The Terminator: 5 Things That Still Make No Sense About Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800

Since its release in 1984, The Terminator has remained a beloved sci-fi classic. James Cameron’s movie not only jump-started his directorial career, but also catapulted a certain bodybuilder to global stardom. As Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first foray into sci-fi, it cemented his status as one of Hollywood’s best new leading action stars, with the low-budget sci-fi movie changing everything for both its director and its star, as well as spawning an exceptional franchise. The character played by Schwarzenegger in the franchise is the T-800, a highly advanced cyborg sent back through time to ensure the death of the future leader of the human resistance against an AI dystopia.

In any sci-fi movie as high-concept as The Terminator, there are always bound to be some plot holes. However, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s best-known ’80s movie has since been scrutinized more carefully, largely due to its lasting popularity and cultural impact. On closer inspection, many aspects of the T-800’s story make very little sense, as the cyborg character seems to be constantly contradicting the rules set out by the franchise itself. With that in mind, here are 5 things that still make no sense about Schwarzenegger’s T-800.

5) For A Machine, He Doesn’t Always Act Logically

Living machines are a key part of the Terminator franchise’s timeline, especially as Skynet sends its cyborg agents back in time in order to manipulate events. One of the most confusing things about the T-800 is also one of the simplest: as its mind is just a sophisticated computer, the Terminator should technically act based on pure logic. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case, and the Terminator is shown making decisions that simply don’t seem logical at all, such as walking away from his target to regroup or failing to use any sort of stealth measures whatsoever.

4) Inconsistently Fire-Proof Hair

It’s a minor detail, but it’s one that is incredibly frustrating for eagle-eyed fans who are keen on consistency. One scene in the original movie sees the T-800 briefly thwarted by Kyle Reese, who explodes a gas tank, burning the pursuing cyborg. The resulting flames are shown to have completely burned away the Terminator’s eyebrows, but for some reason, his hair remains perfectly intact. It’s a small and silly inconsistency, but it’s one that the movie does nothing at all to explain, making it yet another element of the character that doesn’t make sense at all.

3) The T-800 Doesn’t Seem Concerned By Potential Paradoxes

On balance, the time travel in the Terminator movies makes sense, as it makes use of the grandfather paradox and lightly explores the basic idea of cause and effect in relation to traveling into the past. However, what doesn’t make sense is how recklessly the T-800 pursues Sarah Connor, seemingly without any care for the potential paradoxes that it creates in the process. For a machine programmed by an all-knowing AI, the T-800 is dangerously reckless with the timeline and seems as likely to destroy all of reality as he is to kill Sarah Connor.

2) He Shouldn’t Ever Have Been Able To Travel Through Time

One of the most glaring and confusing plot holes in the Terminator movies concerns the arrival of the T-800 in the past. The rules of time travel, as established by Kyle Reese in the movie, are that only living tissue can travel through time. This should make it impossible for the T-800 to arrive intact in the past, as the mechanical components under his skin should have been left behind. If a thin layer of organic material could conceal future technology, it would have been far simpler to send the Terminator back with skin-coated weapons rather than completely unarmed.

1) The T-800 Could Never Have Been Built To Blend In

There are several elements of the T-800’s existence that don’t make much sense, but the cyborg’s design is perhaps the most baffling of all. If the idea was to build a cyborg killer that could perfectly blend in with humans, it seems especially strange that Skynet opted to craft the T-800 in the image of a colossal bodybuilder with a distinctive accent. There are surely countless more inconspicuous ways to have designed the T-800, and there appears to be no significant positives to him looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger in terms of the logic of the franchise.

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