The Terminator has been selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "Culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The American Film Institute (AFI) has also recognized both films on a number of occasions: the line "I'll be back" from The Terminator placed as the 37th-best movie quote, while "Hasta la vista, baby" from Terminator 2 ranked 76th on the same list. The Terminator character from The Terminator was voted the 22nd-greatest villain; meanwhile, the T-800 (of the same likeness) in Terminator 2: Judgment Day was voted the 48th-greatest hero; this is the only time the same character has appeared on the two opposing lists. In the 100 Years...100 series list, the Terminator franchise was voted the 42nd most thrilling. Finally, Terminator 2: Judgment Day ranked 8th on AFI's top 10 list in the science fiction genre.

Terminator 2 is the only film in the series to garner attention at the Academy Awards, with six nominations and four wins {} and is rated highly among critics. Additionally, Total Film has rated The Terminator cinema's 72nd best film, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day the 33rd.{}

The Terminator is a 1984 science fiction film released by Orion Pictures, co-written and directed by James Cameron and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn. It is the first work in the Terminator franchise. In the film, machines take over the world in the near Future, directed by the artificial intelligence Skynet. With its sole mission to completely annihilate humanity, it develops android assassins called Terminators that outwardly appear human. A man named John Connor starts the Tech-Com resistance to fight the machines, defeat Skynet and free humanity. With a human victory imminent, the machines' only choice is to send a Terminator back in time to kill John's mother, Sarah Connor, and prevent the boy's birth, thereby handicapping the resistance from ever being founded in the first place. With the fate of humanity at stake, John sends soldier Kyle Reese back to protect his mother and ensure his own existence. Also starring Emmy winner Paul Winfield. It was released on October 26, 1984 to critical acclaim and grossed $78.4 million worldwide.

In 1988, NOW Comics published an ongoing series with John Connor as the main character in 2031, after sending Kyle Reese back to 1984 to protect his mother. The Terminators in this canon had more human-like endoskeletons, and some issues would deal with subordinates of Connor's in the ruins of certain geographic areas. The seventeen issue series was followed by two limited series.

Dark Horse Comics acquired the rights in 1990 and published The Terminator (titled Tempest in trade paperbacks to distinguish itself), where a group of human Soldiers and four Terminators come to the present, to respectively kill or protect the developers of Skynet. One of the Terminators is Dudley, a human Doctor with cybernetic implants, and he betrays his group as he feels he can make a difference in the past. In the following year's sequel Secondary Objectives, the surviving Terminator leader, C890.L, is reprogrammed to destroy another Terminator sent to aid him and kill Sarah Connor. In the immediate follow-up The Enemy Within, C890.L rebuilds and modifies himself to become more dangerous than ever, while a team of human assassins attempt to return to the past and kill a Skynet developer. The 1992 Endgame concludes this arc, with human colonel Mary Randall, having lost Dudley and her Soldiers in the final battle with C890.L, protecting Sarah Connor as she goes into labor. Sarah gives birth to a girl named Jane, whose Future leadership means Skynet is quickly defeated and never develops time travel.

All five Terminator films have had very respectable box office gross, though after James Cameron left the series it saw diminishing returns in subsequent films. The Terminator made $78 million worldwide, far surpassing its $6 million budget and becoming a major sleeper hit. Terminator 2: Judgment Day grossed approximately $520 million globally, becoming a major blockbuster and the top-grossing film of 1991. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines did not fare as well, with $433 million, making it the seventh highest-grossing film of 2003. Terminator Salvation grossed an estimated $371 million worldwide, a figure below industry expectations and the lowest of any of the sequels in the series.

Terminators have crossed over with RoboCop, Superman, and Alien vs. Predator. In RoboCop versus The Terminator (1992) and Superman vs. The Terminator: Death to the Future (2000), the heroes must prevent the war ravaged Future. In 2000, Dark Horse also published Alien versus Predator versus The Terminator, where Skynet, who went dormant after Connor defeated them, has returned and are creating an Alien-Terminator Hybrid. The Ellen Ripley clone (from Alien Resurrection) and the Predators join forces to stop them.

Malibu Comics published twin series in 1995. One was a sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day, where Sarah and John encounter two T-800s and a female T-1000. The other was a prequel exploring how Connor sent Reese and the T-800 back in time, and the creation of the T-1000 (which took its default appearance from a captive soldier). The conclusions of both series were published in one issue.

In the franchise, Judgment Day (a reference to the biblical Day of Judgment) is referred to as the date on which Skynet becomes self-aware, decides to exterminate mankind, and launches a nuclear attack on Russia which, in retaliation, launches a nuclear attack on the United States (and presumably other nations around the world as well). Due to time travel and consequent ability to change the Future, several differing dates are given for Judgment Day in different films in the franchise. In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Sarah states that Judgment Day will occur on August 29, 1997. However, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines shows that the Judgment Day holocaust has been postponed to July 25, 2004. In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Judgment Day was delayed further to April 21, 2011, due to the attack on Cyberdyne Systems in the second film.

The Terminator Collectible Card Game was released in 2000 by Precedence.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, released by Warner Bros. Pictures domestically and Columbia Pictures internationally, is the 2003 sequel to Terminator 2 and is written by John Brancato, Michael Ferris, directed by Jonathan Mostow and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes and Kristanna Loken. As a result of the destruction of Cyberdyne at the end of Terminator 2, the Skynet takeover has been postponed, not averted. In an attempt to ensure a victory by the machines, a new Terminator, the T-X, is sent back to terminate the lives of as many of John Connor's Future lieutenants as is possible, including John Connor himself and his Future wife Kate Brewster. In addition, the T-X's second mission is to assassinate Kate's father, General Robert Brewster (David Andrews), who is Skynet's primary creator, along with his staff; it anticipates that John and Kate would attempt to seek the general's help in stopping Skynet. After Connor's Future self is terminated by a doppelgänger of his previous protector, Kate reprograms it and sends it back to save them both from the T-X. It was released on July 2, 2003 to mixed reviews and grossed $433.4 million worldwide.

