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| “ | This thing doesn't want to show itself; it wants to hide inside an imitation. It'll fight if it has to, but it's vulnerable out in the open. If it takes us over, then it has no more enemies. Nobody left to kill it. And then it's won. | „ |
| ~ Mac explains The Thing's vicious prowess in The Thing (1982). |
| “ | It attacks its prey, copies it perfectly and then hides inside it. | „ |
| ~ Kate explains The Thing's life cycle in The Thing (2011). |
The Thing is the titular main antagonist of John W. Campbell's 1938 novella Who Goes There? and its media adaptations. Initially appearing as a single hostile alien being, every cell in The Thing's body is autonomous and independent, capable of creating more of said monsters through assimilation, parasitism, and infection. In addition, every spawned monster looks radically different and none of them have a definite shape that can be called a "true form"; ultimately, The Thing's true body and form are a mystery as it most appears as whomever it impersonates.
In the 1951 film, it was played by the late James Arness. In the 1982 film, it was played by the late wolfdog actor Jed and its vocal sound effects were provided by Alan Howarth. In the 2011 film, its vocal effects were provided by Frank Welker.
Description[]
In nature, the Thing is basically an ambush predator, isolating a potential victim or threat to consume and assume its form. In certain cases, usually when exposed or the person it assimilated is fatally inflicted, the Thing will discard all caution and defend itself by manifesting features that may be of its natural form, including tendrils, claws, and mouths. However, the Thing's most dangerous aspect is its cells, each a functional life form that can become independent from the main body when severed by force or separate to facilitate assimilation and self-preservation. For this reason, it is necessary to destroy the body down to the cellular level, with incineration being an effective method.
Behavior[]
The Thing has only assimilation and self-preservation in mind, as it will selfishly save itself or even attack other forms of its manifestation/progeny in order to avert attention and suspicion. When The Thing is left alone with a suitable target, it will begin to split open and fire out tendrils, which grab the target and begin to assimilate it. In certain cases after discovery or high chance of discovery, The Thing will sometimes perform "divide and conquer" tactics, as in the case of the assimilated Edward which split up into three separate forms: One on his hand quickly detached and animated itself before engaging and assimilating Jonas, another limb scuttled away soon after detaching for potential assimilation in a safer location, and the main body of the Edvard thing killed Derek and successfully assimilated Adam Finch, resulting in a form of The Thing named Split-Face. This is also performed, albeit much less successfully, by the Norris-Thing. When exposed, Things will react depending on how big they are compared to the threat. Smaller Things will generally attempt to escape and ambush prey when the individual is more vulnerable. However, a larger Thing will usually attack prey head-on and attempt to overwhelm any hostiles instead of escaping, although if it has not completely lost its cover, it will attempt to flee.
The Thing's intelligence depends on the size of their manifestations: Smaller ones are quite stupid, dimwitted, nonsensical, and reckless while the larger ones (especially those that imitate a human) are quite cunning, manipulative, and formidably calculating. For example, Norris's mutated head foolishly let itself seen by MacReady and his friends while scuttering away from them, resulting in its incineration. Because The Thing can acquire the memories and knowledge of those who it previously assimilated, they can use said memories and knowledge for their advantage, though only larger manifestations of The Thing are more capable of doing so: the Thing Beast who had assimilated Sander Halvorson was capable of taking control of the UFO which brought it to Earth while the assimilated Blair, on the other hand, built a makeshift UFO and was aware of how dynamite works as when ambushing Macready; it disposed of the detonator before revealing itself to confront him. However, this does not always apply to all larger manifestations of Thing Beasts: Rapture-type Thing Beasts (see below) have no intention of hiding themselves from view, as well as not manifesting useful appendages that supposedly give them advantage in battle like legs, and their chosen forms act primarily with little intelligence. A plausible explanation of this is likely that Rapture-type Thing Beasts' own overconfidence against their foes is so great that they believe mobility to evade their foes' attacks is unnecessary due to their formidable but stationary form.
When exposed, The Thing would attack anyone on sight to save itself. This somewhat serves as their psychological weakness due to their aggressive mood blinding them from serious threats that their foes unexpectedly posed on them: The Thing who manifested from assimilated Juliette recklessly attempted to kill Kate and the others as soon as it unveiled its true form which ironically led to its incineration. Should it survive the ordeal from its foes/preys and manage to hide, The Thing would regain its composure in order to use their original intelligence once again: When Split-Face Thing confronted Sam, it hesitated upon noticing his flamethrower.
