The Thing

Factual error: Winter in Antarctica would not have a night and day as portrayed, with the amount of light changing so much during the course of 24 hours.

Factual error: The very first time we see Kate, when she is examining the extracted specimen, she is listening to music on molded plastic headphones that were not available in 1982. Smaller headphones such as these, designed at the time for listening to Walkman-like portable equipment would have had a metal band going over the head, holding the earpieces in place.

THGhost

Factual error: When they decide to disable the snow vehicles in order to keep anybody from leaving the base, they decide to disable the engines by cutting the spark plug wires with mechanics sheers. The only problem is that the engines in the snow vehicles (you can hear this to be true) are diesel engines - and diesel engines do not have spark plugs at all. The plugs in the movie were for gasoline engines.

Plot hole: Through this film (and its predecessor) it is established that the creature imitates its victims perfectly, having all of their knowledge and memory. At the end, when the female lead tells the male lead she knew he was human because of his earring, he reaches for the wrong ear, confirming he is The Thing. Even if The Thing couldn't reproduce the earring, it would have known which ear it was supposed to be in.

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Suggested correction: It is also established in this film that the creature cannot perfectly imitate inorganic materials; the tooth fillings, metal plate, etc. Kate knows that Carter is The Thing and asks him a trick question about his earring to confirm it. The fact that The Thing reaches for the wrong ear means that it didn't know where the earring really was because it cannot perfectly imitate inorganic materials. There is no mistake here.

THGhost

The mistake has nothing to do with The Thing not being able to imitate inorganic material. The mistake is The Thing has all the memories and thus should know which ear was pierced based on these memories.

Bishop73

This goes with my theory that he was actually human because he didn't try to assimilate her when they we're alone and far away from people, and he didn't change when he was threatened and accused which was backed by (potentially false if the theory is correct) evidence which would make it defend itself.

You're obviously wrong here. The Thing imitates the human perfectly including the memory and I'm pretty sure that if you only have one ear pierced you'd know which one is it, therefore the imitation would know.

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Trivia: The fire effects throughout were done practically instead of digitally via clever in-camera effects and the use of special suits, gels and rigs allowing for precisely-controlled burns and for stuntmen to remain aflame longer.

Erik M.

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Question: In the last part of the movie, how are they supposed to drive the snow vehicles? There is a scene before where they cut the wires of all the vehicles to disable them for the quarantine. Am I missing something?

Michele SoIntense Anghileri

Chosen answer: By disabling the snow vehicles, they are making sure that the creature can't use them to escape from the quarantine zone. Since the creature can assimilate anybody, it would probably know how to use one.

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