Characters / Alien Main

Main Characters

Ripley

Ellen Louise Ripley

"This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off."

Portrayed By: Sigourney Weaver

Appearances: Alien | Aliens | Alien³

"Get away from her, you bitch!"

The primary protagonist and hero — in fact, is ranked #8 on AFI's "Heroes" List^note For good reason, mind you! — Ripley is probably the most famous character in the franchise aside from the titular xenomorph. Probably the most level-headed member of the crew, demonstrating an impressive amount of bravery and taking a few levels in badass when dealing with the xenomorph. De-facto leader of the crew on the basis of being the most proactive member.

The sole human survivor of the Nostromo Incident and the only constant character in the franchise apart from the Xenomorphs, Ripley is awakened from hypersleep 57 years later. She gets suspended by the Weyland-Yutani company for "questionable judgment" regarding the ship's self-destruction, finds out her daughter died a while ago (well, in the Director's Cut...) and that LV-426, the planet where they encountered the Xenomorphs, is now colonized.

Once the colony predictably loses contact with Earth, Ripley accompanies the Badass Crew of Space Marines as a civilian adviser, and finds herself as de facto leader alongside Corporal Hicks due to unforeseen consequences. In the resulting struggle with the Xenomorphs, Ripley gains more levels in badass and becomes one of the most awesome Action Girls in cinema.

For tropes relating to the Ripley 8 clone, see the character page for Alien: Resurrection.

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• Action Girl: One of the most important and revolutionary in all of cinema.
• Action Mom: Ripley had a biological daughter, Amanda, who died during the 57-year timeskip between the 1st movie and 2nd, and who is also the protagonist of Alien: Isolation. Ripley later takes Newt in in Aliens... but it doesn't last.
• Action Survivor: After her tangle with a Drone, Ripley Took a Level in Badass in the sequels.
• Always Save the Girl: Soldiered into the heart of a Xenomorph hive in Aliens to rescue Newt while it was minutes away from going nuclear.
• Arch-Enemy: The entire Xenomorph race, which she has vowed to destroy so they can't kill any more people.
• Badass and Child Duo: With Newt in Aliens.
• Badass Normal: The original Ripley was only a human but managed to take down a Queen. In the end, it takes herself to finish herself off — a few Xenomorphs come close, but none actually manage it.
• Bald Head of Toughness Downplayed in Alien³. Ripley was already an Action Girl and Final Girl after being the sole survivor of her crew in Alien and going against and killing Xenomorphs in both preceding films. In the third film, her going bald is incidental: a lice break out on the ship forces everyone to shave their heads completely bald to stop the spread. That said, it's in that movie she becomes a survivor of attempted rape and musters up the willpower to kill herself in order to kill the Xenomorph Queen embryo gestating inside of her.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Ripley can be a bit prickly, but is essentially a kind person. Until you piss her off or push the wrong buttons — then, not even running will save you as she will come for you.
• Big "NO!": Lets one out during especially traumatic events.
• Car Fu: Whilst leading a daring rescue attempt in the ATV to evacuate the marines, a xenomorph tries to smash its way through the windshield. Ripley slams on the breaks so the creature goes flying, then punches the accelerator, crushing it to death under the ATV's wheels.
• Cassandra Truth: When trying to explain the Alien to the likes of Company executives and the prison superintendent at Fury-161, they tend not to believe her warnings of an "eight foot creature with acid for blood".
• Combat Pragmatist: Ripley learns to make use of whatever weapons she has at hand.
• Deadpan Snarker: Especially in Aliens and 3. After surviving her first encounter with the Alien, Ripley's snark seems to skyrocket. She essentially has no more time for anyone's bullshit.
• Death Seeker: in Alien 3, upon learning she's the host of the next Queen.
• Do You Want to Copulate?: Clemens is a little surprised at her offer, but Ripley admits she hasn't had sex in a very long time.
• Duct Tape for Everything: With this trope, Ripley combined a Pulse Rifle and a Flame Unit into a single weapon, circumventing the decision of whether she should bring just one or the other into the Hadley's Hope Reactor Hive to rescue Newt.
• Fantastic Racism: Thanks to her negative experience with Ash, she doesn't trust Bishop an inch once she finds out he's an android. She gets over it later.
• Final Girl: She's the sole survivor of the Nostromo in Alien, as well as of the military expedition in Aliens. Well, technically Hicks and Bishop also survive the second film, though Ripley is the only one to escape without serious injury.
• Good Wears White: In the first film, Ripley wears a white undershirt and panties in the Narcissus, when she prepares to take the Alien out of the shuttle through the airlock, Ripley puts on a white spacesuit.
• Got Over Rape Instantly: In Alien³, Ripley is sexually assaulted by four prison inmates and saved by another at the last moment. Within hours she willingly has sex with Clemens, the prison doctor, without any reference or mention to the previous assault.
• Guile Hero: Ripley fights using her brain... and whatever weapons she can get her hands on.
• Hate at First Sight: She instantly despises Bishop due to him being an android due to previous bad experience with artificial persons. Though played with in that he later earns her approval/respect and they become friends.
• The Hero Dies: In Alien³, she gives up her life to destroy the Queen gestating inside her.
• Heroic Sacrifice: She throws herself into the prison incinerator to keep the company from getting their hands on a Queen.
• Honor Before Reason: Hive of monsters? Snarling Alien Queen? Imminent thermonuclear holocaust? Still not gonna stop Ripley from saving Newt.
• Hot-Blooded: Gets to this point during Aliens.
• Hypocrite: Noble as her keeping her promise to rescue Newt was, she did not extend the same charity to Doctor Dietritch or Sergeant Apone when they were also webbed to the wall as she was, with plenty more of time to extricate them from exploding in a humiliating and bloody mess, at that, in spite of the latter's entire platoon more than willing to try. Justified in that Newt is a child and Ripley just lost her own daughter.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: Seems to believe this for a while and asks Dillon to help out. Subverted by the end of the film when she willingly throws herself into an incinerator when the alternative is getting captured by the company so they can have the Queen that is growing inside her.
• I Gave My Word: "...and hope to die."
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She can come across as stiff and unlikable in the first movie due to her adherence to the rules, and she can be rather cynical in the sequels. However, there's never any doubt that she's a very heroic and selfless person.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: She liked the Nostromo's cat.
• Knight in Sour Armour: (Wearily) "You have been in my life for so long, I don't remember anything else."
  • Also counts as Leaning on the Fourth Wall, as Sigourney Weaver was sick of playing Ripley at this point.
• The Lad-ette: Not as butch as most examples, but it's there.
• Light Is Good: In the first film, she wears a white undershirt and panties on the shuttle and during her final confrontation with the Alien, Ripley dons a white spacesuit. Thus proving that she is The Hero and to contrast with the Alien.
• Mirror Character: Ripley and the Alien Queen are both viciously protective Mama Bear types, and Ripley burns the Queen's nest to save Newt, followed by the Queen immediately attacking her, and when the Queen attempts to kill Newt, Ripley responds just the same.
• Ms. Fanservice: In the first movie, Ripley undresses down to an undershirt and panties in preparation to go into hypersleep on the Narcissus, with several Male Gaze shots as she tries to hide from and escape the Xenomorph. All the Fanservice ends when she dons a spacesuit in preparation to flush it out the airlock.
• Must Have Caffeine: Most prominently in Aliens, justified as she has not slept for one second in the 36 hours since landing back on LV-426.
• Not So Above It All: She's pretty pragmatic, but not so much that she can just abandon her cat when the ship is about to self-destruct.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Initially she comes across as this when she refuses to allow a face-hugged Kane back aboard the Nostromo; company procedure is 24 hours for decontamination. It might seem cold and heartless, but she was doing the right thing trying to institute quarantine.
• Only Sane Woman: In comparison to most of her comrades, she's this.
• Outliving One's Offspring: She outlived her daughter Amanda, who passed away during the 57-year stasis period Ripley was in between the first and second films. Also, since she was Promoted to Parent in Aliens, Newt's death at the start of the following movie could count.
• Past Experience Nightmare: In Alien 3 she has nightmares provoked by her PTSD about being pregnant with a xenomorph fetus that tries to rips its way out of her belly. It also foreshadows that she has been impregnated with a queen fetus sometime before the movie.
• Promoted to Parent: To Newt, in Aliens. Though it doesn't last.
• Retcon: Her rank changes from film to film: In Alien, she refers to herself as the ship's Third Officer, though being next in line after Dallas and Kane would make her Second Officer. In Aliens, she is referred to as "Warrant Officer Ripley" during the court of enquiry. Everyone in Alien 3 just refers to her as a Lieutenant, having read it off the tag on her underwear.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: When Burke tries to tell Ripley how much they can profit from bringing in a Xenomorph.
• Smoking Is Cool: Just like every other adult with spoken lines in the first three films, Ripley smokes and nobody comments on it being bad for her health.
• The Spock: It's most apparent in the first film when she comes across as rather cold-hearted, but she never loses a certain ruthless pragmatism.
• Survival Mantra: You are my lucky star...lucky, lucky, lucky...
• Tank-Top Tomboy: She wears a tank top here and there, and she's certainly a pragmatist and a survivor.
• Teen Pregnancy: Gave birth to Amanda when she was nineteen.
• Took a Level in Badass: Or, more accurately, levels.
• Trauma Conga Line: Her crewmates are killed by a ravenous alien creature and a psychotic android and she learns the company she works for will stop at nothing to try to acquire said alien creatures for use as bioweapons; she winds up returning to the planet where said alien creature was discovered; her love interest and adopted daughter are killed during cryosleep; she's nearly gang-raped by a bunch of psychopaths; and she learns she's hosting a Queen embryo. Yeah... Ripley's had it rough.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • Ripley's thawing out leads Burke to contact the colony on LV-426 and get them to check out the grid coordinates where the Xenomorphs might be.
  • During a moment of panic, Ripley presses both call buttons to open the elevator. This ends up opening the second elevator that the Queen uses to get on the Sulaco, indirectly causing the events of Alien³.
• You Are in Command Now: Ripley takes control of the military expedition in Aliens and the prison in 3 solely because she has prior experience fighting the Xenomorphs. She is also a Lieutenant in the Merchant Navy and was third in command of the Nostromo (and takes said command after Dallas bites it in the vents while poor Kane was already dead).
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Ripley provides an inversion in the second film. When Burke expresses his disappointment on Ripley because she doesn't want to bring a Xenomorph back to Earth and instead she wants to wipe them out, she bluntly tells him that she's glad to disappoint him.

