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Franchise / Alien

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/xenomorph_642.jpg
In space, no one can hear you scream.
"You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? A perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility."
— Ash, Alien (1979)

Alien is a multimedia film franchise created by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, that codified science fiction Body Horror. The franchise, which spans films, novels, comic books, and video games, helped to launch the careers of creators like Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and Sigourney Weaver.

The series revolves around the "Xenomorphs", alien monsters with acid blood that spawn by bursting out of other organisms' chests and try to kill or...bring to the hive just about anything that isn't them. Most works involve humans encountering the creatures, with horrific results. The monsters' designs were the work of H. R. Giger.

A wide array of crossover works with Fox's other famous science fiction alien monster, the Predator, also exist. For more information on those, see the Alien vs. Predator page. See also Xenomorph Xerox for similar creatures in other franchises.

Alien franchise media:

    open/close all folders 

    Films — Live-Action 

    Live-Action TV 

    Comic Books 
  • Heavy Metal
    • Alien: The Illustrated Story (1979)
  • Dark Horse Comics
    • Aliens (1988) - Collected as Aliens: Book One and Aliens: Outbreak
    • Aliens (1989) - Collected as Aliens: Book Two and Aliens: Nightmare Asylum
    • Aliens: Earth War or Aliens: Female War (1990)
    • Aliens vs. Predator (1990)
    • Aliens: Genocide (1991-1992)
    • Aliens: Space Marines (1992)
    • Aliens: Hive or Aliens: Harvest (1992)
      • Cyberantics: A Little Adventure (1992) - A Defictionalization of the book written by Stanislaw Mayakovsky.
    • Dark Horse Presents: Aliens (1992) - Trade paperback collection of comics from Dark Horse Presents
    • Aliens: Tribes (1992)
    • Alien 3: Alone (1992) - Trading card format
    • Alien 3 (1992)
    • Aliens: Newt's Tale (1992)
    • Aliens: Colonial Marines (1993-1994)
    • Aliens: Earth Angel (1993-1994)
    • Aliens: Rogue (1993)
    • Aliens: Sacrifice (1993)
    • Aliens: Crusade (1993-1994)
    • Aliens: Labyrinth (1993-1994)
    • Aliens: Salvation (1993)
    • Aliens: Music of the Spears (1994)
    • Operation: Aliens (1994) - Trading card format
    • Aliens: Stronghold (1994)
    • Aliens: Mondo Pest (1994)
    • Aliens: Earth Angel (1994)
    • Aliens: Berserker or Aliens: Frenzy (1995)
    • Aliens: Mondo Pest (1995)
    • Superman/Aliens (1995) - Co-published with DC Comics
      • Superman/Aliens 2: God War (2002)
    • Aliens: Mondo Heat (1996)
    • Aliens: Lovesick (1996)
    • Aliens: Pig (1997)
    • Batman/Aliens (1997) - Co-published with DC Comics
      • Batman/Aliens Two (2002-2003)
    • Aliens: Special (1997)
    • Aliens: Havoc (1997)
    • Aliens: Purge (1997)
    • WildC.A.T.s/Aliens (1998) - Co-published with Image Comics
    • Aliens: Alchemy (1997)
    • Alien: Resurrection (1997)
    • Aliens: Kidnapped (1997-1998)
    • Aliens: Survival (1998)
    • Aliens: Glass Corridor (1998)
    • Aliens: Stalker (1998)
    • Aliens: Wraith (1998s)
    • Aliens: Apocalypse or Aliens: Apocalypse - The Destroying Angels (1999)
    • Aliens: Xenogenesis (1999)
    • Green Lantern Versus Aliens (2000) - Co-published with DC Comics
    • Judge Dredd vs. Aliens: Incubus (2002) - Co-published with Rebellion
    • Aliens - Free Comic Book Day (2009)
    • Aliens: More Than Human (2009)
    • Aliens: Fast Track to Heaven (2011)
    • Aliens: Inhuman Condition (2012)
    • Aliens: Colonial Marines - No Man Left Behind (2012) - Tie in to Aliens: Colonial Marines
    • Aliens: Incubation/Lucky/Taste (2013)
    • Alien: Isolation (2014) - Prequel to the game of the same name.
    • Fire and Stone (2014-2015)
      • Prometheus: Fire and Stone
      • Aliens: Field Report
      • Aliens: Fire and Stone
      • Alien vs. Predator: Fire and Stone
      • Predator: Fire and Stone
      • Prometheus: Fire and Stone—Omega
    • Aliens/Vampirella (2015) - Co-published with Dynamite Entertainment.
    • Aliens: Defiance (2016-2017)
    • Life and Death (2016-2017)
      • Predator: Life and Death
      • Prometheus: Life and Death
      • Aliens: Life and Death
      • Alien vs. Predator: Life and Death
      • Prometheus: Life and Death One-Shot
    • Aliens: Dead Orbit (2017)
    • Aliens: Dust to Dust (2018)
    • Jonesy (2018)
    • William Gibson's Alien 3 (2018-2019) - Adaptation of William Gibson's unproduced script for Alien³.
    • Aliens: Resistance (2019) - Sequel to Aliens: Defiance and Alien: Isolation.
    • Aliens: Rescue (2019)
    • Alien: The Original Screenplay (2020) - Adaptation of Dan O'Bannon's original script for Alien.
  • Marvel Comics
    • Alien (2021-2022)
    • Aliens: Aftermath (2021)
    • Alien (2022-2023)
    • Alien (2023-present)
    • Alien: Black, White & Blood (2024)
    • Aliens: What If?... (2024)
    • Aliens Vs. Avengers (2024)

