Terminator mystery tattoo/branding

[motman241]

Watching the Terminator movie again (the first one), I noticed that Kyle Reece has a tattoo or brand on his right forearm. I searched all over the internet, and I could find no information about this at all. It shocks me that no prop board, no costume group, no Hollywood site, no fanboy, no nittpickers, no casual movie goers... nobody has commented at all.

OK, so I'm just trying to figure out what the tattoo/brand actually looks like and reads. The info we have so far is that Kyle was captured in the future war, where he worked as a body disposal crew in a concentration camp. He got it there, much like the Nazis did to their prisoners during WW2.

Obviously there is a bar code. The characters under it are so hard to read. Notice in the big picture that it is actually upside down because of how his arm is.

In the picture I numbered as 1, I put a rough estimation of what I see, using fonts that are close to what I think they may be.

Picture number 2 is interesting. I noticed that the heights should be about the same, but the two in the middle are only half the height. The widths of the characters is about consistant. Calculating the mathmatics of it, it looks like this
XXX XX X XXX

Picture 3 is various lighting and brightnesses, just to maybe bring out something different.

Any thought or guesses?

 

[BlueEyeDevil]

Noticed this as well. Also some of the resistance fighters in the new Fox series have work camp tats as well.

 

[Apollo]

Looks like some sort of UPC bar code

 

[cheech9898]

I didn't record any of the new terminator series, but I believe there was a flashback sequence with Derek Reese that showed him & a few others being captured & barcoded with a laser by one of the 1st Terminator Infiltrator models that had rubber skin. Hopefully someone has that episode recorded & can pull some screencaps of those barcodes for you, I think they had a good closeup or 2 in that sequence.

 

[Chronos]

The barcode tattoos in The Sarah Connor Chronicles are different from The Terminator.

You can see in the pics motman posted that the barcode is red, while the television show show them as black.

 

[motman241]

Ok, we know it's a barcode and that he got it while imprisoned by the terminators (and it would go to show that all the prisoners would have them, in the movies or TV show).

What does it say though? Are those numbers, or letters, or both? Do they stand for anything (like Cyberdyne Worldwide Domination), or is it like a license plate (numerical as given)?

 

[motman241]

It has been suggested that those may be a couple individual tattoos/brandings, perhaps from different camps or something. Thoughts?

Any ideas on what the characters are?

 

[cheech9898]

Being able to read it would depend on if they actually followed one of the barcode standards. I have no idea how to translate the actual bars, but if the pattern could be decifered, it would just be a matter of running it through the various barcode standards.

Knowing how some of the industry people get a kick out of joking around, my guess is they pulled barcode patterns off of things like their beer/alcohol package, their breakfast cerial (froot loops, capt crunch, count chocula, etc), or some other product laying around the office.

 

[dropshipbob]

Would a machine even be able to scan that? Bar code on a box is one thing, but on human flesh? I'd imagine it would get distorted easily, both with age and flexing of muscles.

But I suppose the terminators are a highly advanced AI, so they might be able to do it just by looking at it.

 

[Mr_Creepy]

Would a machine even be able to scan that? Bar code on a box is one thing, but on human flesh? I'd imagine it would get distorted easily, both with age and flexing of muscles.

But I suppose the terminators are a highly advanced AI, so they might be able to do it just by looking at it.

Wouldn't be any more difficult than scanning a loaf of bread at the grocery store "now".

 

[motman241]

Actually, that bring up a good point - if they can read the bar code, why would they need numbers and letters on it, too? But on the other side of it, over time, skin will grow and shrink, and wounds can happen that will all distort the tattoo/brand. Something as thin as a bar code's lines will be quick to be unscannable.

As for deciphering the bars.... it should be universal, hence the name Universal Product Code (UPC).