Goofs for
Terminator Salvation (2009) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: The photo of Sarah Connor in this film uses a portrait layout and is cropped differently from the landscape framed photo in the original Terminator film.
  
  
• Continuity: The amount of hair and damage to Marcus' face keeps changing during the face-off between him and John.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In the gas station scene, watch carefully and you can see the "pull lines" yanking the stuntmen away.
  
  

• Revealing mistakes: When Dr. Serena Kogan is standing over Marcus Wright, her head is between him and the light above, him but when it shows his face there is no shadow.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the closing credits Diego Lopez's role is misspelled as "Soilder" instead of "Soldier"
  
  
• Continuity: In one scene John zips up the collar on his coat only to have it appear unzipped slightly and then zipped up again in the next two shots.
  
  
• Continuity: Marcus Wright's accent drops momentarily when he is chained up and the actor's native Australian accent comes through.
  
  
• Continuity: When Marcus is repairing the jeep and they start driving away he doesn't clamp down the hood with the two hood latches on the outside of the hood. Yet while they are escaping the hunter killer you can see the two hood latches secured in place.
  
  
• Continuity: When John Connor is carried to the helicopter after the final fight scene, he is helped into a helicopter and laid right next to the older lady (Virginia), who then disappears from the subsequent helicopter scenes.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Kyle states that traveling at night would be difficult because Hunter/Killers have IR sensors and would detect body heat, yet Blair starts a fairly large fire out in the open at night without any concern. However, these are two different characters with two different levels of experience with Skynet (and its terminators). Also, fire does not necessarily mean a human is present or near and may even mask body heat.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the first big battle scene, a number of members of "The Resistance" leave their helicopters after they land. But as they are walking/running from the helicopters, their hair (especially the woman with long hair) is blowing toward the helicopters, not away from it.
  
  
• Continuity: During the moto-terminator chase, the ball on the tow truck switches from being locked to the side of the boom arm to swinging freely, most notable right before Marcus tells Kyle to drop the ball.
  
  
• Continuity: When Blair drops the shackled Marcus, he's in an upright position, leaning slightly forward, and he falls straight down. He should have landed upright and fallen on his face. However, when he reaches the bottom (a drop of no more than 20 feet), he's in a prone position and lands on his back.
  
  
• Continuity: When Marcus is being executed, there are six loaded syringes in a row, all extended. Syringe five descends first, and in this shot syringe three is returning to its fully extended position, when previously it was already extended. Then syringe three descends again.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Marcus Wright learns how and why he was programmed he throws a table at the see-through screen. A wire attached to the table can be seen suspended from it as it comes to rest, essentially hanging in the air.
  
  
• Continuity: When Marcus and Kyle have found their first abandoned vehicle and just got it started, they are all inside and the windscreen is covered in mud or dust which means it's going to be pretty difficult to see out. However, as they are attacked and have to drive off in an instant, the windscreen (seen from the outside) is suddenly crystal clear.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Marcus starts the car and the music starts playing, the street lamp posts still have their glass bulb covers intact. Considering all the cars had either had their windows blown out or were charred, the streetlamps would have suffered a similar fate in the event of a nuclear blast.
  
  
• Continuity: During the motorbike chase scene, the road has double yellow striping. Later, before the bike and camper van approach the bridge the striping changes to a white lane-divider line. White center striping on US roads was replaced with yellow in the 1970s. (It is possible that the film makers used an old section of road still showing pre-1970s lane markings and forgot to correct the continuity.)
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene where Marcus rescues Blair from the gang shortly after they meet up at first. Its dark and pouring down heavily. Right after Marcus somehow manages to find dry wood to burn, the ground and everything around them is completely dry.
  
