title: Obergefell v. Hodges

text: Justice Samuel Alito wrote a dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justices Scalia and Thomas. Invoking "Glucksberg", in which the Court stated the Due Process Clause protects only rights and liberties that are "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition", Alito claimed any "right" to same-sex marriage would not meet this definition; he chided the justices in the majority for going against judicial precedent and long-held tradition. Alito defended the rationale of the states, accepting the premise that same-sex marriage bans serve to promote procreation and the optimal childrearing environment. Alito expressed concern that the majority's opinion would be used to attack the beliefs of those who disagree with same-sex marriage, who "will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools", leading to "bitter and lasting wounds". Expressing concern for judicial abuse, Alito concluded, "Most Americans—understandably—will cheer or lament today's decision because of their views on the issue of same-sex marriage. But all Americans, whatever their thinking on that issue, should worry about what the majority's claim of power portends."


title: Obergefell v. Hodges

text: James Obergefell, the named plaintiff in "Obergefell" who sought to put his name on his husband's Ohio death certificate as surviving spouse, said, "Today's ruling from the Supreme Court affirms what millions across the country already know to be true in our hearts: that our love is equal." He expressed his hope that the term gay marriage soon will be a thing of the past and henceforth only be known as marriage. President Barack Obama praised the decision and called it a "victory for America".


title: Obergefell v. Hodges

text: Hundreds of companies reacted positively to the Supreme Court decision by temporarily modifying their company logos on social media to include rainbows or other messages of support for the legalization of same-sex marriage. Jubilant supporters went to social media, public rallies, and Pride parades to celebrate the ruling. Media commentators highlighted the above-quoted passage from Kennedy's decision as a key statement countering many of the arguments put forth by same-sex marriage opponents and mirroring similar language in the 1967 decision in "Loving v. Virginia", which abolished bans on inter-racial marriages, and the 1965 decision in "Griswold v. Connecticut", which affirmed married couples have a right of privacy. The paragraph was frequently repeated on social media after the ruling was reported.


title: Obergefell v. Hodges

text: In 2015, due to the ruling, Justice Anthony Kennedy and the other justices of the Supreme Court were chosen as "The Advocate"'s People of the Year.


title: Obergefell v. Hodges

text: Conversely, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called the Court's decision a "lawless ruling" and pledged free legal defense of state workers who refuse to marry couples on religious grounds. In a tweet, former Governor of Arkansas and then Republican candidate for the 2016 presidential election Mike Huckabee wrote, "This flawed, failed decision is an out-of-control act of unconstitutional judicial tyranny." Austin R. Nimocks, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a group that opposes same-sex marriage, accused the Court's majority of undermining freedom of speech, saying that "five lawyers took away the voices of more than 300 million Americans to continue to debate the most important social institution in the history of the world. . . . Nobody has the right to say that a mom or a woman or a dad or a man is irrelevant." Some, such as the "National Catholic Register" and "Christianity Today", raised concerns that there may be conflict between the ruling and religious liberty, echoing the arguments made by the dissenting justices.


title: Obergefell v. Hodges

text: On May 4, 2017, Republican Governor of Tennessee Bill Haslam signed HB 1111/SB 1085 into law. The bill was seen by the Human Rights Campaign as an attempt to challenge "Obergefell v. Hodges".


title: Obergefell v. Hodges

text: Though the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage throughout the country in June 2015, there have been numerous counties refusing to issue marriage licenses to otherwise eligible same-sex couples in the states of Alabama, Texas, and Kentucky. Additionally, the overall status of same sex-marriage in the territory of American Samoa remains uncertain.


title: Obergefell v. Hodges

text: After the ruling in "Obergefell", by September 4, 2015, officials in eleven Alabama counties stopped issuing all marriage licenses: Autauga, Bibb, Chambers, Choctaw, Clarke, Cleburne, Covington, Elmore, Geneva, Pike, and Washington.


title: Obergefell v. Hodges

text: On January 6, 2016, Alabama's Chief Justice, Roy Moore, issued a ruling forbidding state officials from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples; he faced ethics charges for this decree in May of that year and was subsequently suspended for the remainder of his term beginning that September. Following Moore's ruling, the previously listed counties continued to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, while Elmore and Marengo Counties joined in their refusal.


title: Obergefell v. Hodges

text: Chambers County began issuing marriage licences again in June 2016, and so by June 26, 2016, twelve counties were refusing to issue any marriage licenses: Autauga, Bibb, Choctaw, Clarke, Cleburne, Coosa, Covington, Elmore, Geneva, Marengo, Pike and Washington. By October 2016, Bibb, Coosa, and Marengo Counties had begun issuing licenses again, and by June 2017 so had Choctaw County. Until June 2019, eight counties still refused to issue marriage licences to any couple: Autauga, Clarke, Cleburne, Covington, Elmore, Geneva, Pike and Washington.


title: Obergefell v. Hodges

text: At that time, the Alabama Legislature passed a bill that would change state law to replace marriage licences, which were applications put before a probate court, with marriage certificates, which are given to couples that file the required notarized forms. The bill was signed into law in May 2019 by Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, and it went into effect on August 29, 2019; all eight remaining holdout counties were required to begin issuing marriage certificates, and every county in Alabama is currently issuing marriage certificates to all couples, including otherwise eligible same-sex couples.


title: Obergefell v. Hodges

text: After the ruling in "Obergefell", six Texas counties initially refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses: Hood, Irion, Loving, Mills, Swisher, and Throckmorton. Swisher and Throckmorton Counties began issuing marriage licenses by August 2015, and Loving and Mills Counties followed suit by September 2015. After September 4, 2015, Irion County was the only county that refused to issue marriage licenses, with the county clerk citing grounds of personal religious beliefs. However, as a result of the November 2020 elections, there is a new office holder for the position of Irion County Clerk, though if the new clerk would issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple remains unknown.


title: Obergefell v. Hodges

text: Three Kentucky counties were not confirmed to be issuing or refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples: Whitley, Casey, and Rowan. Kim Davis, clerk of Rowan County, cited religious exemptions based on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Section Five of the Kentucky Constitution in her non-issuance of same-sex marriage licenses. In an attempt to mitigate the issue, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin signed SB-216 into law on April 13, 2016, which replaced the previously separate marriage license forms for opposite-sex and same-sex couples with one form that has an option for gender neutral language. On June 22, 2016, the director of the Kentucky Fairness Campaign, Chris Hartmann, stated that "there are no counties where marriage licenses are being denied" in Kentucky.


title: Obergefell v. Hodges

text: Guam had been issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples prior to "Obergefell;" the territory was already fully compliant with the ruling.


title: Obergefell v. Hodges

text: The governor of Puerto Rico announced on June 26, 2015, that the territory would comply with the ruling in "Obergefell" and same-sex marriage would begin in Puerto Rico within fifteen days. Although same-sex couples began marrying in the territory on July 17, the court battle would continue until April 11, 2016.


title: Obergefell v. Hodges

text: On June 29 and June 30, 2015, the governors of the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands, respectively, announced that their territories would comply with "Obergefell".


title: Obergefell v. Hodges

text: However, it is unclear as to how and if "Obergefell" would apply to American Samoa, because residents born in the territory are U.S. nationals, rather than U.S. citizens like in the other four populated U.S territories. On July 9, 2015, then-attorney general for American Samoa, Talauega Eleasalo Ale, stated that his office was "still reviewing the decision to determine its ["Obergefell's"] applicability to American Samoa." Further, the district court judge for American Samoa, Fiti Alexander Sunia, stated in his January 2016 Senate confirmation hearing that he "will not perform weddings for same-sex couples unless local laws are changed." The legality of these statements by former and current territorial government officials remains to be addressed due to lack of litigation, and so the legal status of same-sex marriage in American Samoa remains uncertain.


title: Obergefell v. Hodges

text: The Court's decision did not legalize same-sex marriage on Indian reservations. In the U.S., the Congress, not the federal courts, has legal authority over tribal reservations. Thus, unless Congress passes a law regarding same-sex marriage that is applicable to tribal governments, federally recognized American Indian tribes have the legal right to form their own marriage laws, and to reject those of the U.S. As such, the individual laws of the various federally recognized Native American tribes can set limits on same-sex marriage under their jurisdictions. At least twelve reservations specifically prohibit same-sex marriage and do not recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions, and two others may ban it; these reservations remain the only parts of the Contiguous United States to enforce explicit bans on same-sex couples marrying.


title: Obergefell v. Hodges

text: In "Pavan v. Smith", the Supreme Court reaffirmed "Obergefell" and ruled that states may not treat married same-sex couples differently from married opposite-sex couples in issuing birth certificates. In "Obergefell", birth certificates were listed among the "governmental rights, benefits, and responsibilities" that typically accompany marriage. Quoting "Obergefell", the Court reaffirmed that "the Constitution entitles same-sex couples to civil marriage 'on the same terms and conditions as opposite-sex couples'."


title: Obergefell v. Hodges

text: In "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization", the majority opinion overruled "Roe v. Wade", and held that the right to privacy does not extend to that of abortion on the criteria from "Washington v. Glucksberg" that a right must be "deeply rooted in the Nation's history", and abortion was considered a crime, a view that some historians argued is incomplete. For the majority, Justice Samuel Alito responded to the dissenting's concerns, saying that the ruling would not affect other substantive due process cases. In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas, a dissenter in "Obergefell", urged the court to revisit this case, since "Dobbs" overruled the fundamental right to privacy as unenumerated right implied in "Roe" and cast doubt over substantive due process. The dissenting opinion, which criticized the majority for rejecting "stare decisis" and overruling precedents dating back to "Griswold v. Connecticut", responded, "Either the majority does not really believe in its own reasoning. Or if it does, all rights that have no history stretching back to the mid-19th century are insecure. Either the mass of the majority's opinion is hypocrisy, or additional constitutional rights are under threat. It is one or the other."