    Literature 
  • Alien (1979) - novelization of Alien
  • Aliens (1986) - novelization of Aliens
  • Alien 3 (1992) - novelization of Alien³
  • Aliens (Steve Perry trilogy) (1992-1993) - Novelization of the Aliens: Book One and Aliens: Book Two comic books.
    • Aliens: Earth Hive (1992)
    • Aliens: Nightmare Asylum (1993)
    • Aliens: The Female War (1993)
  • Aliens: Genocide (1994) - Novelization of the comics.
  • Aliens: Alien Harvest (1995) - Novelization of the comics.
  • Aliens: Colonial Marines Technical Manual (1995)
  • Aliens: Rogue (1995) - Novelization of the comics.
  • Aliens: Labyrinth (1996) - Novelization of the comics.
  • Aliens: Music of the Spears (1996) - Novelization of the comics.
  • Alien Resurrection (1997) - Novelization of Alien: Resurrection
  • Aliens: Berserker (1998) - Novelization of the comics.
  • Aliens: Original Sin (2005)
  • Aliens: DNA War (2006)
  • Aliens: Cauldron (2007)
  • Aliens: Steel Egg (2007)
  • Aliens: Criminal Enterprise (2008)
  • Aliens: No Exit (2008)
  • Prometheus (2012) - Novelisation of Prometheus
  • Out of the Shadows trilogy (2014)
    • Alien: Out of the Shadows
    • Alien: Sea of Sorrows
    • Alien: River of Pain (ties into the Fire and Stone comic saga)
  • Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report (2014)
  • The Rage War (2015-2016)
    • Predator: Incursion
    • Alien: Invasion
    • Alien vs. Predator: Armageddon
  • Alien Next Door (2015)
  • Aliens: Bug Hunt (2017) - Anthology of 18 short stories.
  • Alien Covenant (2017) - Novelisation of Alien: Covenant
  • Alien Covenant: Origins (2017) - Prequel to Alien: Covenant
  • Alien: The Cold Forge (2018)
  • Alien: Echo (2019)
  • Alien: Isolation (2019) - Novelisation of Alien: Isolation
  • Alien: Prototype (2019)
  • Aliens: Phalanx (2020)
  • Alien: Into Charybdis (2021)
  • Alien: Infiltrator (2021)
  • Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay (2021)
  • Alien: The Official Cookbook - Spin-Off Cookbook
  • Alien: Colony War (2022)
  • Alien: Inferno's Fall (2022)
  • Aliens: Vasquez (2022)
  • Alien: Enemy of My Enemy (2023)
  • Find the Xenomorph (2023)
  • Aliens: Bishop (2023)
  • Alien: Uncivil War (2024)
  • A is for Alien: An ABC Book (2024)

    Pinballs 
  • Alien (2017; remade in 2021)

    Tabletop Games 
  • Alien (1979)
  • Aliens: This Time It's War also known as Aliens: The Board Game (1989)
  • Aliens Adventure Game (1991)
  • Operation: Aliens - Combat Game (1992) - Tie-in to the Operation: Aliens toyline.
  • Aliens Predator/Terminator TCG (1997)
  • Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game (2015)
  • Aliens: Hadley's Hope (2018)
  • Alien: The Roleplaying Game (2019)
  • Aliens: Bug Hunt (2020)
  • Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps (2020)

    Theatre 

    Video Games 

Video games with Guest appearances

  • Mortal Kombat X (2015) - A Xenomorph born from the Mortal Kombat series's Tarkatan race is a DLC Guest Fighter
  • Dead by Daylight (2016) - Crossover DLC released in 2023, which added a Xenomorph and Ellen Ripley as Guest Fighter characters along with the wreckage of the Nostromo as a map.
  • Fortnite Battle Royale (2017) - Ellen Ripley and Xenomorph skins and items were added in the 2021 In Space... Set.

