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Franchise / Alien vs. Predator

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"Whoever wins, we lose..."

What happens when the Predator, interstellar alien hunter extraordinaire, takes it upon himself to go after the unstoppable, acid-blooded, face-raping Aliens? Oddly enough, lots of humans dying.

Alien Vs. Predator is the combination of Fox's two hit alien monster movies, and the stories of the innocent humans caught in the middle. The series started with a comic by Dark Horse Comics, featuring colony administrator Machiko Noguchi, who finds her newly-settled world has just become a hunting ground for the Predators as they seed it with Xenomorph eggs. Dark Horse would follow on this with other comics, such as Deadliest of the Species and War, as well as crossovers with Superman, Batman, and even The Terminator. Riding the popularity wave of Predators, the Machiko story was picked up again in the mini-series Aliens vs. Predator: Three World War, in which the humans and Predators team up against a second race of Predators (similar to the "black" ones from the film) and their Alien pets.

The concept was even hinted at in the second Predator movie, which featured a Xenomorph skull amongst the Predator's trophies. It was finally made into a movie in 2004, with a sequel in 2007. The movies abandoned the previous setting and had the conflict take place on contemporary Earth. That the movies weren't exactly embraced, even by the fanbase, owes more to the fact that the movie's Human protagonists were the weakest element and simply weren't credible enough, as well as a PG-13 rating limited the violence. The Aliens and Predators remained both on form.

A number of video games have been made; along with a series of comics and novels, they are completely unrelated to the story or setting of the movies. They are instead set in the same time and setting as the movie Aliens.

The tropes from the films are located on their own page: Alien vs. Predator

Not to be confused with Alien Loves Predator, a 2004 spoof webcomic.

Alien vs. Predator media:

Films

Comic books

  • Aliens vs. Predator (1990)
    • Aliens vs. Predator 2 (1992-1993)
  • Aliens vs. Predator: The Ultimate Battle (1992)
  • Aliens/Predator: The Deadliest of the Species (1993)
  • Aliens vs. Predator: Duel (1995)
  • Aliens vs. Predator: War (1995)
  • Aliens vs. Predator: Booty (1996)
  • Dark Horse Classics - Aliens vs. Predator (1997)
  • Aliens vs. Predator: Eternal (1998)
  • Aliens vs. Predator Annual #1 (1999)
  • Overkill: Witchblade/Aliens/Darkness/Predator (1999)
    • Witchblade/Aliens/Darkness/Predator: Mindhunter (2000-2001)
  • Aliens vs. Predator: Xenogenesis/Aliens vs. Predator: Genocide (1999-2000)
  • Aliens versus Predator versus The Terminator (2000)
  • Alien vs. Predator: Thrill of the Hunt (2004) - Mini-comic distributed with DVDs
  • Alien vs Predator: Whoever Wins... We Lose
  • Superman and Batman vs. Aliens and Predator (2007)
  • Alien vs. Predator: Sand Trap (2007)
  • Alien vs. Predator: Deadspace (2008)
  • Alien vs. Predator: Civilized Beasts (2008)
  • Free Comic Book Day: Aliens/Predator (2009)
  • Aliens vs. Predator: Three World War (2010)
  • Fire and Stone (2014)
    • Prometheus: Fire and Stone
    • Aliens: Fire and Stone
    • Alien vs. Predator: Fire and Stone
    • Predator: Fire and Stone
    • Prometheus: Fire and Stone—Omega
  • Predator vs. Judge Dredd vs. Aliens: Splice and Dice (2016-2017)
  • Life and Death (2016-2017)
    • Predator: Life and Death
    • Prometheus: Life and Death
    • Aliens: Life and Death
    • Alien vs. Predator: Life and Death
    • Prometheus: Life and Death One-Shot
  • Alien vs. Predator: Thicker Than Blood (2019-2020)

Literature

  • Aliens vs. Predator: Prey (1994; novelization of the Aliens vs. Predator comic book series)
  • Aliens vs. Predator: Hunter's Planet (1994)
  • Aliens vs. Predator: War (1999; novelization of the comic book series)
  • Alien vs. Predator (2004; novelization of the film)
  • The Rage War (2015-2016)
    • Predator: Incursion (2015)
    • Alien: Invasion (2016)
    • Alien vs. Predator: Armageddon (2016)
  • Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey (2022)
  • Aliens vs. Predators: Rift War (2022)

Tabletop games

  • Aliens/Predator Universe (1994)
  • Aliens Predator/Terminator TCG (1997)
  • Aliens vs. Predator (2010) - Tactical game based on the Requiem movie.
  • Alien vs Predator: The Hunt Begins (2015)
  • Battle Yahtzee: Alien vs. Predator (2016)
  • Clue: Alien vs. Predator (2016)

Video games

Related franchises

General franchise tropes:

