Goofs for
Aliens (1986) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: Ripley's headset around the time she tells Gorman "they're cut off".
  
  
• Continuity: When the queen grabs the loader in the final fight scene, she topples it over first smashing the yellow rotating beacon light on the top then pulling it in the airlock, but when the loader is shown in the air lock the light is undamaged and operating.
  
  
• Continuity: The APC window becomes unshattered.
  
  

• Continuity: When Ripley tries to break the glass in the med lab there is a scuff mark on the glass before her first swing. After this finishes, the mark disappears and we see Ripley actually making the mark with her second swing.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Bishop's body as he stops Newt being sucked out of the airlock.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): During the inquest, Van Leuwen refers to Ripley's company ID number as NOC14472 while the data screen in the background displays NOC14672.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The Marines in the film wear (current) Army stripes - although it is likely that insignia will change in the next several hundred years, they of course do not necessarily have to.
  
  
• Continuity: The first time Ripley grabs the Alien queen during the fight in the power loader, the loader's hand is closing on the queen's neck. In the next shot the hand has grasped the queen's snout.
  
  
• Continuity: When Burke, Ripley and Lt. Gorman first enter the colony building, they pass through the pouring rain outside and get soaking wet. A few seconds later, inside the building, their clothes and Ripley's hair are dry again. (This scene is part of the extended edition)
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the Alien surfaces to snatch Newt, two wires lifting its tail out of the water can be seen.
  
  
• Continuity: Just after finding Newt, Ripley gives her a cup of hot chocolate and the cup handle switches sides between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: Near the end when Ripley is on the dropship, she is seen arming herself. We see her grab a flamethrower from the weapons rack. She then lays a pulse rifle on the deck. Next she pulls a pulse rifle from the rack, and lays down a flamethrower.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Just before Ripley rescues Newt from the cocoon, she kills the parasite coming out of the pod and one of the aliens charges at her. As it is moving down and towards Ripley, wires can be seen on top, helping to move it along.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the loader falls into the airlock the wires holding it can be seen.
  
  
• Continuity: When the team first go to sub-level 3 to find the nest, the mission time in the bottom left corner of their head-cams keeps jumping backwards and forwards.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Bishop is remotely guiding the second dropship on its final approach to the landing pad, wires can be seen holding the ship on the deployable weapons pod.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Pvt. Frost gets burnt and falls to his death, you can see a cameraman's leg.
  
  
• Continuity: On the combat drop from the Sulaco, Hicks falls asleep. However, when Hudson is giving his speech to Ripley, Hicks is sat behind Hudson and is wide awake, but when it cuts back to him he is asleep again. Then in the next shot he is still awake and then he goes back to being asleep, which then corresponds to Apone saying, "Somebody, wake up Hicks".
  
  
• Continuity: In the elevator escape scene where Hicks gets acid sprayed, he holds his gun in front of his face and turns his head to the left. Any acid burns he got would have been to the right side of his face. As they fight to remove his melting chest armor, there are no acid marks on his face. When they leave the elevator, there are acid burns are on the left side of his head, instead of the right side.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Newt's mother is calling in the mayday, she is heard saying "Alpha zero two four niner" repeatedly, but the second time she says it her mouth is saying something else. (Special Edition only)
  
  
• Continuity: When we see the Alien Queen fall into the airlock with the power loader, the tip of the Queen's tail has fallen off, yet it returns afterwards.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When the marines and Ripley are in the Operations Room (chapter 24: 1hr 35) and the throng of aliens have burst in, there's a shot of Hicks with Gorman in the background and Gorman is shooting but no sound or gun fire is seen.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Bishop is "doing the thing with knife" the scene is sped up to give the impression that Bishop is lightning fast. Apone can be seen rocking his head back and forth, also at a ridiculous speed.
  
  
• Continuity: In the opening scene of Ripley (frozen), it shows her head tilted to her left, then the close-up shows her faced forward.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the escape in the APC, containers fall from the overhead storage, yet none of them strike Gorman anywhere near his head - they later say he has a concussion, and leaves the medlab with blood from his wounds showing through his bandage. In fact, only one of the containers strikes Gorman on the right arm and they way in which they fall indicate they are empty, clearly not enough force to knock him out cold.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When the team is descending down to the planet, camera lights and screens are clearly visible in the reflection off Ferro's mirrored sunglasses, and in several shots.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: During the ventilation shaft scene towards the end of the movie Vasquez tells Gorman "you always were an asshole". However, you do not see her lips moving at the end after the camera angle changes.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The shuttle pilot's seat has ejection handles. Since the shuttle travels between atmosphere & space, wouldn't ejection would be more dangerous than remaining on-board, both for the pilot AND passengers? Not necessarily so - pilot ejection would still be practical for atmospheric flight, and a sufficiently advanced seat could include a deployable bubble or shell for surviving space or even atmospheric re-entry. Passenger or payload recovery would be more problematic. But again, an integrated system of the future might provide reasonable survival capability.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Ripley goes to medical to sleep with Newt, she lays her rifle on top of the bed and then lays down on the floor beside Newt. Moments later she looks to break the glass but finds her rifle laying on a table on the other side of the glass. The scene makes it clear that Burke entered while she and Newt were asleep and laid down the opened containment cylinders with the facehuggers inside of them; it's fairly obvious that he moved her rifle out of the room as well (note Ripley's expression when she sees her rifle).
  
