XENOMORPH TIMELINE
Chronology · 111 media · updated
The legacy Alien expanded universe from before the Disney era, outside today's canon: the Dark Horse comics and crossovers, the Bantam and DH Press novels, the older games and the adaptations of unproduced screenplays, ordered by the year their story takes place. Open a media to see what comes right before and after it, or switch to the vertical timeline for a condensed view.
See also: Dark Horse Aliens comics only · Canon, alternate and legacy explained
June 1998 / In-Universe year : 0900 (approx)
In the age of the Vikings, the granddaughter of a dead king summons the warrior Rainulf the Wraith-Stalker to kill a creature with iron skin and blood that burns stone.
January 1993 - January 1994 / In-Universe year : 1955 (approx)
In 1950s suburban America, a burning spacecraft crashes near town. Its pilot carries a Facehugger, and soon a Queen is building a hive in the woods.
June 1993 / In-Universe year : 1993 (approx)
A boy playing the "Alien 3" video game on his Super Nintendo is pulled into it. Suddenly he is the one facing the Aliens, with assault rifles and flamethrowers.
July 1995 - September 1995 / In-Universe year : 1995 (approx)
Signals from deep space may lead Superman to traces of Krypton. He finds Argo, a domed Kryptonian city overrun by Aliens, far from the yellow sun that gives him his powers.
September 1995 - October 1995 / In-Universe year : 1997 (approx)
During routine maintenance on an alien spaceship, a crew member finds a strange egg hidden on board. Soon the ship is falling toward a jungle on Earth.
March 1997 - April 1997 / In-Universe year : 1997 (approx)
Batman goes into the jungle near the border between Mexico and Guatemala to find a missing man. There he crosses paths with an American covert ops team, and with the Aliens from a crashed spacecraft.
August 1998 / In-Universe year : 1998 (approx)
An escape pod carrying an injured StormWatch agent crashes in New York. The WildC.A.T.s teleport to the Skywatch space station to rescue the survivors and find it overrun by Aliens.
December 2002 - March 2003 / In-Universe year : 1998 (approx)
A Gotham City construction crew opens a sealed vault and frees an Alien brought back from Antarctica decades earlier. Batman hunts the creature while a black-ops agency moves in to take over the case.
September 2000 - December 2000 / In-Universe year : 2000 (approx)
Years ago, Hal Jordan chose to contain a nest of Aliens rather than destroy it. Now a freighter has crashed on the planet where he left them, and Kyle Rayner is called in to rescue the crew.
May 2002 - December 2002 / In-Universe year : 2002 (approx)
A ship carrying Aliens crashes on Apokolips, and Darkseid sees in them the army he has always wanted. On a visit to New Genesis, Superman hears a warning that a horror is coming.
September 2015 - February 2016 / In-Universe year : 2015 (approx)
The first human colony on Mars digs up ancient catacombs. Vampirella is called in to examine them, and finds the remains of a vampire race and a chamber full of leathery eggs.
October 2007 / In-Universe year : 2090 (approx)
Before Ripley, there was a first encounter. Someone on Earth knew about the Aliens. Someone battled them, and survived. Aliens and humans have fought before.
June 1997 / In-Universe year : 2100 (approx)
Two black-and-white Aliens stories in one issue. A lone Colonial Marine races a 45-second bomb timer, and a religious sect on a remote mining outpost unearths what it believes is a holy idol.
April 2017 / In-Universe year : 2104 (approx)
Aboard the Covenant, the ship's Audi lunar quattro rover investigates an unidentified presence in the Terraforming Bay.
May 2017 / In-Universe year : 2104 (approx)
Daniels teams up with Muthur, the Covenant's onboard Artificial Intelligence, to take out a hostile alien threat.
June 1979 / In-Universe year : 2122
The crew of the Nostromo answers a signal from a dead planetoid and brings something back on board. Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson's adaptation of the 1979 film, published the same summer.
August 2020 - December 2020 / In-Universe year : 2122 (approx)
On its way back to Earth, the starship Snark picks up an alien transmission. The crew lands on a desolate planetoid and finds a derelict spacecraft and a pyramid of unknown origin.
November 1982 / In-Universe year : 2122 (approx)
An Atari 2600 maze game based on the 1979 film. A lone human crushes Alien eggs in the corridors of a spaceship while adult Aliens roam the halls.