    Web Original 

General franchise tropes:

  • Absent Aliens: Despite the name, the series might count as this:
    • The titular Aliens aren't sapient and are basically intelligent animals and Alien: Covenant reveals (or retcons, depending on your viewpoint) that they were actually created by a human-built android.
    • The Engineers are a race of Precursors who created humanity but are wiped out in a flashback in Covenant. Though Ridley Scott said if he got to do a sequel six Engineers who weren't on the planet at the time would have shown up.
    • The Colonial Marines in Aliens mention dealing with "Arcturians" but James Cameron refused to give much information about what they are (the interaction is in the context of sexual hijinks during R&R, which the Marines seemed eager to get back to).
    • While there have been two crossover movies with the Predator franchise, Ridley Scott considers them non-canon and deliberately contradicted them when writing the backstory for Prometheus.
  • Action Girl: In the Dark Horse post-Aliens comic series, Newt becomes one hell of an action girl. In general, the series is known for its strong female protagonists, who either start as this or become this over the course of their encounter with the Xenomorph.
  • Adaptation Expansion: The comic series branches off from the movies after Aliens, and benefits greatly as a result.
  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Invoked in the films, but pushed to the extreme in the prequels. In the original Alien, Ash's directive to preserve the lifeform even at the expense of the crew evolves into a strange admiration for the creature as well as a peculiar sadism, particularly toward Ripley. In Alien: Covenant, David goes completely off his programming and begins to develop a god complex. Bishop in Aliens and Alien 3 averts this, explained as having stricter safeguards than the one that went against the crew in the first film. But by Alien: Resurrection, androids have been outlawed with orders to "destroy on sight" because some of them started to make "children".
  • Air-Vent Passageway: Both humans and Xenomorphs make good use of air vents to get around without the other side noticing. The Xenomorph in the first film moves around the spaceship using air vents. In the second film, Newt survives by hiding in the air vents, and the Marines make their escape through the same vents. Newt uses them for more aggressive purposes in the Dark Horse adaptation.
  • Alien Landmass: Planet LV-426 (aka Acheron) has rocky formations which are rounded at the top into smooth nubs. Offhand, the rocks greatly resemble bones.
  • All Gravity Is the Same: Going by the movies, LV-426 seems to have standard gravity but the novelization and screenplay say it has a diameter of 1,200 km. If this was the case, it would visibly be a Baby Planet with a ridiculously dense core to generate any kind of gravity. The Colonial Marines Technical Manual says its gravity is 0.86G and gives it a more realistic diameter of 12,201 km.
  • Alternate History: Andrew Gaska's welded universe takes place in a world in which the Cold War never ended, the UK regained its superpower status and the United States expanded to include the entire western hemisphere.
  • Ancient Conspiracy: Actually a set of company protocols, but it sure resembles a cult searching for an Artifact of Doom they think will bring them power. From the 21st Century (possibly before) to the far future. Years, decades, centuries come and go and every time so much as a hint of a sign of a Xenomorph rears its head, they have a team ready to go, with moles, dupes and those they need for the moment all set to go.
  • And I Must Scream: This trope can apply to those patched to a wall in the hive with a facehugger soon to latch on. In the comics, a teenaged Newt falls in love with a Colonial Marine, who turns out to be an Artificial Human with more advanced emotions. He makes a Heroic Sacrifice by staying behind on an infested military base to allow her to escape, but this leaves him trapped on a Ghost Ship (the Xenomorphs leave him alone because he's useless to them for breeding) that can never return to civilization because of the risk.
  • Appropriated Title: Although the third, fourth, and fifth films all went under the original title, most spin-off merchandise is known under Aliens, which was the second movie.
  • Arch-Enemy: Ellen Ripley has the entire Xenomorph race, which she has vowed to destroy so they can't kill any more people.
  • Artificial Human: Ash, Bishop and Call (a bit of franchise-wide Theme Naming which Prometheus appears to have continued with David). Ash from the first movie is a particularly sinister example, since he secretly protects the Alien as part of his assignment and betrays the other crew members.
  • Ascetic Aesthetic: Deconstructed in several ways. The Nostromo in the first film, for instance, clearly had this look before the wear and tear set in. The colony in the second film, meanwhile, has a facade of this look over a greasy industrial substructure. The contrast between this trope, Used Future, and unsettling organic structures is a recurring theme throughout the franchise.
  • Baby Planet: The tiny moon that came to be known as LV-426 was just another dime-a-dozen planetoid barely 1,200 meters in diameter, so small that it's gravity is only 0.86 that of Earth's; another insignificant rock with a primordial and unbreathable atmosphere destined to be forgotten in the vastness of space... were it not for the ghost-ship of an unknown Alien civilization broadcasting a mysterious warning to not explore its cavernous innards... a warning unfortunately ignored by both the crew of the Weyland Yutani towing vehicle Nostromo, and the colonists of Hadley's Hope 57 years after the former mysteriously disapeared...
