Originally posted by lord xyz
Then who is John's original father?
Ok, there you can blame Cameron. 😛
But to try and give an explatnation, I see it like this:
John Conner's father is Kyle Reese.
The Terminator and Kyle are sent back in one timeline, this happens irregardless.
When the terminator is destroyed, nothing significant has changed because this event always happened.
It isn't until the destruction of Skynet that the future was changed to remove Judgement Day.
Of course, while that could explain the parentage, it doesn't explain why the war happened in the first place. Maybe the first time around Kyle destroyed the Terminator completely and Sarah didn't have the final confrontation with the endoskeleton that caused her to realize she was a part of this fight so she didn't go trying to warn people and accepted that Judgement Day would happen regardless of her actions.
That would mean she didn't blow up the research and Judgement Day actually occured.
So yeah, there is a possibility that in a slight alteration of the timeline Skynet went online and that in the second timeline the alteration didn't occur and Sarah stopped Skynet.
It is still possible to assume that Kyle was always John's father as long as he always goes back.