[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nos4a2_7979.jpg]]

''[=NOS4A2=]'' is a 2013 horror novel by Creator/JoeHill.

Charlie Manx has built a wonderful place just for children, where it's Christmas every day. Kids get to have the greatest fun in Christmasland, riding the Sleighcoaster, feasting from La Chocolatier, [[BreadEggsMilkSquick or playing scissors-for-the-drifter.]] And the fun never ends in Christmasland, where these wonderful children get to ''stay'' children -- forever.

At 116 years old, Charles Talent Manx has spent decades kidnapping children and taking them to Christmasland, a place built by his imagination in a world that exists somewhere alongside ours. By the time they arrive, they've been... changed. Victoria [=McQueen=] also knows how to get to places that aren't quite there, using her Raleigh Tuff Burner bicycle to travel and find things that have been lost. At seventeen, she had a close encounter with Manx and was the first person to escape his grasp. Manx was sent to prison, and Vic was left to cope with a psyche deeply scarred by her encounter. Thirteen years later, Manx escapes and takes his revenge on Vic by "rescuing" her son and bringing him to Christmasland. With her unusual ability to find things, Vic may be the only one who has a chance at saving him.

A comic sequel/prequel, titled ''ComicBook/WraithWelcomeToChristmasland'' and illustrated by Charles Paul Wilson III, has been released.

A television adaptation was made for Creator/{{AMC}}, which began to air in June 2019 starring Creator/ZacharyQuinto as Manx and Creator/AshleighCummings playing Vic. After two seasons, the series was canceled.

Has nothing to do with NOS-4-A2 from ''WesternAnimation/BuzzLightyearOfStarCommand.''