title: Ace Attorney

text: Ace Attorney is a series of visual novel adventure video games developed by Capcom. With storytelling fashioned after legal dramas, the first entry in the series, "", was released in 2001; since then, five further main series games, as well as various spin-offs, prequels and high-definition remasters for newer game consoles, have been released. Additionally, the series has seen adaptations in the form of a live-action film and an anime, and has been the base for manga series, drama CDs, musicals and stage plays.


title: Ace Attorney

text: The player takes the roles of various defense attorneys, including Phoenix Wright, his mentor Mia Fey, and his understudies Apollo Justice and Athena Cykes, who investigate cases and defend their clients in court; they find the truth by cross-examining witnesses and finding inconsistencies between the testimonies and the evidence they have collected. The cases all last a maximum of three days, with the judge determining the outcome based on evidence presented by the defense attorney and the prosecutor. While the original Japanese versions of the games are set in Japan, the series' localizations are set in the United States (primarily Los Angeles), though retaining Japanese cultural elements. In the spin-off series "Ace Attorney Investigations", the player takes the role of prosecutor Miles Edgeworth and in the prequel series "The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles", of Phoenix's ancestor Ryunosuke Naruhodo.


title: Ace Attorney

text: The series was created by the writer and director Shu Takumi. He wanted the series to end after the third game, but it continued, with Takeshi Yamazaki taking over as writer and director starting with "" (2009); Takumi has since returned to write and direct some spin-off titles. The series has been well received, with reviewers liking the characters and story, and the finding of contradictions; it has also performed well commercially, with Capcom regarding it as one of their strongest intellectual properties. The series has been credited with helping to popularize visual novels in the Western world. As of September 30, 2022, the game series has sold 9.6 million units worldwide.


title: Ace Attorney

text: The "Ace Attorney" series launched in Japan with the Game Boy Advance game "" in 2001, and has been published in the West since the release of a Nintendo DS port in 2005. The series currently consists of six main series games and five spin-offs.


title: Ace Attorney

text: The "Ace Attorney" games are visual novel adventure games in which the player controls defense attorneys and defends their clients in several different episodes. The gameplay is split into two types of sections: investigations and courtroom trials. During the investigations, the player searches the environments, gathering information and evidence, and talks to characters such as their client, witnesses, and the police. Once enough evidence has been collected, the game moves on to a courtroom trial section.


title: Ace Attorney

text: In the courtroom trials, the player aims to get their client declared "not guilty". To do so, they cross-examine witnesses, and aim to find lies and inconsistencies in the testimonies. They are able to go back and forth between the different statements in the testimony, and can press the witness for more details on a statement. When the player finds an inconsistency, they can present a piece of evidence that contradicts the statement. If the player is correct, the game presents a sequence that often starts with the protagonist shouting "Objection!" and pointing at the witness along with a shift in music before they begin to grill the witness with the inconsistency, which has become an iconic aspect of the series. The player is penalized if they present incorrect evidence: in the first game, a number of exclamation marks are shown, with one disappearing after each mistake the player makes; in later games, a health bar that represents the judge's patience is used instead; and in 3DS games, the character's lawyer badge is used. If all exclamation marks or lawyer badges are lost, or the health bar reaches zero, the player loses the game and their client is declared guilty.


title: Ace Attorney

text: Several "Ace Attorney" games introduce new gameplay mechanics to the series. "Justice for All" introduces "psyche-locks", which are shown over a witness when the player asks them about a topic they do not want to discuss; using a "magatama", the player can start breaking the psyche-locks by showing the witness evidence or character profiles that proves they are hiding something. The number of psyche-locks depends on how deep the secret is; when all locks are broken, the topic becomes available, giving the player access to new information. "Apollo Justice" introduces the "perceive" system, where the player looks for motions or actions made by witnesses that show nervousness, similar to a tell in poker.


title: Ace Attorney

text: "Dual Destinies" introduces the "mood matrix", through which the player can gauge the emotions of a witness, such as tones of anger when mentioning certain topics; if the player notices a contradictory emotional response during testimony, they can point out the discrepancy and press the witness for more information. "Dual Destinies" also introduces "revisualization", where the player reviews vital facts and forms links between evidence to reach new conclusions. "Spirit of Justice" introduces "divination séances", in which the player is shown the memories of victims moments before their deaths, and must find contradictions in the victim's five senses to determine what has happened. "Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney" introduces simultaneous cross-examinations of multiple witnesses, with the player being able to see and hear reactions from the different witnesses to the testimony and using this to find contradictions. "The Great Ace Attorney" introduces "joint reasoning", where the player finds out the truth by pointing out when their investigative partner Herlock Sholmes takes his reasoning "further than the truth".


title: Ace Attorney

text: The "Ace Attorney Investigations" spin-off series splits the gameplay into investigation phases and rebuttal phases, the latter of which is similar to the courtroom trials of the main series. During the investigation phases, the player searches for evidence and talks to witnesses and suspects. Things the player character notices in the environment are saved as thoughts; the player can use the "logic" system to connect two such thoughts to gain access to new information. At some points, the player can create hologram reproductions of the crime scene, through which they can discover new information that would otherwise be hidden. "Ace Attorney Investigations 2" introduces "logic chess", where the player interrogates witnesses in a timed sequence that is visualized as a game of chess, with the player aiming to destroy the other character's chess pieces. To do this, they need to build up their advantage in the discussion by alternating between speaking and listening, and then choose to go on the offensive.


title: Ace Attorney

text: The protagonist of the first three games is the defense attorney Phoenix Wright (Ryūichi Naruhodō in the Japanese version), who is assisted by the spirit medium Maya Fey; in the third game, Phoenix's mentor Mia Fey is also a playable character. In the fourth game, the protagonist is the defense attorney Apollo Justice; in the fifth, Phoenix, Apollo and the new defense attorney Athena Cykes are all protagonists; and in the sixth, Phoenix and Apollo are the main protagonists, while Athena is playable in one case. The spin-off "The Great Ace Attorney" is set in England near the end of the 19th century, and follows Phoenix's ancestor Ryunosuke Naruhodo.


title: Ace Attorney

text: Phoenix's childhood friend Miles Edgeworth, who is the protagonist of the "Ace Attorney Investigations" games, is a recurring rival prosecutor character; in addition to him, each new game in the series introduces a new rival: Franziska von Karma is introduced in the second game, Godot in the third, Klavier Gavin in the fourth, Simon Blackquill in the fifth, Nahyuta Sahdmadhi in the sixth, Baron van Zieks in "Adventures", and Kazuma Asogi in "Resolve". Most of the prosecutor characters are portrayed as powerful and arrogant characters of high social status and who care about keeping perfect-win records in court, and even may favor convictions over finding the truth, although most have secret motivations and sympathetic backstories and typically help the protagonist at the game's climax. Similarly to real Japanese prosecutors, the prosecutors in the series often directly oversee investigations, issuing orders to the police. Japanese attitudes towards the police force are reflected in the series, with the police being represented by incompetent characters such as Dick Gumshoe, Maggey Byrde and Mike Meekins. In the world of "Ace Attorney", trials only last three days, and usually end with a "guilty" verdict, with trials taken up by the protagonists of the games being rare exceptions. The outcomes of cases are decided by a judge, based on evidence provided by the defense attorney and the prosecutor.


title: Ace Attorney

text: The series was created by Shu Takumi, who wrote and directed the first three games. The first game was conceived in 2000 when Takumi's boss at the time, Shinji Mikami, gave him six months to create any type of game he wanted to; Takumi had originally joined Capcom wanting to make mystery and adventure games, and felt that this was a big chance for him to make a mark as a creator. The game was designed to be simple, as Takumi wanted it to be easy enough for even his mother to play. It was originally going to be a detective game, with Phoenix being a private investigator, but at one point Takumi realized that finding and taking apart contradictions was not related to detective work, and felt that the main setting of the game should be courtrooms.


title: Ace Attorney

text: Takumi cited Japanese mystery author Edogawa Ranpo as an inspiration, particularly "The Psychological Test", a short story which involves a crime that "unravels due to the criminal's contradictory testimony." It had a big impact on him, and was a major influence on the game. He was also inspired by stories from another Japanese author, Shinichi Hoshi, stating that he was pursuing his "element of surprise and unexpectedness."


title: Ace Attorney

text: Takumi felt that the best way to write a mystery with a good climax is to reveal various clues, and then pull them together into one conclusion, and not have multiple possible endings. He said that the biggest challenge with that was to make the gameplay and story work together; the goal was to make the player feel like they have driven the story forward themselves, with their own choices, even though the game is linear. He only spent little time on writing a backstory for Phoenix before writing the first game's story, and instead made up dialogue and developed Phoenix's personality as he went along. He came up with the partner character Maya because he thought it would be more fun for players to have another character with them, giving them advice, than investigating on their own.


title: Ace Attorney

text: After the first game's development was finished, Mikami told Takumi that they should make an "Ace Attorney" trilogy, with a grand finale in the third game's last case. Takumi had originally planned to let Edgeworth be the prosecutor in all episodes in the second game, but during the production the development team learned that the character had become popular. This led to Takumi feeling that he had to use the character more carefully and sparingly; he created the new prosecutor character Franziska von Karma, to save Edgeworth for the game's last case, and avoid a situation where he—a supposed prodigy—loses every case. As Takumi wanted the three first "Ace Attorney" games to be parts of a larger work, he avoided making a lot of changes between games: art from the first game for main characters such as Phoenix, Maya and Edgeworth was reused, to avoid having the previous games look outdated in comparison to newer games in the series; and no new gameplay mechanics were added for "Trials and Tribulations", as Takumi was happy with the gameplay after having added the psyche-lock mechanic for "Justice for All".


