While exploring, players may come across a strange skull that can't be identified. There's another easy-to-miss reference on the planet Maji in the first game. Additionally, the colony in Aliens is called Hadley's Hope, while the Zhu's Hope colony appears on the planet Feros in Mass Effect. A familiar setup.Ĭontinuing the reference, a side mission in Mass Effect 3 has Shepard and company use flamethrowers to clear an underground nest of the bugs, as a shout-out to the marines doing the same thing in Aliens.
In the first game, when landing on the icy planet Noveria, the player is told that the supposedly dead Rachni were cloned after a company found some eggs on a derelict ship. While the aliens themselves reference any number of other similar races in other works (including the bugs from Starship Troopers), the missions involving them feature many, many references to the classic Alien film series. In all three games of the acclaimed original trilogy, players meet the Rachni, an insectoid alien race.