The Thing's ability to interact with plant-based life-forms is largely unknown. Its only interaction with plant-based life was in the form of wood/clothing fibers. It cannot absorb these as noted by MacReady, which could suggest an inability to absorb plant cells or dead cells. However, the "Kennel Thing" used a flower-like appendage made of dog tongues and teeth as a threat display. The Things themselves are also remarkable Master Manipulators to a certain degree, not only because they incite paranoia among their foes and victims alike but are also not shown eating or drinking beyond living humans or dogs, and it also leaves the bodies of killed humans or dogs untouched even though there is usable biomass, implies that it understands that potential hosts will react strangely to the presence of someone they know to be deceased. Possible other reasons why it is never seen assimilating fresh corpses are either that it is only able to assimilate living victims or is aware that missing dead bodies would arouse suspicion.
In another feat of reasoning, a Thing destroyed a test that would have lead to its exposure, demonstrating awareness of biology and medical practices that would have exposed it. Interestingly, the second time this same method was proposed as a test, the Thing had seemingly preempted the idea, despite the fact that the Thing that had arrived at the second base was spawned long before the first test was thought of and was in a non-human form. This led to the theory of shared consciousness between Things, especially as the second sabotage was far harder to pull off covertly while sowing seeds of misdirection that exposed its presence.
Biography[]
The Thing (1982 & 2011)[]
| “ | Se til helvete og kom dere vekk! Det er ikke en bikkje, det er en slags ting! Det imiterer en bikkje, det er ikke virkelig! Kom dere vekk, idioter! (Get the hell away! That's not a dog, it's some sort of thing! It's imitating a dog, it's not real! Get away, you idiots!) |
„ |
| ~ Lars' last words, frantically warning Mac's crew. |
The depiction of The Thing from these two modern movies is a lot more faithful to the original novella description than the 1951 counterpart.
Its origin is a mystery, the Thing itself crash-landed in a spacecraft within the icy fields of Antarctica 100,000 years ago and was frozen attempting to escape. However, in 1982, the spacecraft and the Thing were found by a team of American and Norwegian explorers/researchers under Dr. Sander Halvorson from Thules station, who hired Columbia University paleontologist Kate Lloyd to take a sample of the creature's blood as it was brought to the base in a block of ice. But later that evening, the Thing bursts from the ice and kills Lars' Alaskan Malamute, Jed while ingesting Henrik before it was burned alive. However, an autopsy of the scorched alien corpse reveals that its cells are still alive and in the process of assimilating Henrik.
When Kate realizes the Thing already might have had assimilated others, she places the base on quarantine to weed out the Thing based on those who still have metal fillings in their teeth and such, after her initial plan of weeding out the monster through blood sample tests had been sabotaged by The Thing. Due to The Thing's ability to imitate, emulate, mimic and appear exactly like any of the research members, paranoia began to set in. Eventually, the majority of the research team were infected and incinerated before Sander, having been infected, made a run for the spaceship. Kate and Sam Carter, the only two surviving crew members, chased Sanders to the alien UFO where Kate and Carter got separated. Kate eventually managed to pursue and kill the monster and heavily damage the ship beyond any repair. After reuniting with Carter, Kate resolved herself to catch him off guard and incinerated him when she discovered that the earring he previously wore was missing and pointed to the wrong ear when confronted. When Carter was set aflame he emitted an inhuman scream, another evidence that Carter was The Thing. After this, Kate was left all alone, leaving her fate unknown.
Meanwhile, back at the Thules station, Lars' dog (having been infected and lying low until the time was right) made its way to an American Antarctic research station with Lars attempting to kill it before he was shot by Lt. Garry, the station commander. Helicopter pilot R.J. MacReady and Dr. Copper fly to the Norwegian's camp, finding the charred remains of the various Things included the burnt yet preserved corpse that was the station's commander Edvard Wolner after it assimilated Sander's assistant Adam Finch.
