As established at the very beginning of the Terminator franchise, the T-800 is insanely hard to kill despite being a relatively older model to some of the more advanced Terminators fans have seen in more recent years. However, the T-800 does have one huge physical weakness that would have made destroying it as easy as flipping a switch. Unfortunately, because of Skynet’s most successful time travel mission, that secret has been lost to time.
1984’s The Terminator introduced fans to a time-sliding android designed to kill any target Skynet decided needed to die, no matter where they were in history: the T-800. This model Terminator was sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor to prevent John Connor (the leader of humanity’s resistance) from ever being born. It failed, though its arrival in 1984 created something of a paradox, as the remnants of its robotic body paved the way for Skynet’s development. While the original Terminator’s failure could still be considered a victory in the AI eyes of Skynet, it still wasn’t as successful as Skynet’s ultimate Terminator who was sent back in time to 1985 and ensured the T-800’s greatest weakness never even existed at all.
Terminator’s T-800’s Almost Had a Kill Switch Installed in their Skin
In Terminator: Enemy of My Enemy by Dan Jolley and Jamal Igle, a T-800 is sent back to 1985 to kill a biotechnician named Dr. Elise Fong. Meanwhile, an ex-CIA operative hired by a pharmaceutical company to obtain Fong alive was hunting the doctor as well. When this highly-trained kidnapper, Farrow Greene, got ahold of Fong before the Terminator did (though just barely), the two went to a safe area to lie low for a moment before Greene brought Fong to her employer. During this time together, Greene asked Fong what kind of work she was in that made something as deadly as this Terminator wants to kill her. Fong explains that she is a biotechnician on the verge of creating artificial skin. Fong elaborates that her bosses don’t think this is a good idea because they believe that, if it were taught to grow on its own, the skin would spread like a cancer. However, Fong explains that she was also developing a ‘kill switch’ for the skin in the form of a virus that would necrotize the skin entirely.
If Fong had developed what she planned to, then the T-800 wouldn’t have come into existence at all. The thing that makes a T-800 so deadly–aside from just being a Terminator–is the fact that it looks human. This trait is the only thing that separates the T-800 from earlier models, and is why it was sent back in time initially. If Fong’s kill switch were developed and then weaponized by humanity, the skin on these Terminators would be compromised by the synthetic virus with the push of a button. No skin means no time travel, as Skynet couldn’t outwardly expose the deadly nature of Terminators so early in humanity’s history for fear of negative alterations to the timeline.
Unfortunately, the T-800 in this issue was successful in killing Dr. Fong, and the virus she was developing to kill the T-800’s artificial skin never existed. However, just because it never came to be (or, more likely, was erased from the timeline) doesn’t mean it never could. Dr. Fong’s research was sound enough to warrant a time-traveling robot assassin, so it’s clear she was definitely on to something. If someone else picked up where she left off, they could exploit this huge weakness and perhaps even win the war for humanity by keeping the machines out of the past. But, as it stands, that research has been lost to the alterations made in the timestream, which sadly means Terminator’s T-800 has a huge physical weakness humanity never found.
