Goofs

(at around 12 mins) During the opening sequence after exiting the pit, John Connor fights with a Terminator who pulls one of his boots off. After firing at it with a machine gun on the downed chopper, the camera pulls back to reveal John lying in the dust with both his boots on.

(at around 34 mins) 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.

(at around 53 mins) When Marcus rescues Blair from the gang shortly after they meet up at first, it's 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.

(at around 11 mins) 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.

(at around 34 mins) 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.

(at around 23 mins) Early in the movie when they trap a terminator, it is left hanging by its foot from a cable. When the humans run away, the terminator fires its mini gun at them. The recoil should have made it spin like a pinwheel, but it just hangs rock steady.

(at around 1h 50 mins) In the closing credits Diego Joaquin Lopez's role is misspelled as "Soilder" instead of "Soldier"

In the first confrontation with the T-800 involving Star and Kyle, the Terminator is utilizing a Minigun with a Ironman Ammo Backpack. In 7.62mm munitions, the capacity of the Ironman Pack is 500 rounds of continuously fed belt-linked munitions. The Minigun would have consumed all 500 rounds within about 9 seconds of trigger time. There was clearly more than 9 seconds in total trigger time in that segment alone.

(at around 1h 6 mins) Blair slides down a chain with bare hands. This is impossible - it would rip her hands open.

A little past the halfway point, when Marcus is hanging in the shaft, Connor takes three steps forward to release a chain holding Marcus's head in place. In the wide shot, it is seen that the distance from the platform Connor is on and Marcus's hanging body is at least six, and probably over 12, feet. Connor would have needed inhumanly long arms to reach him.

In the first The Terminator (1984), Kyle Reese explains to Sarah that he was born in the camps and bred as a soldier of the resistance. In Salvation, we can clearly see that he was just an ordinary civilian survivor of the war and did not become an actual resistance soldier until he was a young man. This is not necessarily a goof. He could have been exaggerating to impress her in the first movie. Alternately, the time travels of the sequels could have changed the events of his early life.

(at around 27 mins) 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 (at around 53 mins) 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.

(at around 1h 23 mins) 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.

(at around 48 mins) When Blair 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. It may be possible, however, that the release was jammed or damaged.

(at around 43 mins) 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, but this could be a backwater that never got the new colors.

There is no reason for Skynet Central to have touch screen interfaces as used by John Connor. The machines should be able to communicate directly with any equipment they need to use and most terminators up to that point lack the fine coordination to operate a touch screen.

(at around 33 mins) 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.

Terminators could easily kill any humans in one hit, instead, in this movie, they simply throw important characters further away without harming them too much so they can get up and conveniently find ways to kill those terminators. Not really smart for deadly cybernetic killers...

(at around 15 mins) Connor's transport plane is flying through a storm with winds powerful enough to whip up massive waves on the ocean surface, yet interior shots show perfectly stable flight with no turbulence.

(at around 43 mins) 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.

(at around 23 mins) When the T-600 is hanging upside down having been caught in the wire trap, it proceeds to shoot its own foot off to escape. All it needed to do was shoot at the wire to free itself and remain fully functional.

People get thrown around by terminators all the time in the movie but remain in miraculously good shape. Also, being punched hard enough to make one fly would certainly cause grave injuries. The good guys would be dead many times over with real physics.

(at around 1h 55 mins) During the credits at the end of the movie, the Main Title Theme from T2 is used 'courtesty' instead of 'courtesy'.

John Connor is seen driving a JK series 4 door Jeep Wrangler, which was first manufactured in 2007. Skynet launched its massive nuclear war, destroying most of humanity, in 2004. There wouldn't be any new vehicles after that.

(at around 1h 6 mins) When Blair and Barnes are both standing in front of Marcus while he's hanging, Blair takes Barnes' pistol and shoots Marcus. The sound of the gun firing and the muzzle flash do not happen at the same time like they should.

(at around 1h 30 mins) 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.

(at around 1h 16 mins) 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.

(at around 6 mins) 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.

(at around 20 mins) 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 in The Terminator (1984); 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 it needed. Plot hole - Skynet should have never known about Kyle Reese. If it knew that Kyle was to be sent back in time to father John Conner, it could have prevented it by not creating the time travel device and not sending the Terminator. Kyle would not be able to travel to the past and John would not have been born.

Skynet is able to track and destroy the Resistance Command submarine when it broadcasts the signal but they are unable to trace Connor's signal when he is making his radio broadcasts.

Apparently the only consequence of a nuclear holocaust would be the destruction of the cities without any residual radiation-the only byproduct of the holocaust are fires burning up randomly several years later in the middle of nowhere without any apparent reason or sustaining burnable debris.

The Resistance planned to end the war using a signal to disrupt the terminators communication with their central command. John Conner should have known this plan would fail as he had already witnessed several terminators continue to operate after having been cut off when they traveled back in time in the previous movies.

There is no way Marcus could have gotten any of the vehicles at the observatory to run. After sitting for so many years, the batteries would have disintegrated and all the rubber in the hoses and tires would have flaked and come apart.

If the mission of the T-800 is to kill John Conner, why doesn't it rip Conner in two like it with the T-600 instead of throwing him across the room?

(at around 1h 2 mins) Marcus Wright's accent drops momentarily when he is chained up and the actor's native Australian accent comes through.

(at around 45 mins) Airborne targets that have not been identified as hostile, friendly or neutral are called bogies. Targets that have been confirmed hostile are called bandits. An A-10 pilot called the prisoner transport and the HK a bogie yet they were already identified as enemy (hostile) aircraft.

(at around 16 mins) General Ashdown says John Connor is the 'prophesized leader of the resistance'. He meant 'prophesied'.

(at around 33 mins) While Marcus is repairing the jeep, a song starts to play on the vehicle's radio. Kyle looks at Marcus like he's never heard anything like this and asks what it is. Marcus tells him that his brother used to listen to it. A moment later when they are attacked, Kyle mentions that they must have heard the music. Kyle was never told that it was "music".