  • Better to Die than Be Killed: This is how those knowing what's coming while impregnated feel. Subverted in the Newt's Tale comic series. During the colonist's final stand against the xenomorphs, Newt's mother picks up a gun and looks at her children (intending to put them out of their misery before turning the gun on herself). She gets ready to pull the trigger...and then Newt tells her there's another way, and leads them towards a ventilation grate during the attack. Not that it helps, considering that her mother and brother get killed off in short order, forcing her to flee into the duct.
  • BFG: The combination gun Ripley is carrying at the end of Part 2 in the Dark Horse comic of Aliens has to be seen to be believed.
  • Bizarre Alien Biology: The xenomorphs' caustic "blood" is more akin to battery acid than the nutrient distribution matrix other creatures have. It reacts with the metals the xenomorphs absorb from their meals to generate electricity, which they live off of. They also have a "mesoskeleton" of polarized silicon, basically meaning their hides are made of glass. Their nails and teeth are made of a silver-colored metallic material, possibly iron. Their tongues have their own mouth (when it's not adapted into a resin-secreting proboscis in the case of the Worker). Under their cranial shell/frontal lobe area is a remarkably human skull. They absorb traits from the species they parasitize, and their reproductive process is more or less haplodiplontic (a seed produces a number of highly mutable spores that grow into a more adapted offspring, something only seen in certain fungi on Earth).
  • Broken Bird: Newt, later renamed to Billie because of canon continuity issues is one in the Dark Horse comic series.
  • Bug War: A small scale version. The first and third films center on a group of human noncombatants against a single Alien, while the second and fourth films feature groups of armed people against a horde of Aliens. The Alien vs. Predator series features a full-scale battle between the species in the second movie. The "war" part didn't happened until Aliens versus Predator 2.
  • Canon Discontinuity:
    • The Dark Horse comics totally ignore 3 and Resurrection because they were written before Alien 3 came along and killed everyone. In the subsequent novelizations, Newt and Hicks were replaced by Billie and Wilks and Ripley was revealed to be a artificial person with implanted memories.
    • The Out of the Shadows trilogy serves as a Continuity Reboot for the expanded universe, disregarding the comics and other novels, aside from a few little nods. The second book very nearly decanonized 3 and Resurrection as well, before Fox changed their mind and asked the author to include references to them.
    • Neil Blompkamp's film was suggested to ignore 3 (and Resurrection by extension) due to early concept art featuring an older version of Newt, who had a bridge dropped upon her in the opening of that film.note  Blomkamp clarified that his film would not be retconning them, while Sigourney Weaver indicated it would be set in an Alternate Timeline.
  • Canon Foreigner: The comics, games, novels and toys introduce many characters and alien varieties that are ignored by the films.
    • Kenner's Aliens toyline introduces the alien-animal hybrids Arachnid, Boar, Bull, Cougar, Crab, Gorilla, Mantis, Panther, Rhino, Scorpion, Snake, and Swarm. Each includes an Aliens: Space Marines mini-comic giving further details. The Alien King and Queen Face Hugger/Giant Face Hugger may be related to alien varieties in other media.
    • A Jockey-Xenomorph appears in the comic Aliens: Apocalypse and the game Aliens: Infestation. This form is unlikely now that Prometheus changed the earlier Space Jockey concept into the Engineers.
  • Canon Welding: Much like their decision with Star Wars, Disney had to make a call with Alien canon once the films shifted over to them and the comics to Marvel. Their franchise consultant, scifi writer Andrew Gaska, who also sorted out Planet of the Apes canon, has declared that any expanded universe material that did not contradict the six main films can now be considered canon, including Alien: Isolation, the 40th Anniversary shorts, the Alien RPG, Aliens: Bug Hunt, and most of the later Dark Horse comics. Things that contradict the main film series, such Alien vs. Predator, the earlier Dark Horse comics, or Aliens: Colonial Marines, are labelled "barroom canon"; tall tales and rumours told by roughnecks and raconteurs in distant saloons.
  • Canis Latinicus: Supplemental material for the franchise states that the titular alien species was given the name Internecivus raptus, or "murderous thief."
  • Captain Ersatz: The two main characters in the first two arcs of the comic series were Newt and Hicks. When Alien 3 killed the characters off, future printings of the comic changed their names to Billie and Wilks, though this seems an odd choice in retrospect, as their backstories remained identical and the comics had diverged so sharply from the movies by that point that keeping them in step with one another seems irrelevant.
  • Child Supplants Parent: This is a running theme in the last two Ridley Scott-helmed films. Androids were created by humans to serve them. Humans were apparently created by the Engineers, an alien race with even more advanced technology. They are all hostile or resentful towards the next and previous generation.
  • Coca-Pepsi, Inc.: Weyland-Yutani is a combination of rival motoring conglomerates British Leyland and Toyota.
  • Cold Sleep, Cold Future: The world seems to get a little bit grimmer each time Ripley wakes up. In the first film, the Company is willing to risk the lives of a ship's crew to get its hands on an Alien. In the second film, the Company (or at least Burke) is willing to sacrifice a whole colony to breed Aliens. In the third film, Ripley wakes up on a planet that is inhabited solely by a prison. In the fourth film, the megacorporations have given way to an even more irresponsible military that actually goes through with Alien genetic testing. The comic book canon is far worse than even this.