  
• Continuity: In the final scenes after Marcus smashes the display screen, he exits the control room, In the background is gunfire-marked paneling. During the next scene, the Terminator has Kyle on a table being put into a machine. The gun fight takes places and the currently unmarked paneling gets shot up. It is clear that the marks created from the gun fight are the same as the marks behind Marcus from the earlier scene. The plot locations are supposedly different, so the scenery was obviously reused but gunfight scene must have taken place before the scene with Marcus. As no fighting had taken place near the control room, the paneling behind Marcus should have been unscathed.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In the sequence where Wright walks across the river, you can spot the water pump that is supposed to set the water in motion. Due to this it looks more like a fountain than a river.
  
  
• Continuity: When John Connor uses a radio playing Guns 'n' Roses "You Could Be Mine" to attract a motorbike-terminator, the music stops when he catches it. However, the radio can be seen intact in the road and Connor does not switch it off. Why does the music stop?
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: In the opening text panel the word "Judgment" is correct spelled in American-English. (The spelling "Judgement" is the British spelling.)
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The machines can hear rock music from miles away, but are incapable of hearing two low-flying jet fighters. However, the statement that the robots heard the rock music was simply a guess as to how the robots located them. We know that Skynet is actively looking for Kyle Reese and later we see that everything Marcus observes is being monitored, so Skynet already knew exactly where to go.
  
  
• Plot holes: Towards the end, John Connor attacks the first T800 with what appears to be a 40mm grenade launcher. He shoots the T800 with two rounds, and the only result is the destruction of the T800's skin and tissue. The T800 is not physically moved by the concussion. Later, when Kyle Reese shoots the T800 with the same weapon, the T800 is blown of its feet and hurled violently backwards several yards from the blast.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the surgery in the desert, the blood that was being put into John looked like Kool Aid.
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene where Blair (Moon Bloodgood's fighter pilot character) is hanging suspended by her parachute tangled in a tower, she asks Marcus to hand her her knife to cut herself down, and then proceeds to cut her way through her right parachute riser, after which she falls free. She ignores the canopy release on her shoulder (designed to release the parachute in less than a second. However the left side has already been released (and she did not have the knife to cut it yet). Any fighter pilot has to use both releases every time they fly, once to attach to the parachute (which is packed into the ejection seat, not worn), and then to release it again to exit the aircraft, so it is incomprehensible that they would not know how to release it properly.
  
  
• Continuity: When Marcus rips the metal from John's chest he uses his right arm. He then proceeds to stab the T800 skull from left to right following his body motion of going clockwise. Thus the metal would be going from left to right. Later when the T800 face is shown, the metal is showing from right to left
  
  
• Continuity: During the scene where John, Kyle, and Star enter the T-800 manufacturing facility we see several T-800 skulls. The skulls already have the brightly lit red eyes placed into the eye sockets. When the camera cuts in the next picture we see an assembly arm install eyes into the eye sockets of one of the skulls.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Obvious dummy being knocked over by the door the T800 kicks open.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: John Connor gets a heart transplant in the middle of the desert, and apparently with out medical tools. Even more, Marcus' heart is compatible with that of John's. However, we know that Marcus's human tissue has already been altered. In the scene after he gets blown up by the mine and is being examined medically it is stated that his flesh is human but heals much faster than normal. Obviously his human flesh has been changed by Skynet using futuristic technology. It is conceivable that it therefore doesn't have compatibility problems and that John will heal really quickly with the altered heart inside him, even in the middle of the desert.
  
  
• Continuity: When John Connor takes off on the chopper in the beginning of the movie, he never put on his safety restraints. He never removes his hands from the controls so he could not put it on in flight. After he crashes upside down, he is held in his seat upside down by the belt he never put on.
  