After the two-faced corpse was brought to the base, the Americans realize the Thing's presence too late when Lar's dog was placed in a kennel with the station's sled dogs and attempted to assimilate them all. After Childs incinerated the creature, with the team finding the ruins of the spacecraft; the autopsy done by Blair confirmed the Thing's nature as he later proceeded to trap everyone on the base and kill the remaining dogs so no one could leave until the Thing was truly dead before being locked in a tool shed by the others as they devised a way to weed out the Thing by using its autonomous cells to weed out the assimilated. By the time that MacReady and the other normal humans remained, they learned that Blair got assimilated and was building a small escape craft. Realizing that the Thing might also intentionally freeze itself to wait for a rescue team in the spring, MacReady resolved to kill it with dynamite around the complex. After the Blair-Thing was killed, with Garry and Nauls killed off prior, MacReady found Childs with both thinking that the other got assimilated before seeing no point in distrusting each other as they would die of frost within hours.
The Thing (Video Game)[]
In the 2002 video game The Thing, which serves as a sequel for the 1982 & 2011 films (set three months after the 1982 film), it is revealed that The Thing is still alive and waiting for more victims to absorb and kill. This time, there are more numerous manifestations of this alien life form at once, and worse, everything becomes more complicated as most of them have been captured as a means of being repurposed into bioweapons by Gen Inc. However, things went wrong following their escape, as Whitley, the mastermind behind the experiment to modify The Thing into bioweapons, has injected himself with Cloud virus, a viral agent based on The Thing's cells with which he plans to infect the whole planet. Fortunately, Blake (the game's protagonist) foils his plan and destroys him with the help of MacReady, the sole survivor of the 1982 film, before he has a chance to infect the rescue team. In the video game, The Thing was regarded more like a viral organism that has the ability to replicate the original biological entity, including their clothing. This is likely due to the fact that in said game, The Thing had further developed its ability which intrigued Gen Inc. enough to begin experimenting on it.
Variants[]
- Scuttlers: A Thing manifestation from dismembered body parts, more than often detached from bigger ones, with common features such as teeth and spider-like limbs which included stronger hind ones for leaping at preys. In addition of jumping attack and biting, they can spit digestive fluid as a form of long-range attack. It takes few shots of firearm to cripple and/or a single flamethrower blast to kill one.
- Scuttler Pods: Fleshy, blob-like immobile biomass which oose a significant threat for spawning aforementioned Scuttlers. Lacking any form of offensive capabilities, they are vulnerable to firearms and fire.
- Walkers: A Thing manifestation from assimilating humans. Retaining humanoid shape despite severe mutations optimized for combat (warped torso, twisted-looking clawed arms, and insectoid legs). Their early forms were brutish, muscular monsters with a huge, transparent hole in their torso.
- Imitations: A Thing manifestation previously introduced in the film as the recurring threat. Instead of mutating it straight away upon exposure, this manifestation perfectly assumed the host's appearance and only unveil their true horrifying forms as soon as their potential victims lowered their guard. Like Palmer-Thing, their mutations are limited to head and limbs.
- Dog Beasts: A Thing manifestation from assimilating canines not unlike the mutated form of Lar's dog albeit with legs fully developed, endowing great mobility as much as supporting their weight.
- Ruptures: A larger Thing manifestation so big they can take up an entire room or even be part of the room integrated into the architecture. At least one human form typically can be seen embedded in their massive, amorphous and asymmetrical fleshy body and attack with tentacles, teeth, and corrosive fluids. Lacking useful limbs to move about such as legs, they are immobile thus effectively a sitting duck when combating an enemy.
Powers and Abilities[]
- Assimilation: What makes the Thing a terrifying force is its ability to change its shape, infecting a person on a cellular level and then relentlessly absorbing and duplicating their cells, imitating them from the inside out until there is nothing human left. The Thing's copying ability is so perfect that the station dogs didn't know any better until it revealed itself.
- Memory Absorption: When the Thing assimilates a victim, it is able to absorb all of their memories and skills, thus enabling it to better disguise itself as the victim to the point that even their closest allies wouldn't be able to determine they were assimilated.
- Shapeshifting: The Thing is able to change its shape in a gruesome fashion; when doing so, it bursts open and allows a variety of strange and terrifying forms and bits of previously assimilated anatomy to form, such as tentacles, insect-like limbs, eyes, teeth, claws, even faces, eventually re-arranging its cellular structure to mimic its desired shape.
- Invulnerability: The Thing is virtually invulnerable to damage, though some weapons can still hurt it.
- Regeneration: So long as a single cell lives, the Thing can assimilate the cells of other biological organisms to reform itself.
- Intelligence: The Thing's intelligence depends on the size of its manifestations; small Things aren't known for their smarts, but larger Things are much more cunning, manipulative and calculating.