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: Occasionally (some deleted scenes in Aliens, the flashback in AVP: Alien vs. Predator and many times in AliensVsPredatorRequiem), the Xenomorphs abandon their stealth kill tactics for a Zerg Rush that goes about as well for them as one might expect, and it actually works out pretty well during the first AVP film right on up until the Predator Self-Destruct Mechanism kicks in.
  • Continuous Decompression: Used in Part 1 and 2 during the Thrown Out the Airlock scenes. Part 4 has an incredibly big Newborn Xenomorph specimen blown out of an incredibly small hole found within a viewport window aboard the Betty.
  • Continuity Reboot: The Fire and Stone comic series and the Out of the Shadows trilogy of novels serve as a reboot to the Alien and AVP franchises' expanded universes, while containing Continuity Nods to earlier entries.
  • Continuity Snarl: Whether chestbusters can be removed without killing the host. It's implied in Alien 3, shown in Alien Resurrection, confirmed in the comic book Labyrinth, and rejected in Colonial Marines. Other supplementary materials state that even if the chestburster were successfully removed, the host would eventually die of complications arising from the infection process. Alien: The Roleplaying Game took the position that infection is almost guaranteed terminal, as the incubating chestburster's placental sac grows cancer-like tendrils throughout the body to shunt nutrients from the host back to it as quickly as possible, and a host isn't likely to survive their removal.
  • Contrasting Sequel Setting: Alien was confined entirely to a spaceship, Aliens took place on a colony, Alien³ took place on a prison planet and Alien: Resurrection took place on a space station.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: This is evidently humanity's hat in the Alien universe.
    Ripley: You know, Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage.
  • Crapsack World: The Dark Horse comic series is one hellish place to live. The MegaCorp controls the world, all civil rights are essentially gone, the military kills civilians with impunity, and that's before the two killer alien species come knocking. The Aliens overrun Earth and more than one character wonders if we deserved it.
  • Crossover: Famously so with the Predators in Alien vs. Predator.
    • Other comics have the alien forms in conflict with, for starters, Batman, and Superman.
    • A Xenomorph appears as a Guest Fighter in Mortal Kombat X, born out of the MK-specific Tarkata race. Coincidentally, a Predator also appears as a playable character, tying in with the above.
  • Degraded Boss: Literally every single officially created Xenomorph caste has suffered from this trope to a certain extent at one point or another for shall we say a rather large plethora of obvious in-universe reasons.
  • Deliberately Non-Lethal Attack: The expanded universe (and it was present in the script and novelization of Aliens gives the Xenomorph tail stingers a coma-inducing venom for use in non-lethally subduing hosts to take back to the hive to serve as incubators for more Xenomorphs.
  • Distant Sequel: Both AVP: Alien vs. Predator and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem take place in 2004, Alien is set 118 years later, both Aliens and Alien³ are set 57 years after the events of Alien, and Alien: Resurrection takes place another 200 years after that.
  • *Drool* Hello: The movies are pretty fond of this one. 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 bound to be too late to run.
  • Dwindling Party: Across all of the films and other related media out there, if you see a group of main characters, expect there to only ever be one or two survivors at the end of it all.
  • Empowered Badass Normal: Ellen Ripley was a normal human who Took a Level in Badass by the end of Aliens by destroying an entire Xenomorph hive by herself, fighting against acid-bleeding parasitic Xenomorphs. Then by Alien: Resurrection her clone Ripley 8, who shares most of her memories, receives some Xenomorph DNA as a result of a flaw in the cloning process, resulting in Ripley's very own blood becoming slightly acidic as she gets a psychic connection with the Xenomorphs, has reduced empathy and predatory instincts, shows an increase in strength, and is able to shrug off being hit in the face with a loaded barbell.
  • Enemy-Detecting Radar: The motion trackers from Aliens, which often appeared in video game adaptations of the franchise.
  • Ethnicity Monarch: In the Expanded Universe, the Xenomorph species is ruled by a Queen Mother, which even outranks the more commonly-known Queens. The Queen Mother telepathically controls every Xenomorph in the known universe and can even control humans and other species whether living or dead.
  • Everybody's Dead, Dave: In the comic series Aliens: Newt's Tale, Newt is the only one to survive the colonists' last stand at LV-426, and is forced to go into hiding and foraging by herself after watching her mother and brother get massacred by the xenomorphs right in front of her.
  • Everything Trying to Kill You: In the comics, a group of Marines is forced to go to the Aliens' homeworld to act as bait for facehuggers. One character sagely notes that, on other worlds, the Alien is a foreign creature which the locals are not used to dealing with. On its own planet it would have struck an ecological balance with other species, and it might not even be the dominant predator. The bait plan is completely misguided because unbeknownst even to themselves, all the Marines are androids.
  • Evil Is Visceral: In addition to creating many of the subtropes, the Alien eggs and the visual design of the Space Jockey are also this.
  • Excessive Steam Syndrome: Numerous examples across the entire main series and Crossover films. This includes the Nostromo, the Sulaco (in the third film as the alarms are triggered), the Auriga, the Betty and even the downed Predator ship from Requiem.
  • Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: The facehugger, of course. The sight of one attached onto a victim's face is a sure enough sign of said character's impending, shocking fate to come.
