100 Fun Facts About Alien

Who directed the original 1979 film Alien?

Ridley Scott. The producers hired him on the strength of his debut feature, The Duellists, and his detailed storyboards then persuaded Fox to double the budget.

Which fictional corporation owns the Nostromo and secretly wants the alien brought home?

Weyland-Yutani. Its secret Special Order 937 demands that the organism be brought back for study and ends with two chilling words: 'crew expendable'.

Which word completes Alien's famous tagline: 'In space no one can hear you ___'?

Scream. Copywriter Barbara Gips wrote the line for the film's poster, and the physics holds: sound cannot travel through a vacuum, because there is nothing to carry it.

What is the name of the Nostromo crew's pet cat?

Jones. Four lookalike cats shared the part, and Sigourney Weaver proved allergic to cat hair mixed with the glycerin used as fake sweat, so the glycerin had to go.

Which member of the Nostromo crew turns out to be an android?

Ash. Parker knocks his head loose to stop him killing Ripley, and the android innards that spill out were made of milk, caviar and pasta; the scene made an usher faint at a preview.

What sort of vessel is the Nostromo?

Commercial towing vehicle. It is hauling an ore refinery home when a strange signal diverts it, and the crew must investigate or lose their pay: the contract threatens 'total forfeiture of shares'.

Which Swiss artist designed the creature for the 1979 film Alien?

H. R. Giger. He also sculpted the alien ship's interior out of real dried bones and plaster, then airbrushed the whole set by hand.

Which existing artwork by Alien's creature designer became the basis for the monster's look?

Necronom IV. The director found the 1976 print in a book of the artist's work and chose it for its beauty and its unsettling sexual overtones.

What was the working title of the film before it became Alien?

Star Beast. The screenwriter disliked it and switched to Alien after noticing how often the word turned up in his own script; he liked that it worked as both a noun and an adjective.

Which design student, discovered in a London pub, played the creature in the 1979 film Alien?

Bolaji Badejo. The towering Nigerian student took tai chi classes to perfect the creature's slow glide, and he never acted again.

Alien's chestburster was inspired by a 1944 painting by which artist?

Francis Bacon. The painting is Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion; the first model made from it looked like a plucked turkey and had to be reworked.

Which Academy Award did Alien win at the 1980 ceremony?

Best Visual Effects. One winner, Carlo Rambaldi, built the creature's mechanical head, and three years later he won the same award for a far gentler alien: E.T.

Which institution added Alien to its National Film Registry in 2002?

Library of Congress. Anyone may nominate films for it, up to 50 titles a year, and the Librarian of Congress weighs those public picks before choosing each year's additions.

The Nostromo takes its name from a 1904 novel by which author?

Joseph Conrad. Earlier drafts called the ship the Snark and the Leviathan, and its escape shuttle, the Narcissus, borrows from another Conrad tale.

Who has sole screenplay credit on Alien, from a story he developed with Ronald Shusett?

Dan O'Bannon. Two of the film's producers rewrote his script so heavily that they wrote the final shooting draft, yet the Writers Guild awarded him sole screenplay credit.

Why did Alien's makers give the creature acid for blood?

To stop the crew shooting it. Concept artist Ron Cobb suggested the acid: wound the creature aboard ship and its blood would eat straight through the hull.

What did Alien's production team nickname the giant fossilised creature found in the derelict ship?

Space Jockey. To save money only one wall of its vast chamber was built, and the figure sat on a disc that could be turned to fake different camera angles.

Which Nostromo crew member is the host for the chestburster in Alien?

Kane. The cast knew a puppet would appear but not that blood would spray everywhere, so the horror on their faces is real; Veronica Cartwright was hit full on and fell over.

How many years has Ripley been drifting in stasis when she is found at the start of Aliens?

57. In a scene cut from cinemas and later restored, Ripley learns that the young daughter she left behind grew old and died while she slept.

Which Aliens actor delivers Hudson's panicked line 'Game over, man'?

Bill Paxton. He invented the line himself, picturing Hudson as a soldier who came up on video games, where every turn ended with the words Game Over.

Where did casting agents find Carrie Henn, the complete beginner who played Newt in Aliens?

Her school in England. Her father was serving at the American air base at Lakenheath; she had never acted, won a Saturn Award as Newt, and it remains her only screen role.

What is the name of the Colonial Marines' spaceship in Aliens?