title: Ace Attorney

text: For the fourth game, Takumi wrote the scenario and took on a supervisory role. He had wanted the series to end with the third game, as he felt Phoenix had been fully explored and that his story had been told; he said that it is important to know when to end a story, that he did not want the series to become a shadow of its former self, and that he did not see any reason to continue it. Despite this, the spin-off series "Ace Attorney Investigations" was created, being directed by Takeshi Yamazaki and produced by Motohide Eshiro; Takumi returned to the series to write the crossover "Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney". He also directed and wrote "The Great Ace Attorney", which was described as being the first entry in a new "Ace Attorney" series. He said that he has mixed feelings about the series being developed by other Capcom staff, comparing it to a parent sending their child to their first day in school. Yamazaki and Eshiro went on to direct and produce the main series entries "Dual Destinies" and "Spirit of Justice". Due to exhaustion after working on "Dual Destinies", Yamazaki split direction responsibilities with Takuro Fuse for "Spirit of Justice", with Yamazaki working on the scenario, and Fuse on the art and gameplay. In 2020, Yamazaki left Capcom.


title: Ace Attorney

text: The localization of the first game was outsourced to Bowne Global, and was handled by the writer Alexander O. Smith and the editor Steve Anderson. While the Japanese version takes place in Japan, the localized version is set in the United States: because one of the episodes involves time zones, they had to specify where the game takes place, and chose the United States without thinking a lot about it. The Japanese justice system of the original still remained intact in the localization, as changing it would have altered the entire game structure.


title: Ace Attorney

text: The change in the series' setting became an issue in later games, where the Japanese setting was more obvious. Starting with the second game, the series localization direction has been handled by Janet Hsu; One of the first decisions she had to make was how to localize Maya's hometown and the mysticism of the Fey clan. She came up with the idea that the localized versions of the "Ace Attorney" games take place in Los Angeles in an alternative universe where anti-Japanese laws like the California Alien Land Law of 1913 were not passed, anti-Japanese sentiments were not powerful, and where Japanese culture flourished. This dictated what should be localized and what should be kept Japanese; things relating to the Fey clan and the Kurain channeling technique were kept Japanese, as that was Maya's heritage, while Japanese foods that were not widely known in the West were changed, such as changing Maya's favorite food from ramen to burgers. That particular change was mocked by players as the dish later became more well known in the West, and was lampshaded in the English release of "Spirit of Justice", where Maya is described as liking both ramen and burgers.


title: Ace Attorney

text: Character names were also localized to use double meanings similarly to the Japanese names; the name puns were based on the characters' personalities or backgrounds, or were visual gags. Several English names were based on their Japanese counterparts, but for some characters the names had to be altered heavily compared to the Japanese versions. Smith and Anderson had a lot of freedom when localizing the names of minor characters in the first game, but discussed the names of the main cast with Capcom. Phoenix's English surname, "Wright", was chosen as his Japanese name, "Naruhodō"—meaning "I see" or "I understand"—was frequently used as a joke in the script.


title: Ace Attorney

text: "Dual Destinies" was given a digital-only release in the West as to release the English version as close to the Japanese release date as possible while maintaining a tight development schedule. Its follow-up, "Spirit of Justice", was released in the same manner. Although "Ace Attorney Investigations 2" has not been officially localized, an English fan translation has been made. Both "The Great Ace Attorney" games were released in the West with English localization in July 2021 as part of "The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles," making "Ace Attorney Investigations 2" the only game in the series to remain a Japan-only release.


title: Ace Attorney

text: The "Ace Attorney" series has been well received by critics, and has performed well commercially: in December 2009, it was Capcom's 9th-best-selling series of all time, and in October 2010, they called it one of their "strongest intellectual properties", with more than 3.9 million units sold worldwide. By December 2013, the series had sold over 5 million units. In the United States, the first game became surprisingly successful, forcing Capcom to prepare at least three additional runs to meet the demand. By June 2018, the series had sold over 6.7 million units. As of September 30, 2021, the series has sold 8.6million units worldwide.


title: Ace Attorney

text: Geoff Thew at "Hardcore Gamer" said that the "craziness" of the game world makes the cases entertaining, but also that it "resonates on a deeper level" due to its connection to the real Japanese legal system, making the setting still feel relevant in 2014. Bob Mackey at USgamer said that the "Ace Attorney" games were among the best written games of all time, and that the series' strength is how each game builds up to a "stunning and satisfying finale". Thomas Whitehead at Nintendo Life also liked the writing, praising its balance between "light-hearted nonsense" and darker, more serious scenarios. Several reviewers have appreciated the series' characters; Thew said that Phoenix and Maya's banter is among the best in video games, and that Edgeworth's character arc is one of the most compelling parts of the stories.


title: Ace Attorney

text: Reviewers have liked finding contradictions; a common complaint, however, is the games' linearity, as well as how the player sometimes has to resort to a trial-and-error method due to the games only accepting specific pieces of evidence, and how testimony statements sometimes need to be pressed in a specific order. Some reviewers have criticized the lack of changes to the gameplay and presentation throughout the series, while some have said that fans of the series would not have a problem with this.


title: Ace Attorney

text: Several reviewers have praised the series' music. They said that the greatest aspect of the series is its audio design, with the first three games using the Game Boy Advance sound chip better than any other game for that platform; he called the music phenomenal, with the exception of that in "Justice for All", but said the sound effects are what "steals the show". Mackey commented that the games' small amounts of animations for each character are used well for their characterization.


title: Ace Attorney

text: The Takarazuka Revue, an all-female theater troupe, has adapted the series into stage musicals: 2009's "Ace Attorney: Truth Resurrected", which is based on the last episode of the first game; 2010's "Ace Attorney 2: Truth Resurrected Again", whose first act is an original story, and whose second is based on the final episode of the second game; and 2013's "Ace Attorney 3: Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth", which is set before the events of "Truth Resurrected Again". A stage play based on the series, titled "Gyakuten no Spotlight", ran in 2013, and was written by Eisaku Saito. A 2012 live-action film adaptation of the first game, titled "Ace Attorney", was produced at the film studio Toei and directed by Takashi Miike. A 2016 TV anime adaptation of the series, "Ace Attorney", was produced at A-1 Pictures and directed by Ayumu Watanabe.


title: Ace Attorney

text: Kodansha has published several manga based on the series: a short story anthology was published in "Bessatsu Young Magazine" in 2006; "Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney" and "Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth" were serialized in "Weekly Young Magazine" in 2007 and 2009, respectively; and another manga, which is based on the anime, was published in "V Jump" in 2016. A novel based on the series, "Gyakuten Saiban: Turnabout Idol", was released in June 2016. "Ace Attorney" drama CDs, soundtrack albums, and figurines have also been released.


title: Ace Attorney

text: "Ace Attorney" characters have made crossover appearances in other video games. Some "Ace Attorney" characters appear in "SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters DS". Phoenix and Edgeworth make a cameo appearance in She-Hulk's ending in the fighting game ""; in the game's update, "Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3", Phoenix appears as a playable character. Phoenix and Maya are playable characters in "Project X Zone 2", while Edgeworth makes a non-player appearance. Phoenix, Maya, Edgeworth and Franziska were all playable in the mobile game "Monster Hunter Explore" in 2017, as part of one of its temporary crossover events, and a Phoenix transformation is available for a companion character in "Monster Hunter XX". Music from the "Ace Attorney" series is featured in "Taiko Drum Master: Doko Don! Mystery Adventure", with Phoenix making an appearance in the game's story. In April 2021, Ace Attorney was introduced to "Teppen" alongside the "Dead Rising" franchise with the "Ace vs. The People" expansion.


title: Ace Attorney

text: In 2015, "GamesRadar+" named "Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney" as the 55th-best video game of all time. In 2016, "Famitsu" readers voted "Gyakuten Saiban" as the second-most memorable Game Boy Advance title (behind only "Pokémon Ruby" and "Sapphire") and "Gyakuten Saiban 123" as the tenth-best Nintendo 3DS game. In 2017, "Famitsu" readers voted "Gyakuten Saiban" the third-best adventure game of all time, behind only "Steins;Gate" and "".


title: Ace Attorney

text: The "Ace Attorney" series has been credited with helping to popularise visual novels in the Western world. "Vice" magazine credits the "Ace Attorney" series with popularising the visual novel mystery format, and notes that its success anticipated the resurgence of point-and-click adventure games as well as the international success of Japanese visual novels. According to "Danganronpa" director Kazutaka Kodaka, "Ace Attorney"s success in North America was due to how it distinguished itself from most visual novels with its gameplay mechanics, which "Danganronpa" later built upon and helped it also find success in North America.


title: Ace Attorney

text: The "Ace Attorney" series has also inspired many video games. The 2008 Capcom title "", based on the , shares many elements with the "Ace Attorney" series. The 2013 title "" keeps the "Ace Attorney" format but swaps law for philosophical argument, and the 2015 adventure game "Aviary Attorney" features similar gameplay but with an all-bird cast of characters. The 2016 video game "Detective Pikachu", which received a 2019 film adaptation, has also drawn comparisons to the "Ace Attorney" series.


title: Ace Attorney

text: "Ace Attorney" is referenced in several anime shows. In a murder mystery arc of the 2006 anime series "Haruhi Suzumiya", the show's titular character mimics Phoenix Wright during an episode. The 2014 anime series "No Game No Life" also pays homage to the game during an episode.


