Blogs for Fun: The Thing vs The Blob
(Freddy999M)
(thebigcheese9177)
(JustADude)
(Bored Seba)
"I don't overeat. I only eat one meal a day... but my body has been one of those that has almost perfect assimilation, so everything I eat is assimilated, not lost."
-Raymond Burr
Space, such a wonderful place that brought us wonders and mysteries, but not everything is beautiful in it. Sometimes the creatures outside of our world are hungry, and they'll consume everything in their paths. On one side we have The Thing, the shapeshifting creature from John Carpenter, on the other The Blob, the all consuming mass from Chuck Russell. Let's see which hungry 80's monsters will win in a fight.
Before We Start…
For Thing we’re gonna be compositing between the original “Who Goes There?” novel by John W. Campbell, its comic adaptation and John Carpenter's film adaptation (obviously), the 2011 prequel, the various comics that branch off Carpenter’s canon (The Thing from Another World, Climate of Fear, Eternal Vows, Questionable Research and The Northman Nightmare). We’ll also be covering the 2002 video game. Now it should be noted that the Questionable Research comic, The Thing from Another World comic series and the video game take place after the events of the film, meaning that they follow their own canons. Since there doesn’t seem to be a solid canon between these 3, we’re counting all of them for the sake of completion. Thing isn’t portrayed largely differently in them anyways (well except one but we’ll be talking about that later).
What we won’t be counting is any other adaptation of “Who Goes There?” prior to Carpenter’s and the extended Frozen Hell version of the novel which was written by Campbell himself. The reason for that is that, while it was officially published in 2019 when discovered, it’s still not the official story he released and merely what “Who Goes There?” could’ve been. We’ll also not be covering Short Things, a non canon collection of short stories that branch off from “Who Goes There?”.
The Blob is much simpler. We’ll be compositing between the original 2 films, the 1988 reboot and the novelization of said reboot.
Credit to TheBiteRaptor and RedHeadedElf for the calcs.
Background
The Thing
It’s the winter of 1982. The Antarctic research group from the U.S.Outpost 31 research station heard something confusing outside. A dog was being shot by 2 guys on a helicopter. They quickly took down the 2 Norwegians and adopted the dog. Unfortunately for them, that thing was anything but a dog.
We don’t know where it came from, but we do know that it was aboard a spaceship that crash landed on earth millions of years ago. The Thing manages to escape, but succumbs to the harsh environment of the Antarctic desert and freezes for years to come. That’s until a certain Norwegian group found it and brought it to their base to study it. This resulted in Thing massacring almost the entire crew, assimilating a dog and making its escape.
As can be expected, the men of Outpost 31 would suffer the same feat the Norwegians did. That is, until a certain R.J. MacReady put up more of a fight than expected. After a lot of paranoia, death and destruction, MacReady alongside the only other surviving member, Childs, laid in the snow, hoping that whatever that Thing was, was now dead… Or is it? (Of course you couldn’t kill it, you idiot)
The Blob
On a calm night the sheriff was relaxing, it’s unusual for the nights to be this empty of criminals, and then he got a call. It was from Paul Tyler, the boy called the sheriff to tell him the death of an old man, though the call didn’t last long, something was watching Paul, something slimy and pinkish with hunger.
The Blob first arrived to Earth by a small meteor, landing on Earth in a calm night. An old man finds the little thing and pokes it with a stick, the Blob takes the opportunity and manages to catch the old man’s arm and consume him. The body was found by a couple, Steve Andrews and Jane Martin who took the body to Dr.Hallen, but something followed them. Dr.Hallen realizes that the creature must be killed, he does his best to kill it but ends up being devoured with his co worker.
The Blob escapes and goes around the city, devouring everyone on his way. He nearly devours Steve and Jane but they manage to go inside a freezer and make the creature run away, realizing that his weakness was low temperatures. After that the blob makes a massacre in the Colonial Theater, devouring every poor soul that didn’t manage to escape. The police try to stop the blob but it’s futile… Until Steve and Jane arrive to tell them the blob’s weakness, being frozen. After a while the people of the city manage to freeze the blob and send it to the Arctic so he remains frozen forever. Steve and Jane can rest knowing that the nightmare has ended… Hopefully.
Experience & Skill
The Thing
Thing is a very crafty individual. When hidden inside a group, it will play the long game, spreading panic and mistrust by messing with the environment, framing others and causing chaos in general. All to ensure the best chance at success. It is also incredibly smart, being able to build highly complex devices in a very short time frame with anything it will find around its area, with people not noticing most of it.
(It's also implied that the roar the Bennings-thing made was made of the sounds of the other creatures the Thing had assimilated at the time, including other aliens it came in contact with. Given the nature of how open ended this could be taken, we can't be sure what exactly it has done or consumed in It's time, only that it has won against all of them, whatever they were.)
The Blob
Although the blob appears to just be a mindless creature in the first 2 films, the reboot has proved it to be a deadly adversary. By using its flexible body, Blob will ambush unsuspecting victims by appearing through very small and thin spaces, eat them and make a swift escape.
Equipment
The Thing
Some Weapons
Thing doesn’t really carry any weapons. If it does, it’s because the target it has infected already had it on them. These would be an assault rifle as seen above, dual flamethrowers and some explosives.
Anti Gravity Device
In the original “Who Goes There?” novel, Thing almost finished building an anti gravity device powered by an atomic generator that it was gonna use to leave the planet. Thing built it using whatever it could find around the base, taking around a week to do so.
UFOs
The Thing has built a UFO not once, not twice, but three times. All by using whatever it could find around the area it was in. The first was built over the course of 3-4 days, the second on one night and the last one about the same time as the second. Now it should be noted that the first was stated by MacReady that it would’ve most likely not been able to fly to space and would only act as an aircraft. The second and the third however never got the chance to work, either because Thing was found out or it got destroyed. However, just being able to build these in such a short time is impressive enough.