- Longevity: The Thing is able to survive for thousands of years under the right conditions, as it was alive and well once it was thawed from the Antarctic ice 100,000 after it had crashed there.
- Immunity/Resistance to Freezing Temperatures: It suffered no damage from the freezing climate of Antarctica. When it gets cold enough, it falls into hibernation, however, if thawed, it would return to full functionality.
Weaknesses[]
Though their deadly capacities in assimilation and other abilities made The Thing a villainous, threatening force to deal with, there are a number of methods
- Assimilation and Mimicry Limitations: The Thing's infamous ability to assimilate other living beings comes with some limitations;
- They cannot absorb, let alone mimic inorganic materials, which doesn't help by their instinct to shed away inorganic materials embedded into assimilated victims (ex. earrings, tooth fillings, and prosthetics) thus unwittingly give away their true nature to non-infected. This is the least effective method owing to implication of more experienced of Thing manifestations kept theirs to avoid suspicions.
- The same applies to any organism that has been dead for an extended period of time also, either because they would make a poor disguise among non-infected who would predictably notice something off, their circulatory systems too damaged to hasten assimilation process (Copper fails to reanimate as a new Thing despite having his arms bitten off by Norris-Thing which should warrant assimilation only for blood loss prevented it), or both.
- As shown in the case of Ruptures, assimilating too much biomass can be detrimental to a Thing manifestation. The bigger they are, the less mobile they become unless they form useful limbs to carry their weight such as legs.
- They cannot absorb, let alone mimic inorganic materials, which doesn't help by their instinct to shed away inorganic materials embedded into assimilated victims (ex. earrings, tooth fillings, and prosthetics) thus unwittingly give away their true nature to non-infected. This is the least effective method owing to implication of more experienced of Thing manifestations kept theirs to avoid suspicions.
- Blood Tests: There are three types of blood test that can be done to differentiate regular lifeforms and the assimilated ones which actually are a Thing in disguise:
- Blood serum test: A suspected imitation's blood is mixed with uncontaminated blood; which will hypothetically react if the creature is an impostor. This has yet to be proven effective, as The Thing quickly destroyed stored sacks of uncontaminated blood to avoid suspicion.
- Hot needle test: When a sample of disguised Thing's blood is burned with a hot needle, the blood would jump away from the needle. If the blood sample was taken from an unassimilated person, the blood would simply burn and the hot needle would be doused.
- Blood Test Hypo tool: More advanced version of the previous method, where this device extracted a suspected person's blood and it mixed the said blood with a stored chemical agent. As before, the blood would animate and make an attempt to escape, but failed as the chemical agent killed it.
- Electrocution: Electrocution works against The Thing as the method would fry it's cells as seen in Who Goes There?, as well as implied by a Thing's manifestation from Norris's body which suddenly reacts by chomping on Chopper's hands when the latter tries to electrocute him.
- Explosives: Explosives can obliterate a Thing completely, blowing it to pieces and effectively weakening the larger Thing beasts before their remains are incinerated.
- Incineration: Incineration can kill a Thing manifestation as fire would destroy it on a cellular level, but this is mostly effective on medium- to smaller-sized Thing manifestations, as larger ones had a chance to survive albeit incapacitated, as proved when part of the Split-Face Thing survived in spite of being heavily injured by Kate's flamethrower.
- Blind Fury: Upon being exposed or revealing itself on purpose, a Thing manifestation becomes aggressive, entering a state of tunnel vision in which it too fixated to attack and consume anyone within their line of sight while completely ignoring potential threats nearby.
Appearance[]
The Thing has the ability to shapeshift and take on the appearance of any individual nearby, usually taking on the appearance of those of it's victims, such as a human or an animal such as a dog. Although not much is known about its true appearance, but judging by its actual form when it changes, it is much more horrifying: that of a monstrous creature with a variety of strange and terrifying forms as well as bits of previously assimilated anatomy to form, such as tentacles, insect-like limbs, eyes, sharp teeth and claws and even faces. These are it's forms in the 2011 and 1982 films:
The Thing (2011)[]
- Original Thing: A Thing, possibly the original one, with insect-like limbs, a harpoon-tentacle assemblage and a digestive orifice.
- Griggs-Thing: This Thing resembles Griggs, except his face is split in half while the chest is completely opened up to reveal an orifice filled with razor-sharp teeth and writhing tentacles.
