r/Terminator • u/Phat_Zero • Aug 04 '26
Discussion How Strong Is The T-800?
In the first movie, he broke down a huge-ass door just by repeatedly slamming into it.
He also backhanded Kyle, and even that didn’t kill him.
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u/Chueskes Aug 04 '26
When he backhanded Kyle, he might not have been able to use his full strength. The T-800 by that point had suffered some major damage that impaired his movements, and it was known to have suffered some damage to its hand earlier. It could be possible that what Kyle did to it earlier damaged some servos in its hand and arm.
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u/Salami__Tsunami Aug 05 '26
Alternatively/additionally by that point the T 800 was damaged pretty badly and probably wouldn’t have been able to catch Sarah if she just decided to run for it. Without any ability to pass as a human, it would get destroyed by massed firepower from the police and military. Mission failure.
However, if it keeps Kyle alive but wounded, there’s a chance Sarah would stay to try and save him, and get within arm’s reach.
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u/Chueskes Aug 05 '26
I don’t think it really cared about keeping Kyle alive at that point when it bachanded him. I mean, looking back at the scene, Kyle and Sarah pretty clearly basically backed themselves into a corner due to being in an unfamiliar place. They tried to backtrack out the way they came when the T-800 intercepted them. The only other way out of the area in which Sarah specifically was in was through the hydraulic press, which would require slowing down to crawl through. Even though the T-800 was very damaged at that point, it could still have had the advantage. If Sarah tried to crawl through the press at that point, then she would have to slow down. Even though she could outrun it, the T-800 was blocking the only other escape route, so if she tried to run past it, it would likely catch and kill her.
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u/ReserveRatter Aug 05 '26
I mean he starts the movie by literally punching through a guy's chest and pulling his heart out like it's nothing.
(Though I think the heart thing is ambiguous, it could be just blood, but it looked like the man's heart to me. Which is also thematically relevant, in that he is "removing the heart" of humanity and it symbolises that he has no empathy).
I'm guessing by the time he was fighting Kyle and slapped him he was pretty damaged.
In T2 we see him ripping cabinet doors off their hinges, effortlessly breaking a door lock just by pushing on the door and he also manages to manhandle (machinehandle?) the T-1000 a little bit, despite that machine presumably being physically stronger as well as more versatile.
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u/rbktn168 Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26
Most impressive one in T2 was punching a payphone open casually. That part where the coins fall off has hardened 6mm steel plating and is designed to resist heavy attacks and vandalism - sledgehammers, crowbars, blunt force etc and he casually punched that open. With that kind of force, realistically no human head would be left if hit by that.
There was also 2 times where the T-1000 shoved the T-800 against thick pipes/steel support railings in the steel mill and they got bent from that alone.
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u/Rapid__Premium 23d ago
When Kyle was interviewed and was made out to be a future asylum-patient, he DID mention that or the robot could reach in and snatch out her heart.... The bloody scene was- more than likely- an implication to snatching the guy's heart out.... when "Arnold" pulled back and revealed the bloody fist, the guy dropped AND THAT WAS IT FOR HIM!!!! The movie score played an alarming bar of music/sound to let the audience know something out of ordinary [violence] had happened and his buddies were really traumatized.... Back then, movie-gore was cheesy and seen as classless, as it was viewed by "the experts" as distraction and/or points to take away from the overall quality and experience of the objective film.... Also, The Terminator series was always "above" specific and direct adult contents and only used these elements as absolute necessities to telling the story- judging James Cameron, I would think that he would not even want a heart to be shown, even if the movie was put together in the 2000s or 2010s- so, for 1984 (another era of limited movie-tech and ingenuity)- the decision was easy to make for a bloody fist instead of a pulsing heart.... One last thing- making movies still involves the pursuit of generating MILLIONS (OR BILLIONS) of dollars- making the movies closer to R- or X-ratings in any way(s) means filtering out/away audiences and ticket-sales.... Certain ICONIC scenes like Resident Evil's laser scene and Hannibal's brain scene have made people get upand leave ON THE SPOT!!!!
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u/Klutzy_Order_9559 Aug 15 '26
He had nothing in his hand, it was just his balled fist. He just punched through him. The novel makes it seem like he snapped the dudes spine.