The Xenomorphs

In General

The Aliens / Xenomorphs / Xenomorph XX121

Portrayed By: Bolaji Badejo (Alien), Eddie Powell, Javier Botet, Percy Edwards (Alien, vocal effects), Goran D. Kleut, Carl Toop & Tom Woodruff Jr. (Alien³ to Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem)

"Let me see if I have this correct, Lieutenant. It's an eight-foot creature with acid for blood...and it arrived on your spaceship. It kills on sight and is generally unpleasant."

— Harold Andrews

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• Acid Attack: They have extremely corrosive blood. This seems to be a defensive adaptation as anything capable of puncturing them is quickly dissolved, and in a pressurized space like on a spaceship trying to take them out directly could cause catastrophic decompression.
  • This also extends to Facehuggers, who have a nasty habit of using concentrated acid attacks when a host is blocked and seemingly unreachable. This is how the Nostromo Facehugger got into Kane's airtight spacesuit.
• Air-Vent Passageway: If there's an air vent that can fit a human-sized being in it, they will use it to move around undetected.
• Alien Blood: The Xenomorphs have highly corrosive acid for blood, colored a dull greenish-yellow to emphasize its nonhuman nature.
• All Webbed Up: The Xenomorphs use some kind of unexplained organic resin to cocoon people, leaving them as bait for Facehuggers to impregnate.
• Always Chaotic Evil: The Xenomorphs seemingly exist for the sole purpose of killing about everything on a planet. However, their "evilness" varies from film to film.
  • In all appearances they are extremely vicious, but it's often debated whether that's mostly due out of predatory instinct or actual malicious intent, as on the surface they seem more akin to wild animals than the typical villainous sapient aliens of science fiction. While the characterization of the Xenomorphs from the second film onwards pinned them as efficient and often very kill-driven animals, the first movie portrays the sole Alien as actively malicious. It wordlessly appears to mock and torment the members of the crew for no reason other than it can, most notably in the climax of the first film, where it has Ripley cornered. Any other Alien would have simply bumrushed in, but the Xeno, if not for becoming more lethargic in awakening, takes his time, interested and eager in savoring Ripley's terror.
  • It is also subtly implied that they are indeed intelligent, not just bestial animals, which simply makes them even more terrifying.
  • A regularly mentioned theory, both in- and out-of-universe, is that the Xenomorphs are bioweapons, and thus their malevolence is a deliberately built-in feature; this is ultimately confirmed as true by Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.
• Ambiguous Gender: The only obvious sexual characteristics that identify them as any gender; the Queens are all female, while the Drones and Warriors are male and asexual, the species itself being in fact hermaphrodite. They could be similar to real life hive creatures like ant and bee workers who don't techically have one due to being infertile. The Drones and Warriors have been referenced with masculine pronouns, such as; the Alien from the first movie.
• Ambiguous Robots: The Xenomorphs have a biomechanical appearance, though they're closer to the organic end of the spectrum in films where Giger was not directly involved with their design.
• Ambiguous Situation: The specifics on how the Xenomorphs came to be are shrouded in mystery. The most commonly accepted theory is that they were created by the Engineers using the Black Goo.
  • However, the Xenomorphs do have an actual homeworld in many forms of media, a hellscape commonly known as "Xenomorph Prime", where they've not only infested the majority of the planet, but are integrated in a functioning ecosystem, with both prey and natural predators, suggesting they may have evolved there... or it's just an unfortunate world that happened to get the worst known Xenomorph infestation.
  • Alien: Covenant was intended to remove the ambiguity from the Xenomorphs' origins and was originally going to reveal that the Engineers had created them... until Ridley Scott decided it would be more interesting — and completely de-canonize the AvP films — if David-8 was their sole creator, having developed a genocidal god complex.
• Animalistic Abomination: Their behavior and life cycle are so relentlessly hostile and sadistic that they arguably have more in common with The Legions of Hell than a proper lifeform.
• Animal Motifs: The various life stages have different ones.
  • The facehuggers are reminiscent of arachnids, with their eight, elongated digits and innate ability to cause discomfort in a lot of people.
  • The newborn chestbursters are analogous to larvae, both in regards to their slimy, limbless bodies and to the fact that the chestburster's host essentially functions as a cocoon of sorts. They are also often compared with snakes and worms, two other smooth, slithering creatures that many people instinctively avoid.
  • The adult Xenomorphs, with their hive structure, strict caste system and chitinous shells are very often compared to bugs. In fact, "Bug" is actually slang for Xenomorph in some circles and Drone is the name of a common type of Alien, just like it's the most common type of insects of a certain species. The queen is especially reminiscent of an insect queen in that she has control over the hive's collective hivemind, produces royal jelly and sits in a protected spot in her hive, laying copious amounts of eggs by using an ovipositor, exactly like many insect queens do.
  • Finally, and most disturbingly, Xenomorphs possess a number of uniquely human traits, albeit heavily distorted. Their shell brings to mind a human skeleton, their teeth are surprisingly blunt and human-like and inside their head domes is an expressionless human skull with empty eye sockets and a nose.
  • The Runners have a lot in common with dogs, even when the Runner is spawned from something other than a dog, like an ox, or a completely alien species. This is because of their quadrupedal gait, smaller body and their feral, less intelligent minds. Within hives, Runners are also sometimes used very much like guard dogs are by the human-spawned Aliens and the Queen.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • The entire species is this to Ellen Ripley, as she has vowed to destroy them so they can't hurt anybody else.
  • Also to the Predator species in the AvP franchise, as the Predators use the Xenomorphs as the ultimate prey to hunt. However there is also an element of fear as the Predators know how truly dangerous the Xenomorphs are.
• Art Evolution: The appearance of the various Xenomorph specimens varies between films — something that the Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report databook not only acknowledges this but tries to provide an in-universe explanation for it.
• Artistic License – Biology: The Alien's life cycle.
  • The alien grows from a chestburster to a full-grown adult without apparently eating anything (or anyone) in the first film. This is explained in the original script when the crew corner the chestbuster in a supply closet filled with their food supply and lock it in while they try to find a way to deal with it. When they return it has escaped after eating their food and is next seen fully grown. It still stretches belief that it could grow from a small worm into an 7'2" tall monster in only a few hours though.
  • Similarly, in the sequel, there are dozens of fully grown aliens (and a very fully grown queen) along with a giant organic maze in the terraforming facility, despite the fact that there are only some 150 humans to eat if need be. Bishop mentions that the colonists also had livestock, which could serve as hosts/food for the aliens.
  • In some media, they do ravage at a human body to feed off of it (as seen in the third film).
  • It's proposed in an in-universe anatomical/zoological report on the Xenomorphs (in the Dark Horse comic series) that the reason for their blood being acidic is that it is in-fact a living battery (which would kinda work, seeing as how they're silicon-based lifeforms), and that they get all the energy needed for their (individually) relatively short lifespans as an adult from this as well as from their host organism and thus do not actually need to feed, nor do they even have digestive systems. This is similar to a lot of butterfly and moth species in real life (the thing with adults not eating... not the thing with bursting out of people's chests(!)), though they emerge from their cocoon as fully-grown adults without mouth-parts and live to mate, while the xenomorphs emerge from their living cocoons as infants, so just how biologically feasible this might actually be is debatable. Additionally, like bees, the Queens feed off of "royal jelly", a substance which (in-universe) is shown to have phenomenal medicinal and performance-boosting properties in humans.
  • Alien: The Roleplaying Game states that Xenomorphs can eat metal, which both explains how they grow without organic food sources and how they maintain their bio mechanical appearances.
• Attack Animal: The creators state that the Xenomorphs began as a bioweapon created using the Engineers' biotechnology before they ran amuck.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: While the Queen audibly breathes in Aliens, it is unknown if they actually need to, as the species has been shown to work just fine for a scene or two in the vacuum of space.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: Xenomorphs possess long, segmented tails that resemble spinal columns, tipped by a blade-like stinger that is used to, more commonly later on, impale prey. A scene deleted from the script of Aliens (but present in the novelization) shows them using this stinger to incapacitate prey before taking it back to the hive to be facehugged, expanded universe materials frequently reference this (most often, video games giving Aliens a low-damage, "stun" type attack utilizing the tail).
• Big Bad: Goes hand in hand with Villain-Based Franchise.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Alien: Covenant reveals that the Xenomorphs are an end result of the Engineers' Chemical A0-3959X.91 – 15. The version that David created — dubbed Plagiarius praepotens in the 2018 novel Alien: The Cold Forge — was through hybridization of the Neomorph variants spawned from the native species of Planet 4, including a wasp-like extraterrestrial arthropod.
• Bioweapon Beast: People keep trying to turn the Xenomorphs into these, and it never ends well. Turns out the Engineers and/or David made them with this trope in mind by hybridizing different strains of Neomorph using the A0-3959X.91 – 15 pathogen, and just like everyone else it backfired.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Extremely so, and possibly one of the most famous examples.
