Corrected entry: In the scene where Ripley drives the APC into the hive to save the marines a flamethrower accidentally ignites the APC. When this happens Hudson yells "Fire in the hole" to tell everyone that the vehicle is on fire. Any marine would know that this phrase means that an explosive charge has been placed by the speaker and has nothing to do with anything being on fire.
Corrected entry: When Ripley goes to rescue Newt, she only uses the tracker bracelet to try and find her. Why didn't she also take along a motion sensor? It could have not only helped her find Newt quicker, but would have given her warning if there were any aliens closing in.
Correction: They only had two motion sensors on the planet. At the beginning of the final battle, Hudson has one, which was presumably lost with him, and Ripley has the other. She carries this for some time, but seems to drop it in the lift (she has it when they enter, she's lost it by the time they leave) either to help the injured Hicks, or possibly it's been damaged by acid from the alien who attacked them there. If there were no spares on the second dropship, and there's no indication that there were, then she simply doesn't have a motion sensor available to take with her.
Corrected entry: Near the start, Burke gives his phone card to Ripley in her cabin, and his name is spelled "Bourke." But in the credits, his name is spelled "Burke."
Correction: On the card, it reads "Carter J. Burke." It's a bit hard to read because of the design of the card, but it does say Burke.
Corrected entry: 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. (00:45:55)
Correction: We see Newt bite Hicks and it's not until the camera changes from Newt to Hicks do we hear him cry out. But by then, he's already bitten.
Corrected entry: When the marines are in the dropship and ready to go to the planet below, the couplers release and the ship literally drops from the Sulaco which is in a gentle orbit. The dropship should have continued to move with the Sulaco in orbit.
Correction: Assuming that the planet has the same gravity pull as our Earth, all that would be required for the dropship to appear to "drop down" would be for the Sulaco to give the it "a push" and/or the dropship to push back.
I think it's the dropship's own propulsion system which sends it plummeting at high speed towards the planet.
Corrected entry: Bishop's programming about "he is not allowed to harm, or by omission of action allowed to harm, a human being (paraphrased) is the same prime directive of the androids in Isaac Asimov's "Robot's of Dawn" series.
Correction: The rule is invented by Asimov, however it is a widely used rule by other writers/ filmmakers for robots in general, not for androids specific.
Corrected entry: One of the sets for Aliens was later re-used as the Axis Chemical plant in Batman.
Corrected entry: When Vasquez goes to weld the piece of pipe back in place part of it has already been welded. Look at the right of the screen. The piece has already been tack welded before she fires up the torch. (01:41:05)
Correction: It's not tack welding seen at the right, it's slag from the torch cutting.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Bishop "does the thing with the knife," it appears Ripley is sitting at the end of the table with the rest of the marines. She is watching the events with Bishop and Hudson. However when Bishop sits next to Ripley, she's at a different table and her back is to the other marines. Did I see this right?
Correction: Almost. Ripley has spun round 90 degrees to watch what is happening at the other end. Because the camera is low down it looks as if Ripley is at the same table. In some shots you can see her legs however, indicating she has just swivelled round on her stool.
Corrected entry: In the final rescue of Newt, Ripley wisely uses flamethrower bursts to make sure the small hallways are clear of aliens. However in all other scenes involving the Incinerators they leave a flaming wash behind that continues to burn for a while (ex. the APC rescue). Obviously the director couldn't have Ripley wait around for the wash to die down so the bursts burn clean.
Correction: Flamethrowers use a pressurized liquid that sprays out and ignites. In every other scene, the flamer was sprayed directly ON something (like Frost or the APC). Ripley fires it straight down the tunnel to flush out any hiding aliens, so it has nothing to cling to.
Corrected entry: When Spunkmeyer is loading a weapon into the ship he lifts it up to the ship with the walking forklift. As it is pulled into the ship we see strings holding up the back end of the weapon to keep it level. These strings were not there as he carried the weapon. (00:36:30)
Correction: Not so. The cables are being used by the guys in the background that are guiding a large, black object that is suspended from heavy cables, going from left to right in the distance.