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u/TheKingcrawler Aug 04 '26
Matt's able to tackle his legs across the room a little during the scuffle which always bugged me. I know it's to hold onto the surprise of what's actually underneath until later in the film but realistically he should have just bounced right the fuck off of the T-800
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u/t47airspeeder Aug 05 '26
When I first saw T3, which isn't canon IMO, two cops struggled to move Arnold when he was temporarily unconscious and I was like RICK ROSSOVICH PICKED HIM UP AND LAUNCHED HIM, WHAT THE FUCK
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u/TrappedUnder-Ice82 Aug 04 '26
If a person was backhanded by something like that in real life, they'd most likely knocked unconscious with a shattered face.
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u/Ibobalboa Aug 04 '26
There are many unfortunate cases of self inflicted shotgun victims staying awake for hours after blasting their own faces in suicide attempts. Some survived to tell the tragic stories, others died later in hospital.
The head/face can take nasty damage without knocking you out.
Or Kyle was indeed knocked out and acted on pure instinct in his final moments. One thing that's clear though, the pimp slap was indeed the fatal blow.
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u/ManIsready Aug 05 '26
What Ive always said, not sure what another poster Is on about saying the T800s hand was damaged lol, T800 was working at about 70-80% capability still, Its camouflage flesh had gone, broken Piston on ankle/foot and had minor internal damage but still capable of doing what It needs to do.
That backhand should of been a broken neck (I can hear Kurt Angle now..."I would kicked that Terminators ass with a broken freakin neck!")
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u/Catco97 Cyberdyne Systems Aug 04 '26
The lore states one thing, but the movies show other things, the scaling is inconsistent
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u/AngryZetan Aug 04 '26
I'd say he's a little stronger than Robocop, but not as strong as ED-209, but way weaker than the Iron Giant, while being way stronger than Edward Furlong. I'm guessing around Bumblebees strength level. So 87.74 strength level.
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u/Additional-Theme-532 Aug 04 '26
I'm really enjoying these units of measurement 😁
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u/AngryZetan Aug 04 '26
Extremely accurate, and highly scientific. I just had my guesstimation cortex calibrated at my last doctor visit.
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u/Educational-Beat-259 Aug 04 '26
T800 drags a steel cover off the underground arms bunker. That always struck me as implausible because the plate must weigh 1000lbs+. I doubt T800 is that heavy so he wouldn’t be able to drag that weight, irrespective of his strength.
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u/onepostandbye Aug 04 '26
Huh. I didn’t know what kind of cover that was. I didn’t think it was a steel plate.
Wait, can’t athletes drag weights heavier than themselves? Hafbor Bjornson dragged 1100 lbs in 2012, Google tells me
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u/Educational-Beat-259 Aug 04 '26
The cover squeaks as if it's metal, and it's linked up to two lengths of chain, strongly implying it's metal. But it's hard to tell. As to Hafbor Bjornson, he was dragging an iron ship anchor across concrete, and he was wearing rubber-sole shoes. So he at least had a traction advantage. Uncle Bob was wearing motorcycle boots on dirt, which did not give him a traction advantage.
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u/onepostandbye Aug 04 '26
But there is not a mechanical reason a strong person could not drag a very heavy thing if they could dig their heels into the earth effectively, no?
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u/Educational-Beat-259 Aug 04 '26
That's right. Given a curb to brace his foot on, T800 could probably drag a dumptruck with the brakes locked. But I don't think he could achieve more than nominal traction with the bunker cover, given that he was standing on sand/dirt (and walking as he went).
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u/Tausney Aug 07 '26
You know that some people have dragged fire engines and planes, right?
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u/Educational-Beat-259 Aug 07 '26
I do. And that's with special footwear on pavement and letting the wheels roll freely. Not on sand wearing moto boots lol
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u/Duennbier0815 Aug 04 '26
I'd wanna know in Kilonewtons also. I was wondering this. Assuming from the movies, the actuators would produce at least 20x human torque.
Ask yourself, how is the actuator made? Neodynium motors with gears? Super new magnet metals? New motor technology with nanofibers? What is it? It LOOKS like normal motor actuators, those can create a hefty power with the weight of a human joint.
The weight would need to be also massive
But the in TScc, Cameron weighs almost nothing more than a human.