January 1984 / In-Universe year : 2122 (approx)
The crew of the Nostromo must track down and kill the Alien before it picks them off, while one of them is secretly an android working against the others.
October 1991 / In-Universe year : 2122
An alien creature terrorizes the crew of a spaceship. The 1979 film is retold for young readers, with a closing section on how its special effects were done.
October 2018 / In-Universe year : 2122
In space, no one can hear you meow. Aboard the Nostromo, Jonesy enjoys Company cat food and chases space rodents, until the humans bring home a new pet that is definitely not housetrained.
December 2002 - April 2003 / In-Universe year : 2125
In 2125, a small-time crook brings Alien eggs into Mega-City One. When a Chestburster escapes inside Eisenhower General Hospital, Judge Dredd calls in the Verminators.
August 2024 / In-Universe year : 2137
An unofficial guide to Alien: Isolation, the greatest, scariest horror game ever made.
January 1999 - May 1999 / In-Universe year : 2142 (approx)
Deep-space rescue specialist Alecto Throop is hired to find Dr. Lucien Keitel, a renegade scientist who has learned ancient secrets about the Aliens and the giant race behind them.
February 1999 / In-Universe year : 2142 (approx)
On the planet Tirgu-Mires, two Geholgod Institute scientists study a secluded Alien hive that has never been exposed to humans. A short story tied to "Aliens: Apocalypse."
May 1995 / In-Universe year : 2157 (approx)
Lt. Col. Henry Hericksen and the crew of the USS Sheridan answer an SOS from a mining outpost and find a secret laboratory where military experiments have unleashed the Aliens.
March 1992 / In-Universe year : 2172
Dr. Stanislaw Mayakovsky's children's book tells the story of Ari, a cybernetic ant sent into a real ant colony to reach its Queen. This annotated edition is a companion to the comic "Aliens: Hive."
June 1992 - July 1992 / In-Universe year : 2179
The story of "Aliens" as Newt lived it, starting with the day her parents found the derelict ship and the first days of the attack on Hadley's Hope, before the Marines arrive.
December 1986 / In-Universe year : 2179 (approx)
Two different 1986 games based on "Aliens": a first-person strategy game in which six characters from the film search a 255-room complex for the Queen, and an Activision game made of six action sequences.
June 1987 / In-Universe year : 2179 (approx)
Ellen Ripley shoots her way across an Alien-infested planet and into a complex guarded by a giant Xenomorph in this Japan-only MSX game from Square.
January 1990 / In-Universe year : 2179 (approx)
Ripley and Hicks fight hordes of Aliens, many of them new breeds invented for the game, before facing the Queen in a Power Loader.
June 1992 - July 1992 / In-Universe year : 2179
Ripley's escape pod crashes on Fiorina 161, a prison planet with an all-male population of inmates. She is the only survivor, but she did not come down alone.
November 2018 - March 2019 / In-Universe year : 2179 (approx)
After "Aliens," the Sulaco strays into space held by the Union of Progressive Peoples. UPP commandos board it and find a Xenomorph egg growing out of what is left of Bishop.
July 2012 / In-Universe year : 2179 (approx)
Just before the events of the game "Aliens: Colonial Marines," Weyland-Yutani's private soldiers gun down a squad of Colonial Marines fighting Xenomorphs. Only the medic known as Doc and Private O'Neal survive.
October 1992 - November 1993 / In-Universe year : 2179 (approx)
Ripley fights the Aliens inside the Fiorina 161 prison in four different games based on the 1992 film, released from 1992 on Sega and Nintendo consoles and home computers.
January 1993 / In-Universe year : 2179 (approx)
Two Colonial Marines crash on Fiorina 161 and fight hordes of Aliens and Weyland-Yutani soldiers in Sega's light gun take on the third film.
February 1996 / In-Universe year : 2179 (approx)
Ripley and a Marine team land on LV-426 to find the colony overrun. Her fight takes her from Hadley's Hope to a prison facility and into the derelict ship.
September 2011 / In-Universe year : 2179 (approx)
The USS Sulaco is found drifting in space after the events of "Alien 3." A squad of Colonial Marines from the USS Sephora boards it and runs into U.P.P. soldiers and a growing hive.
