Plot hole: It's never explicitly stated or shown that the Thing reproduces with each victim until the movie is nearly over (when Palmer infects Windows). Most viewers figure it out from the context, but it's unclear just when and how the characters themselves have come to this conclusion. This was an inadvertent result of an editing decision and a visual goof: there is a deleted scene in which Blair explains much more directly that the Thing multiplies according to how many victims it takes, and in its place in the final film is a scene containing a computer simulation that director John Carpenter acknowledges was a failed attempt at explaining the organism's life cycle.
The Thing (1982)
Ending / spoiler
Directed by: John Carpenter
Starring: Kurt Russell, Keith David, Wilford Brimley, David Clennon, T.K. Carter
Nauls disappears and is never seen again. Garry is killed by Blair who turns into the Thing. It destroys MacReady's detonator so instead MacReady throws a stick of dynamite at it. The building explodes. MacReady stumbles to a shack to find Childs there. They take swigs of a bottle of whiskey as the camera shows a wide shot of the camp in flames. Childs and MacReady sit around not knowing if the other is the Thing or not...
Vigilant88
Clark: I dunno what the hell's in there, but it's weird and pissed off, whatever it is.
Question: Was the huge monster McReady encounters, and subsequently blows up, the actual "default" form of the Thing? After all, the correspondent DVD chapter is titled "The Real Thing". Yes, they do say that the Thing could've imitated millions of different lifeforms, but it must've had a form to begin with.
Answer: In the book, it was vaguely humanoid with blue rubbery skin, a head of writhing tentacles, and 3 glowing red eyes. There is a picture of it in Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials by Wayne Barlowe.
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Answer: At the end, the large creature presented itself as an amalgam of beings it had absorbed-part Blair, part dog, and various other beings with tentacles, insect-like legs, and a worm-like body. I don't believe that we really ever see what its true form is, if it has one.
Erik M.