20 Things You Didn't Know About Aliens
6. There Were Only 6 Hypersleep Chambers For 12 Characters
The more grandiose scale of Aliens compared to its predecessor inevitably meant bigger sets and more elaborate designs, which even more inevitably led to budget constraints.
This became a problem when planning the 'awakening from hypersleep' sequence, a sequence that has now become a trademark of the series.
The budget could only afford six hypersleep chambers, but there was a crew of twelve that needed to be shown emerging from hypersleep. What you see in the film is actually a mirror, and It is shot in such a way that it looks like there is double the amount of hypersleep chambers.