January 1991 / In-Universe year : 2179 (approx)
From the ruins of the colony destroyed by the Aliens to the greed of Earth itself, players join the Colonial Marine Corps to face the Aliens and corrupt humans.
April 2017 / In-Universe year : 2179 (approx)
When the Colonial Marines set out after their deadliest prey, the Xenomorphs, it's what Corporal Hicks calls a bug hunt - kill or be killed.
April 1998 / In-Universe year : 2179 (approx)
Colonial Marines and player-controlled Aliens battle across colonies and space stations in this online team shooter, where the Marines must fight their way to the Queen's hive.
March 2001 / In-Universe year : 2179 (approx)
A Marine battalion heading home answers a distress beacon from the freighter Thanatos and boards the ship to rescue its survivors from the Aliens.
November 2003 / In-Universe year : 2179 (approx)
At the New Quantico training base, a Colonial Marine recruit must stop the Company's synthetic Xenomorphs after they malfunction and turn on the Marines.
July 1990 - August 1990 / In-Universe year : 2180 (approx)
Bankrupt playboy Wellington Frick leads a small expedition into an Egyptian-style pyramid on an alien world, hoping to find treasure. The chamber at its heart holds three corpses and a clutch of eggs.
July 1990 / In-Universe year : 2180 (approx)
A wordless story told through the eyes of a Xenomorph, which hatches as a Facehugger and ends up in a hive built inside an atmosphere processor.
April 1991 / In-Universe year : 2180 (approx)
A party of huge green humanoids raids a Xenomorph hive and comes face to face with a gigantic Queen. They have come for her eggs.
May 1992 / In-Universe year : 2180 (approx)
On a quarantined planet, the last patient of an abandoned sanitarium remembers how a crashed ship and a single egg cost him his two companions. Now he waits alone.
July 1993 / In-Universe year : 2180 (approx)
A narrator walks the reader through an unusual meal. A Facehugger is squeezed out of its egg and thrown on a grill, to be cooked and eaten by a giant alien creature.
November 1993 / In-Universe year : 2180 (approx)
An Alien outbreak hits the freighter Nova Maru, and Captain Foss forces the cook Selkirk into an escape pod at gunpoint. They crash on a small planet, but the ship's deadly cargo has not stayed behind.
January 1994 - March 1994 / In-Universe year : 2180 (approx)
On a distant world, a tribe of hunters is preyed upon at night by a beast they call the Night Reaper. Young Suom, the only one who has seen it and lived, joins the hunting party sent to kill it.
September 1996 / In-Universe year : 2180 (approx)
Kanako, a crewman with few scruples, fights to stay alive aboard a large ship overrun by Aliens.
December 1996 / In-Universe year : 2180 (approx)
Pilot Nancy turns down her creepy boss, Dr. Dakien. The madman strikes back with a cybernetic double of himself and a load of Aliens, and Nancy's young cousin Jimi is caught in the middle.
January 1997 / In-Universe year : 2180 (approx)
Newlyweds James and Carla Billings put off their honeymoon to hunt down Alien nests and sell the creatures' skulls, hoping to pay for the trip of their dreams.
March 1997 / In-Universe year : 2180 (approx)
Space pirates led by Stitch want to loot a crashed ore tug before its owners arrive, but an Alien nest sits next to the wreck. Stitch's answer is a pig carrying a small nuke wired to a remote detonator.
May 1997 / In-Universe year : 2180 (approx)
A soldier at a remote outpost has come face to face with an Alien, though he is not sure how literal that meeting was. Now he learns what it is like to live with the kind of fear that armies inspire.
June 1997 - July 1997 / In-Universe year : 2180 (approx)
Weyland-Yutani sends the crew of Trispast Salvage to recover the Lunar Maru, a luxury star liner found adrift in an asteroid belt. More than forty artists draw the story, told entirely in the first person.
August 1997 / In-Universe year : 2180 (approx)
On Sybaris 503, researchers have found that leprosy lengthens the gestation of Alien Chestbursters. Then the money runs out, and corporate liquidators arrive to seize every asset, human hosts included.