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    A-M 
  • Abnormal Ammo: Radioactive ammo from the RTS.
    • Spider mines!
    • The standard ammo for the pulse rifle. It's 10mm, larger than mostly any ammo used for rifles, case-less, armour-piercing and explosive. When it comes to fighting Xenomorphs, this is essentially the kind of ammo you need to put a dent in them, as Aliens showed us them shrugging off pistol shots like nothing, and in the 2010 Rebellion game, using the pistol against a Xenomorph is asking for an overdrawn engagement. It usually takes the better part of the pistol magazine; over a dozen rounds. And that pistol's an upgraded one designed to be halfway effective against the buggers.
    • Predators get this in general, especially with the second PC game. Most of their weapons are abnormal and require some form of abnormal ammo, starting with energy as described above, all the way to nets and spears made of substances not found on our periodic table. The Predators can also turn electricity into plasma.
  • Aborted Arc: Aliens vs. Predator 2 and Aliens vs. Predator (2010) both end on cliffhangers that never got followed up on, due to the series either rebooting or being put on hiatus immediately afterwards.
  • Absurdly Spacious Sewer: the 2010 game.
    • Also invoked in Av P Requiem, the city of Gunnison (in Colorado, real life population of about 6300 people) having a sewer system large enough to walk around in.
  • A Commander Is You:
    • Extinction and The Hunt Begins both balance the three factions in roughly the same way.
    • The Colonial Marines are the Balanced/Ranger faction. They have more units on the field than the Predators and a gun for every occasion, but they're practically helpless in melee.
    • The Aliens are the Spammer/Unit Specialist faction. They can have more units on the field than the other two sides combined, and they typically have units that have evolved to fill certain niches more effectively than anything else. That being said, they have little to no ranged options to speak of, and their more common units tend to be more frail than any of their equivalents from the other factions.
    • The Predators are the Elitist/Brute faction. While they do tend to have a trick or two up their non-existant sleeves, the overall schtick of the Predators is that they have just flat out better units than the other two species but can't field even half the amount of units.
  • Action Girl: Machiko from the comic and Linn Kurosawa from the Arcade game.
    • Dunya the Iron Bear mercenary from AvP 2 (the game) and its expansion pack.
    • Tequila from the 2010 game.
    • Lex from the first film, after a bit of a warm up.
  • Admiring the Abomination: Most major antagonists, such as Dr. Eisenberg and Karl Bishop Weyland. Inverted with General Rykov; he already hates the Predators, and the more he learns, the more he abhors them.
  • Air-Vent Passageway: Alien players will see the interior of a lot of ventilation shafts. The Marine player in the second PC game also does this.
    • Major fixture of the 1994 Atari Jaguar game, where both the Alien and the Marine will need to use air vents extensively to move through the space station. The Marine does it to bypass secured areas and get the keycards he needs to keep progressing through the game, the Alien does it to bypass secured areas and get to the hapless Marines secured within.
  • Alternate Continuity: Features a different timeline than the timeline in Prometheus.
  • And I Must Scream: Dr. Eisenberg in AvP 2. His arms and legs are torn off, cocooned into the wall of the Queen's chamber, and since he's a synth, he can't die. The Alien campaign ends with his hysterical shrieks echoing throughout the dark burrows of the hive.
  • Anti-Frustration Features: Alien mooks in the 1999 original are uncharacteristically noisy, and constantly scream and screech as they approach you. Given how incredibly fast, aggressive, and deadly they are, you will be thankful for this unintentional heads-up that they're about to attack.
  • Anti-Villain: General Rykov in AvP 2. Although he's happy to secretly kill a few Weyland-Yutani civilian employees (the people he's hired specifically to protect) in order to steal company resources for his mercs, and under Eisenberg's orders sets the Marines up for an ambush to wipe them out, he's clearly not taking any pleasure in doing so and is absolutely loyal to his own men, even going so far as to undergo a suicide mission at the end of the game to buy time for his surviving mercs to escape the planet. He also ends up indirectly helping the Predators (even though the last time he encountered them, they blasted a hole through his spine).
  • Apocalyptic Log: Most of the backstory for AvP 2 and the 2010 game is told through memos and Incident Reports seen at the start of each level. They even foreshadow what you're about to run into next.
  • Arm Cannon: The Predator "Topknot" in AvP: War is shown with a wrist-mounted plasma caster.
  • Asshole Victim: The human you eventually have to impregnate as a facehugger in AvP 2 is beforehand shown to be a complete asshole of a sergeant who constantly bullies his subordinates and shirks his own duties. You won't feel all that bad for having to chew your way out through his ribcage.
  • Asskicking Leads to Leadership:
    • In the 2010 game Weyland comments that the Aliens are a "true meritocracy." Given what Aliens do, this trope applies to the entire species. The Predators go by this, too: if you want to get anywhere in this society, you have to prove your combat chops in the hunt. Preds often settle disputes in bare-knuckle brawls as well for the viewing pleasure of their fellows. This is proven at the end of the Alien scenario, where Six "evolves" into a Matriarch... Unless you realize that at the end there's pretty much nobody else to 'promote' to the position in question.
    • A scientific log in the second game on how the heavily armored Praetorians develop also fits here: When an alien drone begins the change, it secretes pheromones which causes other aliens to attack it violently. Thus, in order to become a Praetorian a drone has to be tough enough to fight off other aliens en masse, and intelligent enough to escape and remain secluded until the transformation is complete.
  • Authority Equals Asskicking:
    • Karl Bishop Weyland in the 2010 game; in the final shootout of the Marine campaign he can kill you in just 2 shots and can survive even more damage than an elite Combat Android, taking almost a full 99 round magazine from the pulse rifle to bring down, although he still goes down after about 14 shots from the semi-auto sniper rifle or 5 good shotgun blasts.
    • The Alien Queen and Predator Ancient in the RTS. The Ancient can insta-kill all enemies under 50 hp within arm's length. The Queen is no pushover, even in her default form, but the upgraded form has more armor, and sends all transbreed aliens into a killing frenzy. It's a totally viable strategy to assault a base with the Queen leading the charge. Averted with the Commtech marine, who is almost defenseless before being upgraded, but is still a bit of a Glass Cannon after.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Both PC games feature a rocket launcher as part of the Marine's arsenal. That's all very well and good, but not much use when 99% of the enemies you face are fast-moving, melee-oriented aliens.
    • The kill moves in the multiplayer demo for the 2010 game are awesome looking, but leave you vulnerable for some time; its not that uncommon to see an alien grab a marine, with another alien behind him, etc cetra, forming a conga line of blood and gore. This applies in single-player too when fighting multiple enemies, too.
    • The Marine's flamethrower is cool, but doesn't actual deal direct damage, and it takes an alien several seconds to burn to death during which they'll happily attack you. The 2010 game is even worse, as it retains all the flaws of the version from the 1999 PC game, eats ammo for breakfast, and now a burning Alien can grab your leg and kill you instantly when it explodes. In AvP 2, the flamethrower didn't really set enemies on fire, but it did deal massive direct damage and could kill a xeno in a split second.
      • It's very effective against Facehuggers though.
    • In the 2010 game, the Predator's plasmacaster auto-locks onto enemies and can gib a xeno or marine with a single charged shot... and you can only fire about 3 or 4 charged shots before running out of energy and being unable to fire until you found an energy pickup.
    • The Primal Hunt expansion allows Major Dunya to carry and deploy up to two sentry guns. Unfortunately, the turrets have poor tracking, do surprisingly little damage and are destroyed by any amount of damage whatsoever, incluiding the acid blood of the very aliens they might be shooting at, so don't count on them to cover your back. Besides, most enemies spawn pretty much on top of you, so you rarely have time to actually deploy them.
  • Backported Development: The NECA homage toyline to the Kenner figures incorporated elements from later movies, including making the Nightstorm Predator a Black Predator from Predators and Scavage Predator (a redo of Nightstorm) a Classic/Black hybrid. NECA even as far as to make figures of the Berserker Predator from Predators and the Neomorph from Alien: Covenant in the style and scale of the Kenner line.