• Bloody Murder: Their blood is a highly corrosive substance that functions like Hollywood Acid when thrown about. Not good to get splashed on anything important. Like your face.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Their sense of morality is basically like that of a colony of ants or bees. In other words, protect the queen and expand the colony, with generally no ill will, at least in mush of a personal sense, towards their victims.
  • Emphasis on "generally" however, as lone Xenomorphs appear to be far more sadistic, best seen with the Big Chap, who quite obviously toyed and waited with the Nostromo crew for some sick sense of enjoyment. In particular, the one from Alien: Isolation seems to be intentionally hunting down Amanda Ripley because she keeps getting away from it.
• Body Horror: The aliens' parasitical breeding cycle turns you into a living incubator. Cf. certain species of wasp. Nature even on Earth is not always cuddly and fluffy.
• Breeding Slave: They do this to any (presumably large enough) species they encounter, specifically humans. By design, the Xenomorphs were created to invoke every possible means and horrific result of rape, including impregnation. As such, those humans they don't kill they typically bring back to and cocoon within their nest, where they will be impregnated by a facehugger. The "birthing" process, however, is fatal.
• Ceiling Cling: Xenomorphs can cling and move on ceilings with impunity, which also gives them the option of Vertical Kidnapping.
• Chest Burster: Trope Namer, as their larval stage incubates within a host's torso before violently ejecting itself through the sternum.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Every single time that the protagonists are confronted with only one Xenomorph specimen, more specifically a Drone in the original film and a Runner in the third film, the beast proves to be slippery in hiding, seemingly unkillable, and whittles the cast down one-by-one, but when confronted with an entire hive of them, like in Aliens and Alien: Resurrection, on the other hand, they are usually able to kill off quite large numbers of them, forcing the Xenomorphs to instead rely on rushing their opponents en-masse, but then again, there is some in-universe justification for this since both the original movie and the third movie involve fighting the lone Xenomorph specimen within a horribly enclosed space where in which he can easily hide or ambush people and with either weak available weaponry or absolutely no available weaponry whatsoever that would otherwise grant the protagonists a tremendous edge against the lone specimens, and on top of that, they are on a spaceship during the first movie, meaning that any bleeding from the Xenomorph could potentially doom everybody by damaging it, but in the two other movies, though, the protagonists are using rather powerful guns, are more adapted for fighting the titular antagonists, and are also even typically more numerous themselves at the beginning of the conflict at hand at the very least. Additionally, the Weyland-Yutani Files databook proposes that the Drone specimen encountered on the Nostromo really was in fact outright more intelligent than those encountered on LV-426 due to him having to act without any direction at all from a Queen, Empress, or even Queen Mother for that matter.
• Creepy Long Fingers: Depending on the specific design of whatever movie they're in, their fingers can be terrifyingly long, emphasizing their lack of humanity.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Giving "birth" to a Chestburster results in about a minute of sheer, gradual gory agony before the newborn, well, bursts from their victims’ chest. This is highlighted by the iconic plea, "Kill... me!" spoken by impregnated Xenomorph victims.
• Degraded Boss: The Drone, Runner, Praetorian, Boiler, Spitter, Crusher, Defender, Sentry, Prowler, Carrier, Palatine, and even Queen castes all regularly suffer from this treatment, especially in the licensed comic books and video games created for the larger franchise since those two mediums' characters are typically heavily armed and also well-trained Colonial Marines who are all perfectly capable of shooting down and killing off countless specimens of the dreaded extraterrestrial parasitic species from a safe distance; however, this trope is outright inverted with more specifically the Drone caste in Alien: Isolation, and for further details on that most recent point, see the Drone caste specific folder below.
• Diverging Evolutionary Phases: Xenomorphs in their chestburster stage have the ability to take genetic traits from their hosts and incorporate it into their own biology. While the movies, comic books and video games have mainly shown Xenomorphs born from human hosts, the third movie introduced a Xenomorph born from a canine host while the Alien vs. Predator series featured a Xenomorph called the Predalien which shared it's host's dreadlocks and mandibles.
• Dominant Species Genes: While there will be minor differences based on what species the host is, anything impregnated by a Facehugger will always "give birth" to a Xenomorph, sharing the common traits of an eyeless, elongated head; a biomechanical exoskeleton; corrosive green blood; a telescopic pharyngeal jaw; and a long, segmented tail tipped with a bladed stinger.
• The Dreaded: They're feared (and with good reason) by those who have to face them while getting to know what they're dealing with, and Ripley suffers from Catapult Nightmares as a result of the encounter on the Nostromo and the shuttle.
• *Drool* Hello: Whenever dripping saliva onto the victim won't signal a Xenomorph's presence, the warm air exhaled onto the victim's neck from behind will. And if that happens, it's already too late to run.
• Evil Is Bigger:
  • Once the Chestburster grows, they get huge — the shortest credited actor to play the Alien was 6' 2" (1.88 m).
  • This is especially the case with the Queen who is a whopping 15 feet (457.2 cm) tall.
  • The mythical Jockey-Xenomorphs are often said to be around 20 feet, in their normal Drone stage, no less, given how absolutely massive the Engineers are already.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: It's scary how many idiots believe they can tame the Aliens and use them as weapons to make profit. Needless to say, it almost always ends with disastrous results, and they usually are the first to pay for it. Especially egregious as they have escaped from their creators' control and killed/harvested them just like everyone else.
• Evil Is Visceral: The Ovomorph — commonly known as "eggs" — looks much less like a traditional egg and much more like a living creature in its own right... and apparently that's because it is.
• Evil Versus Evil: Whenever they go against the Predators, though the Predators are usually not the cancerous problem that is the Xenomorphs, since most only hunt prey that looks ready to fight.
• Evolutionary Retcon: The Xenomorphs from the later films are much more insectile and predatory than the original film's man in a suit version.
• Eyeless Face: Their iconic, elongated skull lack eyes. Though in some cases, they have empty, disturbingly human-like eye and nose sockets concealed under their transparent cowl.
• Explosive Breeder: It doesn't take long at all for a hive of them to form, and they can grow from larva to adults in a matter of hours.
• Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: The Xenomorphs' horrifying life cycle starts with a Facehugger grabbing onto a most-often hapless victim's face to shove a proboscis down their throat to implant a Fetus Terrible within them.
• Fangs Are Evil: Xenomorphs possess teeth that are roughly human in shape, but the canines and bicuspids are longer and much more pointy.
• Fantastic Drug: Aliens produce Royal Jelly, which has the same role for this species as it does for real-life bees. However, it is also an extremely valuable substance in human society, used as a powerful and mind-enhancing drug for wealthy individuals. Since the only source of Royal Jelly is often deep inside an Alien hive, collecting it can be very dangerous. The Hive mini-series details such an operation.
• Fetus Terrible: Chestbursters are endoparasites intended to evoke this.
• Gender Bender: This is basically what happens to a Xenomorph Drone or Warrior, when they are chosen as the new Queen of the hive. Male Xenomorph Drones and Warriors change gender and become female to be the new Queens of their Xenomorph hives.
• Good Lips, Evil Jaws: To make sure everybody knew their monster meant business, the designers gave it two sets of mouths, each with razor-sharp teeth. It does have lips, but they're usually peeled back in a snarl or hiss.
• Healing Factor: Ash notes how quickly the facehugger heals when they try to cut it off Kane's face. In the 1979 graphic novel adaptation Ash argues against them just shooting the alien because (aside from the acid blood issue) it will quickly repair any injuries. Of course the sequel dropped the Immune to Bullets idea completely. In the director's commentary for Alien: Covenant, Ridley Scott revives this by saying that even the prototype Xenomorphs were capable of healing from almost anything.
• Hermaphrodite: The Xenomorphs, at least according to H. R. Giger, are all hermaphrodites ^note presumably the simultaneous kind, rather than the sequential one. Whether he meant it literally or just symbolically is unclear.
• Hero Killer:
  • Even putting aside Ripley's death, they killed or forced occasional kamikazes of the rest of of the Nostromo crew, the majority of the Marines sent to LV-426, all but one of the prisoners on Fury-161, and several members of the Auriga and Betty crews, though some of those sure got some numbers of xenos on the way.
  • Warren Ellis used them in their crossover with Wild C.A.T.s (WildStorm) to kill off many of the Stormwatch characters he wasn't going to carry over to The Authority.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: See, this is the problem with living in a dark Used Future with monsters after you. In Alien, the Alien stows itself in the wall paneling; in Aliens, several Aliens are curled up in alcoves on the wall in the hive, perfectly blending in with the walls. They are even invisible on IR due to the pervasive heat.
• Hiss Before Fleeing: Before running away from fire, they tend to loudly hiss at it.
• Hive Caste System: Like eusocial insects, the Xenomorphs are divided into different castes in addition to their gene-assimilation. Most of the Xenomorphs seen are either Drones (smooth heads) or Warriors (ridged heads),^note Starting with the Dark Horse comics and continuing into the video-games and toyline, Warriors are treated as being a separate physically superior caste to Drones, a distinction not made by the films' canon. while the Queen caste (broad, jagged head) lays the eggs.
