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A well-known easter egg from Predator 2 is the presence of an Alien skull in the trophy case on board the Predator ship. Aside from a couple of human skulls, there are 4 others:

A man in a light-brown-coloured jumpsuit stands in front and slightly to the right of a display.  The display contains an assortment of white skulls mounted on a darker background.  There are two human-looking skulls, one with a spine attacked and a long xenomorph skull, but 4 other skulls, ranging from twice the size of the human skull to larger than the man's torso, are circled in red.  They all have lots of teeth.

And here's a close-up of the two skulls abutting the Alien skull:

Close-up of the upper-right portion of the display, showing the skulls on either side of the xenomorph's.  The one on the right appears to have eyes set nearly on the side of a very broad face bone with a fan of bones reaching the upper jaw between two enormous ridges that may end in tusks.  There appears to be a fan of bones at the crest of the head.  The one on the left looks more like a predator, but it may have four eye sockets.

Can any of these skulls be identified as either homages to other sci-fi creatures (like the Alien skull) or belonging to creatures appearing in any of the subsequent Predator comics, books, or other movies? Or are they simply props appearing in just this one movie?

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    -1 because circles aren't hand-drawn. I shall now go re-visit MetaSO after 1 year absence :) Commented Nov 11, 2011 at 19:31
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    They are all known as Unidentified Species
    – DavRob60
    Commented Nov 11, 2011 at 20:29
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    The on the left is awfully similar to a zergling :[
    – Saturn
    Commented Sep 29, 2013 at 5:35

7 Answers 7

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They are the unidentified species which are throughout the Aliens / Predator universe.

The skulls were likely created in order to demonstrate that the Predators are not just predators of men, but of the whole galaxy. They travel the stars looking for the "great hunt."

In the second photo, the left skull has some passing likeness to a River Ghost:

The River Ghost's head is shrouded in a pale, insect-like exoskeleton with recesses comparable to human eye sockets on the front of its head above heavy cheekbones, but no visible external eyes.  A sensory organ covered by a moveable flap of bone, partially open and showing the pink interior, is located in the center of its forehead. The teeth extend forwards from their mouth on plates of bone, leaving a considerable gap to their mouths.

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    Yes, it's important to note that the Aliens and Predators live in the same fictional universe. Commented Nov 17, 2011 at 18:50
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    It's Megatron!. Commented Sep 13, 2012 at 18:26
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The large one on the left (which bears a passing resemblance to a T-Rex skull) has mandibles that are reminiscent of the Predator itself.

It's therefore likely that it is a large predator from the Predator's homeworld. They likely share a common ancestor which had mandibles (likely very far down the evolutionary tree).

I haven't read any other Predator material, so I cannot comment on it appearing (or not) there, but that skull is definitely NOT an homage to a different movie.

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The skull in the middle of the first pic, and on the left of the second, could be the alien forerunner featured prominently in Prometheus, and with a cameo in Alien. These were known as the "Engineers".

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Now that Prometheus is out on DVD, it seems obvious that the larger "human" skull is a "Space Jockey" or "Engineer" skull. It's about the right % larger than the human skull, and is close enough in shape to fit the "DNA-match between human and engineer." The Engineers are probably too big for the predators to easily remove the entire spine as with the humans, but also engineer spines might be attached to their space jokey armor making them impossible to remove for the head hunting predators.

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The big skull on the left is either a T-Rex skull or a giant monster from another world, most likely.

The human skulls are King Willie and quite possibly an ancient pharaoh. Clearly humans of great power were eligible to go into the trophy case. It could also be Genghis Khan or Alexander the Great.

One is obviously the Xenomorph Alien skull.

The one with mandibles, I bet, is a Killer Predator skull. The ones from 'Predators'. The rival clan they share a blood feud with.

The last 2 I couldn't tell you. I'm sure they're both species of alien that were deemed worthy opponents for the Predator aliens.

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this is a tricky one, the one in the middle is probably a creature from the other planet in Prometheus, and the one on the left is probably from the predator homeworld and the one to the right is probably a monster also from the predator homeworld, but it all doesn't really make sence because Prometheus is 2092 long after AVP, so why would they find an old war written on a stone wall, so those xenomorphs must an entirely different creature than the xenomorphs in Alien to the next one, Prometheus 2, so the one to the right could be from the second xenomorph species from AVP and AVPR the ones the predators fight.

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Fan-made "Prometheus" movie poster depicting a fanciful skull against a stark black background.

This image definitely looks like the one in the middle!

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  • not really - the eye sockets are not right, and there's a bony crest in the Predator 2 skull not in this poster.
    – HorusKol
    Commented May 29, 2013 at 22:57
  • This looks like a random fan Photoshop image. It's very clearly not an Engineer, nor any of the alien creatures shown in the film. In fact, it appears intended to be an optical illusion rather than a rendering of a physical object, given the transculent overlapping photos. Commented Sep 29, 2013 at 5:53
  • This looks like an Ood from Dr who hahaha. Absolutely not legit. Commented Apr 11, 2016 at 13:54

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