The Terminator franchise has been around for decades, with fan interest keeping the series going despite its up-and-down quality in the movie space. But leave it up to comic books to give fans what they want because, in a Terminator issue from the early 90s, one of the grossest fan theories out there has already been confirmed to be true!
With its wild time travel shenanigans, futuristic robot death assassins, and over-the-top explosive action, fans have been discussing obscure details and pieces of Terminator lore since the original movie came out in 1984, with the hard-set rules of how traveling through time works being one such topic of debate. The franchise’s time travel is unable to send anything synthetic through time without a layer of organic material wrapped around it to help make the transition – the reason Terminators look like fleshy humans when sent on missions and arrive naked. Because of this, both the Terminators and the rebels sent back to stop them usually have to fend for themselves for clothing and weapons when they arrive at their temporal destination, leading fans to speculate that John Connors’ agents should be able to bring back advanced technology inside their bodies to help mitigate this disadvantage – something this comic issue directly addresses.
Terminator Confirms Weapons Can Be Smuggled Inside Time Travelers
The Terminator: One Shot by James Robinson and Matt Wagner was released the same year as Terminator 2: Judgment Day and focuses on another “wrong Sarah Connor” that Skynet has targeted for destruction. Hunted down by a T-800 Terminatrix, Sarah is protected by a future Resistance member named Ellis Ruggles (who has been kicking around since 1955), who saves Sarah by using a large “Electro-Mech Fazer” against the Terminatrix, revealed later to have been built by hiding pieces of it in his body during his time travel trip!
Obviously an uncomfortable choice since rebels would have to either surgically implant pieces of weapons into their bodies or use more of a discomfiting approach to smuggling everything, this tactic nevertheless gives humans a major advantage in stopping the machines by giving them access to technology that won’t exist for decades. Furthermore, sending more than one person through time, each stocked up internally with contraband, would allow John Connor to essentially build whatever he wanted in the past to help his future self. It’s a gross tactic, but one worth exploring if it can help save all of humanity.
The Resistance Ignored a Valid Tactic
Essentially evening the odds between a human-sized flesh-covered weapon and an actual human with “hidden” weapons, this fan theory, though never technically seen in the films, is proven in this issue to work as something that the Resistance forces need to utilize more often. John Connor’s struggle to save humanity seems to be a never-ending one, so if he could find a way to send even more internally weaponized rebels to fight past Terminators, there at least will always be a fighting chance to take down these evil machines once and for all!
