Future Shock timeline

The Future Shock timeline is the timeline covering the events in two Bethesda Softworks video games, The Terminator: Future Shock and its follow-up, SkyNET.

Avant notes

• A big part of Skynet's modus operandi in The Terminator: Future Shock is to constantly rewrite the timeline by sending its past self small snippets of information and changing the future in small yet significant ways. This article considers the Future Shock timeline to be the "gameplay timeline," the final result of all of Skynet's manipulations as experienced by the player.
• It's been suggested before that this timeline could be completely unrelated to any other timelines, the very first iteration of the Terminator timeline (given that it gives us the earliest known date for Judgment Day) or merely another alternate original timeline (assuming that Skynet's use of the Temporal Data Transmitting System to jumpstart itself is the reason Judgment Day happens earlier than usual.) As this is unlikely to ever be confirmed, this article will simply consider the events of the original film as canon, given the license Bethesda appeared to be working under, and will avoid referring to any other related timelines.
• As both games allow the player to customize and name the main characters, this timeline will use generic names for both: "the first recruit" for the Future Shock protagonist and "the second recruit" for the SkyNET protagonist.

Future Shock timeline

1984

• On May 13th, 1984, a T-800 arrives from the future to kill Sarah Connor. Its mission fails as Resistance fighter Kyle Reese intervenes and rescues Sarah successfully. Kyle is killed, but his legacy lives on in Sarah and their unborn son.

1995

• 2015 Skynet sends a piece of self-replicating code to its 1995 counterpart, giving itself self-awareness.
• The USS Las Cruces docks in Los Angeles.
• Judgment Day happens. Millions are slaughtered either in the initial attack or by lingering radiation.

1996

• The survivors realize Skynet's involvement on Judgment Day. The first machines begin rolling off assembly lines.

2015

• The first recruit, then just a scavenger, is captured by the machines while raiding a convenience store and is taken to a Los Angeles death camp, where they are made to work loading bodies into disposal units.
• A few weeks after his capture, the first recruit escapes the death camp, He's saved from death at the hands of a Spiderbot by a Resistance soldier, Sergeant Roberts, who is fatally wounded but urges the recruit to contact Colonel John Connor.
• After joining the Resistance Movement, the first recruit liberates a second Los Angeles death camp, freeing Thomas Jensen, Laurie Brinks, and a young Kyle Reese.
• The first recruit captures a downed HK-Aerial that Doctor Bill Hannover modifies for human use.
• The second recruit joins the Resistance and discovers that Skynet plans to launch a HADES nuclear missile on Los Angeles.
• The second recruit penetrates the Cyberdyne building in Los Angeles looking for information on HADES.
• The second recruit finds HADES schematics aboard the submarine USS Las Cruces, but too late for Doctor Hannover to be able to give them any use.
• The second recruit assault the HADES missile silo and reprograms the nuke, having it explode harmlessly over the Pacific Ocean.
• Captain Milton Bishop betrays the Resistance. Skynet uses him as the template for its new infiltrator: the T-800.
• The Resistance discovers the existence of the Temporal Data Transmitting System.
• A squad of T-800s and a Goliath attack Connor's headquarters, killing Jensen and Brinks. Kathryn Parker and the first recruit lead an evacuation to Santa Monica.
• The first recruit assaults a Skynet laboratory and mercy kills Milton Bishop.
• Skynet's forces invade the Santa Monica hideout, killing Hannover, Reese, and Connor. The first recruit manages to use the TDTS to send a virus back to 1995 and inhibit Skynet's self-awareness, thereby completely erasing this timeline.

Appearances

• The Terminator: Future Shock
• SkyNET