• Hive Mind: A bit differently than others. It's made apparent that they can sense one another, like hearing the screams of their Queen, and have some degree of intelligence and intuition, but they're mostly instinctual creatures. Ripley, who's part alien in Resurrection, can sense two of them killing another to escape from their containment.
• Hollywood Acid:
  • Xenomorph blood easily chews through ship decks, industrial steel floor grates, and body armor. Never mind what it can do to flesh. Notable in that its potency freaks everyone out; one character makes noises about "molecular acid" in the first film, and an executive speaks of "concentrated acid" in a patronizing manner in the second — they're basically saying, "Umm... Acid isn't supposed to do that!"
  • Expanded material posits the theory that the acidic blood in a Xenomorph is similar to the acid in a battery. Essentially, the Xenomorph runs off of energy that is generated by chemical reactions within their bodies, meaning that they don't need sustenance or respiration. This could also explain why various castes of Xenomorph can remain dormant for long periods of time, such as the Ovomorph. It doesn't explain why Xenomorphs and their Neomorph predecessors have been shown eating meat.
• Hybrid Monster: Alien: Covenant reveals that beyond assimilating traits of its host species, the first Xenomorphs were created by using Chemical A0-3959X.91 — 15 to hybridize Neomorph specimens spawned from Paradise's native fauna and fungi, the Engineers, and Elizabeth Shaw's corpse.
• I Am Not Shazam: The term "xenomorph" means "alien form",^note OK, "strange shape" if we're being technical ie, an alien lifeform, and was intended to refer to alien life in general, rather than the Alien in particular. It was used in Aliens by Lieuteant Gorman before he knew or had even seen an alien himself, and had no idea what they were. Nonetheless it has become so attached to the Aliens that you'd have an easier job convincing people Frankenstein wasn't the monster's given name, and Fox eventually gave them the canon designation of "Xenomorph XX121" in the Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report handbook.
• Implacable Man: Zigzagged:
  • Inverted with ovomorphs, facehuggers, and chestbursters that can all easily be killed with fire and inanimate objects.
  • Downplayed with adult drones, runners, boilers, spitters, carriers, and prowlers that can all still be quite the challenge to kill without any weapons equipped, even when there's only a single specimen coming after you.
  • Played Straight with praetorians, queens, empresses, queen mothers, palatines, crushers, and ravens that all take massive loads of bullets and explosives to kill no matter what.
• It Can Think: They're repeatedly shown to be much smarter than the mindless monsters everyone assumes they are, able to execute sneak attacks, work tactically to eliminate advantages their opponents have, being exceptionally stealthy and even knowing about some of the scientific devices they encounter.
  Ripley: (Medical is plunged into darkness) They cut the power...
  Hudson: What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
• Kill It with Fire: In many adaptations they're vulnerable to fire. Want to survive fighting the aliens in close quarters? Flamethrowers are the only way to avoid being hit with their acidic blood at close range. However, Ridley Scott's director's commentary in Alien: Covenant points out this isn't actually the case in that film, as the "Praetomorph" from Covenant were more angry than injured after being blasted by spaceship exhaust plasma. In general, despite the Queen's strong reaction to her brood being torched in Aliens, the creatures appear more cautious then scared of fire.
• Large and in Charge: The Xenomorph foot soldiers or "drones" are already significantly larger than their hosts (usually humans), but the Queen Xenomorph who creates all the others is about the size of a T. Rex.
• LEGO Genetics: The Xenomorphs, as part of their bioweapon design, can assimilate useful traits from their hosts to better survive in the environment and become stronger, and it often extends to physical appearance. The first two films had human-like Xenos, and the third featured a quadruped Xeno that came from a dog (or a bovine, depending on the version). The video games, comics and toy line take it to greater lengths with flying Xenos with wings like a bird or bat (an alien Queen that burst out of Vampirella), gorilla Xenos with long powerful arms, bull and rhinoceros Xenos, and in the Batman crossover comics the Xenomorphs even had physical similarities to the various villains their DNA was combined with (with the Killer Croc Alien being a gigantic crocodile-like beast). And the most iconic type, the Predalien, a Xenomorph born from a Predator with a shorter skull, mandibles, dreadlocks, and a stockier build than other humanoid Xenos. Interestingly, with few exceptions, the Queen Aliens and other higher castes like the Praetorian do not assimilate traits, keeping the Xenomorph line pure-blooded.
• Living Weapon: The Xenomorphs are a bioweapon created using the Engineers' A0-3959X.91 – 15 mutagen. David 8 created his version by splicing together and hybridizing a variety of Neomorphs spawned from Paradise's fauna, the Engineers, and Elizabeth Shaw’s corpse.
• Metamorphosis Monster: The Xenomorphs' life cycle parallels that of insects, going from the serpentine larval "Chestburster" stage to the adult stage in a number of hours. Furthermore, the ridged-headed Warriors seen in Aliens are speculated to be the mature form of the smooth-headed Drones seen in Alien and Alien: Resurrection.^note This notion stems from James Cameron commenting on a fan-theory speculating that to be the case, though all the Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report databook has to say on the matter is that they're both variants of Drone. The official Alien tabletop RPG, however, runs with it — stating that the smooth-headed Drones are Stage IV Xenomorphs, possess a weak connection to the Hive and thus greater cunning and intelligence, and only metamorphose into the more combat-efficient but less-intelligent ridge-headed Stage V Warriors/Soldiers in the presence of a Queen. In some continuities, like the Alien vs. Predator expanded universe, Warriors can further metamorphose into Praetorians — immature Queens — though this caste has not appeared in the films or canon novels, the latter of which feature an immature Queen and essentially renders the Praetorian caste Canon Discontinuity. In the Alien tabletop RPG, the "Runner" Xenomorph variant first seen in Alien³ is given the designation of "Scout", and specimens are capable of molting into "Sentry" Xenomorphs resembling quadrupedal Warriors, and finally into the Crushers seen in Aliens: Colonial Marines.
• Monster Threat Expiration/Villain Decay:
  • Ever since Aliens, the franchise's main title villains've been horrifically suffering from both of these tropes at once because that second installment revealed to audiences around the world that Xenomorphs really ain't Immune to Bullets after all and can be killed off from a safe distance with powerful enough manmade weapons at the ready en-masse, even including their massive Ovomorph-laying Queens, Empresses, and Queen Mothers.
  • In 2014, however, one infamous exception to that rule reared its ugly head in the form of Alien: Isolation. For further details on its portrayal of the franchise's titular antagonists, see the Drone caste specific folder below.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Aliens have a lot of fang-like teeth in each of their Nested Mouths.
• Multiple-Choice Past: The origins of the Xenomorphs are a mess of contradictory accounts, with three primary origins being put forth by different iterations of the franchise.
  • The Dark Horse comics and Alien vs. Predator crossover franchise establish that the Xenomorphs are silicon-based apex predators that evolved on a hellish planet colloquially known as "Xenomorph Prime", and were discovered by the Space Jockeys — who used them as bioweapons — and the Predators — who viewed them as the ultimate prey. Ridley Scott — who detested the Alien vs. Predator franchise — went out of his way to decanonize this with Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.
  • The Fire and Stone comics, Alien tabletop RPG and the novelization of Alien: Covenant — drawing from Alien: Engineers, the original script for what became Prometheus — establish that the Xenomorphs were bioweapons created by the Engineers to commit planetary genocide; and that David was attempting to replicate them by hybridizing different strains of Neomorphs.
  • The film version of Alien: Covenant establishes that the Xenomorphs were created by David through the hybridization of different strains of Neomorphs.^note Ridley Scott revealed that originally he was going to have the Engineers be the Xenomorphs' creators as in the novelization, but decided late into development that having David be the sole creator would be more interesting and removed all references to the Engineer-made Xenomorphs from the final cut. The Xenomorph variant seen in the film — dubbed "Praetomorphs" by the official Alien Tabletop RPG — lacks a biomechanical exoskeleton and was intended to represent an intermediary stage between the Neomorphs and the biomechanical Xenomorphs from the main series; with the Advent short film having him declare his intent to perfect his creations using the Covenant's crew and colonists.
• Nested Mouths: Aliens have a set of telescopic pharyngeal jaws within their main ones. Probably the most iconic case.
• No Name Given: The species is not given an actual name in any of the movies, with "xenomorph" being a generic term for any sort of unidentified alien organism (i.e. "A xenomorph may have been involved."). However, the term was adopted first by fans and then by official merchandise to refer to them specifically because they're never called anything else and other living alien species don't appear in the main series. However, in the 2014 book Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report it is officially classified as Xenomorph XX121.
• Non-Malicious Monster: ZigZagged. They are like animals, they kill and face-rape because it's how they survive and reproduce. Most especially in Aliens, where they are hunting for food and hosts, and trying to protect their nest and eggs, often showing aggressive snarling faces. This is averted to hell and back by the Drone in the first movie, which likes to curiously toy with the fears of its prey, like a rapist in the dark. Whenever Drones are without a hive or in the middle of building one, they show more individual intelligence and, distressingly, an inclination toward rather sadist behavior against their prey. Thankfully, however, it's played straight in the other movies.