Sulaco. The name keeps a tradition going: Sulaco is the port town in the 1904 novel that gave the first film's ship, the Nostromo, its name.

Who beat Sigourney Weaver's Ripley to Best Actress at the 1987 Oscars?

Marlee Matlin. She won for Children of a Lesser God, her first film, and signed her thanks after her co-star William Hurt handed her the Oscar.

Which effects artist built the alien queen for James Cameron's Aliens, taking over from the first film's creature designer?

Stan Winston. He built the queen from Cameron's own sketches, and the film brought him the first of his four Oscars.

Which Aliens character was played by a real Vietnam veteran who trained the cast to handle firearms?

Sergeant Apone. Al Matthews had served in the US Marine Corps in Vietnam, and on set he taught the actors playing his squad to handle their weapons properly, because even blanks can do damage.

Which character in Aliens is the first in the series to say the word 'xenomorph'?

Lieutenant Gorman. He meant alien life of any kind, since the creature had no name of its own, but fans took the word for the monster's proper name and it stuck.

Alien 3 (1992) was the feature directorial debut of which filmmaker?

David Fincher. Shooting began without a finished script and the studio overruled him throughout, so he later disowned the film: 'No one hated it more than me.'

Ripley's escape pod crash-lands on which planet in Alien 3?

Fiorina 161. The crash kills Newt and Hicks before the story has even begun, leaving Ripley the lone survivor on a prison planet of male inmates.

In Alien 3, what do the prisoners pour over the trapped creature in their attempt to kill it?

Molten lead. The creature bursts out of the metal still alive, so Ripley turns on the fire sprinklers and the sudden cold shatters it.

Alien 3's score was recorded while which event unfolded outside the studio?

The 1992 Los Angeles riots. Composer Elliot Goldenthal had spent a whole year on the music, and he said the wild, stormy mood of the city fed its dark, violent sound.

Which French director made Alien Resurrection?

Jean-Pierre Jeunet. It was his first Hollywood film, and he directed it through an interpreter because he spoke little English; his next film, back in France, was Amélie.

Who wrote the screenplay for Alien Resurrection?

Joss Whedon. The creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer said the film followed his script closely but executed it badly.

What is the name of the mercenaries' ship that docks with the Auriga in Alien Resurrection?

The Betty. Its crew are smugglers with a grim cargo: kidnapped people in cold sleep, sold to the military as hosts for breeding aliens.

What stunt did Sigourney Weaver suggest to show off her clone's new abilities in Alien Resurrection?

Sinking a basketball backwards. The director wanted to fake it with effects, but she practised until she made about one shot in six, then did it for real on camera.

Who plays the android David in Prometheus (2012)?

Michael Fassbender. He chose not to rewatch the earlier films' androids, and modelled the way David moves on the Olympic diver Greg Louganis.

David's look and manner in Prometheus were partly modelled on Peter O'Toole's performance in which film?

Lawrence of Arabia. David watches the film alone while the crew sleep, quotes its lines and dyes his hair blond to match its hero.

What does the Prometheus crew call the humanoid race they believe created humanity?

Engineers. They appear to be the race of the giant fossilised pilot glimpsed in the 1979 film, the series' answer to a mystery it had left hanging for 33 years.

Which Lost co-creator rewrote Jon Spaihts's Prometheus script?

Damon Lindelof. He felt the first draft leaned too heavily on the old films, so he cut its direct links to Alien and made the story stand apart.

In Alien: Covenant, the android David wrongly credits the poem 'Ozymandias' to which poet?

Lord Byron. The poem is Shelley's, and fellow android Walter pounces on the slip: 'When one note is off, it eventually destroys the whole symphony.'

Who directed Alien: Romulus (2024)?

Fede Álvarez. To keep his story faithful to the earlier films, he checked it against Xenopedia, the wiki run by the series' own fans, while he wrote.

What is the name of Cailee Spaeny's orphaned colonist in Alien: Romulus?

Rain Carradine. She plans her escape when the company forcibly extends her mining contract, taking along her adopted brother Andy, a glitchy android her father reprogrammed.

The damaged android Rook in Alien: Romulus was built with the likeness of which late actor from the 1979 film?

Ian Holm. With his estate's permission, the effects team built an animatronic head from a scan he had made for The Lord of the Rings, and another actor supplied the voice.

What do the credits call the human-xenomorph hybrid at the end of Alien: Romulus?

