The Thing never reveals the 'true' form of the title alien, which is good as an early plan for the creature's look would have ruined it.
The process of designing The Thing's titular alien monster was so difficult that one early plan would have killed the film completely. John Carpenter grew up a fan of '50s sci-fi movies like Forbidden Planet and the Quatermass films and was particularly enamored with 1951's The Thing From Another World. This adapted the short story Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, about an Antarctic research base invaded by an alien creature that can imitate any living creature perfectly.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Director John Carpenter was such an admirer of The Thing From Another World that he was reluctant to remake it - until he realized he could go back to the short story's shapeshifting depiction of the monster. The genius piece of concept design that informed Carpenter's The Thing is that the alien could look like anything it had ever imitated, resulting in some inventively grotesque body horror sequences.
When Carpenter signed on for The Thing, one element of the alien design he wanted to steer away from was having an actor in a suit. He wanted to convincingly bring a creature to life that couldn't possibly have been played by a human being, which is what going back to the Arness' design would have done. Even for its day, The Thing From Another World's Alien wasn't very compelling in terms of design, to the point that it has no close-ups at all in the final movie.
The Thing's True Form Was Never Revealed Part of the appeal of The Thing is that it can be literally anything, and isn't limited to one look. Had Carpenter's film tried to introduce what it truly looked like, that would have robbed it of the mystery. No design would have been truly satisfying, though a scrapped miniseries sequel from the early 2000s planned a sequence where it would have been electro-shocked back to its original shape.
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