How did the T-1000 reactivate the young T-800 by putting the liquid metal into his eye?

Question

In the fight between "Pops" and the young T-800, Sarah Connor shoots the young T-800 in chest. This suggests that, in order to restore the young T-800, parts in the chest area have to be repaired or replaced. But when the T-1000 enters the factory, it drops the mimetic polyalloy (liquid metal) into its eye, where it is absorbed into its head. How does it repair the big hole created by the sniper shot?

Also, when the reactivated young T-800 starts fighting with Kyle Resse, we don't see any visible damage to the internal robot's chest. Where did the damage go?

Answer 1

The T-1000 can control pieces of itself (even single molecules) from up to 14 km away, according to Randall Frakes' novelization of Terminator 2.

Therefore, the T-1000 can certainly control a blob of itself that is only a few metres away. The T-1000 instructed the piece of itself that it deposited into the damaged T-800 to exactly replicate whatever is required to restore the damaged components, including the exterior skin (which is why we don't see any damage in the chest area). As long as the T-800 is within 14 km of the T-1000, the T-1000 can continue to instruct the piece of itself in the T-800 to correct the T-800's damages.

Similarly, earlier in Genisys we see the T-1000 use a piece of itself to mimic the door hinge on Sarah Connor's getaway truck. (The distance between the truck and the T-1000's cop car was likely never more than a kilometer or two during the chase.)

Answer 2

It didn't, technically, re-activate it. It took control of it. The T-800 didn't have it's programming rebooted. It was instead controlled. Like a puppet. It was only hardware, the T-800 software was gone and never re-activated.

The drop of liquid metal was what allowed the robot to remove the visual bullet hole damage and was the anchor so that the T-1000 could control it remotely.

Like a few lines of code can turn a computer into a bot the drop is all it needs. Think of it like booting a computer from a flash drive and using the hardware but not booting into your OS.

Answer 3

Probably cause the alloy went into the head, swirled around and covered the cpu, so it activated, and perhaps the backup power supply is what powered 84 Arnie, as seen in t2