  • Fate Worse than Death: Giving "birth" to a Chestburster. This is highlighted by the iconic plea, "Kill... me!" spoken by impregnated Alien victims.
  • Fetus Terrible: Chestbursters are endoparasites intended to evoke this.
  • Four-Temperament Ensemble: The films themselves are an odd non-character example in terms of their respective tones and atmospheres (and even in light of the personalities and resumes of their respective directors): Alien is phlegmatic, Aliens is choleric, Alien³ is melancholic and Alien: Resurrection is sanguine.
  • Gaia's Lament: Earth in the series. It has become an overpolluted slum.
  • Genre Blindness: Of all people, the CEO of Weyland-Yutani themselves. In their mad obsession to acquire the Xenomorph, they seem to keep forgetting that sending a bunch of "expendables" who are out of the loop to inadvertently bring the Alien back to Earth and planting a mole in the team always backfires on them when the protagonists inevitably figure out they were set up and then kill the Aliens themselves.
    • Though, it looks to have finally succeeded in Aliens: Colonial Marines.
  • Genre Shift: The "quadrilogy" all share a narrative, yet are all wildly different from each other.
    • The first film is a cinema verite-style look at space truckers who find themselves in a sci-fi Slasher Film. The script is sparse and eschews exposition in favor of suggestion and lets the visionary visuals carry the story.
    • The second film is a muscular '80s action film with a tight script and flawless pacing that sets up and knocks down plot points with mechanical precision. It also delves into the trauma the Retired Badass heroine of the first film has to deal with, as part of its "Vietnam in space" allegory.
    • The third film attempted to return to the style of the first film, but its director, who cut his teeth on music videos, lends it a sumptuous stylized industrial atmosphere and tried his damnedest to make the eight different scripts he was handed work as a cohesive whole. The oppressively apocalyptic air punctuated by hopeful Christian spirituality (aided by Eliot Goldenthal's ecclestically-tinged score) also helps it stand out from its two predecessors, for better or for worse.
    • The fourth film is American postmodern wittiness meets French postmodern weirdness. The direction shifts from operatic to self-depreciating with no rhyme or reason and the script was allegedly written as camp but is played with straight-laced seriousness. Trying to reconcile the sheer oddness on display with the grimy industrial aesthetic of the first three films is liable to make your head blow apart.
  • The Hero Dies: Seems to be a trend in the series, starting with Alien³ and continuing from there since all of the survivors of Aliens, even including Ripley herself, all die in Alien³, Shaw is killed by David at some point after the events of Prometheus, and the ending of Alien: Covenant heavily implies that the same fate awaits Daniels.
  • Hero Killer: As under "The Hero Dies", a lot of heroic characters die because of the Xenomorphs, including the crews of the USCSS Nostromo and USS Sulaco. While this doesn't usually extend to heroes in their non-Predator franchise crossovers (though Superman, Orion, and Judge Dredd had close calls), the creatures being this trope was the case in the WildC.A.T.s crossover — only not for the WildCATs themselves, as Warren Ellis, who wrote the story as well as Stormwatch, decided to use the story to kill off the Stormwatch characters who weren't going to be part of The Authority.
  • Humans Advance Swiftly: If you count the film Prometheus in, you may notice how the robots' personalities are becoming more human as the in-universe timeline moves on.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters: In all the films except for Alien³, the Xenomorphs are set loose due to human greed mixed with incompetence. Even in the third movie however the only reason the Company sends a rescue mission to Fiorina "Fury" 161 is because they suspect Ripley to be currently carrying a Xenomorph embryo. Otherwise they'd basically abandoned their Hellhole Prison planet because it was unprofitable.
    Ripley 8 (regarding Annalee Call revealing herself as an android in Resurrection): I should have known. No human being is that humane.
  • I Cannot Self-Terminate: Any given character with a Alien fetus inside them: "Kill me... kill me..." Justified as usually the victim is cocooned and immobile, otherwise they'd surely do the job themselves.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Happens a few times, what with the Aliens having bladed tails. That said, Ripley turns the tables on the Alien in the first movie by impaling it with a harpoon in their final confrontation.
  • Just Following Orders: Ash in the first movie, and possibly Burke in the second movie (it's never clear whether he's operating on orders from the Company or he's in it for himself). David in Prometheus may count as well, although he may have let his feelings get in the way just a little.
  • Machine Blood: The androids in the Alien films "bleed" a milky fluid when injured. Since these are also Ridiculously Human Robots, it works as a Robotic Reveal in the first film, when Ash bleeds white from a cut.
  • Mad Scientist: Quite a few in the comics, perhaps most notably Church from Labyrinth.
  • MegaCorp: Weyland-Yutani is the very epitome of this trope. They control every Earth government and have colonized many star systems. Not only that, but they have a private army with a bioweapons division. They have prison planets as well, such as the one in the third movie. The fourth movie changes this up by referring to megacorps like Weyland-Yutani as a thing of the past, though the government that replaces them is just as bad, if not worse.
  • Mercy Kill: Often requested by victims of the Xenomorph's parasitic life cycle and usually granted in fact if the opportunity is actually there at the moment.
