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The Terminator Narrative Chronology by Julian Darius
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Note that this chronology does not proceed in a chronological manner. Put differently, the Terminator timeline changes due to time travel: although the original film suggests that time cannot be changed, with any intervention back in time leading inexorably to the same future, subsequent movies embraced the idea that time could be changed. Consequently, the chronology continues until someone sends someone back in time, then continues at the point of arrival in the past, continuing again until someone is sent back in time. This ingenious manner of displaying a chronology of contradictory timelines is made clearer in the table below by solid black lines indicating when time has been changed (or, in essence, rebooted).

		Movies	Comics	Video Games
1955			Ellis Ruggles (then 21) arrives in Los Angeles from the future, sent to watch over Sarah Connor in case another Terminator arrives (established in The Terminator: One Shot)
1959		Sarah Connor born (established on the plaque in her tomb in Terminator 3)
1965			Corporal Graves arrives from the future on a freeway in Los Angeles and is hit and killed five seconds later (established in The Terminator: One Shot)
1984	May	a model T-101 arrives in Los Angeles from the future, sent to terminate Sarah Connor, followed soonafter by Sgt. Kyle Reese of the human resistance, sent by John Connor [Sarah’s son and the leader of the resistance] to protect Sarah Connor; Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor make love, leading to her [paradoxical] conception of John Connor; inside the Cyberdyne factory, T-101 kills Sgt. Reese and Sarah destroys T-101 in a hydraulic press; Cyberdyne discovers T-101’s intact metal arm [paradoxically leading to the creation of Skynet, as if this was the way things originally happened] (The Terminator)	while the right Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese fight the T-101 in Los Angeles, a different 800-model Terminator (who looks like a woman) arrives in Los Angeles and finds another Sarah Connor (a fourth), becoming so by her recent marriage to an artist named John Connor, pursuing her to San Francisco, where she and her husband are honeymooning; Ellis Ruggles (sent from the future to 1955) dies protecting her, but the Terminator takes her with it to the bottom of the city’s bay, leaving only John Connor and Ruggles’s pet monkey (The Terminator: One Shot, 51 pages with a single pop-up, written by James Robinson with Matt Wagner painted art, published by Dark Horse in 1991)
1985		Sarah Connor gives birth to John Connor
1994		while Sarah and John Connor are living in Baja, she is diagnosed with leukemia and given six months to live, though she will live for three years, long enough to save the world in Terminator 2 (established in Terminator 3 in the scene occurring in her tomb)
		the human resistance breeches the robots’ master control just in time to see the T-101 (of The Terminator) dematerialize; Sgt. Kyle Reese volunteers and is sent back to stop it (established in The Terminator)	the T-101 (seen in The Terminator) was actually the second of two Terminators sent back to 1984, the first having looked like a woman; while the last of the 800-models counterattack, John Connor sends Ellis Ruggles back to 1955 and Corporal Graves back to 1965 to watch over Sarah Connor’s life before 1984; John Connor apparently plans to destroy the time machine (established in The Terminator: One Shot)
1995^1	June	John Connor and Kate Brewster kiss in Mike Kripke’s basement the day before Terminator 2 (established in Terminator 3)
		a T-101 reprogrammed by the resistance arrives in Los Angeles from the future, sent to protect John Connor, followed soonafter by a T-1000 sent to terminate John Connor; after escaping the T-1000 in a dramatic chase, John Connor orders T-101 to retrieve his mother Sarah Connor from the hospital, where the three avoid T-1000 again; after recuperating, Sarah returns to L.A. to kill Miles Bennett Dyson, the man most responsible for Skynet’s creation at Cyberyne; she wounds him but cannot kill him, though John and T-101 convince him to destroy his life’s work; the four set explosive charges and retrieve the intact metal arm from the 1984 T-101, but a SWAT team enters the building and kills Dyson before charges explode, destroying Cyberdyne; T-1000 attacks the three, leading to a chase ending at a steel mill, where T-1000 is melted and T-101 is deliberately melted as well (Terminator 2: Judgment Day)
1997		Sarah Connor dies of leukemia; John Connor hits the roads, living a nomadic life, taking odd jobs; unknown to her son John, her body is cremated in Mexico, her ashes scattered in the sea; her will (presumably in case history wasn’t changed in Terminator 2) provides for weapons to be stored in her coffin (established in Terminator 3, the date is given on the plaque in her tomb)
		CRS (CyberResearch Systems) at Edwards Air Force Base, commanded by General Brewster, inherits Cyberdyne’s patents and begins making robotic weapons, including T-1 robots and prototype hunter-killers, as well as Skynet itself (established in Terminator 3)
		in response to a virus disrupting most of the world’s computers, Skynet is activated, triggering a nuclear Armageddon, merely delayed after time was changed in Terminator 2 (established in Terminator 3)
		John Connor learns how to fight Skynet through Gen. Brewster and forms the core of the human resistance; John marries Kate Brewster, who becomes second in command, and they have children who become important in the resistance
2032	4 July	a T-101 infiltrates the resistance and kills John Connor
		a T-X is sent by the machines back in time to kill John Connor and his lieutenants; Kate has the T-101 assassin reactivated and sent back in time (established in Terminator 3)
2003^2		the T-X arrives in Los Angeles from the future, sent to terminate John Connor and his lieutenants, followed soonafter by a T-101 reprogrammed by the resistance, sent to protect Katherine Brewster and John Connor; the T-X kills lieutenants Jose Barrera (working at a fast food restaurant) and then Elizabeth and William Anderson (then young adults); Kate Brewster encounters John Connor, who she last saw in junior high (just before Terminator 2); after battling the T-X, Kate and John escape with the T-101, and the three visit Sarah Connor’s tomb, getting the guns there and again fighting the T-X; the T-101 explains that General Brewster at Edwards Air Force Base activates Skynet that same day, leading to nuclear Armageddon hours later, and that the T-X will now go after General Brewster, which Kate orders the T-101 to help prevent; Gen. Brewster activates Skynet while the T-X infiltrates the base, taking control of the base’s robots; the T-101, Kate, and John arrive, but the T-X kills Gen. Brewster, who dies ordering his daughter to go to Crystal Peak to deactivate Skynet; at Crystal Peak, the T-101 dies killing the T-X, but Kate and John find that the base is not Skynet’s core (it doesn’t have one) but rather a 1960s-era Presidential nuclear shelter, and they hear by radio of the nuclear holocaust outside (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines)		Terminator 3: War of the Machines (follows the plot of the movie but also has scenes in the future)
		John Connor and Katherine Brewster presumably survive the fallout in Crystal Peak, forming a relationship and the human resistance

NOTES

¹ In the opening of Terminator 3, John Connor narrates at the beginning that he was 13 in Terminator 2, which is at odds with this chronology.

² The date of Terminator 3 is speculative. In the middle of Terminator 3 (just before T-101 removes his fuel cell explodes in the desert), John Connor states that Terminator 3 was over 10 years ago; afterwards, he refers to the present as “10 years later” than Terminator 2.