December 1997 - February 1998 / In-Universe year : 2180 (approx)
Three smugglers try to sell a strange pink Alien egg on Earth's black market. When it hatches, TV host Darryl Zither unknowingly carries the creature to Celeste, a luxury pleasure resort.
February 1998 - April 1998 / In-Universe year : 2180 (approx)
Trapped in an escape pod buried under the surface of Sargon IV, a sick and hallucinating surveyor named Victor Thompson relives the mission that brought him and his family to an Alien world.
February 1998 / In-Universe year : 2180 (approx)
On Red Rock, a theme planet that recreates the Old West, a dig for a new mining town wakes hibernating Aliens. Sheriff Tom Siringo has only 19th-century weapons to protect the tourists.
November 2011 / In-Universe year : 2180 (approx)
On Jupiter's moon Europa, a space elevator car stops halfway between the deep-sea research base and the orbital station. The rescue team sent to reach it finds a deadly cargo on board.
May 2012 - October 2012 / In-Universe year : 2180 (approx)
On the ice planet Nivalis-4, Jean DuPaul teaches new Weyland-Yutani synthetics how to act human. She once spent three weeks locked in a room with a Xenomorph, and the company now wants her off the planet.
July 2006 / In-Universe year : 2182 (approx)
Years after the events of "Aliens," two Colonial Marine squads return to LV-426. The Aliens are still there, and so is an army of synthetics that Weyland-Yutani has reprogrammed to guard its bio-weapons research.
January 2014 / In-Universe year : 2182 (approx)
The research ship USS Capella is overrun by Aliens and destroyed in orbit, and the creatures fall to Earth with the debris. Players fight across the infested planet to reach the Ark, a cargo ship leaving Earth.
August 2021 / In-Universe year : 2183 (approx)
On its way home from LV-426, the Sulaco drifts into space held by the Union of Progressive Peoples, then docks at the vast military station Anchorpoint. There, Hicks begins to hear rumors of experiments on the Xenomorphs.
January 1995 - April 1995 / In-Universe year : 2192 (approx)
A Weyland-Yutani hunter/killer team and its Berserker combat unit are sent to clear the biggest Alien hive ever found, aboard the space station DS Service Terminal 949. The Company wants the station back in one piece.
August 1998 / In-Universe year : 2192 (approx)
A Weyland-Yutani Berserker team (three ex-convicts and MAX, an armored exoskeleton powered by a living human brain) is sent to wipe out the largest Alien hive in history aboard the space station D.S. 949.
April 1992 / In-Universe year : 2192 (approx)
An orbiting medical station is infested with Aliens. A Colonial Marine squad trained to wipe them out boards it, with a Berserker battle unit in reserve, and the success of the mission depends on one man's sinister secret.
July 1988 - July 1989 / In-Universe year : 2192 (approx)
Ten years after LV-426, a scarred Hicks breaks Newt out of a psychiatric hospital and takes her on a Marine mission to the Aliens' homeworld. Back on Earth, a captured Alien is about to get loose.
September 1992 / In-Universe year : 2192 (approx)
Wilks was a space marine with a near-fatal flaw: he had a heart. Billie was a child, the only survivor of a far-flung colony outpost.
June 1998 / In-Universe year : 2192 (approx)
Frank is a hired killer running from his past. Aboard a freighter, he falls in with a band of stowaways who may offer him a chance at redemption. When an Alien threatens the ship, he looks like their only hope.
September 1990 - October 1991 / In-Universe year : 2193 (approx)
As Earth is abandoned to the Aliens, three Marines left behind in New York search a bio-research building for answers. A dead employee has started a nuclear self-destruct, and they have 53 minutes to get out.
October 1992 - December 1992 / In-Universe year : 2193 (approx)
While the Aliens overrun Earth, people living on the Moon start dreaming of them. One man has found a way to record those dreams, and he is selling them.
August 1989 - May 1990 / In-Universe year : 2194 (approx)
Hicks, Newt and the damaged synthetic Butler flee an infested Earth on a cargo drone. It takes them to a remote base where General Spears is breeding Aliens and training them to win the planet back.
April 1993 / In-Universe year : 2194 (approx)
Earth is totally over-run by the Alien. Ain't nowhere left to go but deep space. Wilks, Billie, and Bueller, survivors, head out in search of the fragments of humanity. And a place to rest.