title: Ace Attorney

text: In early 2021, a user on Reddit used artificial intelligence to create a bot that took selected Reddit forum arguments into short movies fashioned after "Ace Attorney" courtroom battles between the games' various characters.


title: Ace Attorney

text: Later that year, the "San Francisco Chronicle" took note of its queer inspiration and influence: the first game inspired a great deal of fanwork featuring same-sex pairings and developers in turn took inspiration from boys' love in writing the sequels' characters.


title: Sultanate of Zanzibar

text: The Sultanate of Zanzibar (, ), also known as the Zanzibar Sultanate, was a state controlled by the Sultan of Zanzibar, in place between 1856 and 1964. The Sultanate's territories varied over time, and at their greatest extent spanned all of present-day Kenya and the Zanzibar Archipelago off the Swahili Coast. After a decline, the state had sovereignty over only the archipelago and a strip along the Kenyan coast, with the interior of Kenya constituting the British Kenya Colony and the coastal strip administered as a "de facto" part of that colony.


title: Sultanate of Zanzibar

text: Under an agreement reached on 8 October 1963, the Sultan of Zanzibar relinquished sovereignty over his remaining territory on the mainland, and on 12 December 1963, Kenya officially obtained independence from the British. On 12 January 1964, Jamshid bin Abdullah, the last sultan, was deposed and lost sovereignty over the last of his dominions, Zanzibar, marking the end of the Sultanate.


title: Sultanate of Zanzibar

text: In 1698, Zanzibar became part of the overseas holdings of Oman after Saif bin Sultan, the Imam of Oman, defeated the Portuguese in Mombasa, in what is now Kenya. In 1832 or 1840, Omani ruler Said bin Sultan moved his court from Muscat to Stone Town on the island of Unguja (that is, Zanzibar Island). He established a ruling Arab elite and encouraged the development of clove plantations, using the island's slave labour. Zanzibar's commerce fell increasingly into the hands of traders from the Indian subcontinent, whom Said encouraged to settle on the island. After his death in 1856, two of his sons, Majid bin Said and Thuwaini bin Said, struggled over the succession, so Zanzibar and Oman were divided into two separate realms. Thuwaini became the Sultan of Muscat and Oman while Majid became the first Sultan of Zanzibar, but obliged to pay an annual tribute to the Omani court in Muscat. During his 14-year reign as Sultan, Majid consolidated his power around the local slave trade. His successor, Barghash bin Said, helped abolish the slave trade in Zanzibar and largely developed the country's infrastructure. The third Sultan, Khalifa bin Said, also furthered the country's progress toward abolishing slavery.


title: Sultanate of Zanzibar

text: According to the 16th-century explorer Leo Africanus, Zanzibar (Zanguebar) was the term used by Arabs and Persians to refer to the eastern African coast running from Kenya to Mozambique, dominated by five semi-independent Muslim kingdoms: Mombasa, Malindi, Kilwa, Mozambique, and Sofala. Africanus further noted that they all had standing agreements of loyalty with the major central African states, including the Kingdom of Mutapa.


title: Sultanate of Zanzibar

text: Until 1884, the Sultans of Zanzibar controlled a substantial portion of the Swahili Coast, known as Zanj, and trading routes extending further into the continent, as far as Kindu on the Congo River. That year, however, the Society for German Colonization forced local chiefs on the mainland to agree to German protection, prompting Sultan Bargash bin Said to protest. Coinciding with the Berlin Conference and the Scramble for Africa, further German interest in the area was soon shown in 1885 by the arrival of the newly created German East Africa Company, which had a mission to colonize the area.


title: Sultanate of Zanzibar

text: In 1886, the British and Germans secretly met and discussed their aims of expansion in the African Great Lakes, with spheres of influence already agreed upon the year before, with the British to take what would become the East Africa Protectorate (now Kenya) and the Germans to take present-day Tanzania. Both powers leased coastal territory from Zanzibar and established trading stations and outposts. Over the next few years, all of the mainland possessions of Zanzibar came to be administered by European imperial powers, beginning in 1888 when the Imperial British East Africa Company took over administration of Mombasa.


title: Sultanate of Zanzibar

text: The same year the German East Africa Company acquired formal direct rule over the coastal area previously submitted to German protection. This resulted in a native uprising, the Abushiri revolt, which was suppressed by the "Kaiserliche Marine" and heralded the end of Zanzibar's influence on the mainland.


title: Sultanate of Zanzibar

text: With the signing of the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty between the United Kingdom and the German Empire in 1890, Zanzibar itself became a British protectorate. In August 1896, following the death of Sultan Hamad bin Thuwaini, Britain and Zanzibar fought a 38-minute war, the shortest in recorded history. A struggle for succession took place as the Sultan's cousin Khalid bin Barghash seized power. The British instead wanted Hamoud bin Mohammed to become Sultan, believing that he would be much easier to work with. The British gave Khalid an hour to vacate the Sultan's palace in Stone Town. Khalid failed to do so, and instead assembled an army of 2,800 men to fight the British. The British launched an attack on the palace and other locations around the city after which Khalid retreated and later went into exile. Hamoud was then peacefully installed as Sultan.


title: Sultanate of Zanzibar

text: That "Zanzibar" for these purposes included the coastal strip of Kenya that would later become the Protectorate of Kenya was a matter recorded in the parliamentary debates at the time.


title: Sultanate of Zanzibar

text: In 1886, the British government encouraged William Mackinnon, who already had an agreement with the Sultan and whose shipping company traded extensively in the African Great Lakes, to increase British influence in the region. He formed a British East Africa Association which led to the Imperial British East Africa Company being chartered in 1888 and given the original grant to administer the territory. It administered about of coastline stretching from the River Jubba via Mombasa to German East Africa which were leased from the Sultan. The British "sphere of influence", agreed at the Berlin Conference of 1885, extended up the coast and inland across the future Kenya and after 1890 included Uganda as well. Mombasa was the administrative centre at this time.


title: Sultanate of Zanzibar

text: However, the company began to fail, and on 1 July 1895 the British government proclaimed a protectorate, the East Africa Protectorate, the administration being transferred to the Foreign Office. In 1902, administration was again transferred to the Colonial Office and the Uganda territory was incorporated as part of the protectorate also. In 1897 Lord Delamere, the pioneer of white settlement, arrived in the Kenya highlands, which was then part of the Protectorate. Lord Delamere was impressed by the agricultural possibilities of the area. In 1902 the boundaries of the Protectorate were extended to include what was previously the Eastern Province of Uganda. Also, in 1902, the East Africa Syndicate received a grant of to promote white settlement in the Highlands. Lord Delamere now commenced extensive farming operations, and in 1905, when a large number of immigrants arrived from Britain and South Africa, the Protectorate was transferred from the authority of the Foreign Office to that of the Colonial Office. The capital was shifted from Mombasa to Nairobi in 1905. A regular Government and Legislature were constituted by Order in Council in 1906. This constituted the administrator a governor and provided for legislative and executive councils. Lieutenant Colonel J. Hayes Sadler was the first governor and commander in chief. There were occasional troubles with local tribes but the country was opened up by the colonial government with little bloodshed. After the First World War, more immigrants arrived from Britain and South Africa, and by 1919 the European population was estimated at 9,000 strong.


title: Sultanate of Zanzibar

text: On 23 July 1920, the inland areas of the East Africa Protectorate were annexed as British dominions by Order in Council. That part of the former Protectorate was thereby constituted as the Colony of Kenya and from that time, the Sultan of Zanzibar ceased to be sovereign over that territory. The remaining wide coastal strip (with the exception of Witu) remained a Protectorate under an agreement with the Sultan of Zanzibar. That coastal strip, remaining under the sovereignty of the Sultan of Zanzibar, was constituted as the Protectorate of Kenya in 1920.


title: Sultanate of Zanzibar

text: The Protectorate of Kenya was governed as part of the Colony of Kenya by virtue of an agreement between the United Kingdom and the Sultan dated 14 December 1895. In summary, the "Colony of Kenya" referred to the interior lands. The "Protectorate of Kenya" was a coastal strip together with certain islands which remained under the sovereignty of the Sultan of Zanzibar until the independence of Kenya.


title: Sultanate of Zanzibar

text: The Colony of Kenya and the Protectorate of Kenya each came to an end on 12 December 1963. The United Kingdom ceded sovereignty over the Colony of Kenya and, under an agreement dated 8 October 1963, the Sultan agreed that simultaneously with independence for Kenya, the Sultan would cease to have sovereignty over the Protectorate of Kenya. In this way, Kenya became an independent country under the Kenya Independence Act 1963. Exactly 12 months later on 12 December 1964, Kenya became a republic under the name "Republic of Kenya".


title: Sultanate of Zanzibar

text: On 10 December 1963, the Protectorate that had existed over Zanzibar since 1890 was terminated by the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom did not grant Zanzibar independence, as such, because the UK never had sovereignty over Zanzibar. Rather, by the Zanzibar Act 1963 of the United Kingdom, the UK ended the Protectorate and made provision for full-self government in Zanzibar as an independent country within the Commonwealth. Upon the Protectorate being abolished, Zanzibar became a constitutional monarchy within the Commonwealth under the Sultan. Sultan Jamshid bin Abdullah was overthrown a month later during the Zanzibar Revolution. Jamshid fled into exile, and the Sultanate was replaced by the People's Republic of Zanzibar. In April 1964, the existence of this socialist republic was ended with its union with Tanganyika to form the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, which became known as Tanzania six months later.


title: Sultanate of Zanzibar

text: By 1964, the country was a constitutional monarchy within the Commonwealth ruled by Sultan Jamshid bin Abdullah. Zanzibar had a population of around 230,000 natives, some of whom claimed Persian ancestry and were known locally as Shirazis. It also contained significant minorities in the 50,000 Arabs and 20,000 South Asians who were prominent in business and trade. The various ethnic groups were becoming mixed and the distinctions between them had blurred; according to one historian, an important reason for the general support for Sultan Jamshid was his family's ethnic diversity. However, the island's Arab inhabitants, as the major landowners, were generally wealthier than the natives; the major political parties were organised largely along ethnic lines, with Arabs dominating the Zanzibar Nationalist Party (ZNP) and natives the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP).