Corrected entry: When Vasquez cuts a hole in the pipe for Bishop to up link with the mother ship to get the other landing plane, the plate from the pipe falls in to the hole. When Bishop is in the pipe, Vasquez and Ripley place the cut out piece back on the hole to weld it in place. The cut out piece is smaller than the hole. It was cut out from the pipe and should not fit over the hole without falling through. (01:40:20)
Correction: They probably just did the very common thing of turning the plate around so the left side was welded to the right side of the hole etc. It wouldn't fall through that way as Vazquez obvioulsy didn't cut a perfectly shaped piece of metal.
Corrected entry: In the first encounter with the alien queen Ripley ignites the eggs, unloads the pulse rifle, and then throws her ammunition harness and grenades into the fire for good measure. However, when they get to the elevator the harness is back on without any grenades.
Correction: This is untrue. Ripley clips on a harness first, then she just puts a bandola of grenades over her neck/one shoulder. Then at the end she just throws the bandola into the flames. The harness remains on throughout.
Corrected entry: Only six aliens were used for this film, painstaking editing made it look like there were hundreds of them. If you watch carefully, you'll notice there are never more than six aliens on screen at one time.
Correction: This piece of trivia is an extremely common mistake made about the film Aliens. There were actually about 20 alien suits in all. James Cameron corrected this in an interview in the 90's, and if you check the picture galleries on the Alien Quadrilogy DVD, you can see them all.
Corrected entry: During the briefing on the Sulaco Hudson's comment "Someone said alien. She thought they said illegal alien, signed up." was an inside joke. When Jeanette Goldstein was told they were casting a movie titled "Aliens" she thought it was about the U.S/Mexican border. So for her screen test she tried to look and sound as Hispanic as possible. So she was cast as Vasquez.
Correction: This is almost correct. She wasn't cast because she looked and sounded Hispanic. In the first audition, she told them that she had done some body building in the past, which earned her a second chance.
Corrected entry: In the final showdown on the planet, the Aliens have burst in all around the Ops room. As Ripley is making her way to Medical, Gorman is in the upper corner of the screen, firing his handgun. Watch him, and you will see him point and shoot three times, you hear the clicks, but there is no noise, report or flash, just the actor pointing an empty weapon clicking away, as he apparently hits targets. (01:39:25)
Correction: He is firing rapidly until his magazine is empty. In his mindset of trying to kill the aliens he doesn't notice that his magazine is empty or the gun is jammed until he fires it a few times.
Corrected entry: When Ripley drops the queen into the airlock, look at her just before the queen grabs hold of the cargo loader. Ripley is now a model. She has no face.
Correction: Play it in slow motion or watch closely: she has a face.
Corrected entry: Smartguns and Pulse Rifles being fired both have two very distinct, differing sounds. Yet towards the end of the film where they are fending off aliens, Vasquez and Hudson are both firing pulse rifles that sound just like smartguns.
Correction: Smartguns and Pulse rifles have identical firing noises.
Corrected entry: When Ripley is going to rescue Newt, it's very hot in the corridors (as evidenced by Frost and Hudson's exchange earlier in the film), so why do we see the Alien Queen's breath?
Corrected entry: How is it that the marine drop-ship immediately plunges towards the planet's surface when released from the mother ship, but the mother ship itself appears to be in a stable orbit around the planet? One of the two ships is defying the laws of physics.
Correction: We don't know exactly what transpires between the drop-ship and the mother ship. When the latches release, the smaller ship could be forced away by magnetic repulsion, or use a jet of compressed gas, or some other method of propulsion yet unknown to us. Any way you look at it, once it is lower than the mother ship it will continue to drop at a faster rate.
Correction: In 200-300 years this phrase could have changed. Also he may actually be saying "fire in the hull", as in the hull of the APC, not necessarily "fire in the hole".