Everybody knows that Arnold Schwarzenegger is the kind of action star who says something cool, funny, or just straight up mind-boggling either just before he kills a bad guy or just after he kills a bad guy. In the not-so-subtle art of the one-liner, Schwarzenegger is Picasso. So much so that his lines are usually even more satisfying than the actual kills.
It can be hard to identify the best of the best from a butt-kicking career spanning nearly fifty years. But don’t worry, we’re here to help you. Here are our picks for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ten best one-liners.
“See you at the party, Richter.”
An infamous Arnie line from Total Recall for no other real reason than the fact that it’s just such a bizarre thing to say after ripping both of a man’s arms off. Obviously, it’s referencing an earlier dialogue exchange but it’s still an entertaining head-scratcher.
Usually, you’d expect something along the lines of thanking the bad guy for the hand(s) or maybe even a joke about having the right to bear arms. He could’ve even high-fived one of the hands. Anything, really, except “See you at the party, Richter.” It’s bold in how different it is and the confidence with which Schwarzenegger says it is emblematic of his world-beating confidence. Schwarzenegger could say anything after killing a guy and make it sound cool.
“Hey, Killian! Here is Subzero! Now… Plain Zero!”
What do you do when a maniac gladiator dressed as an ice hockey player is trying to kill you? This is the kind of question your average Schwarzenegger character would have to face on an annual basis back in the 80s. Of course, the answer is that you strangle him with razor wire. But what do you say to the captive studio audience after you’ve done it? That one’s not so easy.
The opponent’s name was Subzero, so there’s a lot of room for ice puns there. But this was a decade before Schwarzenegger’s role as Mr. Freeze in Batman & Robin, so he has nowhere near the peak of his game in that arena. Under the circumstances, we think he did a pretty good job.
“Freeze in hell, Batman!”
Really, this one’s representative of most to all of Schwarzenegger’s lines from Batman & Robin. Fans of the famously campy movie almost always list Schwarzenegger’s performance and dialogue as one of their favorite things about it, if not their most favorite. If you can think of a pun involving any word pertaining to low temperatures, so did the writers of that movie.
Other honorable mentions include: “Let’s kick some ice”, “Everybody, Chill!” and of course the great rhetorical question “What killed the dinosaurs!? THE ICE AGE!” However, after careful consideration, we have to rank “Freeze in hell, Batman!” as our top choice. It really epitomizes how little Schwarzenegger cared about looking silly in that movie and it’s frankly admirable.
“You’re fired.”
This one comes from the time when both Schwarzenegger and Hollywood action movies in general had become entirely self-aware. It’s one of those lines that doesn’t even really make sense, considering that the villain who he says it to never works for Schwarzenegger’s character. NBC’s The Apprentice wouldn’t go on the air for another decade and it would be another thirteen years after that before Schwarzenegger would host it.
Nonetheless, it’s a pretty flawless one-liner to deliver to a bad guy with a smirk on your face right before you fire the missile he’s attached to. There’s an elegance in simplicity sometimes.
“No sequel for you.”
Speaking of self-aware Hollywood action movies from the early 1990s starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Last Action Hero was the most meta of them all. Via some actual Houdini magic, Schwarzenegger’s all-action cop literally escapes from the movie screen to wreak havoc on Manhattan with Charles Dance’s hugely underrated villain.
Dance’s villain has a unique quirk in his character’s false eyes, which keep changing throughout the movie into more and more nefarious designs. His party piece is one that doubles up as a tiny grenade and it leads to the one-liner as Schwarzenegger prepares to quite literally blow it out of his head. As it would turn out, none of them got a sequel but the line and the movie live on in the hearts of fans.
“You are terminated.”
Fans waited nearly twenty years to hear him say it in-character on the big screen and Schwarzenegger is not one to disappoint. The line is really the crescendo of the whole movie and it’s a worthy moment, not just for fans but for any audience member regardless of their knowledge of the franchise.
It comes as the final moment of the main battle between the hunter and its targets. Having been thoroughly bested by yet an even newer model than Schwarzenegger’s famous T-800, Arnie catches up to his foe at the metaphorical finish line and the two become trapped beneath a closing blast door. Schwarzenegger delivers the line just after shoving a nuclear power cell directly into the opposing Terminator’s mouth. All in all, it makes for one satisfying boom.
“You’re luggage.”
Well, what else are you supposed to say after shooting an alligator in the head? See you later, alligator? Too on the nose. After a while, crocodile? Not emphatic enough and biologically incorrect. If it was from a Terminator movie, he could have said something like “I’m the alligator Terminator” but that wasn’t the case. The line originates from Schwarzenegger’s lesser-known, but still cult-favorite, 1996 movie Eraser.
All things considered, this is the only real option and Schwarzenegger doesn’t overthink it. The shorter ones tend to have the most punch and anything more than two words would seem like a waste of breath considering that the opponent is already dead and never spoke English in the first place.
“Let off some steam, Bennett.”
If you’re gonna say something after you throw a metal pipe into someone’s stomach, causing a steady jet of steam to billow out through it from the boiler behind them, then this really would be the obvious choice.
A lot of people get tongue tied in crucial moments. Everyone knows that feeling of thinking of the perfect thing to say in the moment about three hours after the moment ended. Not John Matrix. The original machismo commando, from the movie Commando, always has the best phrase locked and loaded. He’s so good at it that you suspect he might think them up in his spare time and just keeps them ready should the opportunity for a violent death arise.
“Hey, Claudius. You killed my father. Big Mistake.”
What would peak action movie Arnold Schwarzenegger have been like in the title role of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet? Well, thanks to a brief daydream sequence in Last Action Hero, you don’t have to spend your life wondering.
Chomping on a trademark cigar while laying waste to the state of Denmark with an uzi submachine gun, Schwarzenegger’s Hamlet ain’t quite what you were taught in school but that’s for the best. It’s pretty undeniable that, if this had been an acceptable source (or if Hamlet had just thrown some more people through windows), a lot more kids would have paid a lot more attention in English class.
“Stick around.”
There is just so much to love about John McTiernan’s 1987 sci-fi action movie Predator. Even the discarded ideas for that movie have become industry legend. The concept, the tone, the pacing, the special effects and the music were all running at peak efficiency and so was its star, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Unlike all of the other entries on this list, the line isn’t built up to in any kind of way. It’s not the payoff for a satisfying conclusion to some long-running feud. It takes place in the middle of an explosive battle after Schwarzenegger’s character tosses a gargantuan knife into an enemy, lodging them to the wooden beam behind them. It almost has the effect of being completely improvised.