  
• Continuity: After an alien smashes a hole through the triangular windshield on the APC during the escape from under the cooling tower the windshield is then shown with an unbroken windshield as it exits on to the planet surface.
  
  
• Continuity: Towards the end, when Ripley is on her way to rescue Newt, we see the pilot light on Ripley's flamethrower. When she pauses to drop a flare there is no pilot light. The next shot shows the pilot light again.
  
  
• Continuity: Gorman tells Ripley that the pulse rifles shoot caseless ammunition, yet when Vasquez lets off a long burst in the air duct one can see brass casings flying out from it.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Ripley begins to torch the eggs in the chamber and the queen screams, you can clearly see that her head is not very well attached to the neck, revealing some metal parts from inside the model.
  
  
• Continuity: Hicks says that their pulse rifles have 50 rounds each. But yet, when they use their rifles to defend themselves from the aliens, it appeared that the rifles had a lot more than just 50 rounds.
  
  
• Continuity: The first dropship has the "Bugstomper: We endanger species" logo just beneath the cockpit. During the scene where the APC rolls around the corner and is loaded onto the dropship we see the other side (pointing to the right) of the dropship and the logo faces the same way as on the pointing to the left side. In every other scene the Bigstomper logo has been correctly painted in a reverse manner it still faces toward the front end of the dropship.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the committee is around the table to discuss Ripley's fate, the chairs upon which they sit are revealed to be automobile seats by the presence of headrest mounting holes on the top.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Whilst Ferro is piloting the drop-ship down to the planetoid, on the computer screen showing navigation, the characters at the bottom of the screen are back to front, indicating that the scene had been mirrored.
  
  
• Continuity: In the final scene where Ripley is fighting the Queen, when they fall into the airlock chamber, you can clearly see that the tip of the Queen's tail is cut off. Throughout the movie they've made it a point to show that Aliens bleed acid, but when the Queen's tail is cut, it doesn't bleed at all (which would eat through the outer door and cause an air leak).
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Ripley is firing grenades into the Queen's ovipositor, after one of the last explosions, an intact, yellow chicken egg yolk is clearly seen sliding out of the wound. (It is even more obvious in one of the Quadrilogy's featurettes.)
  
  
• Continuity: After the Queen falls down the airlock, the tip of her tail has been broken off (obviously unintentional, and overlooked or not repaired by the crew.) The tip is back on moments later as she's tumbling through space.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Private Hudson refers to Sergeant Apone as "sir," instead of "Sergeant." It's highly unlikely that the Marine Corps custom of only addressing commissioned officers as sir (or ma'am) would change in the future. Non-Commissioned Officers are referred to by their rank.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The wire that pulls the Queen's tail out of Bishop's chest is visible, but it is *not* the white strand that most people assume to be it. The strand is just an unidentified piece of material pulled out *by* the tail, and can be seen to snap and fall away. The wire itself is a monofilament visible for a brief moment before the tail begins to emerge.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When escaping from the Queen, Ripley and Newt get into the elevator to our left. A second elevator arrives to our right which the Queen enters. On the platform, Ripley and Newt emerge from the elevator door to our right, and the Queen from the door to our left. The elevators haven't switched places: they boarded using the cargo doors on the front of the elevator, and exited using the cargo doors on the back, so we're seeing the opposite side of the elevators.
  
  
• Continuity: In the first battle scene, as the aliens begin moving toward the squad, Hudson's scanner start picking up targets. Sgt Apone says "talk to me, Hudson!" as he is walking past a rather large amount of flames. But there shouldn't be anything on fire yet, as the scene where Dietrich accidentally torches Frost with the flamethrower hasn't happened yet.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the opening scene where the salvage crew discovers Ripley in the shuttle's cryo chamber, when one of the crew wipes frost from the plexiglas cover and shines a light on Ripley, she blinks slightly.
  
  

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