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!!''[=NOS4A2=]'' contain examples of:
* ActionMom: The climax sees Vic [[spoiler: roaring around Christmasland on a motorcycle and throwing explosives left and right, and then outracing both the devestation and a pursuing Manx with her son behind her on the saddle.]] Suffice to say, she qualifies for the trope.
* AmazinglyEmbarrassingParents: Played for tragedy. Wayne ''tries'' to love his parents, and sometimes succeeds, but he deeply wishes that his father wasn't so fat, dorky and unsuccessful. Oh, and that his mother wasn't ''insane.''
* AnimalMotifs: With his noticeable overbite and narrow, pointed jaw, Manx is said on multiple occasions to have a face and head that bears more than a passing resemblance to a weasel's.
* AnyoneCanDie: There is a significant body count among the main characters.
* ArtisticLicenseChemistry:
** [[spoiler:Vic kills Bing by igniting a tank of sevoflurane anesthetic he is carrying. That compound exists in real life, but is non-flammable.]]
** When Bing first meets Manx in person, he describes a workplace accident in which an employee caused a nitrogen tank to explode by smoking near it. Nitrogen is completely non-flammable; a tank of it can only explode if it ruptures or if a valve breaks off.
* BaldOfEvil: Charlie Manx, although [[spoiler:his hair grows back as he regains his youth.]]
* BigBeautifulMan: Vic is physically attracted to the obese Lou; she likes the way he smells and the way his body feels against hers.
* BiggerOnTheInside: Maggie's ''TabletopGame/{{Scrabble}}'' bag is barely as long as her forearm, but when she wants to pull out some tiles she needs to stick her arm in almost up to her shoulder to reach them. The sight of it predictably weirds out everyone who witnesses it.
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Vic destroys Christmasland and saves Wayne, and Manx dies for good trying to pursue her afterward. Later, Lou destroys the ornaments that kept the kids trapped in Christmasland and allows them to return to the real world. However, Vic is dead (killed by a combination of a deep stab wound and the mental damage from the Shorter Way collapsing), and some of Manx's children escape.]]
* BlackEyesOfEvil: Manx's children have them.
* BrickJoke: Vic's father tells her in 1986 that the rickety Shorter Way Bridge has finally collapsed after some idiot tried to drive his car over it. [[spoiler:At the end of the book, Manx and his car become displaced in time and crash through the bridge.]]
* BrokenPedestal: Chris, after Vic figures out [[spoiler: that her father is a wife beater. This does '''not''' improve her opinion of her mother, whom Vic still believes "had it coming."]]
* CanonWelding: In addition to the ShoutOut[=s=] to his father's work, Hill also refers to the Treehouse of the Mind from ''Literature/{{Horns}}'' and Craddock [=McDermott=] from ''Literature/HeartShapedBox''.
* CastFromHitPoints: Using the inscape too often leads to worsening physical or mental problems.
* CentralTheme: What does it mean to grow up? [[GrowingUpSucks What do we lose when we do so?]] What do we gain? What would it mean to stay young and innocent forever?
* ChekhovsGun: The bats in the Shorter Way Bridge. Not to mention the gun-shaped paperweight labeled "Property of A. Chekhov" on Maggie's desk in her office at the library. Although the latter doesn't count [[ExactWords technically]] -- it doesn't get ''fired'', but it is used [[spoiler:by Vic to hold off the police after Maggie's murder]].
* ChildrenAreInnocent: Deconstructed.
-->'''Joe Hill:''' The kids live in an eternal state of innocence, and it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Innocent children like to rip the wings off a butterfly just to watch it flop around, and they will laugh ’cause they don’t know any better. [[http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2013/04/interview-nos4a2-author-joe-hill Innocence is ignorance.]]
* CrapsaccharineWorld: Christmasland. It looks like a holiday paradise at first, but the kids inhabiting it have become sadistic little demons due to their time with Manx.
* CreepyChild: Manx's children have been warped into hideous monsters by the corrupting influence of [=NOS4A2=] and Christmasland.
* DaddysGirl: Vic '''much''' prefers her father Chris to her mother Linda.
* {{Deconstruction}}: Of the Franchise/PeterPan story. Manx seems to be convinced he is fulfilling the Peter Pan role, taking children away to a magical land where they will never grow up. However, this is shown to actually be a terrible thing, as the price of staying in Christmasland is the children's souls, and Manx doesn't take them there to help them, as he claims, but actually to maintain his own youth. Vic, meanwhile, is Wendy, who encounters Manx when she is a teenager, and later is forced to confront him in adulthood when he kidnaps her son.
* DentedIron: Vic accumulates injuries and ailments throughout the novel. Her mental state is severely affected by both using her Inscape and the trauma from her first encounter with Manx. Later one of her knees is damaged to the point where it can't bend, she's in the middle of an explosion that kills Bing, and later one of Charlie's vampire children bites a chunk out of her shoulder. She keeps fighting though, and it takes both being stabbed by a different child ''and'' the collapse of her inscape to finally kill her, and even so she manages to escape Christmasland before finally succumbing to her wounds.
* DepravedBisexual: Bing, who, in addition to the number of women he drugged and raped, also drugged and raped the unfortunate man who owned the Wraith after Manx and who was forcibly brought along on a ride to Manx's inscape.
* DisneyVillainDeath: [[spoiler: Manx is caught in the collapsing Shorter Way, falls into a timewarp and comes out a thousand feet above a river, both killing him and [[DeaderThanDead destroying the Wraith so he can't come back.]]]]
* DontYouDarePityMe: Defied. Maggie claims to be perfectly fine with people pitying her, as long as she gets something out of it.
%%* DoorStopper
%%* TheDragon: Bing.
