The Thing

Audio files

If you use WinRAR, you can extract a hidden audio file from The Thing's data folder. The file: "creditsspeech.ogg", is an easter egg featuring Presidents Bush II, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, game characters, and others congratulating Blake on a job well done.

Cameo

John Carpenter himself makes a cameo appearance as Dr. Faraday, the head of Gen Inc you meet halfway through the game. Apparently Carpenter went down to the programmer's studios and had his face scanned into the game. This explains why Carpenter says the game has "an incredibly cool and handsome character in Dr. Faraday" in his praise of the game on the inside cover of the box.

German version

There are various changes in the German version: * Almost all blood effects removed * The mutation animation was shortened * Headless corpses used as level decoration were replaced with regular corpses and cut off limbs removed altogether * Team members don't perform suicide * Death animations of humans were removed * Removed death cries * In two cutscenes violent scenes were removed

A detailed list of changes can be found on schnittberichte.com (German).

Inspiration

The Thing is based on the 1982 cult movie The Thing by John Carpenter. That movie is actually a remake of 1951's The Thing From Another World by Howard Hawks and that movie in turn is based on the 1943 short story Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell.

Transformation

When your NPC teammates turn into the Thing, they generally turn into the same monster... one with a head that looks a little like a skinless lizard. However, there is one character called Fisk who, if infected, transforms into a slightly different looking Thing with a distorted, stretched-out human face.

Since Fisk is a Gen Inc trooper, and since the troopers were originally supposed to be infected humans who would burst out to attack you, it's possible this is a leftover from the original game design, especially since the Fisk-Thing seems kind of buggy as it's head tends to disappear when you look at it from different angles.

References

• Near the beginning of the game, you'll find the sign seen at the first part of the movie noting where you are.
• A few moments later you will get into some pit, where you will find the remains of MacReady's shack. Inside the shack, you will find the recorder with MacReady's message. It is not the original recording done in the movie. Rather, it was done by a soundalike, and was timed differently.
• In the room where you encounter the character named Carter, you will find the infamous Norwegian who cut his own throat to avoid being taken over.
• The first set of CCTV camera controls you get to mess with will switch you to a view of the room behind a door needing an access code. Fans of the movie will instantly recognize this room: Look around and you'll find the ice block the Thing was originally thawed from!

Trailer

If you let the game's menu screen sit for a minute or two, the game's trailer starts. The trailer is also available if you explore the installed FMV folder.

Information also contributed by Alan Chan, CaptainCanuck, Dr. M. "Schadenfreude" Von Katze and Terrence Bosky.