30 Years Later, Terminator Fans Are Still Discovering a Major Sarah Connor Moment

James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day has one subtle detail that fans are still picking up on decades since its release. Originally released on July 3rd, 1991, Terminator 2 concerns the arrival of a reprogrammed T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger), sent back in time from mankind’s war in the future against the sentient A.I. program Skynet, to protect the young John Connor (Edward Furlong) from its fellow Terminator assassin the T-1000 (Robert Patrick). With the T-1000 programmed to kill John in order to stop him from becoming the leader of the human resistance against Skynet, the T-800 and John rescue John’s institutionalized mother Sarah (Linda Hamilton) as the trio try to find a way to prevent Skynet’s rise and the war in the future altogether.

As one of the biggest action and sci-fi hits of the 20th century, Terminator 2‘s popularity is clearly longstanding, but as is often the case with James Cameron movies, it is also a gift that keeps on giving with some of its more subtle details. As recently pointed out on the official Terminator subreddit, fans are still discovering one key detail in Sarah Connor‘s introductory scene in her cell in Pescadero State Hospital, that being that Sarah has turned her bed upright in order to use it as a makeshift pull-up bar. This seemingly innocuous detail not only says a lot about Terminator 2‘s undying popularity, but also about Sarah’s own character arc and escape from the mental ward in the movie.

Why It’s So Easy To Miss Sarah’s Upturned Bed In Her Cell

One would think that a change to one’s bedroom (or cell, in Sarah’s case) as significant as standing their bed upright to use as a pull-up bar would be hard to miss. However, the framing of Sarah’s return in Terminator 2 actually masks this changes surprisingly well. To begin with, Sarah’s pull-ups are framed as close-ups as Dr. Silberman (Earl Boen) and his colleagues are making their way to her cell. This makes only the bar that Sarah is pulling herself up with visible to the naked eye, with the rest of the bed being out of frame. By extension, it also causes the viewer to create a mental picture in their head of a standard pull-up bar that Sarah is using, keeping the bed even further out of sight.

Additionally, even after Sarah is fully shown on-screen in a wider shot of the inside of her cell, the setting actually acts as a kind of camouflage through its coloring. The walls of Sarah’s cell, her bed frame, the mattress, and the bed sheets are also a similar color scheme, a kind of bland white or beige. Even with Sarah’s mattress and sheets rolled up next to the up-turned bed, they match the coloring of the wall behind them well enough to be easily overlooked. In turn, Sarah herself completely distracts from bed behind, having transformed herself since audiences last saw her in The Terminator from a meek, unassuming waitress to a jacked, muscled-up warrior. With the sweat-covered Sarah having clearly just finished an intense work-out and looking more prepared than ever to take down Terminators, her bed being turned into a pull-up bar is the exact thing that stands out the least out her return in Terminator 2.

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Sarah Turning Over Her Bed Gives More Context To Her Horrible Treatment In The Asylum

Terminator 2 presents the Pescadero State Hospital as exemplifying some horrifying stereotypes of abusive orderlies and almost medieval practices of treating mental illness. The ever-smug Dr. Silberman doesn’t take kindly to Sarah improvising ways to keep in shape from the basic living conditions of her cell, commenting to his two orderlies “I don’t like to see the patients disrupting their rooms like this. See that she takes her Thorazine, would you?” Terminator 2‘s extended cut shows the two sadistic orderlies entering Sarah’s cell and viciously subduing her with a nightstick and taser before stuffing a Thorazine pill down her throat (with Sarah’s upturned bed still very easy to miss in the longer version of the scene). While it would seem quite arbitrary for Sarah to be reprimanded so harshly for nothing more than finding a way to exercise in her cell, from Dr. Silberman’s perspective, this just gives Sarah better odds at escaping.

Silberman mentions that Sarah has already made multiple escape attempts, and that she recently stabbed him in the knee with his pen during one such bid for her freedom. Knowing Sarah’s aggression and determination to get back to her son John, Silberman sees her turning her bed into a pull-up bar as much more than Sarah simply working out, but also Sarah prepping herself for another escape attempt. Of course, that hardly excuses the beatings and cruelty Sarah experiences at the hands of Silberman’s vicious orderlies, who seem far more prone to violence and in need of mental help than Sarah (one of the orderlies even veering into sexual predator territory when her creepily licks Sarah’s cheek after strapping her to her bed in a later scene). At any rate, what Sarah sees as a means to keep in shape with the limited freedom she has Dr. Silberman sees as step one of her next escape attempt, and he takes measures to put it down. In the end, Silberman’s suspicion that Sarah is readying herself to try to break out again ends up being on the money, and Sarah keeping herself beefed up is a key asset to how she pulls it off.

Sarah Keeping In Shape Helps Her Gain The Upper Hand Over Her Captors

After her experience with the time-traveling father of her son Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) back in 1984, Sarah has become a much stronger person than she ever was before – in effect, the first human resistance fighter against Skynet. Knowing what the future holds for mankind after Skynet becomes self-aware, Sarah has no other focus but to protect John and train him to become the leader of mankind’s war against Skynet. Sarah’s focus on her physical fitness shows how much she was trying to lead John by example before her involuntary commitment, but even held prisoner in a mental institution, Sarah is too strong and determined to give up without a fight. Hence why even in such bleak circumstances, Sarah keeps herself in peak physical condition, and it pays off when she makes her latest escape attempt.

Using a paper clip as a lock-picking tool to get out of her bed straps and her cell, Sarah soon thereafter clobbers the monstrous orderly who previously beat her with a nightstick. She then fights and maneuvers her way through the institution’s security team, even leaving Silberman with a badly broken arm along the way, and Sarah’s excellent physical conditioning makes her a formidable opponent for the entire team of orderlies. With her smaller stature, Sarah gives Silberman and her tormentors a big surprise in how much pain she can inflict on them, and how easily she can sprint away from them as she makes her escape attempt. While Sarah’s use of the paper clip shows how keen of a strategist she is, her pull-ups in her cell demonstrate that keeping in shape for battles like this was also a wise decision on her part.

Of course, Silberman and his team of orderlies eventually catch up to Sarah and come close to sedating her again, with the arrival of John Connor and the T-800 helping her to finally escape. Still, Sarah gives her Pescadero captors in incredibly difficult fight, showing that brawn can indeed be just as important as brains. The fact that Sarah turning her bed into a pull-up bar has been so easily missed for over three decades is testimony to her use of both in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but even for as late as many fans have spotted it, Sarah’s bed serving as her pull-up bar gives a lot of context for the undaunted warrior who is strong both inside and out that Sarah Connor has forged herself into.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is available to stream on Pluto TV, and can also be digitally rented or bought on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV.