Aliens (1986) - 52 mistakes

Revealing: When Newt is sliding across the grated floor, Bishop reaches out to save her and you can clearly see he's standing in a hole to make him look cut in half.

Continuity: When the Marines first enter the reactor room, the "Mission Time" readout on the shoulder mounted cameras jumps backwards and forwards in time with every cut.

Other: When the autoguns fire at the aliens for the second time, there is a flashcut of an alien being blasted apart. Watch closely; it's the same clip of the alien that Vasquez shot and subsequently sprayed Drake with acid.

Continuity: During the scene where Ripley is trying to break the window with a chair, there is a scuff mark on it before she hits it. It goes away and comes back.

Continuity: You may need slo-mo to see this: towards the end of the film, when Ripley is going down in the elevator to save Newt, pay close attention to the indicator screen counting off the floor numbers as they pass by. It goes floor 8, 7, 6 then 7 again and then 5.

Continuity: In the sequence when the APC is fleeing the hive, and the alien punches a hole though the windshield to get to Ripley. The hole disappears in the next shot when the light reflects off of the glass.

Continuity: When Ripley and Hicks are discussing their defence plans after the first encounter, they decide to put one of the auto guns in each of three locations, leaving one left over. When we see the guns in place they have actually used two guns in each of two locations, that is, two pairs.

Continuity: When Ripley and the Queen fall into the airlock, look closely at the Queen's tail. It seems that the sharp end of it is broken off, or missing. Later on in that scene it is back.

Plot hole: Director's cut: When the autoguns were mowing down the army of Aliens coming through the service tunnels, there should have been enough acid blood being sprayed out to melt a massive hole in the tunnel. But the acid has no effect at all on the tunnel walls.

Continuity: In the end of the film, when Ripley pulls the Alien queen down in to the hatch we can see that the bulb on top of the machine cracks but when they are lying on the hatch the bulb is whole.

Continuity: There are many holes in the 'squad structure' once the marines arrive at Hadley's Hope. Gorman calls up 1st Squad (comprised of Apone, Vasquez, Crowe and Hudson) to approach the colony first. They do. But, if you look closely, there are other marines present. When they arrive at the door Apone goes straight to the console, Hudson holds back to our left and Crowe rests in the background on the right of the screen. Apone then calls Hudson up to do a bypass. If you look closely as Hudson runs up to the console you will see Frost in the background, he steps up to the left of Crowe (his left) and on the left of the screen, you will see Wierzbowski crouch with his flamethrower, slightly obscured by Vasquez (look between her legs). Then 2nd squad is called up. It is comprised of Hicks, Dietrich, Drake, Frost and Wierzbowski. Watch the shot of Vasquez entering the lock and you will see Frost standing roughly where he was when the 1st Squad ran up. Clearly the original scene had all the marines descend on the North Lock simultaneously. The confusion continues when Gorman, Ripley, Burke and Bishop enter the South Lock. They meet up with Hicks' squad yet Dietrich and Wierzbowski are curiously absent.

Continuity: Director's Cut: During the briefing scene on board of the Sulaco, Lt. Gorman begins the briefing. He gets interrupted by Hudson. Before the shot changes to Hudson, you can see Gorman standing straight in front of the marines and looking straight ahead. In the shot from Hudson, you can see Gorman looking to the right to face Hudson. He still should be looking straight ahead.

Continuity: During the Cargo Loader vs. Queen fight, Ripley grabs the Queen and it closes around her neck. In the next shot it is closed around its head. It changes extremely quickly; therefore it couldn't have changed position.

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene at the colony when a large vehicle approaches the camera, the reflection of someone's face can be seen showing the true scale of the miniature.

Revealing: In the Special Edition of the film, in the scene where the Marines are conducting their initial search of the colony, the shot where Hudson and Vasquez enter the "negative situation" room (where they find the hamster) is obviously sped up. You can tell by how quickly Vasquez seems to move when she comes through the door.