  • Badass Normal: Given the... nature... of the other two primary combatant species in the PC games, the anonymous Marine and Corporal "Frosty" Harrison from the games definitely count. Hell, Harrison repeatedly takes on entire hives of Aliens by himself and kills a particularly vicious Predator that took out most of White Team. As for the anonymous Marine of the first game, well. Balls of steel doesn't even begin to cover it.
    • The "Rookie" from the 2010 game, who gets stranded alone in alien territory at least once per scenario and he still manages to fight his way out, including at one point getting captured by the Aliens and having to escape through the hive . It's worth noting that nearly every character in the game expresses disbelief that he has somehow managed to survive.
  • Bag of Spilling: No matter what you end a mission with in the 2010 game's Marine campaign, you always start the next one with a Pulse Rifle in one slot. And at one point you lose that, too.
    • Averted in the Marine's final battle; there's a cutscene which seems to imply the Marine has lost all his weapons except his pistol, just before he has to fight some of the toughest enemies in the entire game. In fact his previous weapons are simply holstered, and he can pull them out at any time.
    • In the RTS, even if you ended the mission with an army, you'll start the next with a handful of units. Occasionally explained in the Alien story, with situations such as a Queen starting a new hive, or a recently decimated hive trying to reclaim its captured Queen.
  • BFG: Lots of these. The Minigun, kill-a-Praetorian-in-one-hit sniper rifle and military power loader in 2 come to mind, and the 2010 game's Smartgun is so big it takes up both primary weapon slots.
  • Bittersweet Ending: In AvP: Three World War, Machiko is able to defeat the rogue evil Predators, but her refusal to die fighting causes another Predator to burn her "status symbol" forehead mark with more xenomorph blood. She's no longer able to work with the Predators, and humans in general are back on the hunting menu. However, Machiko has overcome her issues with isolation and is living happily with her lover, and the evil 'Killer' Predators have been defeated, if temporarily.
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: Most Predators aren't actually evil. Their morality and values system, however, is insanely incomprehensible to humans and they're merciless hunters towards worthy prey.
  • Body Horror: We all know how revolting that scene in Alien with the chestburster eating its way out of John Hurt's chest was, right? Well, in the second PC game, you get to play as the chestburster. Then you have to eat a cat.
    • In the expansion, not only are you the chestburster, but your unfortunate victim is the Predator you play as in the Predator campaign.
    • The Xenomorphs in Extinction weaponize their unique biology, including one ability that digests enemy units alive and stores the resultant Health Food as cysts so that the Chest Burster they spawn can metamorphosize into a King Mook.
  • Boring, but Practical: In Aliens vs Predator 2, the video game, the regular old pulse rifle qualifies as this. It appears to be, at first, just another generic assault rifle. After about two missions of using it you will suddenly realize it kills all common enemies in as many as 5 shots, has a magazine of 99, a rate of fire close to a modern AK-74 assault rifle, possesses an underslung integrated grenade launcher (with perfect trajectory and quick travel times) which instagibs nearly everything in the blast radius, and there's a bug which causes the first bullet fired to cause extra damage, thus making burst shots more powerful while saving ammo. The icing on the cake is that it is available to humans throughout almost every mission, with abundant ammo to boot! Three guesses as to which human weapon received, arguably, the most use in multiplayer.
    • The Alien pounce attack also fits; It's nothing more than a single button move where you fling yourself through the air at a high velocity. Upon impacting other living things they are instagibbed or stunned in place, leaving them open to a quick and brutal slaying. In multiplayer the pounce 'n' slash became the bread and butter of every xenomorph player.
  • Borrowed Biometric Bypass: In the 2010 game, the Predator has to use some unfortunate guy's severed noggin to open doors locked by retinal scanners.
  • Boss Arena Urgency: The battle between the Predator and Predalien in the 2010 game takes place over walkways slightly above lava. As the battle goes on, the Predalien will start to cause a cave in, wrecking the walkways so that the player has to both make tricky leaps between platforms, and at the same time fighting the Predalien.
  • Bowdlerize: The SNES version changes the nightclub in Stage 3 to a cavernous area.
  • Canon Discontinuity: Ridley Scott, who disliked the crossover franchise, completely de-canonized the Alien vs. Predator film duology with Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Furthermore, FOX jettisoned the Praetorian caste from canon with Alien: Out of the Shadows.
  • Canon Foreigner:
    • The predator warrior and the planet Vega 4 are not mentioned outside of the SNES game.
    • Linn Kurosawa, the two predators, the cyborg iteration of Dutch Schaefer, and the city of San Dorado are not mentioned outside of Alien vs. Predator (Capcom), though Linn Kurosawa has made cameos in a few Capcom games.
  • Canon Immigrant:
  • Canon Welding: The intention of the movies, until Prometheus established a different timeline.
  • Checkpoint Starvation: Nightmare Mode disables the checkpoint system, meaning you get bumped back to the very beginning of the mission if you ever die (which, given the enemy's increased damage output, happens a lot).
  • Chekhov's Skill: In the intro to the marine campaign in AvP2 Frosty is shown moving around cargo with a power loader. This gives a subtle bit of foreshadowing to that he is probably qualified to operate the military exosuit, which he indeed does near the end of the campaign.
  • Clone Degeneration: This is an in-game theory presented as to how, over the course of several hundred years, Weyland went from a reasonably Reasonable Authority Figure in the present day to the Card-Carrying Villain he is in the far future of the 2010 game.
  • Colony Drop: The W-Y installation on LV-1201 is designed around "Pods" suspended from a ginormous superstructure. If one Pod is compromised by, say, the alien lifeforms you're running unethical research on, you can just jettison the whole thing before the infestation spreads.
    • Machiko does this in the first comic, almost literally. She runs a colony on a desert planet, and a ship has just arrived to take the rancher's herds offplanet for processing and sale. Like the Nostromo in the first film, it's basically a tug with a large slaughterhouse attached, and the bigger part stays in orbit. Machiko crashes it into the colony to wipe out the alien infestation.
  • Continue Your Mission, Dammit!:
    • The 2010 game's Marine campaign does this rather a lot; Tequila tends to be the one constantly reminding you that you need to hurry up and get your ass to the place you do not in fact have to hurry up and get your ass to.
    • This leads to a bit of Hypocritical Humor later on, when Tequila joins you and Katya takes over as Mission Control. Tequila complains about Katya always interrupting with mission objectives, after spending a couple levels doing nothing except interrupting you with mission objectives.
  • Continuity Nod: Both Weyland and Yutani appear in the modern-day settings, establishing the company (and the Xenomorph-chasing hysteria) for the earlier movies.
  • Continuity Snarl: The Alien vs. Predator films would appear to compatible with the Shared Universe of the Alien vs Predator video games, novels, and comics until Prometheus and Alien: Covenant established a new origin for the Xenomorphs. In The Predator, the tail spear from Alien vs. Predator is shown in a display case, implying Alien vs. Predator is still canon to the Predator half of the franchise, while assuming The Predator is still canon to the Predator franchise.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: Anyone high up in WY is guaranteed to be doing something dangerous, unethical and in all likelihood stupid involving the nearest Hive and/or ancient ruins. It's apparently true for the whole corporation: Weyland-Yutani's contract has a clause that allows them to feed you to a Xenomorph just to see what happens when they feed you to a Xenomorph.
  • Cool Versus Awesome: The whole point of pitting Aliens against Predators.
  • Crippling Overspecialization:
    • How the Predator is balanced against the Marines and Aliens in the games. As ridiculous as their gear is, catch one holding the wrong tool for the job and you've got a much better chance at winning. Most evident in the second PC game, especially in multiplayer where the three species could be further divided into classes and no single Predator would have access to a weapon for every situation.
