10 Movie Characters Pointlessly Forced Into Sequels

Bishop is one of the most interesting and iconic character of the whole Alien franchise. There's him, Ripley, Newt, Hicks, and that's pretty much it. In fact, Bishop appears in more films than anyone save Ripley.

His first big appearance is in Aliens where he serves as a steady source of conflict. Ripley, who had bad run ins with robots in the past, tries to rely on him while also believing he'll turn on them at any moment. Eventually, he turns out to be a solid dude, saves them all, and off they blast.

But then he is ripped to shreds before the beginning of Alien 3, which was an easy way to cut him out of the movie. He was almost destroyed at the end of the last film anyway, but, after an alien is discovered aboard the prison planet, Ripley wakes up Bishop for a pointless scene where he says, "Yeah, we got an alien."

But that's not the only weirdly pointless Bishop scene in this film alone: at the end, a man appears who looks like Bishop, claiming he designed the Bishop model. It's supposedly designed to get Ripley to trust him, but it has no effect, and would have worked with anyone else - and it would not have been as weird and confusing. Was that really Bishop's creator? Why was he still alive so far in the future? Was it just a robot?

That wasn't the end though. Eventually, Aliens vs Predator was spat out, and Bishop is in that film too. Of course, this movie is set hundreds of years before any of the other Alien films, so the excuse is that this is the Bishop that the later robots were based on, despite Alien 3 showing they were based on their creator. It's forced and makes no sense - a terrific two punch combo.