- Juliette-Thing: This Thing resembles Juliette, but the chest is completely opened up, revealing an orifice filled with razor-sharp teeth, writhing tentacles and two toothed mandibles emerging from just about the hips.
- Edvard-Thing: This Thing resembles Edvard Wolner, but with amputated limbs and a whip-like abdominal tentacle.
- Jonas-Thing: This incomplete Thing resembles Jonas, but with a Centipede-Thing melted to his hand and face.
- Split Face: This Thing is two humans consisting of Adam Finch and Edvard Wolner that are fused together and move in a crab-walking position while both heads are fused at the mouth and dangle uselessly.
- Sander-Thing: This Thing resembles a vaguely behemoth body with numerous fleshly arms and tentacles emerging from it while the head is fleshy and tumorous aside from its face, which is an exact replica of Dr. Sander Halvorson's. However, it's "true" face is actually a lamprey-like mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth and more tentacles.
- Carter-Thing: This Thing resembles Sam Carter, but with a missing ear piercing.
The Thing (1982)[]
- Kennel-Thing: This Thing is a large bulbous mass full of flesh and organs with a dog head on the end of a long neck, several intestine-like tentacles used to assimilate prey, several spider-like legs, a few canine legs sticking out haphazardly, two reptilian hands on its back, several human eyes on its torso and a fleshy orifice which reveals a "flower" with dog tongue petals on the end of a long stalk.
- Bennings-Thing: This incomplete Thing resembles George Bennings, except his hands are deformed and horribly covered in blood while the fingers are abnormally long.
- Norris-Thing: This Thing resembles Norris, but with an enormous gaping mouth lined with razor-sharp teeth in the middle of the torso. After being violently expelled from the torso cavity, it's second form is a terrifying spider-like creature with six spindly legs, two human-like legs dangling from it, several dangling entrails and a distorted version of Norris' head and face on the end of a long segmented neck. For some reason, its sinew and blood turned green. After detaching it's own head when its second form is incinerated, it's third form is an upside-down human head with snail-like eyestalks and spider legs.
- Palmer-Thing: This Thing resembles Palmer, but with grotesquely swollen boils covering his entire face and has swollen eyes that ooze blood. Eventually, the head splits in half vertically to reveal a vertical toothy maw with a long tentacle.
- Windows-Thing: This incomplete Thing resembles Windows, except his body is covered in blood and makes inhuman noises.
- Blair-Thing: This Thing resembles a gigantic mass of tumorous flesh with a humanoid torso emerging from the top. The head somewhat resembles Blair's, except the left half is replaced by an enormous mouth filled with humungous Tyrannosaurus-like fangs. The right arm is that of a human, but the left arm is instead replaced by two long arms ending in two-clawed hands. Finally, erupting from the waist is a vaguely dog-looking creature.
Other[]
- Centipede-Thing: A pair of scuttling Things that are formerly Edvard Wolner's arms, but have split off. They have teeth on the former arm joint, multiple tentacles and "legs" and even have the ability to reform after being cut in half.
- Karl-Thing: Seen on a deleted scene, Karl was turned into a humanoid form and later killed by Lars with a flamethrower.
- Blood Test Thing: A simple, yet autonomous Thing that was formed from blood extracted from the Palmer-Thing.
Notable Victims[]
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Who Goes There?[]
- TBA
The Thing From Another World[]
- TBA
John Carpenter Series[]
- TBA
Trivia[]
- A real-world parallel to how its cells operate when not assimilating organisms would be the slime mould.
- The Thing inspired Specimen 10 from Spooky's Mansion, Impostors from Among Us, the Unknown from Dead by Daylight, the X-Parasites from Metroid and the Alien Impostors from the upcoming game The Dark Pictures Anthology: Directive 8020.
- John Carpenter has stated that his interpretation of the creature was inspired by the Shoggoths from H. P. Lovecraft's works.
- In the director's commentary for the 2011 film, Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. states that he believes that the Things have no "true form" or "original form", other than their individual cells.
- However, there is a clue about the Thing's "true form". A good example is that the creatures always have multiple tentacles.
- Also exist non-canon story The Things by Peter Watts tells part of the story of the John Carpenter's movie from the creature's own perspective, describing its horror at how the bodies of creatures from Earth function compared to its own.
External Links[]
- The Thing on the The Thing Wiki
- The Thing on the Alien Species Wiki