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.
The Thing (2011)
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Directed by: Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
Starring: Joel Edgerton, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Eric Christian Olsen, Ulrich Thomsen
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2011 saw the prequel to The Thing tackle the story about what happened to the Norwegian arctic camp populated by scientists who had originally discovered the spaceship-and the sole survivor. A larger team--including two women--face the shape-shifting, body-possessing horror in this less-suspenseful and more grotesque film that has the monster rampage and decimate the humans, filling in various gaps left as backstory in John Carpenter's original classic. Mary Elizabeth Winstead's plucky Paleontologist character Kate Lloyd tries her best to survive in a nod to the Last Girl trope and Alien's Ripley, but if you've seen The Thing, you know that things don't bode well for any of them. Imaginative SFX by the dynamic horror duo of Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, Jr. bring the nastiness to life. See it and watch 1982's The Thing in either order-the idea of an unknown and murderous life-form attacking isolated and ill-prepared people remains the same.
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More trivia for The Thing
Question: They find the thing trying to escape the initial crash but it froze. In the 1982 version, they find another thing in a similar manner. Does this mean Kate was infected but didn't know it but turned as she walked off into the night?
Answer: In the 1982 version they never find another thing in a similar manner. It's just the one creature. Whether Kate was or was not infected is irrelevant, she was not found in the 1982 plot.
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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.