* DysfunctionalFamily: Calling Vic's family dysfunctional is putting it mildly. Between an alcoholic father that keeps beating and cheating on his wife, and a resentful mother that's barely any better, slightly weird loner Vic is far and away the most stable and well-adjusted of them all. Both parents really love their daughter (and probably each other, somewhere deep down), but they often have weird ways of expressing it.
* EarAche:
** Part of Charlie's ear is shot off by [[spoiler:Bing]].
** During the climactic confrontation, [[spoiler:Wayne gets part of an ear bitten off by one of the kids in Christmasland]].
* TheEndOrIsIt: The "A Note on the Type" section reveals that [[spoiler:some of Manx's children haven't been 'fixed' and are still at large.]]
* EmbarrassingFirstName: There's nothing particularly wrong with the name "Bruce." Unless your middle name is [[Franchise/{{Batman}} "Wayne"]] because your father is ''a giant freaking dork.''
* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: Manx and his daughters. In the climactic face-off, [[spoiler:Vic guns her Triumph straight at Manx's car while he and one of his girls are standing in front of it, and Manx ''instinctively'' makes the PapaWolf gesture of getting between his daughter and the threat. In this moment Vic realizes that Manx is a WellIntentionedExtremist at his core -- like a great many monsters, he has a twisted but still caring heart and he genuinely believes his looney bullshit is morally good.]]
* EvenEvilHasStandards: Manx is offended at the accusation that he molested or physically harmed the children that he takes to Christmasland. His attempt to [[spoiler:kill Wayne]] near the end of the book suggests that he has finally grown desperate enough to violate his own moral code.
* EvilCounterpart: Bing to Lou. They are both fat, not too bright, and somewhat child-like in their thinking. However, Lou is good-hearted and responsible (if not always sensible), while Bing is Manx's willing accomplice.
* EvilOldFolks: Manx is over a hundred years old, and [[GlamourFailure at least some of the time]] he looks it.
* ExpandedUniverse: Joe Hill co-wrote a comic tie-in series called ''Wraith''.
* {{Expy}}: Bing, "The Gasmask Man," is this to the Trashcan Man from ''Literature/TheStand''. At one point he even says "My life for you!" after [[spoiler:Manx abandons him for screwing up an attempt to kill Vic]].
* FauxAffablyEvil: Manx can be quite charming, but when he's crossed he turns cruel and vicious.
%%* FlamethrowerBackfire: How Vic [[spoiler: takes out Bing.]]
%%* FriendToAllChildren: Manx considers himself this.
* KickTheDog: [[spoiler:Manx kills Wayne's dog with his bone mallet after hitting it with the Wraith.]]
* GasMaskMooks: Bing is a gas mask [[TheDragon dragon.]] He has had something of an obsession with gas masks, ever since he was a child and his father gave him his old Korean War gas mask and helmet for Christmas.
* GeekPhysiques: Lou is the obese variety. [[spoiler: Until the epilogue when he gets gastric bypass.]]
* GrowingUpSucks:
%%** Manx and Bing believe that they are 'rescuing' children from this.
** Vic and Maggie, who were cool outsiders with magic powers as children and teens, but who as adults turned into a drunken basket case and a drug-addicted homeless prostitute, respectively. Vic at one point muses sorrowfully that she really liked the girl she was at eight and also that she is very unlike that girl now.
* HoistByHisOwnPetard:
** [[spoiler:Bing is killed via his own tank of sevoflurane exploding when Vic ignites the gas he's released around her.]]
** [[spoiler:Manx is crushed in his own car and dies (again) with a mouth full of motor oil.]]
* ImmortalityImmorality: Manx can extend his life by feeding the Wraith someone's humanity and capacity for empathy. He first gave up his own to it, then went on to sacrifice that of other people.
* IncrediblyLameFun: Tabitha is such a neat freak that she gets "a private, almost guilty, pleasure from defragmenting her hard drive."
* InformedFlaw: We're repeatedly told that Vic is a terrible mother with serious mental problems, but we rarely see her be anything but a quite good mother who's just perpetually depressed. It's implied that all her real screwups happened in the years between chapters, but we never get to see them or even hear more than passing references to them. The one instance where Vic did act crazy was in burning her house down - which is, admittedly, a pretty ''big'' screwup, but it seems less like the result of an inherent flaw and more an effect of being driven to drunkenness and despair by years of Manx's children harrassing her.
%%* JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind: Effectively Christmasland is this for Charlie Manx.
* LackOfEmpathy: Manx and the children of Christmasland. Maggie thinks that [[spoiler:[=NOS4A2=] stole Manx's ability to feel empathy as his price for using it]].
* LikeParentLikeChild: In the end, Vic admits that she's much like her father - not all bad, but never as good a parent or a person as she should have been. [[spoiler: On the other hand, they also both show that when the chips are down, they ''will'' come through for their child, to the point of laying down their lives.]]
* LooksLikeOrlok: Manx has some resemblances to Max Shreck (large bald head, narrow face, and fang-like teeth, made even more prominent by his overbite).
* LoonyLibrarian: Maggie has a weird fashion sense and psychic powers, and also a stammer which she developed as a result of using these powers (and which gets worse the more she does use them).
* LostInTranslation: When Vic's neighbor Mr. De Zoet suffers what he thinks is a stroke (it's actually due to Bing pumping sevoflurane into the house), he lapses into his native language, Dutch, and yells "Ik heb een slag". "Slag" is a possible translation for "stroke", but only when the word describes the act of hitting or striking someone/something. The medical condition, which is what's actually meant here, is called "beroerte" in Dutch.
* LoyalPhlebotinum: All of the paranormal events in the book work this way.
