The Terminator (1984): 17 insane facts — the $6M film Schwarzenegger almost never made

The Terminator 1984 insane facts — 17 behind the scenes secrets about the $6M film Arnold Schwarzenegger almost never made, the sequel James Cameron had already written before the first film finished, and the decisions that nearly cost him his own movie. These are the facts hidden inside a film you have already seen dozens of times. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHAPTERS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 00:00 Introduction — the contract that couldn't protect him 01:01 Fact 1 — The Fever Dream That Built a Franchise 02:02 Fact 2 — The One-Dollar Sale With No Legal Protection 03:05 Fact 3 — The Man Who Crashed a Pitch Meeting as a Robot 04:20 Fact 4 — They Rejected O.J. Simpson for Being Too Harmless 05:20 Fact 5 — Arnold Was Hired to Play the Hero 06:11 Fact 6 — He Refused to Acknowledge His Co-Stars as People 07:26 Fact 7 — A Real Massacre Pulled the Film Off British Television 08:28 Fact 8 — Cameron Directed With a German Phrasebook in His Pocket 09:34 Fact 9 — Skynet Ran on Apple II Hobbyist Code From a Magazine 10:49 Fact 10 — The First Word Took Forty-One Takes 11:30 Fact 11 — Linda Hamilton Lost Her Hearing Inside a Metal Shaft 12:21 Fact 12 — Cameron Scheduled the Biggest Scene Last on Purpose 13:09 Fact 13 — Two Talent Agents Saved the Film From Its Own Studio 13:53 Fact 14 — The Producer Spray-Painted Her Own Apartment for the Shoot 14:39 Fact 15 — Sting Was Offered $350,000 to Play the Hero 15:32 Fact 16 — A Scheduling Conflict Made Cameron Write Aliens 16:17 Fact 17 — The Sequel Was Already Written the Night the First Film Was ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE $6M FILM THAT ALMOST NEVER EXISTED ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ The behind the scenes story of The Terminator begins with a man who had just been fired from his last job, sick with fever in a hotel room in Rome, sketching a chrome skeleton on a piece of paper. James Cameron sold the screenplay for one dollar with no legal protection attached — just a verbal agreement that he would direct. Lance Henriksen broke into a financing meeting dressed as a robot to convince a studio chairman to say yes. O.J. Simpson was the original choice for the Terminator role before the studio decided he was too well-liked to be believable as a killing machine. Arnold Schwarzenegger was supposed to play the hero, not the villain, until one lunch meeting changed Hollywood history. This is what an actual $6 million film looked like in 1984 — a producer spray-painting her own apartment doors to match a film set, a director carrying a German phrasebook because he couldn't communicate fast enough in English, and a permanent injury that one of the lead actresses carried for the rest of her life and never spoke about publicly until years later. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE SEQUEL WRITTEN BEFORE THE FIRST FILM WAS FINISHED ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Fact 17 — the one this entire video is built around — is the reason The Terminator and Terminator 2 are not really two separate films. The T-1000 was in Cameron's original 1984 treatment for the first movie. He cut it because the visual effects technology to put liquid metal on screen did not exist yet. He waited seven years, watched early CGI render a water tentacle in The Abyss, and immediately knew the technology had finally caught up to the idea he had been carrying since day one. The deleted ending of the original film — restored on the 2001 Special Edition DVD — reveals the real ending nobody saw in theaters: the causal loop the entire franchise is built on. The sequel did not come from a studio meeting. It came from a shelf, where it had been waiting since before the first film was ever released. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ IF YOU ENJOYED THESE TERMINATOR FACTS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 👍 Like if Fact 9 about the Apple II hobbyist code surprised you 🔔 Subscribe — one classic film, all the facts, every single week 💬 Comment: did you already know the Terminator's vision display code was real software, or did that one get you? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WATCH NEXT ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ → [Back to the Future Part II 1989 — 17 Insane Facts] → [Top Gun 1986 — 17 Shocking Facts] → [Jaws 1975 — 17 Mind-Blowing Facts] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ DISCLAIMER ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ For educational and entertainment purposes only. All facts sourced from the 2001 Special Edition DVD commentary, James Cameron's 1991 Playboy interview, Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2012 memoir Total Recall, Linda Hamilton's 1991 Entertainment Weekly interview, and published cast and crew interviews. #TheTerminator #Terminator1984 #ArnoldSchwarzenegger #JamesCameron #Terminator2 #Skynet #LindaHamilton #MichaelBiehn #MovieFacts #BehindTheScenes #FilmHistory #80sMovies #ScienceFiction #ActionMovies #ClassicMovies #FilmTrivia #MovieSecrets #TimeTravel #TBT800 #MovieFactsYouDidntKnow