What do you all thing "The Thing" really looked like?

[Akira Tubo]

I mean, of course, the one from John Carpenter's 1982 version.

I think its true form was wormlike.  Here is my evidence:

After the dog's head split apart, a worm slithered out from the body, pushing the skull off the neck.

Bennings was attacked by a long worm.

The thing that leaped from Norris' body looked like a worm growing a human head and rudimentary arms and legs.

A worm pulled Windows into the mouth of the Palmer monster.

The Blair monster looked like a worm with a t-rex mouth and miscellaneous appendages.

[AndyC]

I think the wormlike appendages were simply tentacles this thing could sprout at will. Hard to say what it actually looked like, since every alien structure it formed was probably an imitation of some other animal it had assimilated.

The original story had a description of the alien found in the ice. It's been a while since I read it, so I can't quite remember it exactly. It had three angry red eyes. Again, there's no way of knowing if that's its original form.

Here's my theory: It's not really a single creature at all, but a complex colony of unicellular organisms working in unison. They share a group consciousness, and have the ability to sense how many of cells are present at any given time, from one to billions, doing their best with what they've got (head popping off and sprouting legs, blood jumping out of petrie dish).

Evolution simply took a different turn on their planet, and instead of going from unicellular organisms to multicellular organisms, these single-celled creatures formed a looser relationship. They would have to posess a fairly complex cellular structure and genetic code, and a highly evolved method of communication to function as a single shape-shifting being.

Of course, it might not have been evolution, but rather an alien science that was responsible. Maybe it was a biological weapon that consumed its creators and stole their technology to spread through the universe. Plenty of possibilities.

[Akira Tubo]

That's what makes "The Thing" so great.  There's just so much you can do with it, if you've got the imagination.

[Flangepart]

As per the psychology of the creatures........intresting, that. I've often wondered about the beghavior of the alien in the first version of the story. Was it violent because of brain damage suffered in the crash, was it a homicidal crimminal among its own kind, or maby just radicaly xenophobic? It was an intelligent creature....but so are humans, and look at our history.

[Future Blob]

I haven't read the first version of the story, so I can only speak on Carpenter's version.

      Possibly it simply didn't see humans as being "sentient" lifeforms. Since it seemed to be able to mimic anything it absorbed, it's possible that it simply thought that we were "hosts" and things to be used as it saw fit. Not so much xenophobic but simply incapable of understanding that other beings were individual and unique rather than simply fodder. After all, if you could perfectly imitate John Smith, is John Smith so special, assuming you have all of his thoughts, memories ect?

  Or, perhaps it was on the run from some(thing)body else? Not a criminal as much  a refugee?

[john]

>The original story had a description of the alien found in the ice.

"Eagerly Blair was stripping back the ropes. A single throw of the Tarpaulin revealed the thing. The ice had melted somewhat in the heat of the room, and it was clear and blue as thick, good glass. It shone wet and sleek under the harsh light of the unshielded globe above.

The room stiffened abruptly. It was face up there on the plain, greasy planks of the table. The broken haft of the bronze ice-axe was still buried in the queer skull. Three mad, hate-filled eyes blazed up with a living fire, bright as fresh-spilled blood, from a face ringed with a writhing, loathsome nest of worms, blue, mobile worms that crawled where hair should grow - "

[Jim Hepler]

Was the thing killed off or did it live?  It leaves the question wide open.  Was the black guy the thing?

[AndyC]

That's the beauty of the ending - you don't know.

[john]

Reportedly, Carpenter has said that his original ending was to have them both be the thing.

[Erik J]

You know it still could have been both. They never said either way.