    • Also, Praetorian Aliens. Yes, they hit hard and can take quite a bit more damage than regular Aliens... but they can't pounce or climb walls. Very bad trade off...
    • Happens with the most marine and some predator units in the RTS. Very good at fighting 1 type of unit. Terrible at dealing with pretty much anything else.
  • Crossover:
    • The entire point of the series in a nutshell.
    • Interestingly enough, Mortal Kombat X contains a Xenomorph and Predator as guest characters, making that game an extension of the AVP brand. Aside from the MK series, it also marks a crossover with Friday the 13th and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre thanks to the appearance of Jason and Leatherface.
  • Cyborg: The Xenoborg from the first PC game, complete with Eye Beams and Arm Cannon. Yes, someone thought it was a good idea to graft heavy weapons onto a cyborg Xenomorph.
  • Dark Action Girl: Dunya in the second PC game. She's even the main playable human character in the Primal Hunt expansion pack.
  • Decapitation Required: The only way to finally kill Big Bad Karl Bishop Weyland is with a headshot, since in the final quickdraw duel he completely ignores being shot anywhere else.
  • Deadly Lunge: In the original PC game, Aliens simply had the best jumping ability; which could clear the distance between them and opponents quick. In the sequel, the Alien's pounce ability was now an actual attack. In the newer game, it's possible (if awkward control-wise) for the Alien to run, leap and attack, but it's not a specific move.
    • Both the Alien and Predator have a ranged lunge move in the 2010 game.
    • The Runner alien in the RTS has such an attack. Can be upgraded to inject the target with toxic spores on impact, fun.
  • Denser and Wackier: Some of the AvP comics got pretty weird. Deadliest of the Species, in particular, featured such elements as rogue holographic AIs, hybrid Alien/Predator/Humans capable of moral choices, identity crises with humans reformed into "trophy wives," genetic animosity between Aliens and Predators, and Alien influence able to grant people superpowers.
  • Developer's Foresight: In the first PC game the combat synths have unique reload animations if you have cut off one of their arms but they remain otherwise functional.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: The Aliens take on this role in the 2010 game's multiplayer. You're more fragile than the Predators and the Humans, you move differently, and your only attacks are melee-oriented, but a skilled player can make use of their prodigious speed, wall-crawling abilities, and swift takedown maneuvers and become a absolute nightmare to play against.
    • Actually, Aliens have more health than marines. Marines have 100 health, Aliens 130 and Predators 150. That doesn't diminish the above point, though; since the Aliens make growling noises when moving at speed, they can subvert their own attempts at stealth. It makes both stalking prey and engaging in combat inherently risky, but still intensely rewarding. Nothing like getting an execution finisher on a Predator.
  • Disposable Vagrant: In AvP 2.
  • Downer Ending: The AvP Jaguar game's marine campaign ends with the player filing a mission report in his escape pod, complaining about "stomach cramps". The first AvP PC game's marine campaign ends with the player successfully defeating the Alien Queen, but it's an empty victory since he's trapped in the hangar bay of an alien-infested battleship with no means of escape. The 2010 game ends with the player marine and a xenomorph-infected squadmate being "rescued" by a dropship... crewed by Weyland-Yutani mooks, who are having a nice chat with Karl Bishop Weyland about how now they know where the Xenomorph homeworld is.
  • Dragon Their Feet: In the 2010 game, Praetorians, supposedly there to protect the Queen, don't even begin to show up until well after she's killed.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: The first AvP game for the PC, made in 1999, came from the Doom/Quake era of First Person Shooters and as a result has some gameplay elements from that era which can be jarring by modern standards. Most notably, the Marine character's normal movement speed is about 25 mph, with the aliens being even faster to be balanced. Running down the corridors of LV-426 at the same speed as a car on a commercial road, while battling enemies moving at similar speeds, does break immersion a little. You also can't reload your weapon in the middle of a magazine.
  • 11th-Hour Superpower/Game-Breaker: In the Predator campaign of the 2010 campaign, the combistick spear, which doesn't become available until the second-to-last level. It can be thrown several dozen feet, is a one-hit-kill against almost everything, and best of all doesn't drop you out of cloak. Once you get it, you can waltz through human enemies without any effort, and even aliens become much easier to handle.
    • Also, during the last boss fight, your energy automatically recharges, which suddenly makes the mines and plasma caster much more attractive options than they were previously.
    • In AvP2, the Marine gets two. The last level starts with Harrison in Alice, the squad's military-grade powerloader with a bunch of guns and lasers and rockets and stuff strapped to it. He looses this, but after defeating the Queen, gets the sniper rifle to hold off the Praetorians while the squad evacs. The sniper rifle does crazy stupid damage, even if you aren't all that accurate with it, basically one-shotting the Praetorians.
  • Elite Mooks: The second PC game has Dr. Eisenberg's personal cadre of illegal Combat Synths; bald, muscular androids with reinforced bodies and several times as much health as standard human troops. They can see in the dark and even right through the Predator's cloaking device, and some of them carry miniguns and rocket launchers. A good headshot still decapitates them, though.
    • Combat Synths, now referred to as Combat Androids, make a return in the 2010 AvP game during the later levels in all 3 campaigns. They normally carry either a shotgun or, more likely, a sniper rifle. They can take about 25% more damage than a human Marine (Weyland's black-uniformed personal Praetorian Guard are even tougher, and can take at least 60 rounds from the pulse rifle to kill), and headshots do not help.
    • Technically, the player alien as well; the Marine and Predator players slaughter your sisters by the dozens, however, you typically manage to go through an entire army of marines, with one or two predators also on your hit list. Much the same is true of the player alien, who hasn't ever fought aliens before.
    • Praetorians and Predaliens in the FPS and RTS.
    • Survival Mode in AvP 2010 has mini-Praetorians in the later stages; they behave like regular aliens, but have Praetorian headcrests and enhanced health (it takes up to 5 close range shotgun blasts to kill one, although alternatively it "only" takes a few dozen bullets to do the job).
  • Emergency Weapon: In the first PC game you ended up using your pulse rifle as a club if you ran out of ammo for all your guns. In the second game you had a knife. Given the nature of the enemies you faced, though, if it ever came down to that you were pretty much screwed anyway. The 2010 game gives you a pistol with infinite ammo, but it takes almost a full 18 round mag to kill a single Alien drone.
    • Medics and basic Synthetics in the RTS have pistols. They work as well as you'd imagine.
  • Enemy Mine: A staple of the series - it's happened in the original comics (where the elder Predator and humans form a strained bond), Deadliest of the Species, the first movie (which has the last surviving human and the last surviving Predator teaming up to fight the Aliens) and the Capcom game (where the Predators team up with two Cyborgs to fight the Xenomorphs).
  • Evil Versus Oblivion: Nearly every title under the AVP umbrella falls back to this trope eventually. The Predators are not nice people, but they are still people whereas the Xenomorphs are a threat to the survival of everything else in the universe.
  • Excuse Plot: All of the games by Rebellion (the Jaguar, the 1999 PC game, and the 2010 game) have only a bare-bones outline cribbed from the films for the plot, as the games are much more about atmosphere than story and most players know everything they need to know about what's going on from the films. Alien Vs Predator 2 by Monolith has a much more developed and coherent plot, though it takes playing through all three different species campaigns to get the full picture of it.
  • Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: Especially in the 2nd game
  • Fake Difficulty: In the 2010 game, the Marines don't have any sort of alert to tell them from what direction they just took damage from. In theory the motion-capture device should tell you, but Aliens don't move when they are beating you up.
    • Alien vs Predator 2, and it's expansion Primal Hunt in particular, is chock-full of invisible triggers that will spawn a xenomorph horde pretty much within melee range the moment you cross them, making your motion tracker all but useless.