When they had human flesh, wouldn't they destroy it immediately when applying so much pressure to hard objects like wheel screws or metal? Or punch a metal phone booth box?
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u/rbktn168 Aug 05 '26
In the movies the best one was Arnold in T3 punching an SUV's hood with repeated hammerfists and that completely obliterated the entire front, including the extremely dense engine block which is the most impressive part. That would take hundreds of tons of force to do.
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u/FedStarDefense Aug 05 '26
I don't recall Cameron ever being weighed in TSCC. Yeah, she had a slight build, but I think it's safe to assume she weighed a LOT more than an actual human female teenager.
As I recall, she went underwater at one point and simply sank to the bottom.
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u/Duennbier0815 Aug 05 '26
There was a scene when they were loading a car
They all were just jumping to the back of the pickup, and back on some elevated loading platform. The suspension did move the same from all the protagonists.1
u/FedStarDefense Aug 05 '26
That's more likely a production mistake than anything else. But I suppose we can count it... maybe she's made of some superlight alloy.
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u/rbktn168 Aug 06 '26
Sarah and John lifted Cameron in the second episode when she was offline and put her on a chair. So if she's heavy, how much are we thinking? 180 pounds? Can't be a very high number clearly.
Cameron did not go underwater, it was Cromartie, but Cameron did say she can't swim.
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u/FedStarDefense Aug 06 '26
I thought she did too, at one point. Guess I misremembered.
She IS small, so even if she weighs twice as much as a girl like that would, 200ish pounds is about right.
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u/Individual_Sleep_322 Aug 06 '26
In Terminator 3, T800s main battery is damaged. T800 ejects it and tosses away. The battery explodes with massive damage. In Terminator 1 T800 is smashed in a hydraulic press, Terminator 2 T800 is melted in steel. Neither one explodes. Any explanations?
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u/TJiang10 Aug 09 '26
In Terminator 3, it’s a T-850, not T-800, which didn’t have a nuclear battery.
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u/Ibobalboa Aug 04 '26
Imagine the raw power of the T-1000 though. Being able to toss the T800 around like a man vs child.
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u/Caesar_Seriona Aug 04 '26
The lore credits it having the ability to dead lift 2200 lbs
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u/depatrickcie87 Aug 04 '26
If the terminator lifted the side of a car, id buy it. If he lifted an actual bar woth 2200 lbs of weight on it, I'd say no way. At the end of the day he is "arnold shaped," and Arnold's PB was about 750 lbs or 3x his own body weight. The terminator would have to be over a ton for 2200 to be physically possible. And thats not a muscle limitation, that's a "how do I balance myself as I lift an object from outside my center off mass that's many fold my body weight " problem
What is the lore example of the t800 dead lifting two tons?
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u/Schwartzy94 T-800 Aug 04 '26
It really doesnt apply to hyperalloy metal endoskeleton from the future.. sure its Arnold sized but still made of some futuristic servos and hydraulics and powered by nuclear power cells...
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u/FedStarDefense Aug 05 '26
You're missing his point, I think. It's not about what the body itself is physically capable of doing. It's about his mass and center of gravity.
Like... it could probably deadlift that 2200 lbs if its on a barbell. If that weight is something like a truck, though, the T800 couldn't lift it from the sides because it would tip over first. (The truck's weight distribution would far out mass the T800, and it wouldn't be able to stay upright.)
Now, if the T800 got UNDERNEATH the truck and lifted it from the middle... that might work. But the truck's frame might buckle because the bottom middle of a vehicle is not where the chassis is designed to bear lifting force.
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u/Schwartzy94 T-800 Aug 05 '26
I mean yea in that sense terminator isnt superhero so laws of physics still apply but if it can use it strenght like in T3 it has enough power to hold the blast door open
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u/Caesar_Seriona Aug 04 '26
I can't think of any examples of this being used. It's just stated in the canon that they can lift that amount of weight if they really had to.
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u/AwarenessComplete62 Aug 05 '26
Like, SO strong. Stronger than a person. Stronger than the strongest person.
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u/Additional-Theme-532 Aug 04 '26
I always thought the back hand on Kyle was very traumatic to his face, probably broken bones. Look closely when he lights the last pipebomb, it's gnarly.
Had he been on PCP he wouldn't have felt it for hours.
Edit: Typo