10 Movie Character Backstories Revealed Years Later

The original Alien's small cast features just two female characters - the iconic Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), and the Nostromo's navigator Joan Lambert (Veronica Cartwright).

Lambert may bite it mid-way through the movie, but an interesting wrinkle to her story was actually slyly unveiled 7 years after Alien's release in James Cameron's 1986 sequel Aliens.

While Ripley is being debriefed after exiting stasis, the files of her deceased fellow crew members are projected behind her, including a file for Lambert which states that she was a male-to-female "convert."

Though on Aliens' original release the text was simply too blurry to be legible, the bios have since been made available in all their glory on home video releases, confirming that Lambert was born male and transitioned to female later in life.

The report also adds, "So far no indication of suppressed trauma related to gender alteration." It certainly allows audiences to view Lambert in a new light, particularly as it pertains to the sexually violent overtones of her death scene.