are bent out by the opening blows, yet appear upright and inflated in the next shot, and then once again bent out in the subsequent shot.
  
  
• Continuity: The front end of the vet truck is clearly damaged when John Connor hits the civilian car at the red lights. However, moments later when the crane truck catches up, no damage can be seen.
  
  
• Continuity: After the crane chase, the amount of dirt and grime on the passenger-side window of the truck (behind Connor) changes with the scenery.
  
  
• Continuity: When leaving the graveyard, The Terminator smashes the coffin through the back window of the hearse. However, when John Connor sits up out of the coffin and talks a few seconds later, the window is intact.
  
  
• Continuity: When we see Kate riding in the passenger seat of the RV, several views show only a square RV window behind her, with a flat wall forward of that. Other shots show (correctly) an angled window ahead of the square one.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the crane chase, the out-riggers for the crane are extended in some shots and not in others.
  
  
• Continuity: The vet truck's headlights are on/off between shots during the chase.
  
  
• Continuity: When the vet's truck is driving through the front lawns, it hits a parked car in a driveway with the left front. A few moments later, we see that part of the truck completely undamaged.
  
  
• Continuity: The crane truck the TX drives originally has forged painted white steel wheels, but when the Terminator drops the crane in the sewer and flips the truck, it has shinier cast aluminum wheels.
  
  
• Continuity: While John and Kate are talking in the RV as the Terminator drives, the C4 bombs in the table disappear and reappear in a different position relative to the gun also on the table.
  
  
• Continuity: In the T-X POV shot where she examines Jose Barrerra's retina and name tag, his surname on the tag is spelt differently to how it is in the T-X's POV.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When the TX is pulled over by the police officer at the beginning of the film, the officer walks up to her in the Lexus. Just before the officer says, "Lady, do you have any idea how fast you were goin'?" we see the TX's mouth moving as though she's speaking, but we hear nothing.
  
  
• Continuity: When the Terminator crashes the truck into TX and the Vet Clinic, its final resting position (how much is inside the wall) changes at least twice.
  
  
• Factual errors: Firefighters are seen extinguishing a vehicle fire outdoors with a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher. These types of fire extinguishers would be ineffective on a car fire as they work by depriving the fire of oxygen. Carbon dioxide quickly disperses outdoors and the fire would have its oxygen back in no time. Firefighters use dry chemical extinguishers on minor car fires and hose lines on larger ones.
  
  
• Continuity: The .30 caliber machine gun (with the drum clip) that The Terminator uses against the police outside the mausoleum is dropped as he enters the hearse. However, later he removes the weapon from the hearse and places it on the picnic table.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When John and Kate land the plane in front of the bunker, a third person is briefly visible in the backseat.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: At the ending, when John and Kate are in the underground bunker, behind the large glass wall, as the camera pulls back you can see the cameraman reflected in the glass.
  
  
• Continuity: The Terminator tells Kate and John that the Crystal Peak base is "north east on a bearing of 'zero point five degrees'". A bearing of 000.5° is almost exactly due north. Later Kate flies the plane on a heading of 015° ("zero one five degrees" in aviation-speak). This is different from what the T-101 had told her, and even given his mistake it is still closer to north than it is to north east.
  
  
• Continuity: The Terminator turns to open fire on the SWAT team at the cemetery twice; first when Dr. Silberman sees him (as evidenced by the visible muzzle flash from the machine gun, with no audible gunshot), and again when he actually does start shooting.
  
  
• Continuity: In the shots between where John tells Kate that Scott's death is not her fault and the Terminator talks about Robert Brewster, Kate is absent from the front passenger seat of the broken down hearse.
  
  
• Continuity: After the T101 starts driving the fire truck, there is a quick shot of the truck driving with him still hanging on the front.
  
  
• Continuity: When John is in the cage, with Kate talking to him, there are double-doors behind her. The right-side door is open (and not visible). When she turns to go out, the door is closed.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Sarah Connor dies in August 1997. In accordance with her will she has many guns hidden in a coffin right after her death. After the cemetery scene, at the RV, The Terminator pulls a Heckler & Koch UMP-45 out of the coffin. This gun wasn't for sale until mid-1999, two years after the gun was placed in the coffin.
  
  
• Anachronisms: While in the bunker at the end of the movie, when John says "These computers are 30 years old," a Dell computer box, complete with the big blue E, is clearly visible among all the ancient computers. A modern day black Dell CRT monitor is also clearly visible on the center desk in the final bunker scenes.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the chase sequence, T-101 incorrectly cocks the shotgun while on the motorcycle.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: Towards the end of the film, the T-X activates the robotic defenses which are presumably the first models of Terminators. In one scene later on we see through this older terminators vision and it's a sharp crystal clear image. The supposedly more recent T-101 however has a blurry red view imaging. How can a newer model have an inferior optical system?
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After the crane chase, whilst the T-101 is climbing into the vet van from the roof we can see briefly down the street that there's a corner approaching as there's buildings just ahead of them. However when the T-X emerges from the rubble and looks down towards them driving off, they're now on an open road with nothing at all ahead of them.
  
  
• Continuity: When the T-101 puts Kate in the Vet's van the first time, it pushes the tire iron through the right-hand handle and bends the end back on the left-hand handle. Later when the van is going up the on-ramp, the tire iron is reversed (the bend is now on the right-hand handle) and at the gas station, it is back to the original position.
  