  • Monster Delay: The franchise as a whole regularly plays with this trope depending the exact related work of its.
  • Must Have Caffeine: The singular common vice shared by every adult-character with spoken lines of dialogue in this franchise, to accentuate how this is a story about "Blue Collar Working Nine To Five Joes and Janes."
  • Nightmare Fuel: In-universe. Encounters with Xenomorphs are known to leave people with heartbreaking nightmares and PTSD for indefinite times, such as Ellen Ripley for example. Facehuggers are themselves Nightmare Fuel Station Attendants in that Alan Meeks, a Facehugger victim from the Alien: Isolation tie-in comic, experienced several vivid and distressing nightmares while being implanted, and Kane from the first film noted experiencing a dream about himself being smothered.
  • Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: You can see there's no consistency on the naming (which is why it's one of The Angry Video Game Nerd's targets here).
  • Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: Averted. The first two films are silent about religion, but
    • In Alien³ the inmates of the prison colony have got religion.
    • In Alien: Resurrection the space station has a chapel, and one character makes the Sign of the Cross upon entering, which is a typically Catholic observance and a somewhat old-fashioned one at that. This character is later revealed to be an android, and there is a mention of androids investigating religion for a morality which is chosen, rather than imposed through programming.
    • In Prometheus, Elizabeth Shaw is a Christian. Not much is made of this, but she clearly keeps her faith; her last act is to give the date, in the style "year of Our Lord."
  • Post-Climax Confrontation: Literally every single main film along with some of the expanded universe materials uses this trope in one way or another with lone surviving Xenomorph specimens and other enemies all of a sudden inexplicably rearing their ugly heads and likewise subsequently having to be truly disposed of in one way or another following the actual climax of said film or expanded universe work.
  • Psychosexual Horror: The titular creature is rife with Freudian imagery and was originally created as an explicit rape allegory. The facehugger phase of the creature has a vagina-like opening with a phallic proboscis that orally violates the victim. The chestburster itself is entirely phallic-shaped. The adult phase features a similarly phallic head shape, and the way it kills Lambert is rife with sexual assault undertones.
  • Puzzle Boss: Basically every single film and expanded universe work for the franchise has featured an example of this trope at some point or another for obvious reasons such as the ever-present acid for blood problem and also even the occasional absence of any manmade weapons from a given official Alien franchise work's specific setting.
  • The Quest: An evil corporate one at that; almost all of the films and most of the related media include references to Weyland-Yutani's attempts to acquire at any cost at least one of the Xenomorphs.
  • Recursive Creators: In Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, the different species in the overall franchise are established to each be engineered by a preceding one. The known order is Engineers creating Humans, then Humans creating Androids, then Androids creating Xenomorphs.
  • Right Man in the Wrong Place: Ripley, particularly in the second film.
  • Robotic Reveal: When someone starts leaking milk-colored Machine Blood, you've essentially got the franchise's officially recurring style of take on one of these.
  • Rule of Scary: There are plenty of rationalizations of the Xenomorph's life cycle, the circumstances, and behavior of various characters, but in the end it all comes down to this.
  • Schrödinger's Canon: Possibly a messier one than fellow Fox-cum-Disney franchise Star Wars:
    • First, the Dark Horse Comics Aliens comics, which followed older versions of Hicks, Newt, and Ripley on a new Alien-stomping adventure. Once Alien³ came out, and those characters were all off the table, the stories were retconned to follow Suspiciously Similar Substitutes Wilks, Billie, and an android programmed to think she was Ripley.
    • More expanded universe material was released, including the Aliens vs. Predator crossovers, until the Alien: Out of the Shadows trilogy rebooted the EU continuity, relegating all previous EU to Schrodinger's Canon. Interesting, part of the Shadows trilogy would have "observed false" Alien³ and Alien: Resurrection, a rare case of an EU work decanonizing a prime media work, until Fox vetoed that.
    • Ridley Scott took pains to decanonize the Aliens vs. Predator portion of the franchise with Prometheus and Covenant, leading to at least two EU continuities, one with Predators and one without.
    • Then, new EU material, such as Alien: The Roleplaying Game and Aliens: Fireteam Elite again attempt to provide a single, cohesive version of the Alien 'Verse, making references to each other, and to some previously-decanonized EU. . . but make no real mention of the Shadows Trilogy or other works based on them. Notably, the Shadows trilogy decanonized the Praetorian caste of Alien, yet Praetorians appear in both the RPG and Fireteam.
    • Neil Blomkamp's Alien film would have split the timeline again, being a direct sequel to Aliens and taking place in an alternate continuity.
    • The end result is that any given piece of EU material can take place in at least one of five separate continuities: pre-Alien 3 (with Predators), post-Alien 3 (with Predators), post-Shadows (with or without Predators), post-Covenant (without Predators), or post-RPG (still without Predators, at least for now).
