6 ways Prey nods to the other Predator movies

2. The blood-soaked Predator

Though Naru catches fleeting glimpses of the Predator (Dane DiLiegro) or its ship early on in Prey, it’s not until it goes head to head with a grizzly bear that she finally sees it fully for the first time. After it kills the bear with its bare hands, the Predator lifts it triumphantly over its head while Naru watches in horror. The bear bleeds out all over the Predator, revealing the alien despite its invisibility cloaking.

This same thing happens during the opening sequence of 2018’s The Predator, when Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) accidentally uses a Predator’s gauntlet to disable one of the creatures and eviscerate a body hanging from a tree above it. As blood covers the Predator’s prone form, its cloaked shape is revealed in gruesome fashion.

3. The Predator’s physical appearance

If you went into Prey expecting the Predator to look similar to the classic design used in the first two films, you likely got a pretty big surprise when its mask came off for the first time. The Predator in Prey has a very different look from the one that stalked Schwarzenegger and Danny Glover back in the day.

“For this one, I really wanted to make this version of the Predator so much more feral and ferocious and animalistic, from its movements to its silhouette and its design,” Tratchenberg told Digital Spy. “That was something that we looked at the other iterations and tried to zig where they zagged a little bit.”

The Predator in the new prequel film certainly does feel much more aggressive and nimble than any we’ve seen before. But though it has many features that are brand new, the actual creature design is something we’ve seen before in 2010’s Predators. The Berserker Predator that Adrian Brody’s Royce faces off against in that film looks reminiscent of the Predator in Prey, with a similar facial design and skin texture.