The_Thing_

(WARNING: This profile contains spoilers for the two 'The Thing' movies and the video game! You have been warned...)



The Thing is a shape-shifting extraterrestrial organism and the primary antagonist of the 1982 science-fiction film The Thing, its prequel, video-games and literature. The Thing has the ability to assimilate other life forms in order to survive and spread. The original physical characteristics of The Thing are unknown as it could have assimilated hundreds if not thousands of other species before it crashed on Earth.

The biology of The Thing is the same as the body it has replicated or is in the process of replicating. The Thing has the ability to reconstitute itself following immense damage, however it is vulnerable to fire and potentially molecular acid since they both destroy the creature at a cellular level. It is very tolerant of cold, placing itself in cryogenic stasis until found by unsuspecting victims. When changing form, 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. The Thing is also capable of continuing normal functions even when lacking eyes, ears, sense of smell or other ways of interacting with the environment.

Any form of the Thing is capable of astonishing amounts of strength, speed and stamina, such as the case with the Kennel Thing, which subdued and assimilated multiple sled dogs, and especially the Centipede-Thing, which overpowered a man in moments, despite the very clear size difference.

The Thing is a shape shifting organism, but it must come into contact with its host in order to begin the process of analyzing and copying its cellular structure. To do this, the cells begin digesting and replicating the host, eventually taking over the entire body. The Thing will also only assimilate freshly killed or still living prey; any organism that has been dead for an extended period of time will be ignored by it. This may be due to it being largely ineffective to more intelligent prey if it mimicked a member of their society that was known to have been killed. Alternatively, it may rely on the blood stream to rapidly assimilate prey. Copper was killed by the Norris-Thing biting off both his hands, and so presumably was exposed to Thing infection; yet his corpse showed no signs of "reviving" as an imitation (and a post-mortem blood test came up negative). Presumably he bled out so quickly that the infection had no time to spread before his biomass was rendered useless by death.

After The Thing has assimilated a creature it is capable of imitating them exactly with all memories, characteristics, and habits. Even defects like Norris' weak heart are replicated. When a part of The Thing becomes cut in two, both of those pieces become their own creatures and operate separately. For example, when the Norris-Thing's head grows legs and attempts to escape. The replication varies depending on the occurrences at hand and whether or not the attacking Thing is smaller or is injured. If the assaulting Thing in question is injured in any way, much smaller than the prey or under pressure, it will usually just add the bio mass to itself and either mimic the prey or add the mass to its original frame to increase its size and strength to counteract any threats within the area. If however the Thing successfully assaults the prey in a safe location, it will just feed on the prey and make a copy of the victim then revert back to its cover before searching for another victim to assimilate.

The Thing has only assimilation and self-preservation in mind. As seen, The Thing will selfishly save itself or even attack other forms of itself 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 (or at least, Conker's Bad Fur Day will at least survive in the back catalog of Microsoft's IPs, because they don't know what the FUCK they're doing with that damn game), as in the case of a Thing which split up into three separate forms. One engaged and began assimilating someone, another limb scuttled away for potential assimilation in a safer location, and the main body of the Thing killed someone, and successfully assimilated another. This is also performed, albeit much less successfully, by a Thing of a man who suffers a heart attack. 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 level of intelligence is a function of its size. The larger the Thing, the more intelligent it is likely to be. The smaller the Thing, the less intelligent it will be. MacReady's blood test is directly dependent on this idea by proving that a smaller creature such as a petri dish of blood would defend itself violently for self preservation whereas a larger creature (like a human imitation) would be smart enough to stay hidden. When attacked, it looks like even a fragment of one of these things will try to survive as best it can. Even a sample of its blood. There's no higher nervous system, which means no brain to suppress a natural instinct like that if it's in the best interests of the larger whole to do so. The cells have to act instinctively instead of intelligently. Protect themselves from freezing or from incineration, perhaps. This also accounts for why the Norris-Head from the 1982 film scurried from its hiding spot when it did. Its body mass was not sufficiently large enough to form an intelligent brain center. Consequently, it didn't know well enough to NOT blow its cover when the men still presented a danger.

The film, literary and video-game series have outlined several methods of distinguishing an imitation from an original creature, based around either blood-testing or searching for missing inorganic components (for example, tooth fillings or prosthetics). Blood tests work by coercing autonomous Thing cells (imitating blood cells) to act in self-preservation. Crawling away from a hot needle for example. Another blood test variant is the blood serum test, where a suspected imitation's blood is mixed with uncontaminated blood, and the infected blood will react violently if the creature is an imposter. The 2002 video-game, The Thing, adds a further method of testing in the blood test hypothesis in the form of a portable blood testing device which exposes a suspect's blood to a caustic chemical agent.

The only way to kill the Thing completely is to incinerate it with fire or obliterate it completely with high explosives, although powerful electric shocks might also prove effective as well. While smaller Things die fairly quickly from the heat, larger Things take much longer to kill, and may even survive these types of attacks, although they will be incapacitated and/or heavily damaged. Explosives on the other hand, can kill even the larger variants of The Thing relatively easily.






Now, the Thing has come to the Nexus. And it's out for blood.

Player is currently looking for an RP set in the world of Dungeons and Dragons.

UPDATE: The Thing is now unable to assimilate pred-only characters.