The Blob
Abilities
The Thing
Physiology
Thing’s biology is interesting, considering we don’t actually know what its true form is, if it even has one. What we do know is that it acts as a virus, where each of its cells acts as its own organism, with Thing having complete control over all of them. To be more precise, Thing has control over a cell’s nucleus, which allows it to have control over cells themselves as a result, considering the nucleus is basically a cell’s brain. Such control is what allows it to shape its body into pretty much what it wants.
If some part of Thing were to ever be separated, forcefully or by doing it itself, that is now a new organism, but still a Thing and can still fuse itself back together. It can even just spawn smaller Things from itself. A more unique aspect would be it being able to shoot acid from itself, or a green substance that sticks on you and makes it difficult to move.
With all these combined, killing it is an incredibly difficult job since you’d have to kill every single one of its cells. It’s resilient enough to survive in ice for over 100 thousand years, with freezing it only really incapacitating it, since it was able to revive itself once freed. Shooting at it won’t do much either, as it only helps against smaller Things and wouldn’t even kill all its cells in the first place. Burning it is the most solid option, but even that might not finish it off, since there can still exist cellular activity on its inside.
If it’s ever in danger, it can split itself apart to ensure at least one part survives, remove a smaller part of the body (usually the head), or abandon the currently damaged body by bursting through it as a smaller more humanoid looking organism with enhanced speed and agility. If necessary, just being a puddle of blood is enough to ensure its survival.
Assimilation
If any other living thing makes contact with at least one of Thing’s cells, it will be infected and eventually become a Thing too, with the brain being the last part to get assimilated. The time it takes for a target to get assimilated can vary depending on how many cells have invaded it. A handful of cells would take a while, but usually it’s enough for said target to become a Thing within seconds. However, this is just for Thing to take them over. A full assimilation (like to be able to mimic the target’s form perfectly) could take a little longer. It was speculated by Copper that it could take about an hour, but we really can’t know exactly.
The way Thing assimilates is by copying its target’s cells and replacing them with its own. Once that is done, Thing acquires everything about them. Their memories, their personality and the ability to take on the victim’s appearance. Of course, that’s still only imitation, but with enough time not even a microscope would be able to tell the difference.
The organisms that Thing has assimilated so far are humans, dogs, sheep, a seal, a fish, a rat, a bunny and a seagull.
There are 2 things that Thing hasn’t been shown to be able to assimilate. The first is anything inorganic, which makes sense. However, if the object were made from something organic (like wool) it could maybe be able to imitate it. The second thing would be plant life, but the reason for that has never been explained or was ever a topic that was looked into.
Shapeshifting
Once a target has been assimilated, Thing can do pretty much whatever it wants with its body. It gets very detailed and disturbing with its shapeshifting abilities. Now we won't be listing all the transformations, since there's far too many and they usually follow the same properties, so we'll just mention said properties and some more specific ones when needed.
Most Thing transformations are just a disgusting amalgamation of different stuff. Almost always you'd be able to see a mouth filled with sharp teeth, (whether it would be all over its body, on smaller heads projected from it or just a mouth, that's inside a mouth, that's inside another mouth), large clawed hands (which can also range from a simple sharp tendril, what seems to be a saw shaped one with claws instead of blades or just having more than two arms) and a bunch of tentacles to help with range (used to pierce victims, restrain them or simply using its tongue as one). A more specific instance was when Thing, disguised as a sheep, was able to send out its wool to wrap around a soldier. We truly meant that it can do whatever it wants with its body.
Its shapeshifting abilities also translate to his size. It can turn a regular human body into a small malleable slime like Thing or a head with sharp legs, reach heights twice or thrice times bigger than a man and even sizes of giants.
Deception
Combined with all the former abilities and its intellect, Thing becomes a master of deception. Just being aware of its existence can easily spread doubt and fear into a group of people, to the point that irrational moves will force your comrades to shoot you, infected or not. It doesn't help that copying everything about you makes it so that any "Only X would know this" questions are useless.
Thing has shot down small military teams with their own weapons, has made people getting comfortable around it by turning into animals, had a humanoid Thing kill almost an entire crew buy running at a them, causing them to shoot at it which triggered the explosives it had hidden on it, wiping out almost all of them.
I mean just its very first appearance was it getting the people in the outpost to kill the Norweginians chasing it, just by acting as a dog all the way through.
The most crazy moment is probably when it tried to frame MacReady as a Thing by faking his blood test, which caused MacReady to attack another soldier that he thought was the one that faked it with his flamethrower, which turns out was a Thing. Childs mentions that this could just be some layered deception, making it truly unknown if MacReady was a Thing. This caused Child's military team to chase after him and attempt to kill him. Even MacReady himself was starting to second guess his identity.
In the middle of that Childs kills another Thing that was trying to escape from the group, acquiring even more trust. When Childs eventually finds MacReady, it reveals it was a Thing all along and the one that faked the blood test. It can be assumed that Childs was infected the whole time that this military camp was under his leadership, which caused most of it to become part of Thing.
This amount of deceit is insane.
The Whitley-Thing/The Cloud Virus
In the Thing video game, our main enemy is an organization called Gen-Inc, which is conducting experiments on the Thing virus. Whitely had injected himself with a modified version of the virus, dubbed the Cloud Virus, and claimed that he’s proof it can be controlled. Towards the climax of the game, Whitley also injects himself with a strain of the virus called Cloud Virus B4 in order to cure himself of some unknown illness (believed to be terminal cancer). However, it seems like the virus rejected him, which now created a fireproof Thing that can turn giant without having assimilated anyone, ready to begin global infection.
Telepathy
A novel only ability. The Thing was stated to have telepathic powers, being able to read minds and project its thoughts into people’s heads. Members of the research group would have dreams about the Thing’s corpse coming back to life and how its power works.
