9 Movie Franchise Staples That Actually Came From Sequels

6. Alien Queen - Aliens

Ridley Scott is considered the architect of the entire Alien franchise, but while he did direct the seminal original and then return years later to flesh out the universe even more with Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, James Cameron contributed just as many ideas to establish the iconic mythology

However, it was perhaps the Alien Queen which was his greatest addition to the universe, giving fans a bigger, badder xenomorph to haunt their dreams.

More than that though, the Queen also established the ecology of these creatures, clueing audiences into how they reproduce and spread. In the original, the facehugger eggs just are, whereas in Aliens you get to see first-hand how they're made, and how the xenomorphs work on a hierarchical system.

It's since become a staple of the franchise, but Ridley Scott's original movie almost made the idea impossible. The Queen is never brought up, and that's because a deleted scene explained that the eggs are actually made by any Alien which cocoons a human victim, not actually "birthed" in the conventional sense.