• Nonhumans Lack Attributes: The Xenomorphs have no genitalia. We hope.
• Nothing Is Scarier: A large part of what made them so frightening was because of how subtle they were, especially in the mechanical/industrial backgrounds the movie took place in. Their manipulation of the environment allowed them to blend in with the dark corridors, making for ever a Jump Scare moment of Paranoia Fuel for both the characters and the audience.
• Parasites Are Evil: This particular parasitoid is so vile that genocide is considered a worthwhile alternate to letting them roam free, while in Superman/Aliens II: God War, Superman himself states that the Xenomorphs are a disease that has no right to exist and lives only to annihilate.
• Phlegmings: Every time the aliens appear.
• Rule of Scary: They live and breathe this trope. None of their biology makes sense at all (how do they grow to a being that stands 7'2" tall from a little worm in less than a day, how they can survive in outer space, how they cam impregnate and take on the likeness of any host no matter the biochemical differences, how their blood can be so acidic, how do they navigate without apparent eyes, ears, or nostrils etc.), but it all certainly helped make them one of the scariest and most iconic movie monsters of all time.
• Sculpted Physique: The Alien, which is not surprising considering artist H. R. Giger's other works, is a biomechanical monster with a metallic exoskeleton. This use of the trope actually makes sense production wise since the alien's black and tube-like exterior made it blend in on the spacecraft. This is so effective in the first film, that the first time we see the adult Alien, it's hanging in full view of the camera and you probably mistook it for piping!^note For the curious, it's the scene where one crewman goes after the cat and he looks upwards at the chains hanging from the ceiling. See the metallic looking bundle in the bottom right? There's the cowboy!
• Silicon-Based Life: Xenomorphs are apparently silicon based. Ash notes in the first film that the facehugger replaces its cells with "polarized silicon," and a few other works delving into their biochemistry note that are based on chemical compounds incompatiable with carbon-based life, which makes their ability to use carbon-based life as hosts for their larvae even more impressive.
• Skeleton Motif: The Xenomorphs' exoskeletons are skeletal in appearance, with exposed ribs and pronounced vertebrae.
• Spikes of Villainy: Their tails, claws, dorsal tubes, and the headdresses of the Queens and Praetorians.
• Starfish Alien: They are biomechanical carnivorous endoparasites with green corrosive blood that assimilate the genetic material of their hosts.
• Super-Strength: Not to a great degree, but they can leap around pretty well and often pin down humans. Though there are some feats, such as bashing a metal door with their reinforced heads numerous times to dent it, that are often pointed out for comparisons; moments like Dillon in the third film stealing a human victim despite one trying to pull it back, can be found as well. In expanded media, however, some versions of warriors (note, the idea of them being bred for combat by Predators for more interesting hunts has been discussed by creators in the AVP movies) truly are strong enough to pull people apart with their bare hands. Not to mention the Newborn in Resurrection, which has terrifying strength even for it size.
• Super-Toughness: The Xenomorphs manage to be both this and Made of Explodium at the same time. Their shells are very durable and can shrug off a fair amount of damage, including the vaporizing heat (though not pain) of open flames up to, in one case at least, molten lead at over 600 degrees. Their exoskeleton is also roughly as effective as class III body armor against ballistic threats. Unless you're using at least a rifle, expect you won't even make a proper dent in its armor-like exoskeleton, as demonstrated by the Warrior who all but ignored the 9mm rounds from Gorman's pistol that struck its on the cranium at somewhat close range. This is carried over to Isolation where the Aliens are effectively invincible because the only weapons available on the station are either police-issue (pistols rounds, buckshot) or improvised (bolt guns, pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails, flamethrowers, batons...). Some fans have said that this would wear them down, so the one in Isolation may be a grade higher in defenses; however, once their crunchy shell is breached, they're apparently very gooey, flinging gore around like it's going out of style, though this may be the result of being struck by the explosive-tipped "light" armor-piercing rounds of weapons like the pulse rifle. And as mentioned above, their blood is corrosive, so being in splatter range isn't a good thing. Some sources speculate their internals are under high pressure, meaning they're designed to burst apart when killed in an effort at Taking You with Me.
• Suspiciously Stealthy Predator: They nest in warm, humid places that help mask their infrared profile. Their bodies blend in well with darkness and pipes, and they can remain completely motionless. It is almost as though they are perfectly adapted to concealing themselves in an obviously artificial environment.
• The Reveal: The Xenomorphs were created from the Engineers' Chemical A0-3959X.91 – 15. While Alien: Covenant implies David created them, this is implausible since there were Xenomorph eggs, long before David, aboard the Engineers' Derelict ship on LV-426.^note Comments made by Ridley Scott regarding prospective plotlines of a third prequel film indicate that the Derelict ship crash-landed on LV-426 at some point between Alien: Covenant and Alien, though Fox has seen fit to disregard his insistence that David created them and gone with the explanation that the Engineers created them and David was attempting to replicate their research.
• To Serve Man: The Xenomorphs feed off the deceased bodies of their hosts, and in some expanded media versions, whatever else they catch. Humans seem to be one of their preferred hosts, though this varies from film to film, with most victims being either just killed, or abducted for incubation.
• Transformation at the Speed of Plot: The gestation period of Xenomorph correlates to the precise moment when it will be most dramatic or convenient for an alien to pop out of someone's chest. Hatching can occur almost immediately after the facehugger falls off, or it can take nearly a day. How important said person is to the plot usually determines if it's the former or the latter. Xenomorphs also mature as fast as is convenient.
• Ultimate Life Form:
  • The Xenomorphs exist to kill or impregnate up to whatever they encounter, and they are extremely good at it. Ash outright calls them "the perfect organism".
  • Trying to fight them on their own terms is often avoided for fair reasons (an exception being Ripley in the Power Loader) — they're bound to be stronger, faster and hardier than their host, with varying degrees in different stories. The best you can do is escape or go with nukes to a completely scorched earth. The quote from Isolation sums up the don't-get-caught desperation against the lurking, towering, near-bulletproof specimen.
    Henry Marlow: You don't beat this thing, Ripley. You can't. All you can do is refuse to engage. You've got to wipe out every trace. Destroy any clue. Stop its infection from spreading. Make sure there's no chance of the human race ever making contact with it again. Because the moment it makes contact, it's won.
• Vertical Kidnapping: The Aliens are fond of doing this. Famous last words include "Maybe they don't show up on infrared at all..." and "This is rumor control, here are the FACTS."
• Villain-Based Franchise: They're the titular "alien" — despite Ridley Scott's desire to shift the franchise away from them.
• Wall Crawl: They can cling to walls and ceilings, enabling them to rapidly get around.
• Weak to Fire: While spinoffs depict them as being weak to fire, this is averted in the films and Alien: Isolation. The Xenomorphs have an aversion to fire, but seem to be immune to its harmful effects. Even though it is painful to be hit by open flames, even the atomizing heat of starship engines (as postulated for Alien, but displayed in Alien: Isolation and Alien: Covenant) at worst give adult Aliens a nasty singe, but leaves them ultimately unharmed. This may be, though, because these versions have possible differences (as in, the Isolation specimen was even larger compared to a human than the first actor in the suit already was). The most horrifying testament to the strength of their carapace is demonstrated in Alien 3, wherein The Dragon survives being drowned in tonnes of molten hot lead, perfectly alive, at least not particularly harmed and furiously angry. Nevertheless, flamethrowers prove to be the best weapons against them in close quarters since although it has yet to be shown to kill any film version of the adult form, the threat of pain from being hit by one can keep them at bay and buy your team much-needed breathing space to regroup. Furthermore, it largely avoids spilling the creature's blood, which is dangerously corrosive. Thankfully for humanity, the Alien immunity to fire is not shared by its comparatively vulnerable Egg, Facehugger and Chestburster forms.
• Would Hit a Girl: They tend to attack anything that moves; whether they can even understand gender as a concept is unknown, given the way they reproduce. Since, although there are male and asexual Xenomorphs, the Queens are female and the Xenomorph species is hermaphrodite.
• Would Hurt a Child: They will kill any living thing that moves.
• Xeno Nucleic Acid: As a result of being spawned from the Chemical A0-3959X.91 – 15 mutagen, Xenomorphs have what's called a "DNA Reflex", which is apparently why they end up looking similar to their host species. This is further elaborated on in novels and guides, such as The Weyland-Yutani Report. The Chestburster functions much like a cancer, being built from the body's own cells and integrating 10-15% of its DNA in order to prevent an immune response. This causes the Xenomorph to develop similar physical traits, possibly mental ones as well, such as a specific gait or physical features. The reverse is also true; the host has some of the Xenomorph's genetic material integrated into its body during the Chestburster's incubation.
• You Are Number 6: According to the 2014 Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report databook and Out of Shadows trilogy of novels, which 20th Century Fox oversaw and has recognized as canon, "Xenomorph XX121" is Weyland-Yutani's official designation for the species.

