If a multiprocessing Process gets terminated by any means other than its terminate() method, it won't get this special TERMINATE (0x10000) exit code that allows the object to pretend the exit status is POSIX -SIGTERM. In general, the exit code will be 1. IMO, Process.terminate should be consistent with typical exit code of 1 and thus consistent with Popen.terminate. However, I'm adding Davin and Antoine to the nosy list in case they disagree -- before you go to the trouble of creating a PR.