June 1990 - October 1990 / In-Universe year : 2194 (approx)
Hicks and Newt find Ripley alive on Gateway Station. She plans to capture the Queen Mother on the Aliens' homeworld and bring her to Earth as bait.
July 1993 / In-Universe year : 2194 (approx)
Wilks and Billie join a mysteriously resurrected Ellen Ripley on a desperate mission to the Aliens' home world: capture their Queen Mother and use her to take back an Earth overrun by the creatures.
November 1991 / In-Universe year : 2194 (approx)
After the war against the Aliens, an Engineer still hangs in orbit above Earth, reshaping the planet with a terraforming beam. The President of the United States is called to Gateway Station to meet it face to face.
August 1992 - September 1992 / In-Universe year : 2194 (approx)
Mercenaries threaten to take over a peaceful colony world. Its leader, Caleb Deschanel, sends Ash Parnall, known as Renegade, to deal with them.
July 1993 - February 1994 / In-Universe year : 2194 (approx)
Much of Earth has been overrun by the Aliens, but London seems to have been spared. Minecorp sends its mercenaries to find out why, in a city whose people have gone back to living in tribes.
February 1992 - May 1992 / In-Universe year : 2195
Dying cyberneticist Stan Mayakovsky builds a synthetic Alien to slip into a hive. A thief named Julie wants it to bring back the Queen Mother's royal jelly, worth millions on the black market.
August 1995 / In-Universe year : 2195 (approx)
This time the humans are taking the offensive! Stan Myakovsky is a once-famous scientist fallen on hard times. Now he dodges spaceship repo men and dreams of the marketability of his cybernetic ant.
May 2009 - December 2009 / In-Universe year : 2195 (approx)
Wildcat prospectors on the planet Chione find a vast necropolis carved into the rock. As they explore it, they lose their grip on reality and start to disappear one by one.
May 1994 - September 1994 / In-Universe year : 2197 (approx)
Grant Corporation auditors Philip and Joy Strunk deliver parts to Dr. Caspar Nordling's research facility, staffed by androids. They are also there to find out what Nordling is really doing with his Aliens.
January 1994 / In-Universe year : 2197 (approx)
Grant Corporation Station 13 sends a desperate call for help after its Alien specimens break loose. Lieutenant Roberta Benitez and her Colonial Marines are ordered to search the moon base for survivors and sterilize it if needed.
April 1993 - July 1993 / In-Universe year : 2198 (approx)
Corporate spy John Kray is sent to Charon Base to check on Dr. Ernst Kleist, who is trying to breed Aliens that humans can control. Workers on the station are disappearing one by one.
November 1995 / In-Universe year : 2198 (approx)
Escape from Charon or die in the grip of the ultimate weapon.
January 1992 / In-Universe year : 2200 (approx)
Lieutenant Ripley and an elite team of Space Marines hunt Aliens across the galaxy, including strange breeds that have taken on the traits of their animal hosts. Mini-comics made for Kenner's toy line.
August 1999 - November 1999 / In-Universe year : 2200 (approx)
The existence of the Aliens is no longer a secret, and a mega-corporation has formed Strikeforce to hunt them. The team's next mission takes it to the colony world of Salazar VII.
January 1994 - April 1994 / In-Universe year : 2203 (approx)
Composer Damon Eddington wants to record the screams of a living Alien for his "Symphony of Hate." His corporate patron, Synsound, sends a team of ninjas to steal an Alien egg from a rival company.
September 1996 / In-Universe year : 2203 (approx)
In New York City, the streets are swarming with Alien Jelly addicts and homeless people. High above in air-conditioned offices the powerbrokers look down with disgust. One of them, an entertainment mogul, is planning spectacular revenge on a maniac musician.
November 1993 - December 1993 / In-Universe year : 2203 (approx)
Gerald Coile smuggles Alien products such as Royal Jelly and Xeno-Zip. He has set up his retirement by working with the Drug Enforcement Agency, until he finds himself trapped with a live Alien.
November 1991 - February 1992 / In-Universe year : 2213 (approx)
Earth is rebuilding after the war with the Aliens. Billionaire Daniel Grant needs royal jelly for his drug Xeno-Zip, so he joins a Marine expedition to steal a Queen Mother from a hive world torn by civil war.