Drone/Warrior

The Drones & Warriors

The original "Drone" from Alien.

The "Warrior" form, introduced in Aliens.

Portrayed By: Bolaji Badejo, Percy Edwards, Tom Woodruff Jr.

"You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? The perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility."

—Ash

An adult form of Xenomorph XX121 spawned from humans, and the first and most common of said species' many forms to be encountered in the franchise.

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• Conservation of Ninjutsu:
  • Every single time that the protagonists are confronted with only one Xenomorph specimen, more specifically a Drone in the original movie and a Runner in the third movie, the specimen soon proves to be basically unkillable and murders them all one after the other, but when confronted with an entire hive of them like in both Aliens and Alien: Resurrection, on the other hand, they are usually able to kill off rather large numbers of them, forcing the Xenomorphs to rely on Zerg Rush. Then again, there is in-universe justification for this because both the original movie and Alien3 involve fighting the beast within a horribly enclosed space where he can easily hide himself or ambush people and also with either rather weak available weaponry or absolutely no available weaponry whatsoever that would otherwise grant them a tremendous edge against the lone specimens. On top of that, they are on a ship during the first movie, meaning that any bleeding from the Xenomorph could potentially doom everybody by damaging it, but in the two other movies, though, the protagonists are using rather powerful weapons, are more adapted for fighting the titular antagonists, and are also even typically more numerous themselves at the very beginning of the central conflict at hand. The Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report handbook also offers the explanation that with a Queen present the countless Xenomorphs from Aliens were nowhere near as intelligent and cunning as the lone specimens from both Alien and Alien³.
  • Outright defied in Alien: Isolation as the Xenomorph Drone is absolutely unkillable and invincible, and you only ever encounter one of them at a time, and as it turns out, there's a hive on-board and likewise also several of the creatures running around, so it is still possible to encounter more than one of them at a time but only on the higher difficulties, and even then, it's rare outside of a scripted encounter at the very end where they pose no real threat to you, but the defying part is that even in groups, they're still absolutely unkillable.
  • A common pattern is that a sole non-royal Xenomorph specimen, especially one without a Queen, is a far more dangerous specimen than those that dwell within hives due to the increased pressure that a sole Xenomorph faces when compared to those with an entire hive's worth of backup, especially if the prospect of having to create a brand-new hive is in the picture, or, alternatively, it just might be because a lone non-royal Xenomorph specimen is an outright fully autonomous entity with his very own free-will and therefore not bound to any pre-existing hivemind.
• Cornered Rattlesnake: The Drone that bursts out of Kane is essentially this, as he is separated from any and all pre-existing hives and therefore unable to receive any orders from any Queens, so he then goes on an ultra-aggressive solo killing spree, destroying the whole entire crew of the USCSS Nostromo except for Ellen Ripley and Jones the Cat within less than twenty four hours.
• Dark Is Evil: They spend most of the first movie hiding in the shadows, and they have a black exoskeleton that only enhances their frightening appearance.
• Elite Mooks:
  • The Drone spawned from Kane during the events of Alien, dubbed "Big Chap" by merchandising and "Kane's Son" by Ash during the film is noted by the Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report databook to be superior to the specimens encountered during the events of Aliens with the lack of any Queens being speculated to be the cause of such a phenomenon in the first place.
  • The Drones with ridged heads who first appeared in Aliens are actually dubbed "Warriors" in the Expanded Universe and director commentary and are often treated as being stronger and more combat-oriented than the smooth-headed Drones.
• Fluffy the Terrible: The drone Xenomorph from the first movie, he is also called by another nickname and that is Big Chap, that nickname sounds cute and harmless, but no. He is a dangerous and sadistic Xenomorph who likes the fear of his victims and prey, especially poor Lambert.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: This is basically what happens to a Drone whenever they're separated from his hive and Queen, becoming more intelligent and strategic because they're focused solely on survival and also later building their very own hive, and he even displays shades of sadism, which is best shown with the death of Joan Lambert.
• Implacable Man: Absolutely nothing can ever seem to kill or even hurt a Drone/Warrior at all during the first Alien film, as Ash describes the Drone as being indestructible and unkillable, but Ripley still gets rid of the Drone by sending him right out into the vacuum of space after opening up the airlock of the Narcissus. While the Drone manages to survive that, Ripley still manages to blast him into the void with the ship's engines.
• Lean and Mean: The drone and warrior Xenomorphs are quite thin and skeletal creatures. They too are sadistic and cunning beings.
• Metamorphosis Monster: In some versions of the continuity, namely the Dark Horse comics, video-games, and official tabletop RPG, the ridged-headed Warriors seen in both Aliens and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem are the mature "Stage 5" form of the "Stage 4" smooth-headed Drones seen in Alien, Alien: Resurrection, and even AVP: Alien vs. Predator, and in the expanded universe, some Warriors are able to metamorphose further into the Praetorians who resemble and also are in fact miniature Queens.
• The Nth Doctor: The Drone/Warrior caste has a remarkable degree of phenotypical variation — for example, whether their heads are smooth or ridged, their number of fingers, whether their legs are plantigrade or digitigrade, and the shape and size of their tail segments and blades — across the series, to the point where the comics and games tend to separate the two main designs into the smooth-headed Drones and the ridged-headed Warriors. No reason for this variation is given in the films themselves, though the Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report databook and official Alien tabletop RPG offer contradictory in-universe explanations.
• Proportional Aging: It is believed that Xenomorphs can live for many years, even Queens and Empresses can live for many years longer than Drones and Warriors. But the Drone from the first movie seems to be a special case, according to the creators, the Drone had a short life expectancy of a few days, the Alien was dying in the shuttle, after he creates his own nest in the Nostromo. He was looking for a safe hiding place in the shuttle to die alone, since he had already fulfilled his objective.
• Skull for a Head: Downplayed, but the face of the design in the original film did include a skull-like face.