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: The Alien (also known as a Xenomorph XX121 or Internecivus raptus, or simply a xenomorph) is a fictional endoparasitoid extraterrestrial species that serves as the titular antagonist of the "Alien" film series. The species made its debut in the film "Alien" (1979) and reappeared in the sequels "Aliens" (1986), "Alien 3" (1992), and "Alien Resurrection" (1997). The species returns in the prequel series, first with a predecessor in "Prometheus" (2012) and a further evolved form in "" (2017). It also featured in the crossover films "Alien vs. Predator" (2004) and "" (2007), with the skull and tail of one of the creatures respectively appearing briefly in "Predator 2" (1990) and "The Predator" (2018), and will return in the FX television series "Alien" (2023). In addition, the Alien appears in various literature and video game spin-offs from the franchises.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: The Aliens' design is credited to Swiss surrealist and artist H. R. Giger, originating in a lithograph titled "Necronom IV" and refined for the series's first film, "Alien". The practical effects for the Alien's head were designed and constructed by Italian special effects designer Carlo Rambaldi. Species design and life cycle have been extensively augmented, sometimes inconsistently, throughout each film.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Unlike many other extraterrestrial races in science fiction (such as the Daleks and Cybermen in "Doctor Who", or the Klingons and Borg in "Star Trek"), the Aliens are not sapient they lack a technological civilization of any kind, and are instead primal, predatory creatures with no higher goal than the preservation and propagation of their own species by any means necessary, up to and including the elimination of other lifeforms that may pose a threat to their existence. Like wasps or termites, Aliens are eusocial, with a single fertile queen breeding a caste of warriors, workers, or other specialist strains. The Aliens' biological life cycle involves traumatic implantation of endoparasitoid larvae inside living hosts; these "chestburster" larvae erupt from the host's body after a short incubation period, mature into adulthood within hours, and seek out more hosts for implantation.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: The script for the 1979 film "Alien" was initially drafted by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett. Dan O'Bannon drafted an opening in which the crew of a mining ship are sent to investigate a mysterious message on an alien planet. He eventually settled on the threat being an alien creature; however, he could not conceive of an interesting way for it to get onto the ship. Inspired after waking from a dream, Shusett said, "I have an idea: the monster screws one of them", planting its egg in his body, and then bursting out of his chest. Both realized the idea had never been done before, and it subsequently became the core of the film. "This is a movie about alien interspecies rape", O'Bannon said in the documentary "Alien Evolution". "That's scary because it hits all of our buttons." O'Bannon felt that the symbolism of "homosexual oral rape" was an effective means of discomforting male viewers.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: The title of the film was decided late in the script's development. O'Bannon had quickly dropped the film's original title, "Star Beast", but could not think of a name to replace it. "I was running through titles, and they all stank", O'Bannon said in an interview, "when suddenly, that word "alien" just came out of the typewriter at me. "Alien". It's a noun and it's an adjective." The word "alien" subsequently became the title of the film and, by extension, the name of the creature itself.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Prior to writing the script to "Alien", O'Bannon had been working in France for Chilean cult director Alejandro Jodorowsky's planned adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic science-fiction novel "Dune". Also hired for the project was Swiss surrealist artist H. R. Giger. Giger showed O'Bannon his nightmarish, monochromatic artwork, which left O'Bannon deeply disturbed. "I had never seen anything that was quite as horrible and at the same time as beautiful as his work" he remembered later. The "Dune" film collapsed, but O'Bannon would remember Giger when "Alien" was greenlit, and suggested to director Ridley Scott that he be brought on to design the Alien, saying that if he were to design a monster, it would be truly original.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: After O'Bannon handed him a copy of Giger's book "Necronomicon", Scott immediately saw the potential for Giger's designs, and chose "Necronom IV", a print Giger completed in 1976, as the basis for the Alien's design, citing its beauty and strong sexual overtones. That the creature could just as easily have been male or female was also a strong factor in the decision to use it. "It could just as easily fuck you before it killed you," said line producer Ivor Powell, "[which] made it all the more disconcerting." 20th Century Fox was initially wary of allowing Giger onto the project, saying that his works would be too disturbing for audiences, but eventually relented. Giger initially offered to completely design the Alien from scratch, but Scott mandated that he base his work on "Necronom IV", saying that to start over from the beginning would be too time-consuming. Giger initially signed on to design the adult, egg, and chestburster forms, but ultimately also designed the alien planetoid LV-426 and the Space Jockey alien vessel.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Giger conceived the Alien as being vaguely human but a human in full armor, protected from all outside forces. He mandated that the creature have no eyes because he felt that it made them much more frightening if you could not tell they were looking at you. Giger also gave the Alien's mouth a second inner set of pharyngeal jaws located at the tip of a long, tongue-like proboscis which could extend rapidly for use as a weapon. His design for the creature was heavily influenced by an aesthetic he had created and termed "biomechanical", a fusion of the organic and the mechanic. His mock-up of the Alien was created using parts from an old Rolls Royce car, rib bones and the vertebrae from a snake, molded with plasticine. The Alien's animatronic head, which contained 900 moving parts, was designed and constructed by special effects designer Carlo Rambaldi. Giger and Rambaldi together would win the 1980 Academy Award for Visual Effects for their design of the Alien.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Scott decided on the man-in-suit approach for creating the creature onscreen. Initially circus performers were tried, then multiple actors together in the same costume, but neither proved scary. Deciding that the creature would be scarier the closer it appeared to a human, Scott decided that a single, very tall, very thin man be used. Scott was inspired by a photograph of Leni Riefenstahl standing next to a 6'4" (1.93 m) Nuba man. The casting director found 6'10" (2.08 m), rail-thin graphic designer Bolaji Badejo in a local pub. Badejo went to tai chi and mime classes to learn how to slow down his movements.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Giger's design for the Alien evoked many contradictory sexual images. As critic Ximena Gallardo notes, the creature's combination of sexually evocative physical and behavioral characteristics creates "a nightmare vision of sex and death. It subdues and opens the male body to make it pregnant, and then explodes it in birth. In its adult form, the alien strikes its victims with a rigid phallic tongue that breaks through skin and bone. More than a phallus, however, the retractable tongue has its own set of snapping, metallic teeth that connects it to the castrating vagina dentata."


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: This creature has no specific name; it was called an alien and an organism in the first film. It has also been referred to as a creature, a serpent, a beast, a dragon, a monster, a nasty, or simply, a thing. The term "xenomorph" (lit. "alien form" from the Greek "xeno-", which translates as either "other" or "strange", and "-morph", which denotes shape) was first used by the character Lieutenant Gorman in "Aliens" with reference to generic extraterrestrial life. The term was erroneously assumed by some fans to refer specifically to this creature, and the word was used by the producers of some merchandise.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: The species' binomial names are given in Latin as either "Internecivus raptus" (meant as "murderous thief") in the "Alien Quadrilogy" DVD or "Lingua foeda acheronsis" (meant as "foul tongue from Acheron") in some comic books. The main Alien from "Alien vs. Predator" is listed in the credits as "Grid", after a grid-like wound received during the film from a Predator's razor net. "" actually credits the Alien as Xenomorph, while also listing a different variety of the creature as the Neomorph. In "The Weyland-Yutani Report", the Alien encountered by the "Nostromo" was specifically referred to as "Xenomorph XX121".


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: As the film series has progressed, the creature's design has been modified in many ways, including differing numbers of fingers and limb joints and variations in the design of the Alien's head.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: When standing upright, the Aliens are bipedal in form, though depending on their host species, they will either adopt a more hunched stance, or remain quadrupedal when walking or sprinting. Their overall stance and general behavior is a result of the mixture of the DNA of the embryo and the host. They have a skeletal, biomechanical appearance and are usually colored in muted shades of black, gray, blue or bronze. Their body heat matches the ambient temperature of the environment in which they are found, so they do not radiate heat, making them indistinguishable from their surroundings through thermal imaging. In most of the films, adult Aliens are capable of running and crawling along ceilings, walls, and other hard surfaces. They have great physical strength, having been shown to be capable of breaking through welded steel doors in numbers.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Aliens have segmented, blade-tipped tails. The sharp tip was initially a small, scorpion-like barb, but from "Aliens" onwards the blade design increased in size and changed in appearance to more closely resemble a slashing weapon. From "Alien Resurrection" onwards, the tails have a flat ridge of spines at the base of the blade. This was introduced to help them swim convincingly, and was left intact in the subsequent crossovers. The original shooting script for "Aliens" and the novelization both featured a scene in which Lieutenant Gorman is "stung" by the barb tail and rendered unconscious; in the final cut of the movie, Gorman is knocked out by falling crates. As a weapon, the strength of the tail is very effective, having been shown to be strong enough to impale and lift a Predator with seemingly little effort.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: They have elongated, cylindrical skulls with eyes underneath the "visor". In the novelization of "Alien", the character Ash speculates that the Xenomorphs "see" by way of electrical impulse, similar to a shark's lateral line. This method is illustrated in the original "Alien vs Predator" PC game and reused for the "Predalien" 28 years later. The Alien's inner set of jaws is powerful enough to smash through bone and metal. How the creatures see is uncertain; in "Alien 3", a spherical lens was used to illustrate the Alien's point of view, so, when the film was projected anamorphically, the image exhibited severe distortion. In the novelization of the movie "Alien", the creature is held mesmerized by a spinning green light for several minutes.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: In "Aliens", the adult creatures have a more textured head rather than a smooth carapace. In the commentary for "Aliens", it was speculated that this was part of the maturation of the creatures, as they had been alive far longer than the original Alien, although James Cameron stated that he simply left the carapace off because he liked them better that way. The smooth design of the carapace would be used again in "Alien 3" and "Alien Resurrection", although made narrower with a longer muzzle and more prominent chin. This design would be kept in "Alien versus Predator", and abandoned in "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem" in favor of the ribbed design.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Throughout their appearances, human-spawned Aliens have been shown to have different numbers of fingers. In "Alien", the creature has webbed, six-fingered hands. In "Aliens", the number of fingers is reduced to three, with two "paired" and a single, opposable thumb. The fingers are also shown to be much longer and more skeletal. In "Alien Resurrection", the number of digits is increased to four, with two long middle fingers and a pair of thumbs. This design is kept in the "Alien vs. Predator" films, though the hands were made bulkier in order to make the Aliens seem more formidable against the Predators.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Aliens have been alternatively portrayed as both plantigrade and digitigrade organisms, usually relative to their hosts. Human-spawned Aliens were usually portrayed as having humanoid hind limbs, while in "Alien 3" the featured Alien sported double-jointed legs due to its quadrupedal host. This characteristic would be continued in "Alien Resurrection" for the human-spawned Aliens. Tom Woodruff, who had previously played the "dog-alien" in "Alien 3", described the human-spawned Aliens in "Resurrection" as feeling more like a dog than the previous creature, despite having been born from human hosts. The human-spawned Alien warriors would revert to a plantigrade posture in "Alien vs. Predator".