Visible crew/equipment: When an alien rises out of the water to kidnap Newt, you can see two wires lifting its tail out of the water.

Continuity: When Bishop is impaled by the Queen alien he spews android fluid/juice all over his chin. In a subsequent shot his chin is clean and he is spewing fluid again. The following shot his chin is once again covered.

Other: When Ripley shows off her skill with the power-loader, another walks along in the background. Look carefully, it's Ripley driving.

Continuity: At the beginning of Aliens, when the door is cut through, the markings and lettering on the transparent cover of Ripley's suspended animation pod are different from those that were on it when she was asleep at the end of Alien.

Continuity: At the very end, when Ripley is closing the lid of Hicks's sleeping capsule, we see a shot of him and the bandage almost covers his left eye. In the close-up shot of the lid closing, the bandage is further up on his forehead.

Continuity: When remote sentries A and B start firing at the aliens in the tunnel, the display on A shows 500 rounds before they start firing. However, both remotes A and B had been previously test-fired by Vasquez and should show lower counts.

Visible crew/equipment: In the Reactor Room scene, where the Marines first encounter the aliens, there's a part where Dietrich is grabbed from behind and accidentally ignites Frost with her flamethrower, causing him to fall down the stairwell.  As he's falling, if you look, you can see part of a leg and a cable belonging to one of the technicians on the set.

Continuity: In the shot were Ripley is driving the crew away from the aliens, note the big dent in the vehicle. Then in another shot when they finally get outside, there's a shot from the side and the dent is gone.

Continuity: When Newt is caged in the resin, the cloud of steam around the egg completely disappears when Newt is seen from the p.o.v. of the egg.

Continuity: As Ripley tucks Newt into bed for a nap, the angle of the reading lamp over the bed changes about 45 degrees following their close up discussion of the scary dreams of the doll.

Revealing: When Ripley first burns the egg plants inside the nest, the Queen screams and moves her head. The steel rod used to hold the Queen's head to the rest of her body is easily visible.

Visible crew/equipment: Throughout the sequence when the female pilot is preparing to drop the ship with Ripley and the marines on down to LV412, you can see a crewmember in her reflective sunglasses.

Revealing: At the end, just after Ripley kills the facehugger that is going to attack Newt who is cocooned in the nest, an Alien leaps along the walls toward Ripley and you can quickly see wires attached to the Alien's back leading off to the top of the screen that helped to move it. (These wires are illuminated by the smoke in the background. Slow-mo helps but is not needed.)

Visible crew/equipment: Just after Ripley drops the first flare (on her way back to rescue Newt), the shadow of a crewmember is cast on Ripley's back.

Revealing: When the loader is dragged into the airlock by the Queen, during the shot where you see the orange light get smashed on the floor (seconds before it actually falls in), you can see two wires attached to the loader leading off screen.

Visible crew/equipment: A wire is visibly attached to the queen's tail as it bursts out from Bishops' chest. (Slow-mo helps but is not necessary.)

Revealing: Briefly after landing on the planet, we see the APC trundle across the ground. The way it moves shows it is a model, every little bump makes it jump up and down. This is a shame, considering that when it is inside the facility and in subsequent shots, it looks very good.

Revealing: When Ripley rescues Newt, an alien comes from a corner and it jumps from side to side. In the second jump, you can see two wires on its back.

Visible crew/equipment: During the first attack scene in the hive, a marine gets killed and as he falls between the stairwells, his flamethrower goes off. Just as he falls down into the hold, you can see a crew member's foot moving backwards out of the shot.

Continuity: When Ripley sees the Queen on the Sulaco, she tells Newt to run. In the next shot of Newt getting up, she has moved further away from the step.

Continuity: In the battle scene between Ripley (in the loader) and the Queen, the caution light and cover are damaged as the Queen tries to pull the loader into the airlock when Ripley tries to drop it. In the next scene, we see the loader lying on the floor of the airlock with the yellow cover still in one piece.