  • Final Solution: Rykov's ultimate goal is to wipe out the Predators with a Synthetic Plague. At first, he seems motivated by revenge for his own past experiences with them, but the research logs show that he's legitimately disturbed by what his discoveries say about their culture; whether sparing other species the fate of being hunted is part of his motivation or just an excuse for his revenge is left ambiguous.
  • Finishing Move: The aliens and Predators. The humans just have to make do with smacking enemies onto their backs and shooting them.
  • Firing One-Handed: Schaffer fires any gun he picks up one-handed. Using his natural arm. Even the Smartgun. He is (an Expy of/descended from?) an Arnold Schwarzenegger character.
  • Fragile Speedster: The player aliens in the PC games are not too durable, but are exceptionally fast, and due to their wall-crawling, far more mobile than the other species. It's toned down somewhat in the sequel, where it's possible to play as a Predalien or Praetorian (which are more durable but slower), though normal warriors and runners are still fast and fragile.
    • The Alien runners in the RTS. They're extremely fast even by Xenomorph standards.
  • Functional Genre Savvy: In the second game, the Weyland-Yutani xenomorph research outpost on LV-1201 is actually very well designed for its purpose. The Primary Operations Center, which houses most of the administration, spaceport, intersteller communications array, and bulk cargo is surrounded by electric fences on the outside and more electronic fences inside and is located far from the xenomorph hive. Even the weakest point in the security is still proof against anything short of a bomb. The Forward Observation Pods are several independant units suspended over a canyon by means of an electrified framework. The mustering area on the surface below is surrounded by electric fences and automated gun turrets, with additional bunkers for shelter during an emergency, and the only access between this area and the pods is by means of an elevator lowered down from above with no supports to climb up. If necessary, a compromised pod can be seperated from the others and detached. The pods and the POC are connected by a roadway with substantial underground tunnels that are gated in sections like an airlock to ensure that no "specimens" are able to pass through without proper security measures.
    • These are all very logical and effective security measures to deter the xenomorph. However, this being an Alien game, of course something still goes wrong anyway, making this an example of Death by Pragmatism.
  • Game-Breaking Bug: In Aliens vs Predator Classic 2000 on Steam, the game crashes to desktop without saving your progress when you finish the Tyrargo level, preventing you from advancing further in the game. This happens because the Rebellion coding used to port the game to modern OS systems was done in a hurry, and used lots of bit and pieces from an earlier fan-made port without testing. The bug can be gotten around by pressing ESC to restart the mission instead of any key to continue, at which point it will save your progress.
  • Gameplay Ally Immortality: In the 2010 game, Action Girl/Mission Control Corporal Tequila briefly joins you for about 1/3rd of the 2nd-to-last level, and helps you fight about a dozen or so of Weyland's Combat Androids. She's entirely invincible. Averted with the Red Shirt Colonial Marines who occasionally join you; they can die at any time, but if you manage to get through the area while keeping them alive (which can be quite difficult) you'll usually get an extra mini-scripted sequence with them.
  • Gatling Good: The minigun is the ultimate weapon in both PC games; it kills pretty much anything in less than a second.
    • The minigun in the first game, in addition to having no windup time, had simply the coolest firing noise ever (see 0:23).
    • Shows up in the RTS, with radioactive ammo. Also, the exosuit has 2.
  • Genre Shift: The three different campaigns were all surprisingly different genre-shifts of the same game: the Predator campaign felt almost like a hunting game, whether the prey be Alien or human with his cloaking device, thermal and EM vision modes and unique equipment. The Marine campaign was an incredibly creepy horror shooter, while the air vent-scuttling, wall-crawling Alien campaign was a unique stealth-based game interspersed with extreme and bloody violence.
  • Glass Cannon: Typically, Marines have the heaviest weaponry, but also the lowest durability. This was especially true in the first PC game, where even on Normal difficulty you died after only a handful of hits. They're quite a bit tougher in AvP 2 and have regenerating health in the 2010 AvP, though.
    • In the second game, the player character Predator is like this. You could survive even less damage than a fully armored Marine player character, but this was balanced out by having infinite regenerating health.
    • In the RTS, the Marines have the Sniper and Rocket Soldier. They deal a LOT of damage (and bypass armor), but if they're caught in melee range, they're usually dead before the player can react.
  • Gorn: The demo for the new 2010 multiplatform game shows the Predator can collect trophies by ripping off marines' heads, with the faces twitching in shock while the still-attached spinal cord flails around.
    • All the Alien special kills apply as well.
  • The Guards Must Be Crazy: When the power goes off during the alien campaign, one of the scientists wearing a gas mask who gets trapped in the hallway outside your chamber will run screaming INTO the chamber and bang on the giant window... BETWEEN the hallway he was just in and your Chamber.
  • Guns Akimbo: The Gold edition of the original game gives the Marine a cool new pair of pistols, that pretty much do fuck-all against the enemies he faces.
    • Also included: a goofy, if logical reload sequence that takes an extraordinary amount of time - the pistols attach together, simultaneously drop their magazines, are reloaded simultaneously with a pair of magazines, and are then separated.
  • Harder Than Hard: Nightmare difficulty in the 2010 game. It has all the challenge of Hard difficulty (enemies have more health and do more damage, button prompts no longer appear to tell you whether an enemy is using a heavy or light attack, marines are smarter and more aware of their surroundings, and xenos can no longer be knocked down in melee) AND no save checkpoints in any of the levels, so if you die (and you likely will) you have to restart the entire level.
  • Healing Factor/Good Thing You Can Heal: Xenomorphs. They don't get any Stimpacks/Health Shards. They can Headbite, and the Praetorians can Cocoon to enhance it. In the RTS, Human radiological ammo stops it.
    • In AvP 2 the Predator can use his Medicomp as often as he likes as long as he has energy, which he gets from a device he can also use as often as he likes.
    • In the 2010 game the Alien auto-heals, while the Marine and Predator have a segmented bar; damage within a segment auto-heals, past one requires a stimpack or medicomp.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters: The parasitic nightmare-beasts and killing machines who rip people apart for fun tend to be treated almost sympathetically in comparison to the human villains. For example, Six, the Drone PC in AvP 2010 starts off getting a number branded into her forehead, and by the time the game starts, is so broken she can only sullenly obey the scientist giving orders. Also, the Marine player character is the only one who ever ends up facing enemies of his own species...
    • Aliens Are Bastards: ... but still the alien creatures ain't much better themselves. The Xenomorphs kill whatever living creature they see, and in Aliens vs Predator 2 it's heavily hinted that they're semi-sentient so they must do this for more reasons than just to protect the hive. The Yautjas kill people without provocation, usually start the fights and if you survived an earlier attack from them in your life then God help you because those creatures will hunt your ass down, no matter if it'll take them ages or thousands of enemies between them and you before they finally gets you, all for wounded pride.
  • Hybrid Monster: The Predalien.
    • They're particularly nasty in the RTS, as they increase their maximum health after surviving a few battles. The K-Series might also apply. They never do explain how they're different from normal aliens, but they're seen as a threat to the alien bloodline.
  • I Call It "Vera": The marine platoon in AvP 2 has a Combat Exoskeleton (essentially a militarized version of the Power Loader with weapons and armor) in its armory. The marines call it "Alice". It is lumped in with airstrikes in how destructive it can be.
  • Identical Grandson: Karl Bishop Weyland, the President of Weyland-Yutani in the 2010 game, looks and sounds exactly like Charles Bishop Weyland, company founder way back in the 20th century. As anyone who's seen the Aliens movies will know, he turns out to be a series of androids who have been doing this for a very long time, with a new one taking over every time the previous one gets killed. Oddly, no one at the Company seems to have noticed this as being odd.