Offspring. The director wanted no digital creature, so a Romanian athlete who stands 7 feet 7 inches tall played it in full-body prosthetic make-up.

Who created the 2025 television series Alien: Earth?

Noah Hawley. The creator of the Fargo television series set his story two years before the first film, when a research ship carrying alien specimens crashes into a city on Earth.

In Alien: Earth, Boy Kavalier is the founder and CEO of which corporation?

Prodigy. Its founder, the world's youngest trillionaire, borrows from Peter Pan: his research island is Neverland, his first human-synthetic hybrid is renamed Wendy, and her group are the Lost Boys.

In Alien vs. Predator (2004), the buried pyramid lies beneath which island?

It sits about 1,000 miles off the coast of Antarctica, and Lance Henriksen returns as Charles Bishop Weyland to fund the expedition.

Which studio developed the 2014 survival-horror game Alien: Isolation?

Creative Assembly. The studio was known for its Total War strategy games; here it cast players as Ripley's daughter Amanda, hunting for her lost mother 15 years after the first film.

On which date do fans celebrate Alien Day each year?

April 26. Written 4/26, it echoes LV-426, the moon where the eggs are found; the studio launched the first official one in 2016, on the 30th anniversary of Aliens.

Sigourney Weaver took her first name at 14 from a minor character in which novel?

The Great Gatsby. Sigourney Howard is only a name in it, an aunt of Jordan Baker's; already 5 foot 11 at 14, the future star felt that Susan was too short a name for someone so tall.

When James Cameron was hired to write Aliens in 1983, his only directing credit was which film?

Piranha II: The Spawning. The studio balked at giving its sequel to the director of a cheap horror about flying killer fish, until The Terminator became a surprise hit in 1984.

The lasers that light the egg chamber in Alien were borrowed from which English rock band?

The Who lent the lasers, and the chamber they light was a second-hand set too: the derelict's main chamber, redressed once its giant fossilised occupant and chair had been lifted out.

Alien's writers pitched their script to studios as which blockbuster 'in space'?

Jaws in space was the whole pitch. The script also carried a note that the crew was unisex, so every part could go to a man or a woman.

Which 1977 hit sent 20th Century-Fox rushing to make Alien, the only spaceship script on its desk?

Star Wars turned science fiction into the hot genre overnight, and a studio that had shown little interest in it approved Alien with a starting budget of only $4.2 million.

To sell producers on the title Aliens, James Cameron turned the final S on a whiteboard into what?

A dollar sign: he drew two lines through the S to win the producers over. Long treated as a myth, the story was finally confirmed by Cameron himself in 2021.

The disused London plant that housed the nest in Aliens became Axis Chemicals in which 1989 film?

Batman inherited the sets: they stood in the decommissioned Acton Lane plant, which had needed three weeks of cleaning to strip out decaying asbestos, until Tim Burton redressed them.

Who wore scaled-down spacesuits beside the Nostromo's landing leg in Alien to make it look bigger?

Children stood in for the cast: the director's two young sons and the cinematographer's boy. They nearly collapsed in the heat of the suits before oxygen systems were fitted.

The weary crew of the Nostromo in Alien was conceived as which kind of everyday worker 'in space'?

Truckers in space was the brief: the filmmakers wanted working astronauts in a grubby, realistic ship, a break from the spotless futures that science fiction usually showed.

Curly, Nibs and Slightly, three hybrids of Alien: Earth, are named after characters from which story?

Peter Pan runs right through the series: the hybrids are created on a research island called Neverland, and the first of them, a dying girl named Marcy, is renamed Wendy.

Which piece of dockside machinery does Ripley strap herself into to fight the alien queen in Aliens?

The power loader duel was choreographed move by move, because the animatronic queen was big and unwieldy enough to seriously injure the actress fighting it.

What homely name does the crew of the Nostromo give the ship's main computer in Alien (1979)?

Mother wakes the crew when it detects the strange transmission, and later has no answer for the captain when he asks what their chances are against the creature.

In Alien, the transmission the Nostromo crew takes for an SOS turns out to be what kind of message?

A warning beacon, Ripley realises, once the ship's computer has partly deciphered it. The idea of a crew landing despite being warned off was borrowed from Forbidden Planet (1956).

At the end of Alien, what does Ripley use to finish off the creature clinging to her escape craft?

The engine exhaust does it: Ripley shoots the creature out of the hatch with a grappling gun, and when the line snags in the closing door she lights the engines to burn it loose.