• Super-Toughness: Just because the adult Xenomorph does not like being burned by fire does not mean that it is proven to kill off the bastards, and as has been proposed for Alien and directly shown with a slightly different 'protomorph' in Alien: Covenant, the heat of a firing spaceship engine is only ever enough to push back the beast and likewise not actually cause him any visible bodily harm, and his Runner cousin, if anything, is even more horrifyingly tough as he survives being drowned by tons of molten-fucking-lead for a minute or two, but thankfully for humanity at the very least, though, this toughness and immunity to fires and extreme heat is not shared by the Ovomorphs, Facehuggers, and Chestbursters, and also, like its Queen, Empress, and Queen Mother superiors, he is VERY much alive after being dumped right out into the vacuum of space but is completely impotent out within the endlessly vast nothingness of the cosmos, helplessly susceptible to the gravity well of the Zeta Reticuli binary star system and its planets.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: Most Drones/Warriors encountered within hives just rush into battle, usually meaning that a lot of them bite the dust when faced by a properly armed opponent, whereas a sole Xenomorph Drone uses stealth and psychological manipulation to kill off their prey, usually ending up somewhat unkillable through their more strategic thinking. Rather than just being a simple inconsistency, it appears to be a genuine physiological response to their circumstances as swarms of Drones are compelled to follow orders and defend the hive first and foremost, even at the expense of their very own independence and existence whereas a lone Drone separated from any pre-existing hive and/or Queen instinctively prioritizes his very own survival, making him much more meticulous and cunning that way.
• Your Size May Vary: The size of Xenomorphs vary somewhat as the Drone encountered on the USCSS Nostromo while being freakishy tall at 7'2" still falls into human range at the very absolute top end of it mind you whereas the Drones found on Sevastopol Station appear to be closer to 10 feet tall, dwarfing humans, Yautjas, and possibly even the Engineers.

Queen

See Aliens

"The Dragon" AKA "The Runner"

See Alien³

Weyland-Yutani Corporation

Weyland-Yutani Corporation

Weyland-Yutani Corporation, AKA The Company

"Building Better Worlds"

—Company slogan

The collective human antagonist of the franchise, Weyland-Yutani is a powerful mega-conglomerate that deals in technological advances and facilitates the human colonization of space. Concerns itself with obtaining samples of the Xenomorph for their Bio-Weapons Division in the hopes of finding a profitable use, often with repeated schemes that involve intentionally causing Xenomorph infestations at the risk of human populations.

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• Corrupt Corporate Executive: It's very rare to find a high-level employee who isn't one of these.
• Despotism Justifies the Means: In addition to wanting to make money, they seem to want to use the Xenomorphs as their secret weapon to conquer the rest of the galaxy.
• Didn't Think This Through: In addition to the Evil, Inc. and Incompetence, Inc. entries below, Aliens: Fireteam Elite reveals during between-mission conversations with Lieutenant Santos that Weyland-Yutani, with collaborators in the senior Colonial Marine Corps staff, attempted to provoke a war between the United Americas and Union of Progressive Peoples vis false flag attacks. While what caused this plan to fail isn't exactly stated, it's implied both power blocs declared war on the company in retaliation for said attacks, kickstarting the Frontier War.
  • The campaign found in the Colonial Marines Operations Manual portrays it as a rogue operation W-Y wasn't aware of, and if the players blow the conspiracy wide open it's implied the company's board of directors are nearly as apoplectic about it as the United Americas government. Like so many other things in the RPG, this is ambiguously canon.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The Company was originally named "Weylan-Yutani" in Alien, but was renamed "Weyland-Yutani" by James Cameron. Cameron also ditched Ron Cobb's original company logo, which resembled an ancient Egyptian winged sun symbol, for the now-iconic "WY" logo, which he designed. Cobb's original design reappeared in Alien: Covenant.
• Evil, Inc.: Weyland-Yutani and/or its surrogates are in the continuous habit of forcing ill-prepared humans into encounters with the insanely dangerous Xenomorphs, all in the hopes of somehow using the aliens for profit.
• Karma Houdini: Weyland-Yutani blunders from crisis to crisis without ever really coming to harm. Notably Someone at Weyland-Yutani ordered the investigation by the Nostromo. But whoever did would have long since died in between the first two movies.
• Incompetence, Inc.: Weyland-Yutani's evil is only matched by short-sighted stupidity. Despite repeated failures to weaponize the Xenomorphs, which usually end with a lot of dead people and lost resources before the aliens themselves are wiped out, they refuse to give up on it. Many of their plans usually involve half-baked secrecy and Unwitting Pawns grossly ill-prepared to actually handle the Xenomorphs, and several expanded universe materials and even Burke in Aliens all but outright suggest they encourage this behavior because it means fewer people to "share the profits", neglecting the fact that they actually need to succeed in the first place, which never works out.
• MegaCorp: Famously evil enough to sacrifice squads of Colonial Marines, entire colonies, and the security of the Earth in its attempt to weaponize the eponymous alien critters. Has enough pull to commandeer said Colonial Marines and put them on missions in the interests of the company. Produces everything from androids to atmosphere processors to military weaponry to soda drinks, and also administers prisons like Fury-161. More recent materials, such as Alien: The Roleplaying Game, have revealed that Weyland-Yutani accounts for nearly a third of the economy of the Three Worlds Empire power bloc, going a long way to revealing why it keeps getting away with its Evil, Inc. behavior.
• The Unfettered: Weyland-Yutani will stop at nothing to advance its interests. Human costs be damned. One need only look at it's founder Peter Weyland and executives/agents (Ash, Burke, Bishop II..etc).
• Villain with Good Publicity: After falling into disrepute and collapsing before the events of Alien: Resurrection, Weyland-Yutani enjoys a resurgence and renewed public approval after the company reverses ecological damage to the Earth.

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The Engineers

The Engineers

The Engineers (Homo Genitor^note "Father of Man")

^{Click here to see the Engineer unmasked}

The creators of humankind and several other species throughout the cosmos. Worshipped as gods by many, the Engineers are a hyper-advanced, space-faring race believed to be billions of years old. For reasons unknown, they now seek to commit genocide against humans as a whole using the virulent Chemical A0-3959X. 91 – 15, which they also used to seed life on barren worlds. Some speculate that they are responsible for creating the Xenomorphs for use in biological warfare, although the jury’s still out on that one.