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Alien blood is an extremely potent acid and is capable of corroding almost any substance on contact with alarming speed. It is dull yellow in color and appears to be pressurized inside the body so that it spurts out with great force when the creature is wounded. Ron Cobb suggested the idea of the Alien having acid blood as a plausible means to make the creature "unkillable"; if one were to use traditional firearms or explosives to attack it, its blood would eat through the hull of the ship. The "Alien" novelization suggests that, at least at the "facehugger" stage, the acid is not blood but a fluid maintained under pressure between a double layer of skin. In the "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem" documentary "Science of the Alien", it is hypothesized that the Aliens' acid blood could be some type of "hydrosulfuric acid" compound due to its corrosiveness and the conspicuously toxic effects on living human tissue. The documentary also speculates that Aliens are immune to their own acidic and toxic liquids due to an endobiological build-up, similar to the human stomach's ability to protect itself from its own digestive fluids. The documentary takes this hypothesis one step further and speculates that the Alien organism's protection system against its own toxic hydrosulphuric acid is a bio-organically produced Teflon insulation. In the original "Alien", the facehugger is shown to be able to "spit" acid, dissolving the faceplate of Kane's helmet and allowing the creature immediate access inside. This ability is also exhibited by adult Aliens in "Alien 3" and "Alien Resurrection"; much like a spitting cobra, they use it to blind their victims.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Aliens can produce a thick, strong resin that they use to build their hives and to cocoon their victims, and they can use the walls of their hives as camouflage. Aliens also salivate heavily in the form of a sticky, clear slime; while not a toxic substance in and of itself, it is common for the "Alien" films to use it as a suspense-building device, wherein a character will notice the falling saliva before noticing its source lying in wait above him.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: During various events in "Alien Resurrection" on the "USM Auriga", in the crossover film "Alien vs. Predator", in "Aliens" on the LV-426 colony Hadley's Hope, and in "Alien 3" when they are trying to trap the Alien in the lead works the species displayed observational learning and problem-solving skills, and the ability to operate machinery at a very basic level.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: On the "USM Auriga" in "Alien Resurrection", the Aliens kill one of their own, using its blood to melt through their enclosure and escape (according to the novelization, it was inspired to do so from genetic memories inherited from the original Ripley); in "Alien vs. Predator", they use a similar strategy to free the queen from her chains. An Alien also uses acid spurting from its severed tail as an improvised weapon by flicking it, indicating they are fully aware of the effects of their acid blood.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: In the original Alien film it is also implied that the Alien cut the lights in 12 Module on board the "Nostromo" as the character of Brett remarks upon: "I don't understand it." but Parker concludes that: "Circuits must have burned out." - and it ultimately remains ambiguous. On LV-426, they were able to cut power in a section of the complex to gain access to the humans, and the Alien queen learns to call and board an elevator by observing Ripley and Newt escaping in the one beside it.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: The novelization of the film includes a scene where Bishop speculates that the queen establishing her "nest" at the base's main power plant could have been chosen either for the feral, animal reason of the warmth that it would provide or for the rational reason of selecting a location where any attackers would be unable to destroy her without destroying the entire facility. In the director's commentary for "Aliens", James Cameron noted that the creatures in "Aliens" had been alive for far longer than the Alien in the original, and had more time to learn about their environment. Finally, in "Alien 3", the inmates and Ripley try to lure the Alien into the lead works. It becomes increasingly apparent that the Alien realizes it is a trap. At one point, it hesitates to enter the lead works and at other points, it stops all prey just before going into the lead works. All of this indicates it recognized danger and sought to avoid it.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Aliens are eusocial life-forms with a caste system ruled over by a queen. Their life cycle comprises several distinct stages: they begin their lives as an egg, which hatches a parasitoid larval form known as a facehugger, which then attaches itself to a living host by, as its name suggests, latching onto its face. In the "Alien 3" novelization, Ripley commented that this parasitoid would probably be able to use any host from as small as a cat, to as large as an Asian elephant.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: The facehugger then "impregnates" the host with an embryo, known as a "chestburster", which, after a period of gestation, erupts violently from the host's chest, resulting in the death of the host. The chestburster then matures to an adult phase, shedding its skin and replacing its cells with polarized silicon.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Due to horizontal gene transfer during the gestation period, the Alien also takes on some of the basic physical attributes of the host from which it was born (something noticed by Ripley in "Alien 3", when the Xenomorph plaguing the complex moved on four limbs, having gestated within a Quadruped; a dog in the theatrical release, and an ox in the director's cut; whereas all the others she had previously seen had gestated within Humans/Bipeds), allowing the individual alien to adapt to the host's environment (breathe the air, etc.). This is also shown in the two live-action crossover films, "Alien vs. Predator" (2004) and "" (2007), where an embryo, having gestated within a Predator/Yautja, displayed Predator/Yautja physical traits (arthropod-like mandibles) from eruption-onwards.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: This process of horizontal gene transfer is also shown to be two-way; in Alien Resurrection (film & novelization), Ellen Ripley's clone, Ripley-8, is shown exhibiting numerous Xenomorph characteristics, physical and behavioural; this is touched more upon in the novelization (chapter 4), where it's described that, when a host is infested with an Xenomorph embryo, it doesn't just infest the host like a parasite, but also like a virus, "a major breakthrough in adaptive evolution ... a way to guarantee that any host, any host at all, would provide whatever it was the developing embryo needed, even if/when the host's body was inadequate."


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: The adult phase of the Alien is known by various different names. The adult Aliens have been referred to as "drones", "warriors", "workers", and sometimes "soldiers", similar to the way ants have been defined. The names of the adult phase have also been used to name different types of adult phases of the Alien in numerous sources, including video games, comic books, novels, and the films, but only in the commentaries by the team who created the films. No official name has been given to the adult stage of the Alien in the films themselves.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Queen Aliens are significantly larger and stronger than the normal adults, being approximately tall. Their body structure differs also, having two pairs of arms, one large and one small. The queen's head is larger than those of other adult Aliens and is protected by a large, flat crest, like a crown, which varies from queen to queen. Unlike other aliens, the queen's external mouth is separately segmented from the rest of her head, allowing her to turn her mouth left and right almost to the point where it is facing perpendicular to the direction of the rest of her head. In the second film, "Aliens", unlike other adults and queens, the queen had high-heel protrusions from her feet.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Egg-laying Alien queens possess an immense ovipositor attached to their lower torso, similar to a queen termite's. Like some insect queens, there appears to be no need for an Alien queen's eggs to be fertilized. When attached to her ovipositor, the queen is supported by a "biomechanical throne" that consists of a lattice of struts resembling massive insect legs.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: In the original cut of "Alien", the Alien possessed a complete lifecycle, with the still-living bodies of its victims converted into eggs. However, the scene showing the crew converted into eggs was cut for reasons of pacing, leaving the ultimate origin of the eggs obscure. This allowed "Aliens" director James Cameron to introduce a concept he had initially conceived for a spec script called "Mother", a massive mother Alien queen which laid eggs and formed the basis for the Aliens' life cycle. Cameron conceived the queen as a monstrous analogue to Ripley's own maternal role in the film. In that vein, some critics have compared it to Grendel's mother.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: The queen was designed by Cameron in collaboration with special effects artist Stan Winston, based upon an initial painting Cameron had done at the start of the project. The Winston Studio created a test foamcore queen before constructing the full hydraulic puppet which was used for most of the scenes involving the large Alien. Two people were inside working the twin sets of arms, and puppeteers off-screen worked its jaws and head. Although at the end of the film, the queen was presented full-body fighting the power-loader, the audience never sees the legs of the queen, save those of the small-scale puppet that appears only briefly. In "Aliens", Cameron used very selective camera-angles on the queen, using the 'less is more' style of photography. Subsequently, the movie won an Oscar for Visual Effects. An adult queen was to reappear in "Alien Resurrection". The original mechanical head previously used in "Aliens" was provided by Bob Burns and was an altered design. It was repainted with a blend of green and brown, giving it a shimmering, insect-like quality. This color concept would be abandoned in "Alien vs. Predator" in favour of the original black color scheme.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: In the climax of "Alien vs. Predator", the queen's basic design was altered to make her more "streamlined" in appearance and her overall size was increased to six meters (20 feet) tall. Other changes include the removal of the "high-heel" protrusions on her legs, including additional spines on her head and making her waist thinner because there was no need for puppeteers inside her chest. The animatronic queen had 47 points of hydraulic motion.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem" (2007) introduced a younger form of the full-grown queen, albeit with traits inherited from its Predator host. Recalling the facehugger's method of embryo implantation, the Predalien uses its inner mouth to directly deposit multiple chestburster embryos into pregnant female hosts, also using its mandibles to latch on the faces of said hosts, completely bypassing the need for facehuggers. This is explained by the Brothers Strause as a means of quickly building an army of Aliens before the young queen evolves into its sedentary, egg-laying state.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: The eggs laid by the queen are ellipsoidal, leathery objects between one-half and one meter (two and three feet) high with a four-lobed opening at the top. The eggs can remain in a stasis mode for years, possibly indefinitely, until nearby movement is detected. As a potential host approaches, the egg's lobes unfold like flower petals, and the parasitic facehugger extracts itself from the egg and attaches itself to the potential host.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Giger initially designed the eggs with a much more obvious vaginal appearance, complete with an "inner and outer vulva". The producers complained that Catholic countries would ban the film if the allusion was too strong, so Giger doubled the lobes to four so that, in his words, "seen from above, they would form the cross that people in Catholic countries are so fond of looking at".


