The Alien and Predator franchises have a long history of interconnectivity that eventually culminated in the Antarctic action of 2004’s Alien vs. Predator. But what if this same cold region of the world was home to another sci-fi horror series that formed a third segment of this cinematic universe? That’s what one Reddit user has suggested after watching 1982’s The Thing and the 2011 prequel of the same name.

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In this short but thoughtful fan theory from Redditor RagglenLove, it’s speculated that the titular life-form of the John Carpenter classic may have been an early creation of the humanoid beings from Prometheus, but perhaps didn’t turn out exactly as they’d planned.

“Since we’ve never established where the Thing came from, who made them and who owned the spaceship, I was thinking, maybe the Engineers (Space Jockeys) created the Thing parasite as a weapon to attack Earth, but during their journey, the Thing got loose and their ship crashes into Antarctica.

Since the Thing was a failure to them, as in, too dangerous to handle, the Engineers went on to other projects, the Black Goo.”

Though it’s doubtful that Ridley Scott or anyone else involved in the recent Alien projects had this crossover continuity in mind, this theory still makes an unusual amount of sense. The spaceship from The Thing is said to have crashed on Earth many millennia ago, potentially allowing these events to slot in with the Prometheus chronology. Better yet, this wouldn’t be the only dangerous parasitic species created by the Engineers, with the franchise-defining Xenomorphs relying on a living host when they transition from their early Facehugger form.

But while it’s overall a nice idea that could make for a pretty fun saga, you probably shouldn’t hold your breath for any new cinematic instalments from The Thing or Alien for the time being, with the latter franchise even rumored to be a casualty of the Fox-Disney merger. Still, if you’re really keen to get your fix of man vs. extraterrestrial action, look out for The Predator, coming to theaters on September 14th.

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