History Film / Aliens

* ICannotSelfTerminate: In a deleted scene, Ripley [[spoiler:comes across a cocooned Burke in the atmosphere processor begging for help. She gives him a grenade, though he whines as he obviously knows what this means for him. Though considering the fate of the other 157 colonists he damned (not including Newt), he got off easy.]]

* ICannotSelfTerminate: Ripley [[spoiler:comes across a cocooned Burke in the atmosphere processor begging for help. She gives him a grenade, though he whines as he obviously knows what this means for him. Though considering the fate of the other 157 colonists he damned (not including Newt), he got off easy.]]

* SciFiWritersHave/NoSenseOfDistance: The colony and atmosphere processor seems ''absurdly'' huge given that there are only ~140 colonists on the planet. The marines have to travel to several different parts of the facility by flying there from their dropship. In a later scene, when Ripley is gearing up to go save Newt, an exterior shot shows Bishop flying the dropship a great distance from one part of the colony to another. Apparently, the alien who nabbed Newt sprinted for tens of miles in just a few minutes.

* DidntThinkThisThrough: How exactly ''was'' Burke planning on sabotaging every other sleep pod to make himself the lone survivor? As a civilian on a military ship, he would probably have been one of the first to be put to sleep. Justified in that his back is against the wall in an already stressful situation, so he's not in the best frame of mind to be scheming.

* NotTheIntendedUse: The Caterpillar P-5000 Powered Work Loader is a futuristic forklift built as a MiniMecha, not a machine for rasslin' giant aliens in. Doesn't stop Ripley though.

* MotileVehicularComponents: The APC has its guns mounted on a turret that can be rotated flush with the hull for storage and carrying on a DropShip. The tie-in tech manual states that it's reccommended the turret be locked in-place as soon as possible after deployment to avoid fouling the rails.

* NonIndicativeName: The Colonial Marines' "pulse rifles" clearly aren't, at least not as Cameron [[Film/TheTerminator earlier depicted them]] -- the name "pulse rifle" implies that they're some kind of high-tech laser gun, when they're just shooting [[KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter regular bullets.]]

* TakeThatAudience: The boardroom scene takes a potshot at viewers of the first ''Film/{{Alien}}'' movie who assumed that the Derelict and the Xenomorph were native to the lifeless LV-426, when the boardroom confirm amongst themselves that it's impossible for LV-426 to have any indigenous life, prompting an irritated Ripley to spell out that the Xenomorph and the Derelict clearly did not originate on the planetoid but rather they crashed there after coming from somewhere else; Ripley even hammers it home by snarking at the boardroom, "Did [=IQs=] just drop sharply while I was away?"

* ConservationOfNinjutsu: Countless different adult Xenomorph Drones along with the Alien Queen appear throughout the film's runtime this time around, only for them to get brutally slaughtered right and left by the Colonial Marines' highly advanced and likewise also very deadly futuristic weaponry systems, but the number of human deaths seen throughout the film is also higher due to the USS ''Sulaco'' crew's initially significantly superior numbers when compared to the USCSS ''Nostromo'' crew's initial numbers 57 years before them, however.

''[[caption-width-right:350:[[{{Tagline}} This time, it's war.]]]]''

** Hicks: "I like to keep [[ShotgunsAreJustBetter this]] handy ''([[DramaticGunCock chik-chak]])'' for close encounters."
** Frost: "What the hell are we supposed to use, man? Harsh language?"

** Hicks: "Alright, we waste him. No offense."
** Ripley: "Get away from her, you BITCH!"

** "I like to keep [[ShotgunsAreJustBetter this]] handy ''([[DramaticGunCock chik-chak]])'' for close encounters."
** "What the hell are we supposed to use, man? Harsh language?"
** "Alright, we waste him. No offense."
** "Get away from her, you BITCH!"
** "LET'S ROCK!"
** "Eat this!"

* MonsterDelay: Somewhat [[ExaggeratedTrope exaggerated]] in this film in that the eggs, the adult Xenomorph Drones, and the Queen all take awfully long periods of time to finally show up on-screen for the first time, especially so in the latter-most specimen's case, but the {{FaceHugger}}s, however, actually show up on-screen far earlier in this film than the one that impregnated Kane during the [[Film/{{Alien}} first film]] ever did.

* FunnyBackgroundEvent: While one Company exec is skeptically dissecting Ripley's account of the ''Nostromo''[='s=] fate, another seated behind her is slumped back in his chair, sleeping. The sharp-eyed viewer can also see another exec doing crosswords under the table while pretending to be taking notes.

* {{Bowdlerize}}: For whatever reason, the novelisation removes almost all of the profanity. Though likely done to make the book more accessible to younger readers, this censorship was not imposed on any of the other three novelisations.

* FasterThanLightTravel: Implied as a deleted scene has Ripley say she promised to get home before her daughter's birthday, implying the Nostromo mission was supposed to last a few months at most and Hicks says a rescue ship would take 17 days to reach them.

** Ripley tries to haul Newt up by the sleeve of her leather jacket, but since it was Ripley's jacket it's way too big and Newt slips right out of it.

* GivingThemTheStrip: Hicks must quickly shed his acid-blood-spattered body armor before the corrosive stuff can penetrate to his skin.