Alien's writer met several of its artists on Alejandro Jodorowsky's abandoned film of which novel?

Dune fell apart after six months of work in Paris, leaving the writer broke and sleeping on a friend's couch, but the artists he met there went on to shape the look of Alien.

Which composer of The Omen and Planet of the Apes wrote the unsettling orchestral score for Alien?

Jerry Goldsmith was the studio's pick, not the director's, who had wanted Isao Tomita. The director disliked the original main title, so the composer rewrote it.

Which actor, later Viper in Top Gun, plays Dallas, the captain of the Nostromo, in Alien?

Tom Skerritt turned the part down at first, when the project had no director and a tiny budget, and said yes only once a director was attached and the money had doubled.

Which actor went from Bond villain in Live and Let Die to Parker of the Nostromo in Alien?

Yaphet Kotto was sent the script on the strength of playing Dr. Kananga, and said he turned down a lucrative offer elsewhere just for the chance of being cast in Alien.

Which French illustrator's costume sketches became the Nostromo crew's bulky spacesuits in Alien?

Moebius was attached to Alien for only a few days, yet his costume renderings were the basis for the final suits built by the designer John Mollo.

Which xenomorph body part sits in a trophy case in Predator 2 (1990), hinting at an Alien crossover?

A skull among the hunter's trophies was planted as an Easter egg for fans, fourteen years before the two monsters finally shared a film.

What is the name of the Nostromo's escape shuttle, in which Ripley flees the doomed ship in Alien?

Narcissus was meant to carry Ripley off in the closing shot: Alien was first written to end with the Nostromo's destruction, before a last showdown aboard the shuttle was added.

Which author sued 20th Century Fox over Alien's likeness to his story Discord in Scarlet?

A. E. van Vogt had written of a creature that plants parasitic eggs inside a ship's crew, which hatch and eat their way out. The studio settled the case out of court.

The Alien vs. Predator crossover began life in 1989 in which medium, years before the 2004 film?

Comic books came first: the opening story ran across three issues of a Dark Horse anthology from November 1989, and video games followed in the 1990s.

After a high school staged Alien as a play in 2019, the film's director suggested which of his films next?

Gladiator was his suggestion, made in a letter of congratulations to North Bergen High School in New Jersey, whose no-budget props were built from recycled toys. He also paid for an encore performance.

Which toy company's family-friendly Alien figures of 1979 were scrapped after parents complained?

Kenner had struck its deal before anyone saw the film, and also sold a board game in which players race for the shuttle while the creatures roam the ship's corridors and air shafts.

The first Alien video game, released for the Atari 2600 in 1982, was inspired by which arcade hit?

Pac-Man aboard a spaceship, more or less: the player clears a maze of alien eggs rather than dots, and one reviewer of the day dismissed it as a rehash of games already on sale.

Which actor plays the android Bishop in Aliens and the tycoon he was based on in Alien vs. Predator?

Lance Henriksen is the franchise's great repeat visitor: he also plays the android's human designer in Alien 3, and reprised Bishop for a video game decades later.

Which star of The Terminator replaced James Remar as Corporal Hicks early in the filming of Aliens?

Michael Biehn arrived too late for the cast's military training and had to wear his predecessor's armour. Two shots of the first Hicks, seen from behind, stayed in the film.

Which comedian, later the star of Mad About You, plays scheming company man Burke in Aliens?

Paul Reiser had only had small film parts, such as one in Beverly Hills Cop, before Aliens handed him his first major screen role as its smiling villain.

Which actress, later an Irish immigrant in Titanic, made her debut as Private Vasquez in Aliens?

Jenette Goldstein had never handled a gun before playing the squad's toughest Marine, and held hers so awkwardly in close-ups that the film's producer stood in for her.

What is the first name of Ripley's daughter, the heroine of the 2014 video game Alien: Isolation?

Amanda spends the game searching for her missing parent, 15 years after the events of the first film. A scene cut from Aliens in cinemas shows Ripley learning of her daughter's death.

The pulse rifles in Aliens were built around which real submachine gun?

Thompson guns, the tommy guns of gangster films, sat inside the futuristic shells, each paired with a pump-action shotgun. The actors carrying them had trained with Britain's SAS.

The Marines' heavy smart guns in Aliens were attached to which piece of camera equipment?