On May 9, 2007, it was announced that production rights to the Terminator series had passed from the feuding of Andrew G. Vajna and Mario Kassar to The Halcyon Company. The producers of the company hoped to start a new trilogy based on the franchise. But due to box office failure of the fourth film, the Terminator Salvation trilogy is cancelled.

The pilot episode received a rating of 11.1 from Nielsen Media Research on January 13, 2008. The mainstream press reviews were generally positive. USA Today gave the premiere episode 3 and a half stars out of four, calling the series, "smart, tough and entertaining." The New York Times referred to it as "one of the more humanizing adventures in science fiction to arrive in quite a while", while the Los Angeles Times declared the show "has heart and feeling" and "an almost Shakespearean exploration of fate vs. character" that features "plenty of really great fight scenes, and explosions, as well as neat devices developed in the Future and jury-rigged in the present." In addition, film industry journal Daily Variety declared the series pilot "a slick brand extension off this profitable assembly line" that showcases "impressive and abundant action with realistic visual effects and, frankly, plenty of eye candy between Glau and Headey." At the start of the second season, Variety praised "Headey's gritty performance as Sarah — managing to be smart, resourceful and tough, yet melancholy and vulnerable as well" and that the Chronicles "continue to deliver", getting "considerable mileage out of the constant peril" facing the characters. The Connecticut Post placed it on its list of the top 10 TV shows of 2008: "It's smart, with thought-provoking meditations on parenthood, destiny and human nature, and features good performances by Lena Headey, as Sarah, and Summer Glau." On Metacritic, a review aggregator which assigns a normalised score out of 100 to each review, the first season currently holds an average score of 74 based on 24 reviews. The second season has a score of 67, based on only 4 reviews.

The Terminator: Infinity (2007) comic book series by Dynamite Entertainment (a sequel to Terminator 3) depicts Connor on July 17, 2009. Kate Brewster died the year before, and he is aided by a Future Terminator named Uncle Bob. They create a homing signal to bring together other human survivors, beginning the resistance. The series is also tied into another one of Dynamite's publications, Painkiller Jane, for two issues. Dynamite are releasing a sequel Terminator: Revolution and at all the same time IDW Publishing are releasing a Salvation tie-in, possible because the former is based on the Terminator 2 license.

The real-world passing of the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles date for Judgment Day in April 21, 2011, prompted BBC News to pose the question, "How close were the Terminator films to the reality of 2011?". This television news spot attempted to compare and contrast how far present day Technology and society had developed in relation to the predictions of the motion picture franchise.

By December 2013, Skydance Productions and Annapurna Pictures were developing a new Terminator television series. Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz, who had worked together previously on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, were named as Writers and executive producers. Under the working title Terminator: Project Skynet, the series was said to deviate from the franchise's history at a critical moment in 1984's The Terminator, and would also integrate with then-projected film series' direct sequels to Terminator Genisys. With the rights reverting to James Cameron in 2019, the planned television series connected to Terminator Genisys has since been cancelled.

In October 2015, it was announced that the Terminator sequels were on hold due to the fifth film underperforming at the box office. Skydance chief creative officer Dana Goldberg commented at The Wrap’s Annual Media Leadership Conference that the franchise was not on hold, just ‘re-adjusting’. In January 2016, it was revealed that a sequel to Terminator Genisys had been removed from Paramount's 2017 release schedule, in favor of a Baywatch film adaptation starring Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron. In March 2017, Schwarzenegger stated that a sixth film was still in development.

On September 19, 2017, during the question and answer session after a special screening of Terminator 2: Judgment Day 3D, James Cameron officially announced that Linda Hamilton will return to the series to reprise her role as Sarah Connor. The story treatment was written by James Cameron himself, serving as the outline for the writers' room. Cameron and Miller meet in-person once a week to discuss the film in detail and talk via phone daily to discuss the writing process. Miller stated that the tone will be the same as the first two films. Cameron and Miller jointly acknowledged that the focus of the film is not to create more sequels or generate revenue, but to instead create the proper sequel, with the goal being to just make a good movie. However, there is a plan for a trilogy that would conclude the story should this first film prove successful.

The writers' room consists of Josh Friedman, creator of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, David S. Goyer, Justin Rhodes and Billy Ray. The creative team has stated that the new film will feature a young 18 to 21 year-old, who could potentially lead the franchise should the first film be successful. Cameron neglected to reveal the nature of the new Terminator villain at the event, stating it would "ruin the surprise", but was referred to by Cameron as "he" and "really cool". The Director also made mention of creating a theme park attraction akin to T2 3-D: Battle Across Time should the film prove successful. At a fan event in Birmingham, England, Arnold Schwarzenegger confirmed that Linda Hamilton had begun training for the film. He also confirmed that because the series deals with time-travel, the film ignores the premise of other movies and TV show in the series and will not be titled Terminator 6, but will be a direct sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The film is scheduled to be released on July 26, 2019. On March 8, 2018, it was announced that Mackenzie Davis had been cast to star in the upcoming film. The intended shooting time has been revealed to have been moved from March to June, Cameron citing the casting for the new lead role as the reason. In April 2018, the film's release date was pushed to November 22, 2019, to avoid box office competition with the Fast & Furious spin-off film Hobbs & Shaw. The same month, Diego Boneta, Natalia Reyes and Gabriel Luna were cast as primary characters in the film.