  • Ignore the Fanservice: In the 2010 FPS, the first mission of the human campaign, you are sent to help your buddies in a club. A holographic Ms. Fanservice pops up on the stage. You can watch her if you want, but the story will stop dead. And your CO keeps at you untill you go do your job. If you progress, you're too busy killing monsters to watch the dancer.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: In the 2010 game, one of the grab kills for the Alien has you impaling your enemy on your tail, lifting your tail to slide down a bit, and then grabbing and pulling the body down just a few more inches.
  • Insectoid Aliens:
    • The xenomorphs, being an exoskeletal species with a hive mind intelligence, fit this trope. Their humanoid figure not withstanding.
    • The rarely seen but often mentioned Amengi, who enslaved the Yautja in the ancient past, resemble giant cockroaches.
  • Interface Screw:
    • In the 2010 game, type B. Why does the player character Predator insist on holding his wristblades right up in front of his eyes, unless to check to see if he is cloaked or not?
    • In AvP2 being cloaked adds a slight static effect to the Predator's alternate vision modes.
  • It's the Only Way to Be Sure: In AvP Requiem, an infested Colorado town is nuked to prevent the aliens from spreading across North America.
    • This trope is also invoked by the Predator in the first AvP film, when it detonates the pyramid to destroy an alien hive.
    • Machiko does this via Colony Drop in the first comic to wipe out the alien hive infesting her colony. It's pretty much SOP when dealing with xenomorph hives at this point.
    • In accordance with the above, the intro to the Marine campaign in AvP2 has one of the marines suggesting they just bomb the place from orbit and call it a day. Unfortunately that is out of the question since they are on a rescue mission.
  • Jack of All Stats/Lightning Bruiser: The Predators in the FPS games have the best balance between firepower, durability, and speed.
  • Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: One of the best uses in video games, in the AvP 2 game. Your actions as each of the three characters (Colonial Marine, Predator, and Xenomorph) have effects on each other's plots. You will even see yourself as one of the other characters in some spots.
  • Jump Scare: The first game, at least, loves this. Facehuggers are basically this turned into a game mechanic.
    • Played with via Cat Scare in Alien vs. Predator 2. The planet is home to large, beetle-like insects that occasionally flap their wings and move around, making a sound not all that dissimilar from a facehugger. Helps get you all nice and paranoid in the two levels before the aliens actually show up.
  • Justified Tutorial: In the 2010 game, the opening for the Marine has you be incapacitated until after things go to Hell, and a Voice with an Internet Connection talks you through basic actions. For the alien, the tutorial is provided by a scientist observing you. the Predator goes through his Initiation trials.
  • Katanas Are Just Better: Linn Kurosawa carries one into battle. It's so much better, in fact, that it doesn't melt on contact with Alien Blood.
  • Kill It with Fire: On the upside, using a flamethrower on a Xenomorph avoids that "acid blood" problem. On the downside, you've just ''really'' pissed it off.
    • In the RTS, the Flamethrower soldier and Predator Blazers, and Predator Shrine. The Upgraded Rocket Soldier counts too, their new launchers fire incendiary ammo.
    • Definetly not in the 1999 game. Firing the flamethrower would keep aliens at bay, but if you actually hit them they would become ten times more aggresive and literally explode when their health reached zero, most likely melting you dead in the process.
  • King Mook: Praetorians and PredAliens. The PredAlien is upgraded to a unique, full-on Big Bad for the Predator campaign in the 2010 game, while the Praetorian is a full boss battle with only 3 appearing in the Marine campaign and 1 in the Predator campaign.
  • Late to the Tragedy: In the 2010 game, thanks to a convenient piece of unsecured equipment, the Rookie suffers head trauma and is knocked out; which leads your squad to leave you behind.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Predator player characters in the first PC game could run as fast as an Alien, soak loads of damage, AND most of their weapons were 1-hit-kills against most enemies. Predator players were toned down in the later games, though, although the NPC Predators remain very tough.
  • Load-Bearing Boss: The Matriarch in the smelter. Killing her results in an explosion that seemingly destroys most of the colony. Though this is because defeating her involves setting her on fire, and she had made the genius move of building her nest right over the colony's entire stockpile of high power mining explosives.
    • Karl Bishop Weyland seems to be like this in the Marine campaign, as the Pyramid starts to collapse as soon as you kill him (and explodes soon afterwards), for no particular reason. However, it's revealed in the Predator campaign that the Predator had set the Pyramid to self-destruct earlier, and while the Rookie was busy fighting Weyland, the Predator was fighting the Abomination in the chamber below, with the Abomination smashing up the structural supports holding the Pyramid up.
  • Lock-and-Load Montage: The first film features one for the Predators.
  • Mad Scientist: Not so much in the films, but since the games, books, and comics take place in a similar setting to Aliens, there's all sorts of crazy doctors experimenting with the critters. In the upcoming game, the player Alien (Specimen Six) was apparently bred in captivity, because that always works out so well...
  • Malevolent Architecture: The main building of the colony in the 2010 game is a volcano-shaped tower centred on a smelter apparently built directly above a room full of explosive canisters.
  • Master of Unlocking: Frosty in 2 gets a handy hacking tool and a blowtorch for getting through locked doors. The Predator gets a "Charge Emitter" for shorting out panels. Meanwhile, the Alien's way of dealing with some of these is to smash until they give way.
  • Meaningful Rename: In the 2010 game, while Synths seem to have been changed to Androids for no particular reason, the change of Alien "Queen" to "Matriarch" reflects a slightly different take on how the Alien Hive actually works. Specifically, that any drone can become Matriarch, seemingly just by kicking enough ass. This happens to Six in the Alien campaign ending.
    • This phenomenon has actually been suggested in other materials previously, but this is one of the first, if not the first time, we actually see it happen.
  • Meat Moss: Xenomorph hives in Extinction, rather than being resinous mouldings like everywhere else. The Hive Nodes produce a web of roots that absorb nutrients from whatever they're stuck to, and form them into Health Food for your soldiers.
  • Mêlée à Trois: Aliens vs. Predators vs. Humans. Although in many cases the Predators and Humans tend to team up in an Enemy Mine situation against the Aliens.
  • Messianic Archetype: Specimen Six in the 2010 game definetly fits this description. She is born as more intelligent than her brethren, she is spared as an infant by her human oppressors, she is ordered by the Matriarch to liberate her kin, unleashing a plague on the humans. At the end of the alien campaign, she is knocked unconscious and taken off world, 'dying' before evolving into the new Queen and symbolizing the rebirth of a new era.
  • Mighty Glacier: The marines in the first person games are slow, but have enough firepower to level a mountain (including the minigun and SADAR missile). Dutch Schaefer also qualifies as this.
    • In the RTS, the Marine exosuit, the Alien Ravager, and Military Predators. All very slow moving, but designed to engage multiple enemies simultaneously and win.
    • Praetorians aren't exactly slow, but they're too heavy to wall-crawl like regular aliens, which does limit their mobility, especially in the 1999 PC game and AvP 2.
    • In the Marine campaign of AvP 2 you get to briefly pilot a military exosuit yourself. It comes equipped with a minigun, rocket launcher, flame thrower and a laser. It takes so little damage from xenomorphs that the only way they can kill you is by accumulating Death of a Thousand Cuts.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • While it only had three barrels, the image in AvP 2's manual makes it very clear the minigun has the same M60 handguard under the barrels as the famous Predator minigun.
    • An obscure one; in the 2010 game, Tequila refers to their present mission as shaping up "worse than Acheron". Acheron is the alternate name for LV426, the planet where the Aliens were first discovered and where a company of Marines were wiped out in Aliens.
    • Two of the Predator-on-Alien finishing moves in the 2010 game (the backbreaker and the one where the front half of the Alien's head gets cut off) are references to the 2004 movie.
    • In AvP2 after you complete all three campaigns you get an extra epilogue. It describes how several scientists who studied Predator technology gained from the site have disappeared along with their research, and the same Asian-looking woman was spotted near several of these incidents. This is likely intended to be Machiko Noguchi, a character from the comics who joined the Predators.