  • Sequel Escalation: Alien has one Xenomorph Drone preying on seven "space truckers." Aliens has a fully-fledged hive of Xenomorph Drones and their Queen pitted against a platoon of Space Marines. Alien³ reverts right on back to the original scenario with only one Xenomorph Runner attacking and killing off twenty-two prisoners and their three local overseers in a desperate attempt to ensure the survival of a Royal Chest Burster currently incubating within none other than Ellen Ripley herself in fact. Alien: Resurrection escalates it to a whole hive of cloned Xenomorph Drones, their also cloned Queen, and even a hybrid Newborn Xenomorph specimen seen near the end of the film again.
  • Sleeper Starship: Faster-than-light travel in this franchise for whatever reason is dramatically slower when compared to the StarWars franchise's hyperspace travel for example, so they then instead just use cryogenic stasis travel here.
  • Smoking Is Cool: Aside from the vice of Must Have Caffeine, every single heroic adult character (well, aside from the Dirty Coward Lambert) with spoken lines in the Alien Franchise is bound to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day like a chimney. The cigarettes in question have just as much filter as smoke, and are noted to be "denicotined" in the novelizations.
  • Snowy Screen of Death: This tends to happen all the time whenever there's constantly chest-bursting parasitic extraterrestrial organisms abound:
    • In Alien, the monitor screen shows static when the connection to Dallas breaks off as he is attacked by the monster.
    • In Aliens, each crew member's helmet camera and vital signs are hooked to a screen and any time somebody dies, their screen goes static.
    • Happens repeatedly in one scene in Alien: Resurrection, as the Space Marines get picked off one by one.
  • Sole Survivor: Newt in the Newt's Tale comic series.
  • Space Clothes: Averted. The crew members wear normal clothes. People entering cryogenic sleep strip down to their underwear; otherwise, they usually walk around in civilian/military attire. In the opening scene of Alien, the clothes are distinctly reminiscent of diapers, as the lethargic crew are "born" from closed spaces into the white room controlled by the AI "Mother".
  • Space Is Noisy: There are some flight-cruising sounds, and in the fourth one, an explosion.
  • Space Marine: A platoon of Colonial Marines is dispatched to investigate a human colony that has gone silent. They find a xenomorph hive and are largely wiped out, destroying the hive and killing the Queen in turn. Colonial Marines are frequent characters in expanded universe materials, either actively-serving or retired, and they're frequently pitted against Xenomorphs (more rarely, Yautjas) and suffer high casualties because of it. The ones who survive become (or already were) unspeakably badass.
  • Theme Naming: Each synthetic character has a name from the first three letters of the alphabet, in accordance with their order of appearance:Ash, Bishop and Call. Prometheus continues this trend with David.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Ripley's mutation from being a scientist to a badass Alien killer is a running theme through the franchise.
  • Transformation Horror: Of the Slow Transformation subtype. As shown in a scene from the Alien - Director's Cut and novelization, and explained in Alien: The Roleplaying Game, an alien drone in the absence of a queen will instinctively abduct other creatures, bind them in its nest, and inject them via its tail with an invasive bacteria which will cause their body to gradually metamorphize into a new alien egg.note  If the creature being transformed is lucky, the alien will have smashed enough of its skull to leave it comatose through this process. If not, the creature may be fully aware of what's happening to it with no ability to move or stop it...
  • Trapped-with-Monster Plot: The first film is one of the most famous examples, and almost every entry in the franchise is also an example.
  • Trope Codifier:
  • United Space of America: It's all but explicitly stated that the US is still a superpower centuries in the future, complete with its own colonies. Also, the Colonial Marines are clearly shown as American.
  • Used Future: The first film in particular is a notable early example: the cold, underlit grungy ship looks like a run-down refinery ship. It's a big break from the sparkly white corridors and spandex jumpsuits seen in many previous Sci-fi franchises.
  • Villain Ball: In the Dark Horse comic, a Company plant (and a psychopath) kills an officer to prove to his hostages how ruthless he is, while said officer is attempting to flat-out tell him that his plan to infect the marines will not work because they are all androids.
  • Villain-Based Franchise: The franchise in general is this, but not the movie series due to centering on Ripley.
  • Womb Horror: The Xenomorphs are meant to invoke this in conjunction with rape horror, in particular their life cycle consisting of forced fertilization from a facehugger leading to a Chest Burster. This intent was confirmed by screenwriter Dan O' Bannon in the Alien Saga documentary.
  • Why Isn't It Attacking?: Quoted almost word for word by one of the Android Marines in the Dark Horse comic. This was the first major indicator that the marines were not what they believed themselves to be.
  • You Are in Command Now: In the Dark Horse comic series, at least at one point, it's Newt's turn to step up to the plate.
  • Zeerust: Spaceship electronics are based on bulky 1970s computers like the Apple II series which were considered cutting-edge at their time.
  • Zombie Infectee: Most people who know they're incubated by an Alien Facehugger, and its effects, choose to bite the bullet or die in a Heroic Sacrifice. One memorable scene from Alien: Resurrection involved an infectee bear-hugging the scientist responsible for his infection, forcing the Chestburster to go through his chest and the scientist's head, taking his murderer with him to the afterlife. This was actually done in the comic, many years before, but the artists had the creature enter the researcher's chest.

Alternative Title(s): Aliens

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