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No, if I remember correctly, John's mom came from the future to protect little John from being killed.
This is like. Terminator 2-ish.

Then later, John himself, from T2 or T3, goes back in time again to where his mom came from, Which is Terminator Salvation, to make sure his dad doesn't die, because supposedly John's mom says Kyle dies and John won't be born.

The timeline is already massive ******** up anyway because of what John's Mom did. And it is clear that it has ******** up more since half robo/man dude (I forgot his name D: ) didn't exist in Sarah's timeline at all, as she makes no mention of it in the tapes.

I am pretty sure that in the timeline of Salvation, Kyle was SUPPOSED to die, and that was the whole reason John was in that timeline.

And everything wouldn't be over right away... I think Skynet was destroyed, yes, but I'm pretty sure all of the robots would still operate individually anyway. Plus Skynet HQ in california was the only one that was destroyed-- not Skynet International.

The reason John has to be born (again) is to fight Skynet International.

Q asked someon to chime in here, so.. here we go.

You're making this too complicated.

Ok, Terminator 1 - Kyle goes back in time to prevent Skynet from killing Sarah Connor, who will birth John connor.

Kyle knocks up sarah (John origins), dies, sarah kills terminator.

Terminator 2 - Timeline continues as it always was. John is fathered by Kyle (Who was his dad originally? I'll cover that later.)

Liquid metal terminator is sent by skynet to kill john as a kid. John sends T1000 (arnie) back to counteract liquid metal terminator.

Both terminators cancel each other out, and skynet starting the war is delayed by the destruction of cyberdine technologies.

Terminator 3 - Cyberdine tech is taken over by the military, and the date of machine war is resumed (Although at a later date). Johns wife sends arnie to protect john and herself from uhh.. alyssa milano terminator. (Hereby referred to as gymnasticnator) Arnie and gymnasticnator kill each other, john and wifey escape into bunker. Machine war starts.

Terminator 4 - Machine war in progress, same continual timeline as previous movies. Not alternate world/reality/timeline etc.

John goes to save Kyle to PRESERVE the current timeline. Basically, if Kyle dies, John cannot be born.

Think of the timeline in the terminator series as a circle, with one tangenital timeline, which is destroyed by the actions in the 2nd movie. (Tangenital timeline being the one where the war starts in 98 or whenever, which is pushed back by the destruction of cyberdine.)

So, the one concurrent timeline dictates john born after first events, survives 2nd events, survives 3rd events, actions in 4th events preserve first events.

Were kyle to die, a disparate timeline would be created, nullifying the events from the three previous movies, all the way up to the moment kyle dies. So, it's basically destined that kyle must survive for the timeline to remain. Therefore, saying "Well, john didn't have to do all that crap to save kyle" is self-nullifying. Because these events are occuring, John has *always* done all that crap to save kyle.

OR ALTERNATELY,

using the tagline "The future is not written, there is no fate but what we make ourselves"

The future events past t4 are undefined, therefore, with each movie, a new timeline is created, so there is no necessity that Kyle must remain alive. Kyle will, without fail, emerge in the first events and get sarah preggers. Even if he's dead in the future.

Basically, he's a "Bubbled" event. Sent from one possible future that will always exist in the first event/1989 (or whenever the first movie is set, i forget the exact year.) Basically saying that in 1989, kyle will *always* be alive in the future to be sent back in time. His existence is part of *his* timeline.

Any events that happen after that are the start of a *new* timeline. So, in theory, anything can happen to him afterwards, and the first event is unchanged.

So, there you go. Two explanations.

smile

heh. Sorry. I spent a large portion of my free time studying and learning about temporal physics and timeline divisions, either syncronus or disperate timelines. XD

Basically, it works out one of two ways. Either it doesn't matter that kyle dies, because it's basically a different kyle. Or, John always went through all that crap to save kyle.

Nah, it just depends on which theory you ascribe to, in terms of time travel. It's like a pick your own adventure book. razz

EVEN IF THAT WERE TRUE,
people naturally have doubts anyway.

Especially time travel, nobody can know for sure.
If you were given the same situation, I'm sure you wouldn't sit on your a** and be like "Nahhhhh, I'm totally sure I'll be fine rescuing my dad."