December 1993 / In-Universe year : 2213 (approx)
Their queen is dead and the hive mind has been left to flounder on its own. On a world bereft of its only guiding force a schism is taking place: two strains of alien, formerly united by one all-powerful mother, now divide their forces for a world-shattering, acid-drenched war.
March 1993 - June 1993 / In-Universe year : 2213 (approx)
Ann McKay is the only survivor of a crash on a jungle planet. The human village she reaches has lived for months with an Alien nearby, and its people are hiding something from her.
January 1993 - July 1994 / In-Universe year : 2215 (approx)
Lieutenant Joseph Henry, a politician's son with a habit of insubordination, is handed the worst platoon in the sector. A routine check on a toxic waste dump leads them to strangely organized Aliens and a cult of human hybrids.
June 1994 - August 1994 / In-Universe year : 2215 (approx)
Cigar-chomping Alien hunter Herk Mondo answers a distress call, hoping a grateful colony will pay well. Instead the planet's defense system opens fire on him, and the terraforming colony turns out to be overrun by Aliens.
February 1996 / In-Universe year : 2215 (approx)
Alien exterminator Herk Mondo is stuck in the middle of an infestation without a single weapon, while an active volcano gets ready to blow beneath his feet.
October 2008 / In-Universe year : 2218 (approx)
After thirty years of cryogenic sleep, Detective Anders Kramm wakes to a changed world. The Alien threat has been subdued. Company interests dominate universal trade. Terraforming is big money now, with powerful men willing to do anything to assure dominance over other worlds.
September 1993 - January 1994 / In-Universe year : 2223 (approx)
On the secret research station Innominata, Dr. Paul Church studies how Aliens think and hunt. When a man is killed by an escaped Alien, Colonel Doctor Anthony Crespi suspects that the creature had help getting out.
March 1996 / In-Universe year : 2223 (approx)
On the space station Innominata the infamous Dr. Paul Church has built a maze of tunnels. Church is hiding the results of his latest experiments. His aim... to bring human and alien together as one being!
July 1998 / In-Universe year : 2230 (approx)
Teenager Roark arrives on Tirgu-Mires, a fourth-generation farming colony. The local kids tell him about the Wraith, a monster said to live in a nearby cave where twelve young people have disappeared.
September 1997 - December 1997 / In-Universe year : 2240 (approx)
On a backwater world settled by the child survivors of a crashed ship, preacher Toch Newcomen warns that the end is near. Then something starts killing the people of Emerson.
January 2008 / In-Universe year : 2250 (approx)
Thomas Chase wakes up from cryosleep to his first day at a new job - as a pilot for a contraband drug company dropping a shipment on Fantasia, a rock-planet terraformed to hide an elaborate drug manufacturing operation.
October 1997 - November 1997 / In-Universe year : 2381
Two hundred years after her death, Ellen Ripley is cloned aboard the military ship Auriga. When the Aliens bred on board break loose, she and a crew of smugglers must find a way off the ship.
October 2000 / In-Universe year : 2381 (approx)
A cloned Ripley wakes aboard the USM Auriga as the Aliens break out of containment, and must team up with a band of mercenaries to escape the ship.
November 1997 / In-Universe year : 2381
Terry Bisson's junior novelization of Alien Resurrection, a 128-page book for young readers with an eight-page color photo insert. A cloned Ripley wakes aboard a military lab ship where Aliens are being bred.
October 2017 / In-Universe year : 2381 (approx)
Standard issue for the United States Colonial Marine Corps: everything a new recruit needs to identify and fight the Xenomorph, with a companion app that adds 3D animations and weapon training.
October 2005 / In-Universe year : 2381 (approx)
Nearly three centuries ago, the Weyland-Yutani starship Nostromo investigated what appeared to be a distress call emanating from the barren planet Acheron.
May 2006 / In-Universe year : 2385 (approx)
In an inhospitable galaxy, the planet Rosamond 6 is a rare find. With a moon, an atmosphere, and a thriving bio-system the world has all the keys necessary for human habitation.
June 2007 / In-Universe year : 2500 (approx)
On the spaceship Umiak, an elite troupe of cadets is forced into servitude by an unscrupulous captain taking the ship to a smuggler's rendezvous.