    N-Z 
  • Nerf:
    • The Pulse Rifle in the 2010 game is noticeably weaker than in previous games. It takes 15-25 bullets to kill just one Xenomorph drone on Normal difficulty, compared to just a handful of bullets in the 1999 AvP and AvP 2.
      • Inverted, in some schools of thought. The Aliens could be considered buffed rather than the pulse rifle nerfed, as it is one of the most efficient damage-dealing weapons in the game. Rebellion released the multiplayer health ratings for the creatures, which placed Aliens at 130 to a marine's 100. On hard difficulty, Aliens have something in excess of 200 health.
      • For reference, the pulse rifle does 20 damage per shot in Aliens vs Predator 2, and only 5 damage per shot in the 2010 Aliens vs Predator.
    • The player-character Predator in the first PC game was essentially a walking tank that could stealth for added lulz. In AvP 2 and AvP 2010, Predators can survive much less damage and need to use stealth tactics to survive against Marines.
      • Additionally, in the original game, the Predator would automatically recharge their energy, which made using the energy-intensive portions of the Predator's arsenal a very viable strategy. In 2, you needed to swap out to a special charging device to do so (although the recharge rate was fast, you had to decloak to use it and the effect was very visible). In the 2010 game, you could only recharge your weapons by draining power from human equipment; alongside the fact that charging mines and the plasma caster now took out a rather large chunk of energy, it made melee combat more important. However, the Predator's stealth system no longer drained energy, and health syringes were a dedicated powerup; somewhat mitigating the increased difficulty in refilling your energy.
  • New Meat: The Marine player character in the 2010 game is called "The Rookie." Even by his own HUD.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Eisenberg's reaction to the Marines shutting down the security grid in 2. Despite that he ordered it to be set up like that in the first place.
    • Also, when Harrison is escaping from the Pod he unintentionally releases the Player Character Predator from stasis, allowing it to wreak havoc on the guards and scientists. Granted, the Predator never actually interferes with Harrison or his allies, and in some cases aids him indirectly, so this example is iffy.
  • Night-Vision Goggles: In the first PC game, the Marine had a grainy, monochrome green pair of goggles. Because they were light amplifiers, any light source could be blinding (including the muzzle flash of your guns). The Predator's alternate vision modes could also count.
  • No-Gear Level: In both the Marine and Predator campaigns in AvP2 after the first couple of levels you are captured by the mercenaries and stripped of all your gear, except for the Predator's bracers which contain a retractable blade and a hacking device. This actually happens at the same time and place in the story, and you even briefly encounter the other player character.
  • No One Gets Left Behind: Frosty tries this in AvP 2. It doesn't exactly work out well the first time, although he does have more success when he tries it again at the end of the game.
    • As does The Rookie in the 2010 game. It doesn't work out much better, given the ending.
    • Predator campaigns tend to do this too, though usually the Pred is aware whoever he's looking for is dead and is trying to do something honour-related with their body or stuff.
  • No OSHA Compliance: Weyland-Yutani have a nasty habit of designing bases, security systems and more or less everything so it'll fail if someone looks at it funny. Lampshaded in AvP 2 where you find a note which explicitly states that the current communications setup compromises the entire security grid.
    • AvP 2 also has high-pressure, extremely hot steam coming out of random pipes, and pipelines labelled "Natural Gas" directly adjacent to ones labelled "Oxygen."
    • In the 2010 game, in which mining explosives were kept directly underneath a blast furnace.
  • No Party Like a Donner Party: Doctor Eisenberg from AvP 2 was part of an early expedition to LV-1201 that got trapped in an installation by aliens for an extended period. When he was finally rescued, he was found huddling in a corner surrounded by half-eaten corpses.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: The Marine campaign in any of the games relies heavily on this. Special mention goes to second PC game wherein the first few stages nothing attacks you, instead throwing many a cat scare your way.
  • Obviously Evil: Weyland-Yutani. It's amazing how forgetful the universe seems to be about this.
  • Obvious Rule Patch: The AvP 2 Predator had a huge weakness when it came to medium-range combat, being equipped exclusively with melee or slow-firing, long-ranged weapons. Primal Hunt introduced the Ancient Predator's energy flechette, a handy SMG-like device.
  • Older Is Better: Midway through the 2010 game, the Predator player character tosses away his mask in favor of a much more ornate one belonging to an ancient Predator king. Aside from containing useful holographic recordings, it also has a Xenomorph-specific vision mode; which the Predator's original mask didn't. The manual suggests the ancient predator clans were much more prolific and powerful than their descendants.
  • One-Man Army: Pretty much all the main characters will be killing off entire armies' worth of the other two species (although in the Predators' case, this is entirely in-character and Predators themselves are usually bosses for the other two species). Special note probably goes to the Predator in the original SNES version of Alien Versus Predator, who cleans out a human colony of a major alien infection (including a queen and several different praetors) more or less single-handedly, using only his bare hands.
  • Only Six Faces: While the 2010 game has several different Marine character models, they do tend to recycle a bit if you play for a while. Most notably, one of the female marines uses the exact same character and face model as main female character Tequila, only with slightly different color hair. It's a bit jarring to go through much of the Marine campaign saving her, then performing gruesome finishing moves on marines that look exactly like her in the Alien campaign.
  • Outside-the-Box Tactic: Most of the bosses in the 2010 game are relatively easily killed with one particular weapon, and almost impossible to kill with any other weapon. I.E. The Praetorian laughs off scoped rifle shots and automatic weapons fire, but goes down after only a few shotgun blasts, while the Predator is fairly easily sniped with the scoped rifle, while a full magazine from the Smartgun will barely tickle him.
  • Percussive Maintenance: In the FPS games while playing as an Alien and sometimes with a Predator breaking important pieces of electronic equipment always leads to the desired outcome. How to turn off the security measures holding an entire Alien hive contained by humans? Just smash the control computer!
  • Pistol-Whipping: In the first PC game, marines who ran out of all their ammo could wield their Pulse Rifle like a club. Generally, if things came down to that, you were screwed. In the 2010 game, the marine can fairly competently stun Aliens in close quarters, but it's hardly suitable to be your primary tactic.
  • Plot Hole:
    • In the 2010 game, why exactly did the marines drag the unconscious player character with them into the combat situation, only to leave him behind when things got dangerous?
    • In Primal Hunt, the Predator is carrying a chestburster. This does not stop facehuggers from giving a face full of one-shot kill.
  • Powered Armor: Remember the Power Loader from Aliens? The AvP 2 game has the militarized version, armed with a flamethrower, a dual minigun, and a semi-auto missile launcher, and a laser weapon, the whole thing powered by an atomic reactor— essentially more firepower than an entire squad of marines. They call her Alice.
    • The Beat 'em Up fighting games have the standard version of the Power Loader as a boss. It's got two big-ass claws and a shoulder-mounted flamethrower.
    • The RTS has the exosuit. Features include a completely sealed cockpit and 2 gatling guns, with enough ammo to destroy a small country. The refire rate is so high, that units caught in the firing cone are barely able to move.
  • Praetorian Guard: The Praetorian/Royal Guard aliens, obviously, although they only really guard the route to the Queen in the first PC game. In the 2010 game they don't even show up until long after the Queen's already dead.
    • Karl Bishop Wayland is protected by a personal cadre of advanced Combat Androids with distinct black uniforms and helmets, who are found in the last level of the Marine and Predator campaign. They've got cloaking devices and can take more than twice as much damage as a regular Combat Android, making them about as tough as a Predator Youngblood.
  • Preserve Your Gays: In Alien vs. Predator: Prey Jame Roth and her wife Cathie are among the few survivors at the end.
  • Private Military Contractors: The Iron Bears from the second PC game.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: Some of the Predators are legitimately honorable warriors and hunters. Broken Tusk of the first miniseries especially stands as probably the nicest Pred ever encountered and even kills a fellow hunter when he sees a child's skull among the other Predator's trophies.
  • Puzzle Boss: The Queens in the 1999 and 2010 games are puzzle bosses for marine players. In the 1999 game, you have to open the airlock to kill it, while in the 2010 game, you get to Kill It with Fire.
  • Read the Fine Print: Apparently even the most mundane WY contract has at least 88 clauses with subclauses, which seem to include the ability to do more or less anything they like to you.
  • Real Is Brown: The 2010 game does this any time you're outdoors.
  • Recycled Title: Rebellion Developments has made not one, not two, but three separate games based on the Alien Vs Predator universe: Alien Vs Predator (1994, Atari Jaguar), Aliens versus Predator (1999, PC), and... Aliens Vs. Predator (2010, multiplatform).
    • And that's not counting the SNES and arcade games, which are also titled Alien vs. Predator.
  • Red Shirt Army: Hoo boy, the Marines die in droves...
  • Respawning Enemies: Seen in the Jaguar game as well as the first PC game. The fact you could never safely clear a room and thus had to keep moving to avoid being eaten is part of what made the Marine campaign so terrifying.
    • Although the second PC game (AvP 2) generally avoided this, there was one section at the end of the first map of the 4th mission (the alien-infested underground base) where you had to deal with constantly respawning aliens while most likely low on health and armor due to the lack of any pickups in that area.
  • Retcon: The first movie establishes a timeline where both species were part of early Earth civilization, with Xenomorphs being regularly hunted by Yautjas.
  • Ridiculously Human Robot: Eisenberg in AvP 2, and Karl Bishop Weyland in the 2010 AvP.