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: The interior of the original egg was composed of "Nottingham lace" (caul fat), which is the lining of a cow's stomach. In the first film, the quick shot of the facehugger erupting from the egg was done with sheep's intestine. Initially, the egg remained totally stationary except for the hydraulic movement of the lobes; however, by "Alien Resurrection", the entire egg was made to ripple as it opened. In the Director's Cut of "Alien", an additional scene shows still living crew members being cocooned into new eggs, either morphing into a new embryo or acting as a food source for the facehugger inside the egg. According to the novelization for "Resurrection", the Egg, in and of itself, could be considered a living organism in its own right.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: A facehugger is the second stage in the Alien's life cycle. It has eight long, finger-like legs, which allow it to crawl rapidly, and a long tail adapted for making great leaps. These particular appendages give it an appearance somewhat comparable to chelicerate arthropods such as arachnids and horseshoe crabs.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: The facehugger is a parasitoid; its only purpose is to make contact with the host's mouth for the implantation process by gripping its legs around the victim's head and wrapping its tail around the host's neck. Upon making contact, the facehugger administers a cynose-based paralytic to the host in order to render it unconscious and immobile. During a successful attachment, the facehugger will insert an ovipositor down the host's throat while simultaneously implanting an embryo. The host is kept alive, and the creature breathes for the host. Attempts to remove facehuggers generally prove fatal to the host, as the parasitoid will respond by tightening its tail around the host's neck, and its acidic blood prevents it from being cut away. In addition, its grip on the host's head is strong enough to tear the host's face off if it is forcibly removed.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Once the Alien embryo is implanted, the facehugger will remain attached until the implant is secure, which can take anywhere from less than a minute to 16 hours. Once this happens, the parasite detaches, crawls away, and dies. The victim awakens with no awareness of the implantation, believing himself to have been asleep, and appears to have a normal, healthy bodily function.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: According to "AVPR: Science of the Xenomorph", a behind-the-scenes documentary on "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem", it is theorized that facehuggers may implant a viral agent that "commands" the host's cells to grow the chestburster, as opposed to an implanted embryo. This is an alternate explanation to horizontal gene transfer as to how the resulting Xenomorph is able to adopt the characteristics of its host.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Giger's original design for the facehugger was a much larger creature with eyes and a spring-loaded tail. Later, in response to comments from the filmmakers, Giger reduced the creature's size substantially. At first, Giger assumed that the facehugger would wrap around the outside of the astronaut's helmet, but Scott decided that it would have far more impact if the facehugger were revealed once the helmet was removed. Scott and Giger realized that the facehugger should burn through the helmet's faceplate with its acid blood; subsequent redesigns of the space helmet included a far larger faceplate to allow for this.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Dan O'Bannon initially conceived the facehugger as somewhat resembling an octopus, possessing tentacles. However, when he received H. R. Giger's designs, which substituted finger-like digits for tentacles, he found Giger's design concept to be superior. Since no one was available at the time, O'Bannon decided to design the facehugger prop himself. The technical elements of the musculature and bone were added by Ron Cobb. Giger's initial design for the smaller facehugger had the fingers facing forward, but O'Bannon's redesign shifted the legs to the side. When the foam rubber sculpture of the facehugger was produced, O'Bannon asked that it should remain unpainted, believing the rubber, which resembled human skin, was more plausible.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: In "Aliens", the facehuggers were redesigned by Stan Winston so that they would be capable of movement. Unlike the creatures in the first film, the creatures would take a much more active role in impregnating their victims. When Ripley throws one off her, the facehugger is now capable of scuttling across the floor and leaping at its prey, wrapping its tail around the victim's throat. The facehugger is also shown to be capable of independently surviving outside of its egg. Due to the film's budget, only two fully working facehuggers were built.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: In "Alien 3", another addition was planned but ultimately dropped, a "super-facehugger" that would carry the embryo of the queen Alien. This super-facehugger is briefly glimpsed in the Assembly cut of "Alien 3" but not identified as such. It made a brief appearance in the canonical "Alien" book called "Alien: Sea of Sorrows", set a while after the events of "Alien Resurrection", about the grandson of Ripley Clone 8, Ellen Ripley's clone.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: After implantation, facehuggers die and the embryo's host wakes up afterward, showing no considerable outward negative symptoms and a degree of amnesia regarding events at the time of implantation. Symptoms build acutely after detachment of the facehugger, the most common being sore throat, slight nausea, increased congestion, and moderate to extreme hunger. In later stages where the incubation period is extended in preparation of a queen birth, symptoms will include a shortness of breath, exhaustion, and hemorrhaging (detectable through biological scanners and present in nosebleeds or other seemingly random bleeding incidents), as well as chest pains caused by a lack of space due to the chestburster's presence or even premature attempts to escape the host.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: The incubating embryo takes on some of the host's DNA or traits, such as bipedalism, quadrupedalism, possessing the mandibles of a Predator, and other structural changes. According to Weyland-Yutani medical scientists in "Aliens: Colonial Marines", the chestburster will draw nutrients from the host's body in order to develop a placenta as it grows, attaching itself to several major organs in the process. The placenta has cancerous qualities, such that even if the embryo were removed surgically, the placenta would simply cause the affected organs to shut down, resulting in death; the only exceptions to this are from human-X enomorph hybrid hosts like the cloned Ripley 8, who survived an extraction procedure without issue.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Over the course of one to 24 hours—indeterminable in some cases, and sometimes up to a week, in the case of some queens—the embryo develops into a chestburster, at which point, it emerges, violently and fatally ripping open the chest of the host.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: There is no on-screen explanation of the reasons for the different incubation times. Fully-grown aliens may avoid harming species acting as hosts for un-emerged chestbursters, though this may only be in the case of a queen embryo.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: When a chestburster erupts from the body of a human host, it is less than tall, although the embryo can vary in size from a guinea pig to a large dog depending on the size and species of the host. Its appearance and adaptive characteristics are also determined by the host. Typically, its first instinct upon emerging is to flee and hide until full maturation, as well as find a source of nutrition. However, it soon undergoes a dramatic growth spurt, reaching adult size in a matter of hours; in "Alien", the chestburster had grown to in height by the time the "Nostromo" crew located it again. The chestburster is shown to have molted before reaching maturity. In "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem", Alien warriors who are still growing are shown, displaying shed skin. In the unrated cut, the Predalien is shown wiping off its final molted skin at the film's start.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: The chestburster was designed by "Alien" director Ridley Scott and constructed by special effects artist Roger Dicken. Giger had produced a model of a chestburster that resembled a "degenerate plucked turkey" and was far too large to fit inside a ribcage. Much to Giger's dismay, his model reduced the production team to fits of laughter on sight. Scott drafted a series of alternative designs for the chestburster based on the philosophy of working "back [from the adult] to the child" and ultimately produced "something phallic". The chestburster in the original "Alien" was armless, but arms were added in "Aliens" to facilitate the creature crawling its way out of its host's corpse. This concept would be abandoned in "Alien Resurrection", but it would return in "Alien: Covenant".


