Alien Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
8correct to beat the crowd
100 free Alien trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Alien trivia questions with answers. Alien has been scaring audiences since 1979, and this quiz runs the whole franchise. It starts on the Nostromo with Ripley, Ash, Jones the cat and the chestburster, follows Cameron's Colonial Marines to LV-426, lands with Fincher on the prison planet, meets the clones and mercenaries of Resurrection, then moves through the Prometheus and Covenant prequels, Alien vs. Predator, Romulus, the FX series Alien: Earth and the game Alien: Isolation. There are questions on the creature too: who designed it, who wore the suit and who first said 'xenomorph'. Easy questions ask who directed the original and what the tagline says; hard ones want the film's working title, the artist behind the chestburster, the actress who beat Weaver to the 1987 Oscar and where the Alien 3 score was recorded. Made for people who know that in space, no one can hear you scream. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the films, characters and creature, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed the original 1979 film Alien?
Ridley Scott
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.
Q 02Which fictional corporation owns the Nostromo and secretly wants the alien brought home?
Weyland-Yutani
Weyland-Yutani. Its secret Special Order 937 demands that the organism be brought back for study and ends with two chilling words: 'crew expendable'.
Q 03Which word completes Alien's famous tagline: 'In space no one can hear you ___'?
scream
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.
Q 04What is the name of the Nostromo crew's pet cat?
Jones
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.
Q 05Which member of the Nostromo crew turns out to be an android?
Ash
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.
Q 06What sort of vessel is the Nostromo?
Commercial towing vehicle
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'.
Q 07Which Swiss artist designed the creature for the 1979 film Alien?
H. R. Giger
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.
Q 08Which existing artwork by Alien's creature designer became the basis for the monster's look?
Necronom IV
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.
Q 09What was the working title of the film before it became Alien?
Star Beast
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.
Q 10Which design student, discovered in a London pub, played the creature in the 1979 film Alien?
Bolaji Badejo
Bolaji Badejo. The towering Nigerian student took tai chi classes to perfect the creature's slow glide, and he never acted again.
Q 11Alien's chestburster was inspired by a 1944 painting by which artist?
Francis Bacon
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.
Q 12Which Academy Award did Alien win at the 1980 ceremony?
Best Visual Effects
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.
Q 13Which institution added Alien to its National Film Registry in 2002?
Library of Congress
Q 21Where did casting agents find Carrie Henn, the complete beginner who played Newt in Aliens?
Her school in England
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.
Q 22What is the name of the Colonial Marines' spaceship in Aliens?
Sulaco
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.
Q 23Who beat Sigourney Weaver's Ripley to Best Actress at the 1987 Oscars?
Marlee Matlin
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.
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.
Q 14The Nostromo takes its name from a 1904 novel by which author?
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad. Earlier drafts called the ship the Snark and the Leviathan, and its escape shuttle, the Narcissus, borrows from another Conrad tale.
Q 15Who has sole screenplay credit on Alien, from a story he developed with Ronald Shusett?
Dan O'Bannon
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.
Q 16Why did Alien's makers give the creature acid for blood?
To stop the crew shooting it
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.
Q 17What did Alien's production team nickname the giant fossilised creature found in the derelict ship?
Space Jockey
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.
Q 18Which Nostromo crew member is the host for the chestburster in Alien?
Kane
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.
Q 19How many years has Ripley been drifting in stasis when she is found at the start of Aliens?
57
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.
Q 20Which Aliens actor delivers Hudson's panicked line 'Game over, man'?
Bill Paxton
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.
Q 24Which effects artist built the alien queen for James Cameron's Aliens, taking over from the first film's creature designer?
Stan Winston
Stan Winston. He built the queen from Cameron's own sketches, and the film brought him the first of his four Oscars.
Q 25Which Aliens character was played by a real Vietnam veteran who trained the cast to handle firearms?
Sergeant Apone
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.
Q 26Which character in Aliens is the first in the series to say the word 'xenomorph'?
Lieutenant Gorman
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.
Q 27Alien 3 (1992) was the feature directorial debut of which filmmaker?
David Fincher
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.'
Q 28Ripley's escape pod crash-lands on which planet in Alien 3?
Fiorina 161
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.
Q 29In Alien 3, what do the prisoners pour over the trapped creature in their attempt to kill it?
Molten lead
Molten lead. The creature bursts out of the metal still alive, so Ripley turns on the fire sprinklers and the sudden cold shatters it.
Q 30Alien 3's score was recorded while which event unfolded outside the studio?
The 1992 Los Angeles riots
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.