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene where Newt and Ripley are trapped in a room with two facehuggers, Newt traps one with a table, and you can briefly see the operator's hand manipulating the legs.

Continuity: In the extended edition of the film, Ripley, Gorman, Burke, and Bishop meet up with Hicks at the entranceway. It is raining heavily and Ripley's hair gets soaked. But when she is inside a few minutes later, it looks as if she has had time to dry her hair thoroughly between now and then.

Revealing: When Bishop is doing his knife trick on Hudson it's obviously fast forwarded as you can clearly see the head of Apone in the background move way too fast for real life. No one can move their head that fast without snapping their neck.

Continuity: Right after Ripley is rescued from the Narcissus, look at her hair in the clinic. At first there is a wide angle shot of the nurse coming over to her with some small talk. Then, when the shot changes to a close up of Ripley and the nurse, her hair has puffed out about 2 inches more.

Other: There are 2 squads of marines in the film, 9 in total. Squad one is Apone, Vasquez, Hudson, Crowe, Wierzbowski. Squad 2 is Hicks, Frost, Dietrich, Drake. But as the marines enter the compound you clearly see 5 marines running up to the door, and shortly after, Apone shouts for second squad to move up. As they move look closely and you will see 5 more moving up. 5+5=10, who is the mystery marine?

Continuity: After the Alien Queen is sucked out of the airlock, Ripley climbs back onto the platform and closes the doors. In a shot from above, her left leg has not yet crossed the mouth of the opening. Cut to a closer shot and half her body is already on the platform.

Continuity: In the original "Alien", Ripley dons a space suit in the shuttle, in preparation to decompressing the quarters to the hard vacuum of space. The helmet has no light on its top. Subsequently, in "Aliens", the opening shots pan through the shuttle chamber, and Ripley's helmet sits there...with a light on its top.

Continuity: When the marines first encounter the Alien hive in the reactor, and Ghorman asks Hudson what he's seeing, we're treated to a shot of Vasquez' helmet cam, and her name in the bottom right is missing her first initial. [Timecodes are from the special edition of the movie. The first one is the one for the error, and the second is a different scene with the initial present for comparison.]

Continuity: Towards the end of the film where Ripley and Bishop are in the dropship flying towards the atmosphere processors, Ripley begins to build a composite weapon from a flamethrower and a pulse rifle. She pulls a flamethrower from a rack on the wall, but lays pulse rifle on the deck of the ship, and then pulls a pulse rifle from the rack and lays a flamethrower on top of the pulse rifle.

Audio problem: In the beginning of the scene where the soldiers are eating in the mess hall, the soundtrack of background noise is played, then repeated.

Continuity: When the drop ship is about to leave the main ship look at the picture on the side of the ship, just to the left of the parrots window. There is a symbol of an eagle. Note which way it is facing. Later when the ship is on the planets surface and the marines are leaving it, the eagle is facing the other way.

Continuity: Pulse rifles have 10 mm caseless ammo, but if you watch the scene where Vasquez depletes her rifle and then switches to the pistol, there clearly are shell cases being spat out.

Continuity: When Ripley is giving Newt the cup of hot chocolate the handle is on Newt's right. When it shows the close up shots, the handle is on Newt's left.

Continuity: When Gorman and Burke come to see Ripley to persuade her to come to LV-426, Burke hands her a plastic card so she can call him if she changes her mind. At this point Ripley lights a cigarette. The scene then cuts to a view of the whole room, and Ripley can be seen lighting the cigarette again.

Revealing: When Michael Biehn's character reaches for Newt for the first time while she's cowering in the recess of the hallway, he cries out just before she bites him.

Continuity: When Ripley enters the hive, right before she lights the second flare, she fires a flamethrower burst. When she does, the starter flame goes out, then in the next scene it is on again.