    • Katya, the administrative android from the 2010 game would also count, though the fact she's been partially dismembered breaks the illusion.
  • Right-Handed Left-Handed Guns: In the 2010 game the pulse rifle has the charging handle on the left-hand side, and most of the guns have left-handed ejection ports, even though they don't actually eject anything.
  • Rule of Cool: The original reason why they had Aliens fighting Predators.
  • Shades of Conflict
    • Gray-and-Grey Morality: For the most part. While the leaders of that big corporation are a bunch of greedy assholes, most of the employees are just people doing their work or innocent victims. The marines are often just trying to get whatever snafu the Company just created under control. The Xenomorphs are obviously nasty bastards but in the video games, it's their territories that are being invaded and their queen violated, so really they're just fighting a war of self-defense against the humans and Predators, though with rules that aren't exactly what the Geneva Conventions would allow. The Yautjas are just there to hunt, even though their targets for said hunt are hives of aliens and any armed human they come across, but they do have standards on who the hunters are allowed to kill; women, children, the sick, the old and the defenseless are forbidden but for the rest, it's open season with whatever nasty and violent way they want to use.
    • Evil Versus Evil: In media where the humans are the viewpoint characters such as the movies, Aliens and Predators facing off against each other is definitely this.
    • Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Predators. And arguably the Alien, as it shows some intelligence but is mostly a ferocious animal.
  • Shoulder Cannon: The Plasmacaster. The RTS steps it up with shoulder-mounted missile launchers and heat beams.
  • Shout-Out:
    • In the first Xenomorph level in Extinction the Song of Nephilim is the background music.
  • Simultaneous Arcs: In the second and third PC games, the three campaigns - Alien, Predator, and Marine - intersect and overlap with each other, although each campaign starts and ends at different points in the overall story. To get the full picture it is necessary to complete every campaign.
  • A Space Marine Is You: The games tend to feature Colonial Marines as a third faction, and typically as the only one that have to fight their own species as well as the other two. The trope's come full circle, since Aliens was the inspiration for Doom, then Doom and its myriad offspring inspired the AvP games.
  • Spell My Name With An S: It varies as to whether the series title is "Alien Versus Predator," "Alien Vs Predator," "Aliens Versus Predator" or "Aliens Vs Predator."
  • Staredown Faceoff: This pose is a hallmark of the Aliens vs. Predator franchise, represented in a scene in the first movie where one of the Predators is face to face growling with the Xenomorph Queen.
  • Stay Frosty: Played straight and played with; in AvP 2 you are Frosty.
  • Stopped Numbering Sequels: except for the 2001 game (AVP 2) the title for every other game is a variation of "Aliens vs. Predator". So if you're saying that you got "Aliens vs. Predator", people may not know whether you're talking about Alien vs. Predator, Alien vs. Predator, Alien vs. Predator, Aliens versus Predator or Aliens vs. Predator.
  • Shower Scene: Dunya of the Iron Bears gets one in Aliens vs. Predator 2: Primal Hunt.
  • Strong as They Need to Be: In the 2010 game, apparently a human Marine with average strength can catch a Facehugger in mid-jump and hold it away from his face, shove a Xenomorph off him, block the metal-shredding claws of a Xenomorph or the super-sharp blades of a Predator, and even knock these super-strong creatures flat on their asses. But lifting up a big battery is still "nnnngh"-worthy.
  • Super-Speed: In the original 2000 PC game, the human Marines moved at more than 22 miles per hour (not sprinting, mind you. 22 mph was their normal movement speed); the Aliens and Predators moved at similar speeds to keep up. This was a product of the game being developed back when insanely fast movement speed was the norm; i.e. with Doom or Duke Nukem 3D.
  • Supervillain Lair: The WY complex in AvP 2 appears to be some kind of attempt at designing a Xenomorph-proof building; it consists of a series of skyscraper-sized pods suspended from an overhead gantry that can be dropped individually in case one is compromised. The support structures in turn are electrified to prevent intrusion through them.
  • Ten-Second Flashlight: Played straight with AvP 2's night vision, which literally lasted about ten seconds. The 2010 game avoids this with the actual flashlight, though the flares still burn out absurdly fast. Averted with the first game, which involved creeping though dark and terrifying environs without a flashlight.
  • They Would Cut You Up: One of the Company's goals regarding Predators.
    • Also seen in the RTS. One of the missions involves captured Predators.
  • Thong of Shielding: The holographic nudie dancer in the 2010 FPS. This is what gave the game a "Suggestive themes" warning in the rating box.
  • Those Two Guys: Sergeant Blackwell and Private Shugi, the other two members of Harrison's fireteam, in the second PC game. While they appear frequently at the beginning of the Marine campaign, they disappear for the most part until the end, where they pop up just so they can get killed by the Queen.
  • Thrown Out the Airlock: In the first PC game, the Marine has to deal with an Alien Queen by spacing it.
  • Time Abyss: The Matriarch in the 2010 game was apparently the first Alien Queen ever hunted by Predators, and was entombed along with a Predator noble.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Lex.
  • Unique Enemy: In the original Jaguar and PC Aliens vs Predator games, the Predators appeared semi-regularly as Giant Mook enemies. In AvP 2 and AvP 2010, you only fight 1 predator in the entire Marine campaign, and only 3-4 Predators in the Alien campaign (also, in AvP 2010, the 3 Predators in the entire Aliens campaign are all in a single boss fight).
  • Vasquez Always Dies: Tequila in the 2010 game is a borderline case; she's something of an Expy of both Vasquez and Hicks. She gets implanted with a chestburster, but is put into cryo sleep to keep her alive until it can be removed. Considering that the Marine Campaign doesn't exactly end cheerfully, it's probable she'll never get that surgery.
  • Versus Title
  • Videogame Flame Throwers Suck: AvP '99 has a flamethrower that will light up aliens in a heartbeat, but won't actually kill them until long after they've both set you on fire and torn you to shreds. Averted with the second installment, where the flamethrower deals high direct damage and can kill aliens very quickly (the offset being that the fire physics are much simpler than in the 1999 game). To quote the WY training manual:
    "The flamethrower is an effective weapon in all battlefield situations but especially so when confronting xenomorph, not only because of its high stopping power, but also because of the barrier of flame it puts between a containment officer and an offending specimen."
    • The one in the RTS is decent. It's good for crowd control and can cancel out regeneration abilities. Using it on Alien runners or Predator Spearmasters is a BAD idea though.
  • Villain Decay: Two accounts.
    • In the second PC game, the PC Predator is much less resilient than his NPC kinsmen.
    • The Aliens are nigh-undefeatable badasses in the films, but for gameplay reasons tend to get the mook treatment in most games.
    • Mostly averted with the Rebellion FPS games, where even one Alien can ruin your day. Both are considered to have a high learning curve.
  • Villain Protagonist: Averted to an extent; typically the actual bad guys are humans and the Alien and Predator characters are often the subject of their villainy. Also played with to the point of crossing over into Asshole Victim; the Aliens and Predators are, at best, cases of Blue-and-Orange Morality, but the Corrupt Corporate Executives they frequently fight rightly deserve the fates the two alien races visit upon them.
  • Voice with an Internet Connection: The Marines usually have one in the games; in the 2010 game, so does the Alien and the Predator.
  • Weak, but Skilled: The player-character Predator in the 2010 game can take a decent amount of melee damage when fighting Xenos, but dies almost instantly against full-auto weapons fire when fighting Marines. Combat against marines is thus all about stealth and distraction, drawing many comparisons to Batman: Arkham Asylum.
    • Predator Spearmasters in the RTS. They can score a 1-hit kill while cloaked, and when surrounded by enemies, will use a spin attack that sends them all flying. They can also parry weaker alien attacks. The low health is the only thing keeping them balanced.
  • Wingdinglish: The commonly-shown Predator glyphs are actually just an LED-like number display in base 9.
  • A Wizard Did It: In Alien: Resurrection General Peréz says humanity hasn't encountered any Xenomorphs in the 200 years since Alien³. This contradicts countless Expanded Universe stories so the Thrill Of The Hunt mini-comic said there was an event called The Big Deletion where a computer virus wiped out most of humanity's stored knowledge.
  • Wrestler in All of Us: One of the Predator's kill moves in the 2010 game is to grab an Alien and do a backbreaker.
  • You Are Number 6: The player character of the Alien campaign in the 2010 game was given the name "Six" (due to being the sixth specimen), and has the number literally branded on her forehead.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The Marine campaign in the first PC game ends like this, with the Company thanking the player for achieving all their mission objectives then informing the player that they "regretably cannot be evacuated at this time. Goodbye." Also; clause 88-C of the WY contract, which apparently gives your employer the right to shoot you for giggles or use you as a guinea pig.
    • Note that the Marine's superior officer in the first game still helps you by opening the hanger doors, meaning he at least got to live a bit longer and kill the Queen.
    • Karl Bishop Weyland invokes this trope; he claims he "owns" the Marine Corps, therefore he owns the Rookie. And when an asset is no further use to him, it is to be disposed of.
  • Zero-Effort Boss: Dr. Eisenberg, the Big Bad of AvP 2, comes at you with a combat shotgun and goes down after 1 hit at the end of the Alien campaign. Although this does make sense, as although he was an android, he was a non-combat model and besides he wasn't really the final boss of the Alien campaign anyway; that was the two Predators you fought just prior to defeating Eisenberg. And on the higher difficulties he CAN kill you in one shot if you dick around instead of finishing him immediately.
    • In contrast, Karl Bishop Weyland who's also an evil android Big Bad armed with a combat shotgun will often kill you the first few times you fight him, especially if you try to kill him with the wrong weaponry.

Alternative Title(s): Aliens Vs Predator, Alien Vs Predator

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