Aliens (1986) Trivia
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47 free Aliens (1986) trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Aliens is James Cameron's 1986 sequel to Alien, the film that turned Ridley Scott's haunted house in space into a roller coaster and made Ellen Ripley an action icon. Fifty-seven years after the Nostromo, Ripley goes back to LV-426 with a squad of Colonial Marines, an android named Bishop and a company man named Burke, and finds a nest, an orphaned girl called Newt and a queen. Made for about $18.5 million at Pinewood Studios, it earned Sigourney Weaver the first Best Actress Oscar nomination ever given to a science-fiction film. This quiz is about the 1986 film alone. It covers the cast and the actor who was fired from it, the years the sequel spent stalled at Fox, the SAS training, the tea-break war with the British crew, Stan Winston's queen puppet, James Horner's three-week score, the box office, the awards and the film's long afterlife in games, comics and a Marvel movie. Fifty questions, four options each, with a short explanation after every answer. Play on your phone or print it for a quiz night.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who wrote and directed Aliens?
James Cameron
James Cameron was hired after a development executive read his script for The Terminator and 'couldn't put it down'; Ridley Scott later said he was never asked to make the sequel.
Q 02Who plays Ellen Ripley in Aliens?
Sigourney Weaver
Sigourney Weaver was paid $1 million, her biggest fee to that point, after the director and producer walked away from the project rather than make it without her.
Q 03Who plays Corporal Dwayne Hicks in Aliens?
Michael Biehn
Michael Biehn got the call on a Friday night and was filming by Monday, a late replacement who missed the cast's military training and had to wear his predecessor's armour.
Q 04Who plays Newt in Aliens?
Carrie Henn
Carrie Henn had never acted before Aliens and chose not to make acting her career: she grew up to become a schoolteacher.
Q 05Who plays the android Bishop in Aliens?
Lance Henriksen
Lance Henriksen played the android as a very innocent 12-year-old who pitied the adults around him, because he knew he was going to outlive them all.
Q 06Which panicky Marine private does Bill Paxton play in Aliens?
Hudson
Hudson's wail of 'Game over, man!' grew out of the backstory Paxton invented for him: a soldier who had come up on simulators and video games.
Q 07Who plays the company man Carter Burke in Aliens?
Paul Reiser
Paul Reiser had more experience as a comedian than as an actor, with a tiny part in Beverly Hills Cop behind him, when he was cast as the smooth-talking villain.
Q 08Which actress plays Private Vasquez in Aliens?
Jenette Goldstein
Jenette Goldstein, a stage-trained actress, was making her very first film and has said she arrived not even knowing what a master shot was.
Q 09What is the name of the Marines' spaceship in Aliens?
Sulaco
Sulaco was first sketched by its designer as a huge sphere with antennas, until the director pointed out that a flatter ship would glide past the camera better.
Q 10On which moon is the colony Ripley returns to in Aliens?
LV-426
LV-426 still holds the derelict ship from the first film, and the model was the original: it had spent the years between in the driveway of a film historian the studio gave it to.
Q 11At which studios near London was most of Aliens shot?
Pinewood
Pinewood's crew clashed so badly with the director that his farewell speech said one thought had kept him going: he would drive out of the gate and never come back, while they stayed.
Q 12How long has Ripley drifted in hypersleep when she is rescued at the start of Aliens?
57 years
57 years pass before a deep-space salvage crew stumbles on her shuttle by blind luck, long enough for a colony to be built on the very moon where her crew found the alien.
Q 13As the story goes, the director pitched Aliens by writing 'Alien' on a whiteboard, followed by what?
A dollar sign
A dollar sign made it 'Alien$' in the tale, though the film's own producer has said she heard the story for years without knowing if it was true.
Q 21Which British film-industry tradition most frustrated the Canadian director of Aliens?
Tea breaks
Tea breaks, wheeled in on a trolley, cost him by his own reckoning about an hour of filming every day, which added up to some five hours a week.
Q 22Which machine does Ripley strap herself into to fight the queen at the end of Aliens?
A power loader
A power loader, the walking forklift she drives early in the film to show the Marines she can be useful, becomes her armour for the line 'Get away from her, you bitch!'
Q 23The alien hive sets built for Aliens were left standing and reused in which 1989 film?
Batman
Q 14If Alien was a haunted house, the director said the sequel should be like what?
A roller coaster
He and the producer agreed to combine the horror of the original with the action of The Terminator.
Q 15Which novel were the Marine actors in Aliens told to read to understand the space-soldier archetype?
Starship Troopers
Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein's novel, left its mark on the script as well as the cast: the Marines' phrase 'bug hunt' is borrowed from it.
Q 16Which actor was first cast as Hicks in Aliens and then fired early in the shoot?
James Remar
James Remar's exit was put down to artistic differences until he admitted he was fired after an arrest for drug possession; shots of him from behind are still in the film.
Q 17Bill Paxton credited his casting in Aliens to a chance meeting with the director where?
Los Angeles airport
Los Angeles airport: Paxton ran into the director there, heard that the script was on its way to England and joked, 'I hope you write me a part!'
Q 18Veterans of which military unit trained the Marine cast of Aliens before filming?
The SAS
The SAS veterans drilled the Marine actors so that they would bond as a unit and treat the rest of the cast as outsiders; one star, cast late, missed the lot.
Q 19Which Vietnam veteran in the cast of Aliens helped train the actors to handle firearms?
Al Matthews
Al Matthews, who plays Sergeant Apone, was a real Marine with two Purple Hearts from Vietnam, and his first rule for the cast was never to walk around with a finger on the trigger.
Q 20The actor first cast as Hicks in Aliens accidentally shot a hole through the set of which film next door?
Little Shop of Horrors
Little Shop of Horrors was filming on the next stage under Frank Oz when, as the cast's weapons instructor told it, the newcomer 'blew a hole in Frank's set' with a shotgun.
Batman's crew arrived at the disused Acton Lane power station to find most of the alien hive still in place, and rebuilt it as the Axis Chemicals plant.
Q 24What was used for the android Bishop's white blood in Aliens?
Milk
Milk gushed from the torn-in-half android through two or three days of filming, until it spoiled and the effects crew were holding their noses to go near the actor.
Q 25In Aliens, which relative of Ripley died while she drifted?
Her daughter
Her daughter, Amanda, grew old and died at 66 while her mother slept, a loss the theatrical cut left out and one that feeds her bond with the orphaned Newt.
Q 26Who composed the score for Aliens?
James Horner
James Horner called the job 'a nightmare': he reached London with six weeks to write the music and nothing to write it to, because the film was still being shot and edited.
Q 27In Aliens, when does Newt say the creatures 'mostly come'?
At night
At night: her warning proved so quotable that the actress who spoke it has had people offering her their own take on the line for years.
Q 28Where was the Aliens score recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra?
Abbey Road Studios
Abbey Road Studios saw sessions so rushed that the music for the final battle was written overnight, and the director first heard the score there with the whole orchestra waiting.
Q 29Unused music from the Aliens score turned up in which 1988 film?
Die Hard
Die Hard has a score by Michael Kamen, yet its makers cut in music written for Aliens, and for 1987's Man on Fire, in place of some of his cues.
Q 30Which concept artist designed the Marines' spaceship for Aliens?
Syd Mead
Syd Mead, who drew the future Los Angeles of Blade Runner, got the job because the director admired the spaceship he had designed for the film 2010.