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Aliens take on various forms depending on the characteristics of their hosts. Most of the Aliens seen to date have been human-spawned, but a number of Aliens born from other hosts have also been seen. Some of these are also a different variants or species altogether such as the Neomorph and Deacon.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: The "Dog Alien" or "Ox Alien", (also known as "Runner Alien" in the expanded universe stories) and referred to in-film as "Dragon", was introduced in "Alien 3". The creature itself shares the same basic physical configuration and instincts as the other Aliens shown in the previous films, although there are several differences due to the host it was spawned from (a dog in the theatrical cut, an ox in the novelized version and the assembly cut). The dog Alien in its chestburster form is a miniature version of the adult, unlike the larval human- and Predator-spawned chestbursters. The adult is primarily quadrupedal, has digitigrade hind legs, and lacks the dorsal tubes of the human-spawned variety. The only differences behavior-wise was that this Alien behaved more like a dog or another quadrupedal animal that generally is prone to using its mouth instead of its front legs as its primary weapon to attack and maul its victims with its teeth. This Alien, even when actively provoked, would not attack or kill Ripley, due to the queen growing inside her. This, however, changed towards the movie's climax, at which point the monster, after surviving a torrent of molten lead, burst from the liquid and went into a rampage, pursuing Ripley and presumably attempting to kill her until she destroyed it by showering it with freezing water, causing it to explode from thermal shock.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Originally, H. R. Giger was approached on July 28, 1990, by David Fincher and Tim Zinnemann, and was asked to redesign his own creations for "Alien 3". Giger's new designs included an aquatic face-hugger and a four-legged version of the adult Alien. Giger said in an interview "I had special ideas to make it more interesting. I designed a new creature, which was much more elegant and beastly, compared to my original. It was a four-legged Alien, more like a lethal feline—a panther or something. It had a kind of skin that was built up from other creatures—much like a symbiosis." However, when Tom Woodruff and Alec Gillis of Amalgamated Dynamics told Giger that they had their own design, Giger expressed himself as "very upset" and that the creature he had especially designed was his "baby". Even after the production severed contact, Giger continued to fax suggestions to Fincher and made full-scale drawings and a sculpt of the Alien, all of which were rejected.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: Giger would later be angered by the end credits of the released film presenting him as merely the creator of the original creature, and the fact that ADI personnel gave a series of interviews that minimized Giger's contribution. Fox eventually reimbursed Giger, but only after he refused to be interviewed for their behind-the-scenes documentary of "Alien 3".


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: However, Giger would comment that he thought the resulting film was "okay" and that the Alien was "better than in the second film".


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: In "Alien Resurrection", due to significant genetic tampering in an attempt to recover DNA from the deceased Ellen Ripley and the Alien queen within her, the resulting cloned Aliens show a number of minor human traits. The cloned queen inherits a perversion of a human womb, and as a result, it ceases to lay eggs and gives birth to a humanoid mutant hybrid. Physically, the human/Alien Newborn is very different from other alien young, being larger, with pale, translucent skin, a skull-shaped face with eyes, a human tongue, and a complete absence of a tail. The Newborn fails to bond with its Alien queen mother, killing it, and imprinting on the Ripley clone instead.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: The Newborn creature was originally scripted by Joss Whedon as being an eyeless, ivory-white quadruped with red veins running along the sides of its head. It had an inner jaw, with the addition of a pair of pincers on the sides of its head. These pincers would have been used to immobilize its prey as it drained it of blood through the inner jaw. The creature was originally going to rival the queen in size, but Jean-Pierre Jeunet asked ADI to make the human/Alien hybrid, known as the Newborn, more human than Alien. The Newborn's eyes and nose were added to improve its expressions to make it a character, rather than just a "killing machine", and give it depth as a human-like creature.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: This variation is the result of a facehugger impregnating a Predator. The "Predalien" was first depicted in a painting by Dave Dorman, and subsequently featured in the "Aliens versus Predator" comics and games. A Predalien chestburster debuted in the final scene of "Alien vs. Predator" (2004), but did not make a full on film appearance as an adult until "" (2007).


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: The Predalien shares many characteristics with its hosts, such as long hair-like appendages, mandibles, skin color, and similar vocalizations. It is a large, bulky creature, and possesses physical strength greater than that of human-spawned Aliens. Like human-born Aliens, it is also shown to be stronger than its host species, as evidenced by its ability to pin, push, and knock a Predator away with ease.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: The dark-blue Deacon is a different species that makes an appearance in "Prometheus", though it clearly shares traits similar to the Xenomorph, including a similar life-cycle. The Deacon is the result of a "Trilobite" (which takes its name from a group of extinct marine arthropods), a large facehugger-like creature, attacking and impregnating an Engineer. After some time, it will burst out of its host, with the notable difference that it is "born" almost fully developed. Its fate is unknown, though the tie-in comic book "Prometheus: Fire and Stone", also set on LV-223, features a mutated mountain with acidic veins which are implied to be the heavily mutated Deacon.


title: Alien (creature in Alien franchise)

text: The pale-white Neomorph is featured in "". It was created through exposure to spores found growing on the Engineer homeworld. The embryonic Neomorph then gestates inside the host until it bursts out of its host's back, throat, or possibly other areas, using mostly its head, which is sharp and pointed, similar to the Deacon. Like the Xenomorph, the Neomorph has a tail which is strong enough to tear off a human jaw. The Neomorph is a less weaponized version of the Xenomorph and lacks the facial features and biomechanical traits of the latter. The Neomorph is far more feral than the traditional Xenomorph; they are voracious predators, often eating the corpses of their victims. Unlike the Xenomorph, the Neomorph appears to lack a hive structure since they propagate through mutated animal life.


title: Vought F4U Corsair

text: The Vought F4U Corsair is an American fighter aircraft which saw service primarily in World War II and the Korean War. Designed and initially manufactured by Chance Vought, the Corsair was soon in great demand; additional production contracts were given to Goodyear, whose Corsairs were designated FG, and Brewster, designated F3A.


title: Vought F4U Corsair

text: The Corsair was designed and operated as a carrier-based aircraft, and entered service in large numbers with the U.S. Navy in late 1944 and early 1945. It quickly became one of the most capable carrier-based fighter-bombers of World War II. Some Japanese pilots regarded it as the most formidable American fighter of World War II and its naval aviators achieved an 11:1 kill ratio. Early problems with carrier landings and logistics led to it being eclipsed as the dominant carrier-based fighter by the Grumman F6F Hellcat, powered by the same Double Wasp engine first flown on the Corsair's initial prototype in 1940. Instead, the Corsair's early deployment was to land-based squadrons of the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Navy.


title: Vought F4U Corsair

text: The Corsair served almost exclusively as a fighter-bomber throughout the Korean War and during the French colonial wars in Indochina and Algeria. In addition to its use by the U.S. and British, the Corsair was also used by the Royal New Zealand Air Force, French Naval Aviation, and other air forces until the 1960s.


title: Vought F4U Corsair

text: From the first prototype delivery to the U.S. Navy in 1940, to final delivery in 1953 to the French, 12,571 F4U Corsairs were manufactured in 16 separate models. Its 1942–1953 production run was the longest of any U.S. piston-engined fighter.


title: Vought F4U Corsair

text: In February 1938 the U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics published two requests for proposal for twin-engined and single-engined fighters. For the single-engined fighter the Navy requested the maximum obtainable speed, and a stalling speed not higher than . A range of was specified. The fighter had to carry four guns, or three with increased ammunition. Provision had to be made for anti-aircraft bombs to be carried in the wing. These small bombs would, according to thinking in the 1930s, be dropped on enemy aircraft formations.


title: Vought F4U Corsair

text: In June 1938, the U.S. Navy signed a contract with Vought for a prototype bearing the factory designation V-166B, the XF4U-1, BuNo 1443. The Corsair design team was led by Rex Beisel. After mock-up inspection in February 1939, construction of the XF4U-1 powered by an XR-2800-4 prototype of the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp twin-row, 18-cylinder radial engine, rated at went ahead quickly, as the very first airframe ever designed from the start to have a Double Wasp engine fitted for flight. When the prototype was completed it had the biggest and most powerful engine, largest propeller, and probably the largest wing on any naval fighter to date. The first flight of the XF4U-1 was made on 29 May 1940, with Lyman A. Bullard, Jr. at the controls. The maiden flight proceeded normally until a hurried landing was made when the elevator trim tabs failed because of flutter.


title: Vought F4U Corsair

text: On 1 October 1940, the XF4U-1 became the first single-engine U.S. fighter to fly faster than by flying at an average ground speed of from Stratford to Hartford. The USAAC's twin engine Lockheed P-38 Lightning had flown over 400 mph in January–February 1939. The XF4U-1 also had an excellent rate of climb although testing revealed some requirements would have to be rewritten. In full-power dive tests, speeds of up to were achieved, but not without damage to the control surfaces and access panels and, in one case, an engine failure. The spin recovery standards also had to be relaxed as recovery from the required two-turn spin proved impossible without resorting to an anti-spin chute. The problems clearly meant delays in getting the design into production.


title: Vought F4U Corsair

text: Reports coming back from the war in Europe indicated an armament of two synchronized engine cowling-mount machine guns, and two machine guns (one in each outer wing panel) was insufficient. The U.S. Navy's November 1940 production proposals specified heavier armament. The increased armament comprised three .50 caliber machine guns mounted in each wing panel. This improvement greatly increased the ability of the Corsair to shoot down enemy aircraft.


title: Vought F4U Corsair

text: Formal U.S. Navy acceptance trials for the XF4U-1 began in February 1941. The Navy entered into a letter of intent on 3 March 1941, received Vought's production proposal on 2 April, and awarded Vought a contract for 584 F4U-1 fighters, which were given the name "Corsair" – inherited from the firm's late-1920s Vought O2U naval biplane scout which first bore the name – on 30 June of the same year. The first production F4U-1 performed its initial flight a year later, on 24 June 1942. It was a remarkable achievement for Vought; compared to land-based counterparts, carrier aircraft are "overbuilt" and heavier, to withstand the extreme stress of deck landings.


title: Vought F4U Corsair

text: The F4U incorporated the largest engine available at the time, the 18-cylinder Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp radial. To extract as much power as possible, a relatively large Hamilton Standard Hydromatic three-blade propeller of was used.


title: Vought F4U Corsair

text: To accommodate a folding wing the designers considered retracting the main landing gear rearward but, for the chord of wing that was chosen, it was difficult to make the landing gear struts long enough to provide ground clearance for the large propeller. Their solution was an inverted gull wing, which considerably shortened the required length of the struts. The anhedral of the wing's inboard section also permitted the wing and fuselage to meet at the optimum angle for minimizing drag, without using wing root fairings. The bent wing was heavier and more difficult to construct, however, offsetting these benefits.