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• Alien Blood: Their blood seems to be light green colour.
• Aliens Are Bastards: There was initially a positive relationship between the Engineers and humankind, but in 93 CE, something caused the former to have a change of heart. According to Word of God, the Engineers would return to any planet they had seeded with life to monitor their creations. If they were disappointed, they would use Chemical A0-3959X. 91 – 15 to wipe out entire species and start over from scratch.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Each member of the species harbors a strong animosity towards humans and other creatures.
• Ancient Astronauts: Throughout several millennia, the Engineers visited Earth and influenced basic features of human development, such as culture, learning, and technology.
• Ancient Conspiracy: In the novel Alien: Original Sin, which is no longer considered part of the canon, it's revealed that Earth's governments have known of both the Xenomorphs and the Engineers (dubbed Mala'kak in the novel) for a long time. A secret organization, Loki, was even created to trade human hosts to the Mala’kak for breeding Xenomorphs in exchange for Xenomorphs. As it turns out, the Nostromo Incident wasn't an unlucky accident but rather orchestrated by Loki and the Mala’kak for Loki to acquire a steady supply of Xenomorph eggs.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: According to Alien: The Roleplaying Game, an Engineer can survive for an hour in a vacuum without needing to breathe. This explains why the Last Engineer could walk about on LV-223 without dying from the planet’s toxic atmosphere.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: According to early versions of the script for Prometheus and interviews with director Ridley Scott, it is hinted that Jesus was an envoy from the Engineers sent to Earth with the goal of helping humanity evolve beyond their violent tendencies. The crucifixion of Jesus by the Romans could explain why the Engineers hold such animosity towards humans.
• Bio-Armor: Their bulky elephant-like suits serve as glorified power armour and HAZMAT protection, with trunk-like air hoses and energy shields to shield them from dangerous environments or projectiles.
• Black Eyes of Evil: Their eyes are lifeless and as dark as ink, with pupils shaped like oblong crosses. On top of that, they want genocide humans.
• Cruel Elephant: The Engineer's biosuits possess a striking resemblance to elephants and, as a collective, are determined to destroy humanity. According to Alien: The Roleplaying Game, it is possible that they designed these biomechanical suits based on creatures they encountered in the past.
  • The comic series by Dark Horse Comics (now non-canonical) introduces a living Engineer, the “Collector”, with a trunk like an elephant, curved tusks, and thick wrinkled skin. Moreover, the Collector intends to terraform Earth, making it uninhabitable for humans.
• Depending on the Artist: The Dark Horse comics couldn’t decide on a consistent appearance for the Engineers before Prometheus. In their two main appearances, their look varied significantly. Destroying Angels gave them trunks extending from their chests with tufts of gray hair around their temples and slug-like lower bodies. In contrast, Dark Horse’s ALIENS showed them as bulky bipeds with pink skin, elephantine tusks, and yellow, cross-shaped eyes.
• Depending on the Writer: How the species is depicted, and their relationship with humans and Xenomorphs varies between media. Alan Dean Foster's novelization portrays them as kindly yet unlucky creatures who encountered the Xenomorphs on LV-426, though this viewpoint should be taken cautiously since it originates from Ash. However, the pre-Prometheus Dark Horse comics show the race as hostile xenophobes among the Xenomorphs' first victims. Prometheus and all following works depict them as mankind's spiteful inventors, possibly having created the Xenomorphs as a form of biological warfare.
• Evil Is Bigger: These guys tower over Yautja and humans alike, though their size tends to fluctuate a lot between media.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Before Prometheus, it was generally assumed that the trunk-like objects on their helmets were part of their actual anatomy. As such, basically every pre-Prometheus depiction of Engineers have elephantine trunks, and sometimes even tusks to go along with them. This even extends to some "Jockey-Xenomorphs", that have been depicted with trunks as well.
  • Based on the massive size of the Engineer in the original Alien, pre-Prometheus Engineers were also way bigger, closer to the size of an Alien Queen than to their movie counterparts.
• Genius Bruiser: The genius part is obvious, but they’re also very dangerous hand-to-hand combatants who can throw down with the likes of Yautja and Xenomorph Queens.
• Human Aliens: Engineers bear a striking resemblance to humans with the exception of having smooth hairless pale skin and lifeless eyes. Justified as we share 100% of our DNA with them due to an Engineer using Chemical A0-3959X. 91 – 15 to create life on Earth at the cost of his own life and aeons of convergent evolution.
• I Have Many Names: Despite lacking an official name during the pre-Prometheus era, production staff labelled the species with nicknames including the “Pilot” and “Big Dental Patient,” but the one that stuck was “Space Jockey”. Stories set in the EU dubbed them Ossians or Mala’kak with the binomial nomenclature of Mundus gubernavi (“Universal Pilot”). From Prometheus onwards, they’re called “Engineers” alongside a new scientific name: Homo Genitor (“Father of Man”).
• Indo-European Alien Language: Inverted. The Engineers taught our ancestors how to speak Proto-Indo-European, a hypothesised proto-language that became the ancestor of countless languages spoken across the Eurasian continent, both living and extinct. Anil Biltoo, a linguist who created the Engineer language for Prometheus remarked that it's not “pure PIE”.
• Made of Iron: Holy shit, yes. It takes an awful lot to bring one of these guys down as the Last Engineer survived getting shot and his ship's crash-landing until the Trilobite impregnated him. Fire And Stone sees another Engineer overpower an experienced Yautja in a one-on-one fight where it tanked a shot from the Yautja's Plasmacaster, impalement, and blasts from his Energy Rifle before the Yautja kills the Engineer with its Self-Destruct Device.
  • Life And Death shows one of two Engineers endure a full barrage of automatic gunfire and dying only when a full belt of grenades goes off in his face. The second walks off its ship self-destructing, impalement from a Xenomorph Queen's tail and kicks the bucket when his biosuit's shielding gets compromised by Chemical A0-3959X. 91 – 15, leading him to be pumped full of lead.
• Maker of Monsters: The movies and Expanded Universe heavily imply, if not outright state, that the Engineers created the Xenomorphs as bioweapons, or at the very least had a hand in their creation via the same hyper-advanced biotechnology they used to seed terrestrial life throughout the universe.
• Meaningful Name: Mala'kak, the name given to them in Aliens: Original Sin, is a play on the Arabic term for angel malak, hinting at their portrayal in Prometheus as celestial visitors who taught man knowledge and were remembered as gods or angels.
• Mesopotamian Monstrosity: Even before becoming bitter towards humanity, the Engineers had a strong impact on ancient cultures and were even worshipped by some. Mesopotamia was one such society, and there is evidence to suggest that their cuneiform writing system was influenced by that of the Engineers.
• Mysterious Past: Almost nothing is known about the species, their origins, and why they even want to exterminate humanity. Most of what we know about them comes from interviews with Scott or tie-in media like novelisations, tabletop games, and comic books.
• Organic Technology: Everything they build seems to be at least partially alive. The elephantine spacesuits that Engineers sometimes wear seem to be made from bone. Buttons on their ship's control panels appear to be some kind of fatty nodule, and their architecture has plenty of rib-like ornamentation.
• Super-Strength: Possess utterly massive frames and insane strength, allowing them to rip off heads and break Yautja limbs like matchsticks.
• Super-Soldier: The Engineers on LV-223 appear to be something like this. While Engineers in general appear to be hyper-evolved, these ones are freakishly strong, even counting for their massive frames, as well as clothed in what appears to be some form of highly advanced armor, allowing them both insane strength and durability, among (presumably) many other things.
• Übermensch: All the Engineers we see could count, being around eight feet tall, long-lived, technologically advanced, and seemingly in peak physical shape.
• Ultimate Life Form: A more traditional example than the Xenomorphs. From what we see of the Engineers in Prometheus, they're all gigantic, super strong, hyper-intelligent beings in perfect physical shape. So advanced in fact, that they spend their time creating other lifeforms since theirs appears to have been perfected.
• Your Size May Vary: The species height tends to be somewhat... inconsistent at best. The Pilot’s corpse measures around 15 feet tall heightwise, yet the Engineers from Prometheus and Alien: Covenant stand around roughly 8 feet tall on average. Are we supposed to believe that fancy armour accounts for nearly half of the Pilot's height?

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