 |
"Mature Content Warning!" |
| “ | Okay, look. What if that ship didn't even exist? Do you ever think about that? I didn't know! So now, if I went and made a major security situation out of it, everybody steps in—administration steps in, and there's no exclusive rights for anybody, nobody wins! So I made a decision, and it was...wrong. It was a bad call, Ripley. It was a bad call. | „ |
| ~ Burke to Ripley, trying to escape blame for the alien outbreak at Hadley's Hope. |
| “ | This is so nuts. I mean listen...listen to what you're saying. It's paranoid delusion. How...it's really sad. It's pathetic. | „ |
| ~ Burke gaslighting the protagonists when caught in the act. |
Carter J. Burke is the secondary antagonist of the 1986 film Aliens, the second installment of the Alien film series. He is the junior executive of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. While initially amicable towards the Marines and Ripley in particular, in reality Burke had ulterior motives and his loyalties lay solely with Weyland-Yutani. For anyone else, Burke is perfectly willing to betray and murder anyone in his way of his ambitions.
He was portrayed by Paul Reiser.
What Makes Him a Hate Sink?[]
- He wants to help Weyland-Yutani weaponize the Xenomorphs for profit, which would certainly cause mass chaos if they were put in the wrong hands.
- He's revealed to have sent the 158 colonists at Hadley's Hope, knowing full well about the derelict ship that secretly houses a Xenomorph egg nest that had the planet infested with those extremely dangerous and aggressive creatures, which ended up killing everyone except for the child Newt Jorden.
- Worse yet, his actual response when Ripley confronts him on this? Administration complications and profit margins.
- He locks Ripley and Newt in a soundproof with two Facehuggers, planning to jettison the cryo-sleeping marines into deep space so that nobody can contradict his story for when he smuggles the Xenomorph embryos back to Earth.
- Worse still, when the marines confront him on this afterwards, he tries to gaslight them into thinking they're suffering from paranoid delusions.
- When the Xenomorphs break into the heroes' base of operations, Burke seals the door behind them and leaves them all to die while making a run for it like the coward that he is, thus directly causing the deaths of Hudson, Gorman and Vasquez. Thankfully, another alien was waiting for him around the corner to kill him.
- Ripley outright considers him to be worse than the aliens in-universe, stating that nobody sees them "f*cking each other over for a goddamn percentage".
Trivia[]
- Paul Reiser's own parents hated Burke so much that they cheered at his death and one of Reiser's sisters even punched him for playing such a loathsome character.
- Only Burke's final cut version counts as a Hate Sink, as his comic book version was redeemed, and his original version features a humanizing deleted scene where he gave Ripley a sincere appology about his involvement in the whole disaster. Ripley, in a moment of pity, gives Burke a hand grenade to detonate and spare him from the Chestburster killing him. Had this scene been kept in the film, Burke would not have been Hate Sink due to showing remorse and being depicted sympathetically. This deleted scene is ironic, as the final cut version is arguably the most reuplsive character in the franchise, both in-universe and out.
External Links[]
- Carter J. Burke on the Villains Wiki
- Carter J. Burke on the Pure Evil Wiki
- Carter J. Burke on the Xenopedia Wiki
[]
 Hate Sinks
| ||
|
Animated Features Live-Action Features Animated Television Family Guy King Of The Hill Bob's Burgers Other Live-Action Television Literature Fanon See Also | ||