10 Aliens Tougher Than Xenomorphs

Let’s address the elephant in the room. The Brood are Marvel’s ripoff of the Alien franchise’s Xenomorphs. There’s really no other way to say it. And yet the insectoid space parasites up the ante on the Xenomorph’s already pretty high WTF factor.

See the Xenomorphs hunt down and tear people apart for survival. The Brood does it for fun. Not only do the scaly creeps do the whole, impregnating-a-living-host-with-their-embryos-and-then-killing-them-after, but they get off on it. The Brood enjoy the pain and suffering they cause their hosts, making them a crueler alien species than the Xenomorphs ever were.

While we wouldn’t want to meet either alien in a dark alley at night, at least the Xenomorph wouldn’t smile before it kills us. We can’t say the same for the Brood.

The Xenomorph might be the scariest alien ever put on screen, but the Arachnids are a close second. The vaguely spider-like Arachnids have all the ferocity of a Xenomorph but none of the cunning. You might think that makes them less of a threat, but we beg to differ.

Arachnids have a hard exoskeleton capable of withstanding most bullets, and half their body is a giant pair of scissor-like jaws. Combine that with a lack of self-preservation, and you’ve got a mindless, indestructible killing machine that would rush over and bite a Xenomorph in half before the alien had a chance to even stick out its little baby mouth.

Sure, the acid blood might kill the Arachnid, too, but not before ten others take its place on the battlefield. Whatever the Arachnids can’t take down individually, they can always be overwhelmed by thousands—if not millions—of fellow bugs.

The Sarlacc debuted onscreen in Return of the Jedi as a giant, toothy hole. As far as aliens go, nowhere near as terrifying as a Xenomorph. But looks can be deceiving. Trust us when we say Sarlaacs are some of the toughest S.O.B.s in the Star Wars universe.

What a Sarlacc lacks in mobility, it makes up for in sheer nastiness. Anyone unlucky enough to get within range of a Sarlacc’s tentacles is in for a world of unspeakable suffering. Once a victim is dragged down into the creature’s stomach, small tendrils puncture and embed themselves into the prey’s skin. These tendrils then pump a neurotoxin into the victim that causes constant pain and renders them immobile while the Sarlacc slowly digests them over a thousand years.

Oh, and did we mention Sarlaccs has a stomach enzyme that keeps you alive for the entire millennia-long process? We’d like to see a Xenomorph pull that off, or any other alien for that matter.

This one might seem like a joke, but hear us out. Star Trek’s Tribbles might be cute, fluffy little balls of fur, but their capacity for reproduction makes them terrifying. The fuzzballs replicate at a dizzying speed, increasing their numbers exponentially. Tribbles are so fruitful members of the species are born pregnant.

Xenomorphs, by comparison, are aliens with a prolonged and very specific method of reproduction that can make propagating the species a crapshoot. Left unchecked, Tribbles can overrun any species—even Xenomorphs—by sheer numbers. There’s a reason Tribbles are the only creature that strikes fear into the hearts of the savage Klingon race.

Imagine something as big and nasty on the inside as the Sarlacc but mobile and capable of hunting. That’s the sandworm, a giant beast up to 450 meters in length with a digestion system like a blast furnace. The second a Xenomorph or any other flightless alien sets foot on the planet Dune, it’s over.

These subterranean behemoths can sense even the smallest vibration, and when they rush to the surface to investigate, the friction causes lightning storms. Xenomorphs are formidable, but sandworms are on a whole other level.

If you think Sarlaacs are tough, what about a species that eats them for breakfast? The Krayt Dragon is a large reptilian alien that can spit acid like a Xenomorph. It’s also ten times the size and has a temper that would make most Xenos look like puppies.

Essentially a giant worm-dragon hybrid, the Krayt dragon prowls the sand of Tatooine, searching for anything and everything to shove in its giant maw. Krayt dragons are so feared that just the sound of one’s cry is enough to send tough-as-nails Tusken Raiders running for the hill. Trust us, the Xenomorph doesn’t want this smoke.

The aliens from Invasion of the Body Snatchers are spores that drift from the planet, assimilating all life, presumably even Xenomorphs. While we don’t doubt that the Xenomorphs would make short work of the so-called “pod people” that the body snatchers turn into when assimilating other beings, they would be no match for the spores themselves.

There’s no reason to assume that the body snatcher spores wouldn’t assimilate and make copies of the Xenomorphs just as they do every other alien species they come across. With that in mind, the slimy black fiends would be just as effective as humans are when it comes to defeating the body snatchers, which is to say not at all.

The Blob is a gelatinous, slime-like alien that, unlike the Xenomorphs, cannot be killed. We’ll say that again for the people in the back: The Blob cannot be destroyed. It just creeps along, consuming everything in its wake.

The more The Blob eats, the bigger it gets and the only way to stop it is to freeze it. Unless they’ve somehow learned how to build and wield freeze rays, every Xenomorph, from the lowliest drone to the queen herself, is nothing but food for The Blob. Like the creature’s theme song says: beware of The Blob.

The alien from John Carpenter’s The Thing is the only species on this list that is uglier than a Xenomorph…probably. The truth is we never see the actual “organism” in the movie, just different hybrid forms, but those hybrid forms are some of the most disturbing movie monsters ever created.

When a Facehugger attaches to a dog in Alien 3, the resulting Xenomorph looks like a Xenomorph but has some animal characteristics. When The Thing assimilates a dog, it becomes a disgusting, wet, inside-out, vaguely dog-like monstrosity with spindly legs and long intestine-like tentacles. While the Xenomorph’s acid blood might be a challenge for The Thing, it will kill the alien if it can’t assimilate it.

To beat The Thing, every last one of its cells must be destroyed, and honestly, the Xenomorph just doesn’t have that kind of destructive capability.

The Borg, as a species, is different from others that survive by assimilating other organisms. Borg don’t take over organic matter so much as they co-opt it and augment it with technology. As a result, the cyborg aliens aren’t interested in destroying other life forms like the Xenomorphs; they want to add them to the collective.

Given that the Xenomorphs already exist in a hive-like structure, getting them to join the Borg hive-mind shouldn’t be much of a problem. The resulting creatures, however—whether you want to call them XenoBorgs or Borgomorphs—would make the other aliens on this list look like mosquitos.

Xenomorphs augmented with advanced technology and tuned into a hive mind would potentially take over the universe. Thankfully, such a union is nothing more than a disturbing pipedream. The Borg and the Xenomorphs are owned by two different companies…for now. When Disney eventually takes over every other entertainment company, who can say what kind of nauseating crossovers they might engage in?

Just remember, we came up with XenoBorgs first.