Warning: The following contains spoilers for Terminator: Dark Fate.

The death of John Connor

The first Terminator plot is all about the eponymous machine going back in time to kill Sarah Connor (played by Linda Hamilton) in order to stop her giving birth to her son John, while T2 sees another Terminator try to kill John (Edward Furlong).

In Dark Fate, the story of John Connor meets a tragic end when, in a flashback scene, we learn that despite the Connors stopping Judgment Day from happening, some crossed wires at Skynet (which is replaced in Dark Fate by a company called Legion) meant that John ended up getting shot to death by a Terminator anyway.

Sunglasses

Dark Fate sees Sarah join forces with the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) who killed her son but has grown a conscience of sorts after decades of living as a human. However, the T-800 has not lost all links to his past, as it is revealed he still owns sunglasses of the sort memorably worn by the T-800 in most of the first film and on its iconic poster.

“I’ll be back”

The new film offers two spins on the line “I’ll be back,” as heard in the 1984 Terminator. Sarah Connor says it after the first time she meets Grace (Mackenize Davis), while the T-800 tells his surrogate family “I won’t be back” as he leaves to take on the Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna).

Other quotes

Alongside “I’ll be back,” we get references to other bits of the franchise’s script, like the T-800’s repeated references to “probability of success,” while Grace gets her own version of “come with me if you want to live” (she says “Come with me or you’re dead meat in 30 seconds”) and her own “no fate but what we make” speech.

“Guitars, Cadillacs”

Dark Fate director Tim Miller included his own choice of Easter egg in the new film as a tribute to Judgment Day. When the Rev-9 falls from the sky, he lands at a family barbecue, where the Dwight Yoakam song “Guitars, Cadillacs” is playing. He told SyFy: “The Dwight Yoakam song ‘Guitars, Cadillacs,’ that’s my little Easter egg, because, you know, that’s the scene that [Schwarzenegger]’s walking into the bar and they play that.”

Carl’s Draperies phone number

In a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference to the 1984 film, the phone number for Carl’s Draperies is 888-512-1984, with May 12, 1984 being the U.S. release date of The Terminator. The number is also a real working number that fans can call for a message from Arnold Schwarzenegger himself including another iconic catchphrase from the movie series.

Death by power core

Though Dark Fate does its best to reset the timeline and make fans forget about Terminators 3, Genisys and Salvation, it does feature a reference to Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines by having the T-800 use his power core to kill the Rev-9, a tactic also used in that film.

Terminator: Dark Fate is in theaters now.