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50 free Aliens (1986) trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Aliens is James Cameron's 1986 sequel to Alien, the film that turned Ridley Scott's haunted house in space into a roller coaster and made Ellen Ripley an action icon. Fifty-seven years after the Nostromo, Ripley goes back to LV-426 with a squad of Colonial Marines, an android named Bishop and a company man named Burke, and finds a nest, an orphaned girl called Newt and a queen. Made for about $18.5 million at Pinewood Studios, it earned Sigourney Weaver the first Best Actress Oscar nomination ever given to a science-fiction film. This quiz is about the 1986 film alone. It covers the cast and the actor who was fired from it, the years the sequel spent stalled at Fox, the SAS training, the tea-break war with the British crew, Stan Winston's queen puppet, James Horner's three-week score, the box office, the awards and the film's long afterlife in games, comics and a Marvel movie. Fifty questions, four options each, with a short explanation after every answer. Play on your phone or print it for a quiz night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who wrote and directed Aliens?
James Cameron
He got the job on the strength of his scripts for The Terminator and Rambo: First Blood Part II; Ridley Scott said he was never asked.
Q 02Who plays Ellen Ripley?
Sigourney Weaver
She received $1 million and a share of the profits, the highest salary of her career at that point.
Q 03Who plays Corporal Dwayne Hicks?
Michael Biehn
He was hired on a Friday after the original Hicks was let go, and missed the Marines' training as a result.
Q 04Who plays Newt?
Carrie Henn
Scouted at school in Lakenheath, England, with no acting experience, she never pursued acting afterwards and became a teacher.
Q 05Who plays the android Bishop?
Lance Henriksen
He played the character as an innocent child who pities short-lived humans, and his 'blood' on set was milk.
Q 06Which panicky Marine private is played by Bill Paxton?
Hudson
His 'Game over, man; game over!' came from a backstory Paxton invented in which the character trained on simulators.
Q 07Who plays the company representative Carter Burke?
Paul Reiser
It was his first major film role after small parts such as Beverly Hills Cop.
Q 08Which actress plays Private Vasquez?
Jenette Goldstein
It was her first film; she gained 10 pounds at the director's request and wore dark contacts and an hour of makeup daily.
Q 09What is the name of the Marines' spaceship?
Sulaco
The designer first imagined it as a sphere with antennae, but a flat freighter worked better passing the camera.
Q 10On which moon is the colony Ripley returns to?
LV-426
The derelict alien ship seen there had been sitting in historian Bob Burns III's driveway since the first film.
Q 11In which month of 1986 was the film released in the US?
July
It opened at number one with $10.1 million from 1,437 theaters, ahead of The Karate Kid Part II.
Q 12What was the film's approximate budget?
$18.5 million
Fox had estimated $35 million and chairman Barry Diller offered $12 million, at which point the director and producer quit until he relented.
Q 13At which studios near London was most of the film shot?
Pinewood
The director's parting words to the crew there: he would one day drive out the gate and never come back, and they would still be there.
Q 21Which Vietnam veteran in the cast helped train the actors to handle firearms?
Al Matthews
He plays Sergeant Apone; the blanks were still hazardous, and one actor put a hole through a neighbouring set.
Q 22The original Hicks accidentally shot a hole through the set of which film on an adjacent stage?
Little Shop of Horrors
Frank Oz was shooting his musical next door at Pinewood.
Q 23Which British film-industry tradition most frustrated the Canadian director?
Tea breaks
They stopped production for up to an hour each weekday; the crew, for their part, took him for an American 'punk'.
Q 14How long was the treatment the director wrote in three days in November 1983?
42 pages
It was built on the producers' suggestion of 'Ripley and soldiers'; one executive called it a constant stream of horror without character.
Q 15To sell the title, the director drew lines through its 's' to make what symbol?
A dollar sign
The whiteboard story was thought apocryphal for years until he confirmed it in 2021.
Q 16If Alien was a haunted house, the director said the sequel should be like what?
A roller coaster
He and the producer agreed to combine the horror of the original with the action of The Terminator.
Q 17Which novel were the Marine actors told to read to understand the space-soldier archetype?
Starship Troopers
The director also wrote a distinct backstory for every Marine.
Q 18Which actor was originally cast as Hicks and then fired early in the shoot?
James Remar
He later admitted it followed an arrest for drug possession; two shots of him from behind survive in the film.
Q 19Bill Paxton credited his casting to a chance meeting with the director where?
Los Angeles International Airport
Fox liked the idea after his turn in Weird Science; he worried the character would annoy people until he saw it as comic relief.
Q 20The Marine cast trained for three weeks with which military unit?
The SAS
The idea was to build camaraderie and make them treat the non-Marine actors as outsiders.
Q 24Which cinematographer replaced Dick Bush after a dispute over lighting the hive?
Adrian Biddle
Bush had insisted on lighting the alien nest brightly, against the director's wishes.
Q 25The hive sets were left standing and later redressed for which 1989 film?
Batman
Tim Burton turned them into the interiors of Axis Chemicals.
Q 26What was used as Bishop's android blood?
Milk
After several days of filming it had gone sour and foul-smelling.
Q 27How long is the theatrical cut?
137 minutes
Fox wanted it under two hours for more daily showings; the director refused another 12-minute trim. The extended cut runs 157 minutes.
Q 28Who composed the score?
James Horner
It was his first collaboration with the director, and he called it a 'nightmare'; bits of Goldsmith's Alien score were cut in to fill gaps.
Q 29How many weeks did the composer end up having to write the score?
Three
He had expected six; the music for the final battle with the queen was written overnight.
Q 30Where was the score recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra?
Abbey Road Studios
The director first heard it at the recording session, disliked it, and it was too late to change.