Two years after the Battle of New York, Steve Rogers works in Washington D.C. for the espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D. under Director Nick Fury, while adjusting to contemporary society. Rogers and Agent Natasha Romanoff are sent with S.H.I.E.L.D.'s counter-terrorism S.T.R.I.K.E. team, led by Agent Rumlow, to free hostages aboard a S.H.I.E.L.D. vessel from Georges Batroc and his mercenaries. Mid-mission, Rogers discovers Romanoff has another agenda: to extract data from the ship's computers for Fury. Rogers returns to the Triskelion, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s headquarters, to confront Fury and is briefed about Project Insight: three Helicarriers linked to spy satellites, designed to preemptively eliminate threats. Unable to decrypt the data recovered by Romanoff, Fury becomes suspicious about Insight and asks senior S.H.I.E.L.D. official Alexander Pierce to delay the project.
In 2029, Human Resistance leader John Connor (Jason Clarke) launches a massive final offensive against Skynet, an artificial general intelligence system seeking to eliminate the human race. Before the Resistance wins the offensive, Skynet activates a time machine and sends back a T-800 Terminator to 1984 to kill John's mother, Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke). John's right-hand man, Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney), volunteers to travel back in time to protect her. As Kyle floats in the machine's magnetic field, he witnesses John being attacked by another Resistance soldier (Matt Smith). He then has visions from his childhood about events in 2017.
In 2084, Earthbound construction worker Douglas Quaid is having troubling dreams about Mars and a mysterious woman there. His wife Lori dismisses the dreams and discourages him from thinking about Mars, where the governor, Vilos Cohaagen, is fighting rebels while searching for a rumored alien artifact located in the mines. At "Rekall", a company that provides memory implants of vacations, Quaid opts for a memory trip to Mars as a secret agent fantasy. However, during the procedure, before the memory is implanted, something goes wrong, and the story diverges between the question of what is real and what is hallucination. Apparently, Quaid starts revealing previously suppressed memories of actually being a secret agent. The company sedates him, wipes his memory of the visit, and sends him home. On the way home, Quaid is attacked by his friend Harry and some construction coworkers; he is forced to kill them, revealing elite fighting-skills. He is then attacked in his apartment by Lori, who reveals that she was never his wife; their marriage was just a false memory implant and Cohaagen sent her as an agent to monitor Quaid. He is then attacked and pursued by armed thugs led by Richter, Lori's real husband and Cohaagen's operative.
At the end of the 21st century, Earth is devastated by chemical warfare. What little habitable land remains is divided into two territories, the United Federation of Britain (UFB, located on mainland Europe) and the Colony (Australia). Many residents of the Colony travel to the UFB to work in factories via "the Fall", a gravity elevator running through the Earth's core. A Resistance operating in the UFB seeks to improve life in the Colony, which the UFB views as a terrorist movement.
In the near future, Michael Jennings (Affleck) is a reverse engineer; he analyzes his clients' competitors' technology and recreates it, often adding improvements beyond the original specifications. To protect his clients' intellectual property and himself, Jennings, with the aid of his friend Shorty (Giamatti), undertakes a memory wipe to remove knowledge of his engineering.
The emotionally withdrawn Joel Barish and the unrestrained free-spirit Clementine Kruczynski begin a relationship on a Long Island Rail Road train from Montauk, New York. They are almost immediately drawn to each other despite their radically different personalities.
In Los Angeles, November 2019, retired police officer Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is detained by officer Gaff (Edward James Olmos) and brought to his former supervisor, Bryant (M. Emmet Walsh). Deckard, whose job as a "Blade Runner" was to track down bioengineered beings known as replicants and destroy them, is informed that four have come to Earth illegally. As Tyrell Corporation Nexus-6 models, they have only a four-year lifespan and may have come to Earth to try to extend their lives.
John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) awakens in a hotel bathtub, suffering from amnesia. He receives a phone call from Dr. Daniel Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland), who urges him to flee the hotel to evade a group of men who are after him. During the phone talk, Murdoch discovers the corpse of a brutalized, ritualistically murdered woman, along with a bloody knife. He flees the scene, just as the group of men (known as the Strangers) show up to investigate the room.
In 2029, the world is interconnected by a vast electronic network that permeates every aspect of life. Much of humanity has access to this network through cybernetic bodies, or "shells", which possess their consciousness and can give them superhuman abilities.
During the Korean War, the Soviets capture a U.S. platoon and take them to Manchuria in Communist China. Some days later, all but two of the soldiers return to U.S. lines and Staff Sergeant Raymond Shaw is credited with saving their lives in combat. Upon the recommendation of the platoon's commander, Captain Bennett Marco, Raymond is awarded the Medal of Honor for his reported heroism. When asked to describe him, Marco and the other soldiers automatically respond, "Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life." Deep down, however, they know that Shaw is a cold, sad, unsympathetic loner.
In the year 2092, Nemo Nobody is a 117-year-old man, the last mortal on Earth. Humanity has conquered mortality through the endless renewal of cells, living in a shining future accompanied by their stem cell compatible pigs. The world watches in fascination as Mr. Nobody edges towards death, curious to know of life before quasi-immortality. Nemo says that he remembers nothing about his past and a psychiatrist, Dr. Feldheim, tries to make him recall memories through hypnosis while other memories are told to a journalist. Nemo spits out contradictory pieces as he is prodded, and no one is sure what happened and what did not. He is an enigma, often thinking that he is only 34 years old with no traceable record of his life. He recounts his life at three primary points: at age nine when his parents divorce, at age fifteen when he fell in love, and at age thirty-four as an adult. All three unfold into their many possible outcomes.
In the near future, Alex Raine (Olivier Gruner) is a disillusioned assassin for the LAPD. During a routine mission, he is attacked by a group freedom fighters known as The Red Army Hammerheads. Nearly killed by the surviving leader, Rosaria (Jennifer Gatti), Alex resists her assertion that he is a mindless robot: "Eighty-six point five percent [of him] is still human."
The movie opens in a mental institution where a girl named Su-mi is being treated for shock and psychosis. She is questioned by a doctor who asks if she can speak about the day that led her to being admitted to the hospital.
Morgan Sullivan (Northam), a recently unemployed accountant, is bored with his suburban life. Pressured by his wife to take a job with her father's company, he instead pursues a position in corporate espionage. Digicorp's Head of Security, Finster (Bennett), inducts Morgan and assigns him a new identity. As Jack Thursby, he is sent to conventions to secretly record presentations and transmit them to headquarters. Sullivan is soon haunted by recurring nightmares and neck pain. When he meets Rita Foster (Liu) from a competing corporation, his life starts to become complicated.
Gauri (Shobhana) the sole survivor of a tragic bus accident loses her memory. Admitted to a private nursing home, where she is diagnosed as suffering from 'hysterical amnesia' (retrograde amnesia), she falls in love with the doctor's son Sarath Menon (Jayaram). However, Narendran (Suresh Gopi), Gauri's husband arrives from USA searching for Gauri. When Gauri fails to recognise Narendran, he returns without a word, never showing Sarath his wedding photos with Gauri, that he was carrying with him.