A Steadicam arm took the weight, and it needed to: each gun was a real German MG 42 dressed up with motorcycle parts, and weighed as much as 70 pounds.

The Marines' armoured personnel carrier in Aliens was a disguised tug from which kind of workplace?

An airport tug built to push Boeing 747s hides under the armour. For miniature shots the crew also made a sixth-scale replica, which needed a set about 80 feet long.

Which novel did James Cameron tell the Aliens actors playing Marines to read before filming?

Starship Troopers was set as homework so the actors would grasp the space marine archetype, and Cameron also wrote a separate backstory for every member of the squad.

Which composer, later an Oscar winner for Titanic, had just three weeks to score Aliens?

James Horner called the job a nightmare: with Cameron still shooting and editing there was nothing to write to, and he ended up recording at Abbey Road with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Which future Game of Thrones patriarch plays Clemens, the prison colony's doctor, in Alien 3?

Charles Dance stands by the film, rating it above its predecessor, and has recalled an alternative ending being shot for fear the original was too close to that of Terminator 2.

In the cinema cut of Alien 3, the creature bursts from which animal kept by one of the prisoners?

A dog named Spike is the host in cinemas, which is why this creature runs on all fours. The longer cut released years later swaps the dog for a dead ox.

Vincent Ward's abandoned version of Alien 3 was set among monks on a planet built from what?

Wood was the idea: Ward imagined an archaic wooden world where technology-shunning monks take the creature for the Devil himself, a setting the studio later traded for a prison.

Which Neuromancer author wrote an unused Alien 3 script that became an audio drama in 2019?

William Gibson was hired in 1987 and told the producers that Alien had influenced his own writing. Decades on, his script returned as a full-cast audio play with two of the Aliens actors back in their roles.

Which star of Beetlejuice plays Call, the crew member revealed as an android, in Alien Resurrection?

Winona Ryder dreaded the film's long underwater sequence, the first thing shot: she had nearly drowned at the age of 12 and had not been in the water since.

Which name is given to the hybrid that treats Ripley's clone as its parent in Alien Resurrection?

The Newborn kills the queen that gave birth to it, and was built as an animatronic because a studio executive argued it would look far more real than a digital creature.

Which Oscar winner plays Vickers, the icy executive overseeing the expedition in Prometheus (2012)?

Charlize Theron described Vickers as pragmatic and desperate to control the situation. The film later reveals her as the estranged daughter of the old tycoon bankrolling the mission.

Which star of Luther plays Janek, the captain who flies the Prometheus into the alien ship?

Idris Elba saw Janek as a pragmatist whose crew is his responsibility, and in the finale the captain and his remaining crew give their lives to ram the departing craft.

The film Prometheus takes its title from the Greek Titan who defied the gods to give humanity what?

Fire was the gift, and eternal punishment the price: a fitting namesake for a ship whose passengers set out to question their own makers.

Which author novelized Alien, Aliens and Alien 3, then returned for Alien: Covenant?

Alan Dean Foster adapted the first film from its shooting script, in both adult and junior editions, and wrote every novelization up to the third film before turning down Alien Resurrection.

Alien: Covenant was first announced under which subtitle, taken from a 17th-century epic poem?

Paradise Lost was the title unveiled in September 2015, before a change of mind. Milton's poem had nearly named the previous film too, which was once going to be called simply Paradise.

The colony ship in Alien: Covenant is carrying 2,000 sleeping settlers to which distant planet?

Origae-6 was also the destination for 1,140 frozen human embryos, until a human voice broadcast from an uncharted, habitable world tempted the crew off course.

What is the name of the terraforming colony on LV-426 that falls silent at the start of Aliens?

Hadley's Hope is where the Marines find a single survivor, a girl who has been living in the compound's air ducts since the creatures took everyone else.

What is the name of the android aboard the Covenant, a newer model than David, in Alien: Covenant?

Walter was built to be less human: the earlier David line had been discontinued for being too lifelike, and David derides his successor for lacking creativity.

Alien: Romulus was originally meant to skip cinemas and premiere on which streaming service?

Hulu had the film until shortly before shooting began, when the studio switched it to a cinema release. Filming took place in Budapest, where a working electricity plant doubled as the mining colony.

The alien-world exteriors of Prometheus were shot at the foot of an active volcano in which country?

Iceland was picked over the Mojave Desert because the director found it rough and Jurassic-looking, and the two-week shoot there supplied about fifteen minutes of the finished film.