  
• Plot holes: When John Connor tells Marcus about how Skynet has tried to kill him, his mother and his father Kyle Reese, Marcus doesn't question how a teenager could be the father of John Connor, who is obviously much older. Marcus therefore has no reason to think the teenager would be the same Kyle Reese who is supposedly John Connor's father, yet happily states how he's been hanging out with him.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: John Connor knows his father's name only from the records his mother left him. It is not made entirely clear how Skynet could have obtained that information too and how it can identify Kyle Reese by his face (something which is not known even to John). However, it's entirely plausible, given Skynet's access to global information, that it could have obtained such information from records of events shown in previous Terminator films, such as Kyle Reese's arrest record and subsequent filmed interview; this would have given Skynet a picture of his face, which could then be used in conjunction with facial recognition software to identify him. Additionally, during the many interviews between Dr. Silberman and Sarah Connor in the mental institution shown in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Sarah Connor very openly talks about Kyle Reese and his role in future and past events. Between Kyle Reese's arrest records and Sarah Connor's medical records, Skynet would have all the information they needed.
  
  
• Errors in geography: During the opening attack on the Skynet facility, there is a POV shot of a missile heading towards a target at North 36 deg, 17 mins, 22 secs and East 117 deg, 15 mins, 23 secs. Those coordinates are in Eastern China, south of Beijing, an unlikely target for Connor's team to travel to. However, if the eastern coordinate of 117 deg is changed to West then the target is in Death Valley, California, a more probable target.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the motorbike chase sequence after the ball on the end of the tow truck snags the terminator and starts dragging it and just before the truck goes over the bridge, you can see the drag lines made on the right side of the road during principle photography for the animators to add in the CG ball, cable, and bike in post.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When John Connor drives up from southern California and into San Francisco to enter Skynet, he drives across the Golden Gate Bridge moving North to South from Marin County. Though it seems more logical for Connor to approach SkyNet from the south, he may have chosen a northern approach because SkyNet may have installed heavier defenses to the south, anticipating an attack by the Resistance. Connor would have known that fact and could have taken the long route around the San Francisco region to avoid those defenses.
  
  
• Factual errors: Dr. Serena Kogan is seen without head hair as a result of cancer treatment, but she still has her eyebrows which would have also been lost.
  
  
• Continuity: When John is lying in the field hospital before he receives the heart transplant, the gouge wounds on his face from the T-800 are not bleeding and appear partially healed, even though the battle presumably happened mere hours earlier. After the transplant, while being flown away in the helicopter, John is shown with bloody bandages covering the same wounds.
  
  
• Continuity: The opening scenes tell us that Skynet launched a nuclear attack on humans at the start of the 21st Century. This is inconsistent with Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), where we learned the attack took place on August 29th, 1997.
  
  
• Anachronisms: John Connor is seen driving a JK series 4 door Jeep Wrangler, which was first manufactured for the 2007 model year. Skynet launched the its massive nuclear war against the humans in 2004. There would no need to continue to develop new vehicles for a non-existent buying public, nor would there be humans to construct it.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: After pursuing Marcus Wright to the river after he escapes, Connor's helicopter is attacked by Hydrobots. As one of the machines breaks through the Helicopters frontal control panel, we see the pilot fire at least four pistol rounds at the machine, yet no gunshots are heard.
  
  

• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: SPOILER: In the past three movies, it's been explained over and over that John Connor was the leader of the resistance. In this movie, not only is he not the resistance leader, but he's not even a part of the senior command group. However, it is clear that John Connor will, one day, rise to be the leader of the resistance in another sequel when one considers what happens to the leaders in this film. Moreover, it is clear that the John Connor we see in T2 is from later on in the war considering the difference in weaponry in the two movies and the scar on his face.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: SPOILER: When Marcus first enters the City (Los-Angeles), he calls to a man in the distance who turns out to be Terminator, that then begins shooting at him. This makes sense because SkyNet had to maintain Marcus's cover as an ordinary human (and also explains the Terminator's terrible aim). It's later revealed Marcus is also a Terminator and SkyNet's machines identify him as a friendly because as far as SkyNet was concerned, Marcus had completed his mission and was coming "home".
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: SPOILER: In the final battle scene, after the Terminator pretends to be Kyle calling for John, there is clearly a wire attached to John's back before he is pushed to the lower level.
  
  

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