  
• Factual errors: There is a reference to the Skynet computer operating at 60 "teraFLOPS per second", which is an inaccurate use of the term FLOPS (tera is correct, as it means trillion). A FLOP is an acronym for FlOating Point Operation and a FLOPS is a FlOating Point Operation per Second (note that FLOPS is singular, not plural). The FLOPS count is used to measure a computer's performance, particularly those in the scientific and academic fields. So to speak of "FLOPS per second" is redundant. One could argue that "FLOPS per second" refers to acceleration (such as miles per hour per hour) but members of the scientific computation field never speak of a computer's acceleration.
  
  
• Continuity: When the T-X poses as Kate to attempt to assassinate Robert Brewster and is shot by the T-850, her "clothes" take normal bullet damage, not the mimetic "splashes" from both the T-1000 in T2 and on the T-X in earlier scenes.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: When the T-101 scans the roadhouse bouncer, his internal display misspells 'briefs' as 'breifs'.
  
  
• Continuity: When Kate and the Terminator are talking in the RV, when the camera is closer to the Terminator, the armrest for his right arm is down. When the camera is closer to Kate, the armrest for the Terminator's right arm is up. This change happens repeatedly.
  
  
• Factual errors: Having control of a vehicle’s computer would not allow the car to be driven remotely, as the steering is completely mechanical (even power steering), and although some modern cars have a computer controlled throttle (not the cars in the movie though), the pedal would not depress (same goes for the brakes, clutch and gears).
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the crane chase, the "outriggers" that stabilize the crane when it's boom is lifting an object are alternately extended and retracted.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the T-X shows up (posing as Kate) to assassinate Robert Brewster, before The Terminator begins shooting, the T-X begins to react like she is being shot at just a second before The Terminator starts firing.
  
  
• Continuity: When the Terminator is informing John of the T-X's remaining targets, he mentions Jose Barrera. However, the T-X killed Jose Barrera at a burger joint near the beginning of the film.
  
  
• Factual errors: The entire chase scene with the crane ignores numerous laws of momentum, inertia and tensile strength. Using the crane arm to demolish a steel-framed building would not only completely mangle the arm, it would also cause the crane itself to crash, instead of which it doesn't even slow. Similarly, whilst the vehicle easily has sufficient mass and momentum to smash cars out of its path, having a tonne or so of metal hitting it at roughly 40mph is going to have an effect on the steering, it wouldn't just casually carry on in a straight line as if nothing happened. Most significantly, after the T-800 drops the crane's hook through the manhole cover, the hook would firstly need to actually latch onto something to create the desired effect (instead of just getting pulled right back out again and dragging along behind the crane) and whatever it anchors itself on would need to be sturdy enough to stop the tens of tonnes of crane - if a building can't do it, it's rather unlikely that a sewage pipe is going to. Even if such an item could be found, the cable would not tear through the road without slowing the crane down at all and would in all likelihood bring the crane to a much slower, more drawn-out and less visually impressive (and hence much more boring) stop.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: As the hearse speeds through the grass after driving under the truck it leaves absolutely no marks in the grass.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: At the end of the scene where they are by trailer, when the camera is on the terminator, the camera tilts down revealing an apple box underneath the table.
  
  
• Continuity: When the T-101 is holding open the Crystal Peak bunker blast door he uses one hand to hold back the TX from getting to John and then use the other hand to pull his power cell out. This did not leave an arm available to hold open the door.
  
  
• Continuity: The tire iron is removed from the Vet truck handles at the convenience store, when the truck leaves you can see there is no tire iron in the handles and it is seen lying on the asphalt. Later, it has reappeared on the door handles.
  
  
• Continuity: When The Terminator opens the casket, which had at first been full of weaponry, it is now hiding John Connor. However, later on they are seen to be armed to the teeth. Where did these weapons come from? It is very clear that they did not have either the time, nor indeed the opportunity, to return inside the mausoleum and retrieve their weapons.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After the Cessna has landed at the bunker, its flaps are clearly retracted, when they are always at full when landing a plane.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the Terminator exits the mausoleum with the casket and turns to fire at the police, the angle of the machine gun barrel as he fires is such that all bullets would hit the tree tops above the police cars rather than the cars.
  
  
• Continuity: At the AMPM petrol station in the desert, the cash register is covered with hand written signs saying the phones/computers are out of order, and thus credit cards are not working. Yet after Terminator shoplifts some food, the phone is working for the gas station attendant to call authorities.
  
  
• Plot holes: During the scene in which the T-X infiltrates the United States Air Force's Cyber Research Systems base and manages to execute Robert Brewster just after he activates Skynet. Although the T-X has the ability to resemble anything it touches and is possibly the reason for the ease at which it entered the base. It's never explained how exactly the T-101 accompanied by a man supposedly with no current official existence, fully armed managed to get into the base. Although Kate is the daughter of Robert, there's no way at all that a secure facility would allow the entry of two heavily armed men.
  
  
• Continuity: Two different planes were used in the scenes where John and Kate head to the bunker as revealed by the ID number on the side of the plane (same at the beginning and at the end but different while in the air).
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the T-X kills Jose Berrera at the fast food restaurant, the drive through window is on the wrong side of the building. The T-X could have driven the wrong way but it was shown at the speaker, driving the direction that the drive through should have been.
  
  

• Revealing mistakes: SPOILER: After the Terminator shoots the fake Kate/T-X at the military base, he can be seen throwing the machine gun to the right of the screen, landing on a mattress clearly meant to protect the prop machine gun. Seconds later, when Kate runs to her dying father, the mattress is now gone and the prop gun is now on the floor.
  
  
• Plot holes: SPOILER: In the scene at the RV, we learn that the Terminator must obey Kate Brewster's orders, as she is the one from the future who sent him back in time. However, there are several times preceding this scene in which Kate Brewster barks orders at the Terminator (i.e. "Let me go!", etc. ) and he ignores her.
  
  

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