some interesting trivia threads will be posted on movies.. read them they are as entertaining as the movies =)

- As Ripley is getting out of the atmosphere plant at the end of the film, there's a countdown. If you time it, you find that the plant blows up about a minute and a half ahead of schedule, a pleasant change from the usual direction artistic time works in the movies.
- This isn't a mistake, but a funny little thing: When you look closely to Drake's an Vasquez' Auto-cannons, you can clearly see, that these are modified German machine guns, produced by Heckler & Koch. In some shots, when firing, you can also see the ammo-belts hanging out of the guns (e.g. when Drake is firing his last rounds, just before he drops the gun). These machineguns are also carried by some Stormtroopers in "Star Wars" - almost unmodified.
- Just in case you didn't know. The woman that plays Vasquez is the same woman that plays John Conner's foster mother in Terminator II. It's amazing what they can do with makeup. James Cameron, like many directors, likes to use the same actors. Michael Beihn (Hicks) is sent back to save Sarah Conner in Terminator. Vasquez is also in Cameron's Titanic. She is the mother of the two kids in the belly of the ship telling them a bedtime story before they die. She did a pretty good Irish accent then as well.
- 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.
- 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.
- Just an aside - if you look at a lot of the hardware used by the colonial marines it is the same hardware you see used by the humans in the film "Terminator" the first one, some of the guns, the flash lights (which are just roadside emergency lights, I have a few) and some of the armour.
- Oscar to the editor - when they are landing on LV-426, Acheron colony, the time is on the money - when Apone announces "10 seconds people, look sharp" it is ten seconds exactly - the entire time of landing is real time (yes, bored one night I used a stop watch).
- When the first landing party go into the base and walk through the lab, just before Hudson makes a noise by knocking something off a bench, you can clearly see a deep fat fryer amongst the various scientific equipment.
- One of the sets for Aliens was later re-used as the Axis Chemical plant in Batman.
- At the end, after Ripley saves Newt from the hive, they emerge from the elevator to discover that Bishop has apparently left them behind. As the Queen Alien approaches them, Ripley tells Newt to close her eyes, and then Newt cries out "Look!" as Bishop appears in the dropship. The triumphant music which plays as the ship rises was used again in "Die Hard," when Karl emerges from the building at the end and tries to kill McClane, only to be gunned down by Powell.