The Blob
Physiology
While the original Blob was just an alien substance, 1988 Blob was originally bacteria that got mutated after being exposed to space’s atmosphere. Dr Meddows described it as resembling a giant amoeboid without a membrane , which would make it a single celled organism, even though the novelization also describes it as multi celled (See Before the Verdict), with the only thing on its mind being hunger.
It is virtually impossible to harm it with conventional damage like blunt attacks, getting shot, getting electrocuted and having trichloroacetic acid being thrown at it (an acidic substance that breaks down materials). Also since it’s well, a blob, it’s capable of squeezing through tight spaces like under doors, through vents, through pipes etc.
Assimilation
Blob’s assimilation is both terrifying and looks painful as hell. Once It latches on to a target with just a little bit of its substance, the Blob will start assimilating its way from just a hand at an alarming rate to half the victim's body. Since Blob basically acts like a big mass of acid, victims that are consumed go through a process of having their entire body get broken down, with them feeling every single bit of it the entire time. Every. Single. Bit. The more the Blob eats, the bigger it becomes, ranging from becoming bare minimum the size of a grown man, the size of a car or even bigger than a diner.
Shapeshifting
Blob’s malleable nature allows it to change its shape to whatever suits the situation best. Usually it will just create a bunch of tendrils around its body to grab and eat victims, which is especially dangerous when it can assimilate upon contact even if you’re not pulled into it yet. However it also once created what appears to be a big mouth for better chomping, so that’s neat ig.
Duplication (kinda?)
While not really an ability that Blob has shown doing by itself, frozen fragments of it that were separated from its body were able to live on as a different Blob. So it technically can live on as more than just one Blob, it’s just that it would only work if you forcefully cut parts of it off.
Resistances
The Thing
Extreme Cold: Thing can survive in the antarctic weather for a decent amount of time and just being entirely frozen
Fire: This would count only for the modified Cloud Virus B4 of Thing’s infection
The Blob
Trichloroacetic Acid: Was unaffected when some of it was thrown on it
Electricity: Was fine from having active communication wires dropped on it
Heat: Unaffected by a flamethrower and endured the heat from re-entering earth’s atmosphere
Extreme Cold: While Blob is weak to it, it only helps incapacitate it and not kill it
Feats
The Thing
Overall
Became a cult classic
Killed almost all members of the Norwegian team that found it
Killed almost all members of the Antarctic research group
If released onto a populated area, global infection would take around 3000 hours tops
Survived in 2/3 of its canons
Has existed since at least the Pleistocene era
Got some cool ass action figures
Inspired the horror anime known Parasyte
The first film was considered to be “the best horror movie ever made” by Dead Meats’ James A. Janisse
John Carpenter himself said that the first film was his favorite one he's made
Strength
Smashes through a steel wall (372.88 Megajoules - Small Building)
Bursts through the ground, causing the area around it to shake (0.001 Tons of TNT - Wall)
The Thing smashes through an ice block (6.061 Kilojoules - Street)
Speed
Can dodge bullets (Debatable)
Can turn into a Alaskan Malamute and run at its top speed (13-14 km/h)
Can fly as a seagull (28mph)
Durability
Partially survived a ship exploding (2 Tons of TNT - Large Building)
Partially survived another ship exploding (58.75 Tons - 1.176 Kilotons of TNT, MCB - Small Town)
Survived an explosion that destroyed part of the spaceship it was on (5 Tons of TNT - Large Building) (it still died by the resulting fire but its body wasn’t destroyed by said explosion)
Would scale to said spaceship’s durability, since it survived crash landing on earth (124.15 Kilotons of TNT - Large Town), creating a big crater as a result (3.58 - 429.67 Kilotons of TNT - Small to Large Town) (Debatable)
The Blob
Overall
Has a total kill count of 120 through all its films
Was considered a threat to the US if left unchecked for a week
Partially survived in both canons
Spread terror throughout a town
The 1958 film was a success, grossing $4 million at the box office despite its small production budget
One of the few horror characters that had the balls to kill a child on screen
Remakes producing company also did Rambo, Terminator 2, and Jumanji (TriStar Pictures is based like that)
Had a character inspired by it in the hit Sony franchise Hotel Transylvania and Dreamworks masterpiece Monsters vs Aliens (peak achievement right there)
Strength
Bursts through the road between the sewers and the surface (1815.63 Megajoules or 0.43 Tons of TNT - Building)
Speed
● Moves fast enough it almost catches a group of teenagers from the kitchen to the freezer area
Durability
Weaknesses
The Thing
Thing might seem incredibly powerful, but it does have some faults. For starters, while its existence can definitely throw a group out of control, this can become a double edged sword depending on how each individual acts and is affected. You can also tell it apart if it has assimilated an individual with anything inorganic on their body. It also has shown some weakness to electricity.
And we can’t forget Thing’s weakness to fire. It’s the one sure to kill it if you manage to burn all of it. Sure, Whitley-Thing might have some immunity to it, but that doesn’t count for the rest of the Things (at first at least). Also, while freezing it won’t kill it, it can incapacitate Thing if frozen solid.
The Blob
This gooey mass of death might seem unstoppable, but it does have one big weakness. Any form of cold temperatures will scare it away, even something as simple as ice cubes. If frozen solid, it would get completely incapacitated with no way of escaping. While not a big weakness as cold, fire also seems to cause it harm, since it became irritated when shot with a flamethrower and felt pain from the heat of re-entering our atmosphere. To what extent though is unknown, since we never got much of a chance to see.
Before the Verdict
Eternal Vows
Eternal vows was the final entry in the Thing From Another World comic books. The reason it’s getting its own section is because of how wildly different it represents Thing compared to every other of its material. We’re going to explain the story so you can understand why.
Now in this story, Thing was able to escape into the big city as a fish. We mainly follow Jenny, who finds out that her lover, Simon Powell, was recently found murdered. That night Jenny seems to have changed into a Thing, however it mostly seems like she was still somewhat herself even after becoming a Thing, The key difference was that now she had a sort of mental connection to Powell, which turns out was a Thing all along and the one that infected Jenny. Moreover, now we learn that Jenny needs to assimilate others in order to replace her dead cells with living ones to continue living.
Despite both Jenny and Powell now being things, they still stay as lovers which leads to stuff like…Thing sex. Through this process Powell was able to show Jenny all his memories from all the organisms it has assimilated so far. Powell later mentions to Jenny that when exchanging her dead cells with leaving cells, she must make sure not a single cell of hers must be left in the target, or else it will result in more Thing which would mean more competition. This turns out true when the next day Jennifer turns her friend into a Thing too, which turns into the island becoming infested with Things, so Jenny just burns it before the infection can fully spread. Oh and Powell was at some point killed by MacReady or whatever (not before turning into Jenny before his death as some love tribute, which basically gave away the fact she’s also a Thing, so good job idiot), but don’t worry since he still exists as a voice in Jenny’s head.
After that some killings happened, a bit of MacReady annoyance, some more killings and oh a boat exploded so that’s cool. The story ends with just Jenny’s head sinking in the water before Powell tells her that adapting to water will allow her to live, which it did since she turned into a fish, but lost all her memories in the process.
Oh and it should be noted that Jenny never hears any other voices from other Things aside from Powell (maybe cause they bonded or something).
So as I’m sure you’ve noticed this story is just wack. This shit makes zero sense and is something no other Thing media has ever even shown. It introduces completely new elements out of nowhere that not even the original movie or previous comics had. Hell, even the original “Who Goes There?” the novel wasn’t so drastically different from the Carpenter version. It doesn’t even feel like a Thing story in the first place. For this reason it was mostly ignored by us. It may seem weird, considering we’re using the other 2 Thing From Another World comics, but at least those are written like a The Thing story. The same can’t be said for Eternal Vows.
The Spaceship
Something some of you may have noticed is the inconsistencies around the spaceship that crash landed on earth with Thing in it. For example, in the 1982 film, we very clearly see it out in the open, while in the 2011 film, it’s stuck under ice. Moreover, in the Northman Nightmare comic, the panel in which the spaceship is damaged by an explosion, at first it’s seen as way too small, but it suddenly becomes bigger when the actual explosion happens. Never mind the fact the explosion itself damaged it pretty badly, something we see in neither films. It’s more surprising when you realize this comic was made to promote the 2011 film.
The size change can only be explained as a simple drawing fuck up, since it’s impossible for the ship to be that small. The rest however are simply just inconsistencies, since there’s no way to give a solid explanation about them. However, that shouldn’t completely disregard the explosion feat, since it’s still a very blatant feat that still happened. Not knowing the ship’s original position when it crashed on earth could make the calc for the crater it caused invalid, but that’s why we also calced the crash landing in general to be safe.
Blair’s Notes
In the videogame there are certain notes you can find left behind by Blair. One of these mentions how contact with a Thing isn’t guaranteed but still has a 50-70% chance of infection. This is never mentioned anywhere else and wildly contradicts the fact that contact with Thing means 100% chance of infection. There’s not really a way to explain this statement, so it will just be ignored due to the amount of times we’ve seen instant assimilation happen.
There’s also one more note claiming that Thing can even replicate clothing. Now this isn’t totally wrong, as it has been stated before that it could possibly do so with clothing made from something organic like wool (mentioned in Thing’s assimilation section), but here it doesn’t specify any clothing type. This would obviously go against Thing being able to replicate inorganic stuff. The best way to explain this is if it shapeshifted into looking like it had clothing on when it’s part of its body, but it’s never shown to do that. Whether you believe this or not, it doesn’t matter to the debate anyways.
Inconsistent Assimilation
There’s a few moments in the 1982 film where characters come in contact with Thing and aren’t assimilated (or at least not fast enough). The most obvious one being Clark coming in contact with Dog-Thing numerous times, but testing as not infected. This isn’t something that has really been explained, but an explanation that can be given for it is that Thing just decided not to assimilate him yet. It’s not something that it has shown doing (at least not very blatantly), but it very much should be able to, since it has control over all of its cells. But why would Thing just decide not to assimilate someone? Well that’s not something that’s ever been explored, but if we had to guess, it may just have fit its plan. In what way, who knows. Thing is very tactical and plays the long game instead of going on the offensive unless forced. It could be that it just found certain members more useful as Things and others as humans. Or maybe it’s simply just inconsistencies.
Either way, like the former “50-70% chance of infection”, it would be hard to dismiss all the other moments that Thing has 100% infected upon contact, but at least this case has some form of explanation for it.
Or you know, maybe it’s just oopsie film moments that don’t mean anything.
Blob’s Acidic Nature
A big question about Blob’s physiology is whether its acidic nature is passive or just what happens during its feeding process. While this topic wasn’t fully explored in its stories, there’s a few stuff worth mentioning. In the reboot, right before it attacks Paul, a little bit of its acid falls on the wooden table in front of him. This would mean Blob can even break down objects. Now you could argue that this would make sense for wood since it’s an organic substance. However, the wooden door that Blob pushes right before it moves above Paul wasn’t affected by it. Plus if it really was passively acidic, there should’ve been some form of damage on all the surfaces it had come in contact with throughout the film, but we don’t see any. This would make sense with the amoeba comparison, since they also feed by breaking down their food, Blob just does it a more extreme way.
But what about that one instance where it damaged someone upon contact? If you recall, during the movie theater scene, Blob once killed a woman by coming in contact with her in some way or another, which resulted in half her face getting melted. However, it should be noted that Blob was at the time on a feeding frenzy, so it would make sense why it would be acidic at the time. Either that or it can control which part of its body is used for feeding, but there’s no solid evidence to suggest that.
Blob’s Meteor
If you’ve noticed, we never addressed the meteor Blob was in the Feats section. The reason for that is because of the nature of this feat. Due to Blob’s biology, size (at the time) and the fact the meteor was shielding it, it seems very unlikely that Blob should scale to the impact itself when taking into account all of this. At most it would downscale immensely. However the heat it had to endure would be fair game.
Unicellular Blob vs Multicellular Blob
As you’ve already seen, we mentioned that Blob has statements from its novelization of the 1988 film that describe it as single celled and multi celled.
Blob was stated by Dr Meddows (Dr Timber in the book) that it can be assumed to be single celled. This is backed up by the fact it was also called single celled in the 1972 sequel, plus Blob was originally bacteria before its mutation, which are unicellular. However, earlier in the novel there are statements from the narrator that would suggest it to be multicellular. Now obviously this would be a major contradiction to Blob’s biology that could drastically change the debate.
Let’s go over the context of some of these. Dr Meddows’s statement comes from his first encounter with Meg and Brian (our protagonists), which was when he was hiding the truth from them about how Blob was created as an experimental military weapon. Now this would be a weird thing to lie about, but even then it still doesn’t dismiss the fact Meddows is making an assumption in the first place. He never even got a chance to study Blob’s biology in the first place.
But what about the statement for og Blob? Well the statement came from Bobby who’s just some guy. Granted it’s weird for this statement to be wrong within the context of the scene, but it still comes from someone that has no idea how Blob’s biology works. This also talks about the biology of 2 different versions of Blob, which is what we on the team feared could happen when compositing it. This is mostly an issue if you buy og Blob being unicellular.
The last piece of evidence for Blob being unicellular would be comparing it to its original state, which was just simple bacteria. However, we can’t know if it stayed that way after its mutation, considering its biology never got the chance to be fully studied.
Ultimately, what we buy for Blob’s biology we’ll be mentioned in our verdicts.
Bonus Fanart
(Credits to Freddy999M)
(Credits to CreepyisintheMegazard)
(Credits to the Big Cheese)
Verdicts
But before that, here’s a fight script made by Freddy999M.
Phoenix Wright
Hello my fellow attorneys, the names phoenix wright here. This blog wasn't something I expected to like but man reading into the Blob and learning about the Thing was interesting. Now cross examinations are now in session!
In terms of stats , it's clear the thing is faster via virtue of his numerous animal transformations and the fact that normal teenagers have outrun the blob. In terms of strength and durability, both Blob and Thing are capable of breaking steel doors however the difference being Thing completely fragments it into piece in one go while Blob took awhile just to knock it off its hinges, Thing greatest durability of surviving of one thousand Gallons of Airplane Fuel was calced around 38.7 to 39 tons of tnt that's enough power to destroy a city block(Assuming the thing spaceship feat isn't viable since the ship most likely took most of the impact) which should far and away surpass the blob who at most survived shotgun far and an electric telephone wire so Thing should comfortably take this physical category. However the debate is more than just stats considering Blob Physiology as a slim to be immune to most conventional means + how their assimilations would clash against one another. I would say Blob acidic nature would make it difficult for Thing could directly assimilated and copy its cells but at the same time , Thing could escape and split his body into more things to survive and eventually use its super intelligence figure out a way to win but at the same time the ice weakness blob possesses was found by chance so it depends. At worst it's a tie and at best Thing Wins.
Iceking
Hi I’m ice and if you don’t already know (I don’t blame you) I’m a huge horror fan and one of my favorite sub genres is body horror and when it comes to that there’s no better example than the Thing and the Blob. So it’s no surprise that these two have developed a little rivalry so let’s see who comes out on top. In terms of raw stats I’d say the Thing takes even its lower ends get way higher than anything I’ve seen for the Blob which is just building level and speed isn’t much better. The Thing has super human speed which is way more than the blob has and that’s not even mentioning its possible bullet timing feat. Now onto abilities and to be frank, the thing absolutely obliterates this category. The thing is way better at assimilating people like how you’d only need to be near one cell of a thing to be assimilated and the thing has a way better range, sure the blog has tentacles but the thing does too and can the blob fly? Didn’t think so. So in conclusion the Thing WINS.
The Big Cheese
Given the two are really hard to kill with ordinary weaponry (besides flamethrowers) but given the fact that the things can also assimilate intelligence (shown through dr Blair ), if given the time to assimilate someone, the thing could easily lead the blob to something cold enough to kill it, but this doesn’t fully take into account the fact that the blob grows with each piece of organic mass it consumes which could probably lead to the blob most likely overwhelming the thing. I’m leaning more towards the thing because of intelligence being a key factor but it could go either way. Also, the thing might have some sort of resistance to the blob's consumption powers. So my winner is the Thing.
JustADude
Hi, JustADude here. I loved working on this blog and love this match up. This gave me the opportunity to research all of Thing’s media which was a blast, especially the novelization of the film, that one is really good. Now before I go into this debate, I’ll be mostly focusing on Russell Blob and Carpenter Thing. I’m fine with this blog using the original versions too, I think that works for the sake of completion and covering all the bases. However I think the mu in general should focus on those versions, because compositing them with the originals can get messy when it involves their biologies (tho that was mostly a Blob problem). I will still talk about them if needed, but they won’t be the main focus. Anyways, onto the debate.
Stats
Stats is an easy one to cover. Blob’s best and almost only noteworthy feat is bursting through the ground, from the sewers to the surface. This feat gets to 1815.63 Megajoules or 0.43 Tons of TNT. Thing has a feat where it can burst through steel walls in the videogame, which gets up to 372.88 Megajoules. This would make Blob around 5-6 times stronger than Thing. Not an ap stomping gap, but still makes Blob stronger. Now that's just talking about Thing’s lower end feats. Majority of Thing’s durability feats get way higher than this. These range from Thing being from 5 times stronger to even 50. The most notable one being the explosion from the “Questionable Research” comic series that gets from 58.75 Tons to 1.176 Kilotons of TNT, widening that gap even more.
But wait, we can get much higher. There’s a certain feat that creates a possible scaling chain to the ship’s durability. As you may have seen, the highest calc in this blog is the crash landing of the spaceship that Thing was on. Now obviously this isn’t calcing the force Thing would’ve had to endure during the crash, since the ship is too big for Thing to have taken much damage. This is just the crash itself. There are a few holes to poke on the crater it made, considering there’s instances where it's shown in different locations, with the most obvious one being its placements in the 1982 and 2011 films. Plus considering the ship crash landed a long ass time ago, finding the original position is basically impossible. That’s why we also calced the crash in general just in case. Now the way Thing can scale to this is through an explosion it survived in the “Northman Nightmare” comic. Thing was caught in the middle of this explosion, which while it did kill it, it’s because of the resulting fire and doesn’t discard the fact it survived the explosion itself. If you were to scale Thing to the ship, then it would get up to 124.15 Kilotons of TNT. This makes the gap in strength ginormous. Now obviously this can be argued as an outlier, due to its weird scaling chain and the fact it gets way higher than any other feat. While I think that’s a fair argument, I’m probably fine with using it. Thing already gets decently high feats and has at least one that also gets in the town level range. It helps that it almost always survives these feats, with fire always being the one sure way to get rid of it, making it a consistent enough scenario, this one just gets higher than the others.
It should be noted that Blob’s physiology makes it difficult to damage it by conventional means. But it comes into question how far that would get it. Thing is ap stomping no matter what, with Blob never having gone against an opponent that strong. I don’t have a very strong opinion on this topic, since I’m still a bit unsure of it myself. But when taking into account the high ends, then I don’t see Blob getting very far.
Speed is simple, considering neither have anything very impressive. The bullet dodging one for Thing is very questionable and I don’t buy it. We don’t see where most bullets landed and the switching of the scenes makes it hard to argue in tandem movement. It doesn’t help that there ain’t any other similar feats for consistency. Certain transformations though, like the seagull and dog ones, would allow for faster movement speed compared to Blob.
Arsenal and Abilities
In terms of arsenal, Thing just kinda wins that category. Blob has quite literally nothing while the Thing has stuff like his anti gravity device, UFOs and sometimes certain weapons. Said weapons wouldn’t be useful against Blob, but the rest will be important later.
Its flamethrowers could do some damage to it, considering its shown to feel pain from extreme heat, but it’s unknown if that can fully kill it, since fire was never explored much as a possible weakness to Blob. It's a topic worth talking about, but at the moment I wouldn’t put much stock in it.
Now the real meat of the debate is how their biologies would interact with each other. I’ll go over how the fight would go with multicellular and unicellular Blob.
Thing vs Multicellular Blob
This one is pretty straight forward. Thing’s assimilation works super fast and one cell is enough to take over a target. But that shouldn't be possible with Blob’s acidic body right? Well, not really. Blob’s assimilation could kill a good amount of cells, but the process of completely eating someone is not that fast. It has been stated that you could still see body parts inside Blob way after the victim was eaten. With that in mind, it would be impossible for Blob to destroy all of Thing’s cells before at least one of them can copy one of Blob’s. At that point the copied cell would be immune to the acid and can now spread freely through all of Blob. This process gets a lot easier if you believe Blob’s acidic body isn’t passive, which I do.
Thing vs Unicellular Blob
In this case, it would most likely not work in Thing’s favor. This is due to the fact it has never assimilated a cell that big or has shown to be able to do so. Now you could say that if Thing had a lot of its cells on Blob it could do so. This wouldn’t be that much of an issue since at best Thing can get way bigger than the max size of Blob that we’ve seen, meaning it’d have enough cells to cover the majority of Blob. However that is merely a hypothetical with no solid evidence that it would work anyways, passively acidic or not.
With Thing’s main win con out of the way, it would have to rely on Blob’s weakness to cold. So would Thing be able to figure out that weakness? Well, Thing is incredibly smart. It can build complex devices and vehicles out of just whatever it can find around in a relatively short time and almost always manages to trick people with its shapeshifting abilities. Plus Thing is most certainly smarter than the people that were able to find out Blob’s weakness. So Thing would realize this weakness right? Well, it should be noted that Blob’s weakness was always found out by sheer chance. Thing has no reason to assume Blob is weak to cold right off the bat. While it could realize it in the long run, at that point Blob might be too big for Thing to capitalize on its weakness. But Thing could use its telepathy to learn about Blob’s weakness? While I’ve already mentioned that I’d prefer ignoring the og versions for these characters, I’ll talk about it anyway. Aside from the fact Blob doesn’t even have a brain to look into, let’s assume that Thing could do it anyways. That’s not really gonna be helpful, considering Blob isn’t capable of any complex thoughts, with eating more and more being the only thing on its mind.
And just to get it out of the way, Blob is never finding out Thing’s weakness. It’s not smart enough to pull off something like that. Nevermind the fire resistant Cloud Virus B4 variant.
So Blob would just win, right? Thing’s assimilation wouldn’t work and it wouldn’t be able to figure out Blob’s weakness fast enough. Well, not really. While the Thing wouldn’t be able to do anything to Blob, that doesn’t mean that Blob will be able to kill Thing either. In order for Blob to kill Thing, it would have to destroy all of the cells from all of the Things. Sure it would be able to eat one or two, but that’s enough for Thing to realize that it should just give up on confronting Blob. Thing is smart enough to realize that. Blob obviously can chase after Thing, but there would be too many of them for Blob to eat them in one go, especially when they can split themselves apart if Blob doesn’t eat them whole immediately.
So the amount of Things that exist would ensure the escape of at least one Thing. But how does that exactly help it? That’s where it's arsenal comes into play. The UFOs would allow it to escape the planet. Now you could argue Blob would eventually catch up to it after some eating time. Afterall, it was stated that it could destroy the US in about a week. Well, Thing can build its devices in less time. Sometimes it can take less than a day, sometimes a few days. Plus the only reason they take that long is because Thing is busy with not getting caught, the limited material it has around it and because it’s usually only working by itself. But with enough time and Things, the entire process takes way less time. Considering the fight would most likely take place in a city, Thing would have a bigger variety of stuff to use too. This is also assuming that it has to build it in the first place and you don’t just give it to it straight away. Plus the one week time frame for Blob can be put into question considering it was just a guess.
So now that I’ve gone over both scenarios, what do I think is the correct one? Well I’ll be honest, I don’t have 100% certainty on if Blob is multicellular or unicellular, but gun to my head, I find the evidence for Blob being multicellular stronger due to being stated by narrator themselves, opposed to the unicellular ones which have some context to put them into question, even though I think it’d still be a bit weird for them to be false.
Tertiary Factors
Not much to say here. Thing’s deceptive skills are basically useless against something that eats anything that moves. Thing is way older, having been around for millions of years, compared to Blob who existed for like a night, but it spent almost all of it in ice. It also hasn’t shown any on screen experience against opponents that aren’t humans.
Thing’s intelligence is super helpful, considering it will be able to realize when to give up if needed and would allow it to make and escape one way or another. It’s also the only one of the 2 that has a chance to figure out the other’s weakness.
Conclusion
Overall, Thing is taking strength no matter what, with its higher ends widening that gap significantly. Neither are blitzing each other, but Thing has better movement speed with certain transformations.
Thing is the only of the 2 with a chance of figuring out the other’s weakness. While it won’t be able to immediately, it’s still a likely possibility in the long run. Also, even though it’s a debatable topic whether it’d be a weakness, Thing would be able to figure out fire harms Blob in some way thanks to the flamethrowers.
Multicellular Blob would be susceptible to assimilation, even if Blob was passively acidic. Unicellular Blob would most likely be immune due to Thing having never assimilated a cell that big, but the gap in strength is still there, which is something Blob has never dealt with. Even if it didn’t work, Thing can ensure its survival long enough to leave the planet.
Either way, Blob has no way of solidly winning, with the match up ending either in a Thing win or a tie. I think it’s fair to argue either outcome, but if I had to pick, I’d probably say that it’s safer to bet on Thing winning.
Bored Seba
Well hi, i'm Seba, this was a very fun blog that I had a blast researching, this blog did made me appreciate both characters a lot more and it was really fun learning more about the blob and learning more about the thing, I had fun with this blog, but now for the debate part.
Yeah it's really really close cuz there was a lot to consider for this blog, both monsters were very powerful in their own right, the thing is way smarter but the blob becomes more destructive, they can both grow size but Blob has shown to become bigger, but the Thing could outsmart the Blob, yeah there's a lot to consider on the debate side of this mu. The Thing army could at first overwhelm Blob, but when Blob gets bigger it could kill many of the Things, though, Thing would notice and would most likely leave the fight.
Though, Thing could also try and figure out Blob weakness and potentially outsmart the Blob, so you could really argue either, since both are in a way similar in some categories, tho I do think that The Thing could figure out the weakness of the Blob, the thing is potentially faster, not only in a human form but in any animal form showed, while normal humans managed to outrun the Blob. The Thing would try to kill the Blob by leading him to traps to test it, in one of those traps he will find out the blob's weakness and finish him off.
Blob is able to kill the Thing, yes, but the Thing is already experienced to almost dying and would probably make an extension and leave to make another plan. The Thing could also just use any of the weapons that could hurt the blob and directly make him unable to fight.
While the Blob might be unicellular, making the fight a possible stalemate, the Thing is still able to defeat the blob both unicellular and multicellular.
Both are strong, but only one could assimilate an advantage and take the crown. The winner is the Thing.
Freddy999M
Good day to the one reading this, my name is Freddy and I'm going to give an opinion on who wins this tricky matchup.
Going for the easier part to decide, the stats… They don’t really matter, except maybe speed. The reason why is the fact that they’ll just become stronger when they grow and their ways of killing won’t matter or won’t affect them, especially the blob. Though if I had to give it to one i’ll probably give it to the Thing because he usually shows better feats but overall it won’t matter. Now the funny part is speed and it’s pretty easy, the Thing is faster than the Blob in any form he takes, specially the animal ones like a dog or a sheep, though the blob usually tries to trap someone in a closed area to catch them easily so it won’t really matter if the Thing can dodge tentacles if he’ll end up consumed.
Now, abilities and weapons. The thing has way better arsenal in weapons for obvious reasons, I won’t need to explain, but in terms of powers I'm going to give it to the Blob. The thing has more powers but I consider the blob to have a more deadly and direct arsenal, let me explain. Both assimilations are really dangerous, but in general I consider Blob’s assimilation more dangerous for the main fact that he consumes people faster and doesn’t let them react, while the people Thing attack might be able to react since it’s from the touch. And well, I don’t think telepathy is going to work with the blob if I'm being honest.
But with that, the main question, who wins? I would say it depends if you consider Blob an unicellular or multicellular being… But I won’t, I think Thing beats Blob in both cases, let me explain.
With a multicellular Blob it’s easy to explain why, the blob’s acidic physiology isn’t strong enough to dissolve the Thing before his cells get infected and ends up being assimilated, the Thing could also use anything in his arsenal.
Now, how would Thing defeat the unicellular Blob? Simple intelligence. The Blob isn’t dumb but might act pretty animalistic and usually would just sneak onto victims, but the Thing is a genius, he is able to infiltrate a base, build many mechanisms like a spaceship… three times, you get the point. So, the Thing might be able to trick the blob, but couldn't the blob just consume him? Well, the Thing would be fast enough to separate a part and escape, and now that he knows how the Blob works he would try to run away or try to kill it. While it’s possible that the Thing would just run away and build a spaceship I will consider that the Thing will kill the Blob. Now, the Thing is intelligent and faster, but how would he be able to kill him? Now comes the main fact, the assimilation. While I consider Blob’s assimilation better for killing, it’s clear that the Thing’s assimilation would end up infecting a city by how easy it is for someone to get infected without realizing. Both creatures would be in the city, the Thing infected a majority of them, and one of the clones is attacked by the blob near a freezer, and after that there is a high possibility that assimilated person finds out about the Blob’s weaknesses, and since many if not all assimilated people are mind connected they’ll find out about this and find a way to kill or at least incapacitate the Blob.
Or he could just send the Blob flying with the anti gravity device.
While it’s true that outside of a different environment this might end up in a draw, I'm still siding with The Thing winning in the majority of scenarios.
The Blob was a strong tsunami with hunger, but for the Thing it was just another jelly he’ll feast on. For me the winner is the Thing.
CreepyisintheMegazard
Hey all, Creepy here.
Cool MU, fun to research, debate time.
The matchups debate is more complex than people give credit for,
Stats overall don't matter too much given either’s biology, only notably that The Thing could be faster in a dog or bird form but that'll take time and it isn't crazy (all of Things higher ends are also huge outliers (looking at you large town Thing)).
So now it's more into their abilities, Things assimilation does get countered by The Blobs singular celled and acidic body (tho if you have them at multicellular Thing just kinda wins huh). This is important as neither have many other abilities to take advantage with over the other (Things self-acid resistance doesn't mean it'll be immune to Blobs acid as the difference in potency between the effectiveness of them is nearly double for Blob), and neither have really fought in any crazy way before especially against a lifeform like the other (Things experience advantage while notable too isn't going to matter much as we have no evidence to say it has fought Blob-like aliens before)
So really the debate is if Thing could figure out a way to stop Blob before Blob gets too large to stop.
Now considering that Thing usually has another body somewhere detached from themselves, if one does get caught by Blob it wouldn't mean a win, and if Thing observes this and realizes it can't beat it normally it'll try to think of another plan (and if the last Thing gets caught by Blob it's very likely unable to escape as it's transformations are a bit slow while Blobs acid acts very quick).
This means the fight would have a stray Thing running while Blob chases them and gets bigger.
Now you could say that this is an inevitable Blob win as overtime it'll get way to big for Thing to handle with, but thanks to the Things intelligence, there's a chance for it to think of a strategy to win (there's 2 strategies it could use, first, blending in as a human while the military does its work for it but that could be considered outside help and terrain advantage which wouldn't be that fair, or second, the Thing builds a freezing weapon in time but it figuring out Blobs ice weakness is unlikely and even then we haven't seen Thing make anything like that and assuming it could would be a no-limits fallacy).
The Thing's big win con would be to really trap The Blob which does seem pretty hard for it to do with the resources it could find plus how long that'll take.
Meaning the choice it'll most likely go for is to either hide in Antarctica (assuming it figures out the ice weakness) or just leave the planet, either way, Blob can't really stop Thing from doing either, but if it does it'll just leave the fight making it impossible for it to continue.
Considering how Thing normally reacts the chances of it trying to leave to planet seem pretty high, plus Blob hasn't shown that it would figure this plan out and destroy any progress Thing made, meaning Blob likely wouldn't do anything about this except maybe just chance as it does do that a lot and we do assume both are out for each other in particular.
But still given each biology, Things intelligence, and Blobs avoidances, the fight would most likely end in a Draw if you ask me.
…
But Thing is the only one of the two to have had sex, they clearly win cuz of tha-
Conclusion
The Thing
Advantages:
Stronger no matter what
Better movement speed with certain transformations
Overall smarter
Only one of the 2 that could figure out the other’s weakness in the long run…
Multicellular Blob would succumb to assimilation…
If needed, its numbers and survivability would ensure a safe escape with one of its crafts
The Thing 1982
Among Us
Disadvantages:
…but it might be useless by that point
…but unicellular would resist it
Deceptive skills are useless in this fight
Blob’s physiology makes it so that it can’t be hurt by conventional means
Blob would become too much for Thing in the long run
Known dog and cat murderer
Among Us
The Blob
Advantages:
Cannot be hurt by conventional means
Acid is more potent than what Thing could possibly resist
Better mobility due to its biology
Unicellular Blob would resist Thing’s assimilation…
The more dangerous of the 2 in the long run
The Blob 1988
Way cooler poster art tbh
(JustADude disagrees)
Less Rizz (first blog where that's a plus)
Disadvantages:
…but multicellular wouldn’t
Weaker no matter what
Slower than certain Thing transformations
Food is the only thing on its mind
Unable to fully kill Thing due to its intellect and survivability
Known dog and cat murderer
Hasn't been covered by Dead Meat
Winner
Team Thing (6): Iceking, The Big Cheese, JustADude, Bored Seba, Freddy999M, Phoenix Wright
Team Blob (0): RIP Bozo
Tie (1): CreepyisintheMegazard
Sources
The Thing
Who Goes There? Comic Adaptation (1976)
The Thing (1982)
The Thing From Another World (1991-1992)
The Thing From Another World: Climate of Fear (1992)
The Thing From Another World: Eternal Vows (1993-1994)
The Thing From Another World: Questionable Research (Issues #13-16) (1993)
The Thing (2011)
The Thing: The Northman Nightmare (2011)
The Blob
The Blob (1988)
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