The Thing

Corrected entry: Supposedly the thing landed/crashed and crawled out afterwards into the freezing arctic, where it froze solid. Well and good. Why did it leave the ship into the freezing environment it could not tolerate? As soon as it enters the ship it fires it up and starts to take off. So there was apparently nothing wrong with the ship requiring it to go outside in the first place.

Correction: The idea is the alien got flung out of the ship when it crashed, ending up in the ice and freezing solid before it could escape back inside.

lionhead

Corrected entry: In a deleted scene, when they burn Karl, it is obvious that the stuntman is wearing a fake "Karl" mask.

Correction: Which is one of the reasons they deleted the scene. It's like saying one of the actors flubbed their lines in an unused take.

Corrected entry: If the creature can't imitate inanimate material, how does it replicate the person's clothing perfectly?

Correction: It doesn't. In every case, it rips through the person's clothes, leaving them covered in blood. It tries to hide the clothing in various ways, but several times we see the blood-soaked clothes. It simply puts on new clothes.

Corrected entry: I can just barely understand the logic behind an Antarctic research station having a small number of handguns and at least one assault rifle. But flamethrowers and grenades? No reason, other than to drive the plot.

Correction: Should there be a loss of power, flamethrowers and thermite grenades would be useful for melting ice and starting fires for warmth. And it actually makes a lot of sense to have weapons in 1982, it was still the Cold War and the Soviets had a large presence there.

Grumpy Scot

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Mistakes

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

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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Questions

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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