TERMINATOR, ALIENS and PREDATOR are all connected in a shared universe (with The ABYSS)?

Explained in our Trivia Volume 8, every fan knows that the “The Terminator” and The Abyss films both exist in the same universe.  But did you know there are strong theories to suggest both Alien and Predator franchises also exists within the same Terminator universe?

The Alien link to Terminator of course is not a surprise to some.  Many fans know that Bishop (and androids like him) were originally written as a product of Cyberdyne Systems.  That’s right!  When James Cameron first wrote the script for his film “Aliens”, his earlier draft mentioned Cyberdyne Systems by name.

Take a look:

 

In the final shooting script, Cyberdyne Systems was changed to Hyperdyne Systems to avoid copyright infringement. However, with many fans, it has been widely accepted that Cyberdyne Systems eventually evolves into Hyperdyne Systems inside the Cameron universe.

If you buy into the premise, how the evolution from Cyberdyne to Hyperdyne occurred is anyone’s guess. There is a popular theory that the executives and financiers of Cyberdyne took the remnants of their company that was destroyed in the events “Terminator 2: Judgment Day 3D”, and reformed it into a new company called Hyperdyne. But yes, at its core, Bishop is from the same company as the T-800.

The Terminator’s link to the “Predator” franchise is a new one however, and more founded on video game Easter eggs than older script drafts by the film’s original writers.  It was cracked ironically by David Israel Nunez Alvear over at Cracked.  And it all revolves around what happened to Major “Dutch” Schaefer?

If you’re familiar with the 1987 science fiction classic “Predator”, you’ll remember that Major Alan “Dutch” Schaefer (played by actor Arnold Schwarzenegger) was a mercenary and the leader of a private military team. In 1987, Dutch and his men were hired by the U.S. military and the CIA for a “rescue mission” in the Republic of Val Verde. After discovering that their mission was a set-up to dupe them into eliminating the rebels in the area, Dutch’s squad came into contact with an alien Predator that stalked and killed the elite mercenaries one-by-one.

This new theory suggests that what Dutch endured in the jungle that day was actually a military test, designed to find the perfect soldier.  And once that perfect soldier was found, his genetics would be used to ultimately make a cyberbetic organism.

You see, the government was already aware of the visiting alien Predator for years, arriving when the summers ran at their hottest.  So it makes sense to use that other-worldly hunter as a test to find the perfect human specimen to fulfil their government contracts with Cyberdyne.  Yes, the U.S. Government purposely sent multiple teams of men into the Predator’s playground, in hopes of finding a perfect soldier that would eventually become a template for the T-800 Model 101.

This is all based on a connection that David found in the “Alien vs Predator” 1994 game by Capcom.  The game was reportedly based on an AvP movie script that was stuck in limbo and never went into production.  Its storyline revealed that Dutch was no longer human being, but actually a cyborg!  And what was his cyborg code?  It was CDS-170A3… with CDS standing for “Cyberdyne Systems”.

So when all is said and done, Major Alan “Dutch” Schaefer was taken by the U.S. Government after the events of the “Predator” and his genetics were used to create cybernetic organisms.  It may be a stretch, a coincidence, or even a conspiracy theory, but we love it!

We’ll be back!

Dutch 2.0: