[[quoteright:207:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/c2693e78-b748-4e99-a50f-ce90e36a2a34_2996.jpg]]
->''"Six bodies, Sheriff! That's what I've seen between here and Ridgemont! A filling station in flames! I'm telling you Michael Myers is here, in this town! He's here to kill that little girl and anybody who gets in his way!"''
-->-- '''Dr. Loomis'''

When the idea of making the ''Franchise/{{Halloween}}'' franchise into a GenreAnthology didn't work out, the studio had an obvious solution: bring back The Shape himself.

In '''''Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers''''', ten years have passed since Michael Myers terrorized the town of Haddonfield, Illinois. The fire that seemed to consume both Michael and Dr. Samuel Loomis put Myers in a comatose state and burned Loomis over a good portion of his body, but both men lived. During a medical transport, Michael awakens from his comatose state and heads back home with a new target in his mind: his young niece, Jamie. Loomis, as usual, follows the trail back to Haddonfield, and it soon becomes a race against time to save Jamie from her psychotic uncle.
----
!! ''Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers'' contains examples of the following tropes:

* BigNo: Loomis has the biggest no of history in the ending.
* [[BigBrotherInstinct Big Sister Instinct]]: Rachel to Jamie.
* BusCrash: Laurie died in a car crash.
* CallBack: The ending is one for the [[Film/{{Halloween 1978}} first film's]] opening.
* CarFu: Rachel uses her car to run Michael Myers over. But since Michael is Michael, it doesn't faze him in the slightest.
* ContinuityNod: Michael and Dr. Loomis have burn scars from the climax of the second film.
** Lindsay and Tommy, the kids from the first two movies, make brief appearances as teenagers early in the film.
* CutPhoneLines: Michael doesn't just cut the phone lines of his victim's house. He cuts the phone lines ''and'' causes [[BigBlackout a blackout]] in ''the entire town''.
** Know how he did it? Just by throwing some poor smuck into a electric generator at a power plant. Michael knows how to improv.
* DangerTakesABackSeat: Michael pulls this off by clinging to bottom of a pickup truck.
* DeathBySex: Trampy Kelly, who sleeps with Brady, her friend's boyfriend, gets killed, as does Brady, said cheating boyfriend. The virginal Rachel, of course, survives. For now, anyway.
* EmptyPromise: From Loomis to Jamie, in the school. Subverted when she asks him if he ''really'' believes they'll make it out alright, and he gives a barely audible LittleNo.
* FinalGirl: Jamie Lloyd and her half-sister Rachel.
* HeroicSacrifice: Inadvertently done by Brady who tries to shoot Michael, then futilely struggles with him, ultimately giving Jamie and Rachel a chance to escape.
* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: Kelly gets impaled to the wall with a shotgun.
* MurderByMistake: A group of vigilantes accidentally shoot to death parkgoer Ted Hollister, thinking he might have been Michael.
* NeckSnap: Grady's death.
* PoliceAreUseless: The Haddonfield Police Station gets massacred.
* StockSubtitle
* TakeMeInstead: When confronting Michael at the diner, Loomis invokes the trope -- saying Michael could kill him in exchange for leaving the people of Haddonfield alone. Michael remains still following this, suggesting he turned it down and prompting Loomis to try to shoot him.
* TakeThat: In a cut scene Michael is coincidentally looking for a new mask at a store the same time Jamie is. He grabs a RonaldReagan mask and walks off screen. A few seconds later, he throws it away and grabs the bleached WilliamShatner mask instead.
* ThemeMusicWithholding: The opening credits feature a creepy syntherizer score, until it cuts to the hospital with the main theme in full blast.
* UnexplainedRecovery: Dr. Loomis managed to survive the explosion of the first floor of a hospital in ''Film/HalloweenII1981'', returning with a slightly burnt face, a limp and mangled hands.
** The same goes for Michael, seeing as before the explosion, he got shot in the eyes by Laurie, causing him to become blind. To be fair, it's implied that he isn't exactly human...
* WelcomeToHell
* WouldHurtaChild: Michael, obviously. But strangely enough Dr. Loomis, who does not hesitate to slap iron at a child no less than twice in the movie (to be fair though, the first time he doesn't know they're just kids).
----