** Vic [=McQueen=] has a bike that lets her instantly travel great distances and find things that have been lost.
** Maggie Leigh has a bag of ''Scrabble'' tiles that can spell out important secrets to her.
** Charlie Manx has a Rolls Royce Wraith that can travel to Christmasland. It also keeps him young... and consumes his (and later others') soul. He can also control it with his mind.
* MamaBear: Don't mess with Wayne. Vic ''will'' find you, and you ''will'' be sorry.
* TheManInTheMoon: The moon in Christmasland has Charlie Manx's face, and actually screams at one point during the Inscape's destruction.
* ManOnFire: Manx kills Tom Priest, a soldier that tries to arrest him at a gas station, by dousing Tom with gasoline and igniting him with a lighter.
* ManipulativeBastard: Manx is disturbingly good at pushing other people's buttons to steer them in the direction he wants them to go.
* MarketBasedTitle: A small example; the UK version of the book is retitled ''[=NOS4R2=]'' to better fit the British pronunciation of "Nosferatu".
* MentorOccupationalHazard: [[spoiler: Maggie Leigh and Vic's father]].
* MeaningfulName: Possibly the Shorter Way Bridge, which surely isn't named that way in-universe because it shortens the ways for Vic.
* MiddleNameBasis: Wayne's full name is Bruce Wayne Carmody.
* MisplacedWildlife: While driving to Christmasland, Manx runs over a hedgehog not far from the Iowa border. Hedgehogs are not indigenous to North America.
* MoreTeethThanTheOsmondFamily: One transformation that happens to the children of Christmasland is growing multiple rows of sharp teeth. One child's teeth go all the way back to her throat. [[spoiler:Wayne]] slowly but surely transforms in this way under the Wraith's influence.
* MostWritersAreWriters: Vic goes from living in near-poverty with her boyfriend and son to making a successful career for herself once she comes up with the idea for a series of children's books.
* MrViceGuy: All of the protagonists have serious, human flaws -- which they all acknowledge. A central theme of the book is that demanding perfection from reality is immature and ultimately as unhealthy as any other vice.
* OmniscientMoralityLicense: Manx claims to have it. Sure, the parents he "rescued" children from might not have been abusive ''yet,'' but he supposedly foresaw a future when they would become so.
* OurVampiresAreDifferent: Although his license plate is [=NOS4A2=], Manx is not a traditional vampire (he implies that he got the plate to spite his first wife for ''calling'' him a vampire). Instead of drinking blood, he maintains his youth by his car draining the souls of children as he kidnaps them to a semi-imaginary realm. In the process, though, the children become something much more resembling traditional vampires.
* ParentsAsPeople: At the beginning of the book, Vic idolizes her father and considers her mother a repressive shrew. She later learns that, while her mother might have been hard to live with, her father was sleeping around and occasionally hit her mother when he was drunk. After he abandons his wife and daughter, Vic spends years hating him, but they do manage to reconcile [[spoiler:before they both die saving Wayne]].
* PocketDimension: [=NOS4A2=]'s back seat is one, trapping anyone in it inside so they can't escape.
* PoliceAreUseless: Quite. And justified, considering Manx is not one who can easily be dealt with.
* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: Both Manx and Bing are misogynists, though in Manx's case it doesn't apply to young girls.
* PowerAtAPrice: Using the Inscape ultimately drains its user over an extended period of time and comes with some sort of detrimental effect, either physical or mental. Maggie's stammer comes from using her tiles, and gets worse the more she does. Maggie believes that using the Wraith has caused Manx to become more and more of a sociopath. Vic has sunstroke-like symptoms after using the Shorter Way too much, and has migraine-like pain in her left eye. [[spoiler:Later on, some of the bats inside the bridge escape, causing minor brain damage; more escape or are killed when Manx tries to run her and Wayne over inside the Shorter Way.]]
* PsychopathicManchild: Bing likes to make sing-song rhymes (which irritates Manx to no end) and is clearly mentally deficient, and has murderous and rapacious tendencies that only get worse under Manx's influence.
* RageAgainstTheHeavens: When Bing goes back to his old church (now a condemned ruin) to pray for Manx's safe return, God seemingly rebuffs this blasphemous prayer by sending him a HumiliationConga -- first [[ExcrementStatement a bird shits on his face]], then he trips and lands on a used condom that gets stuck on his hand, then in his hair when he tries to shake it off. His response is to throw a tantrum in the middle of the church, then leave and come back with bottles of lighter fluid to burn the place down; he ignites the blaze by setting the crucifix on fire.
-->''"What?"'' he screamed to the church. "''What?'' I came here on my ''knees!'' I CAME ON MY KNEES! And you do ''what? '''WHAT?!'''''"
* TheRenfield: Bing does Manx's wetwork, i.e. disposing of the parents of the children Manx "saves." This often involves raping them after drugging them with sevoflurane. Maggie even explicitly calls him a Renfield when she first warns Vic about Manx.
* RescueEquipmentAttack: During the fight with Manx at a gas station, Sam Cleary knocks Manx out cold with a fire extinguisher.
* RescueRomance: Lou helped Vic escape from Manx, and they ended up getting together after.
* QuestionableConsent: Bing uses his "gingerbread smoke" (sevoflurane) on the mothers of the kidnapped children for this.
* SelfHarm: Near the end of the book Maggie's arms are covered in scars from cigarette burns. It turns out they are self-inflicted, as the intense bursts of pain help her control her worsening stammer and let her use her ''Scrabble'' tiles (which has been getting harder to do).
* SelfMadeOrphan: Bing murdered both his parents.
* ShoutOut:
** A demonic, semi-autonomous, murderous car? [[Literature/{{Christine}} Sounds familiar]].
** The map of the United Inscapes of America includes the [[Literature/{{It}} Pennywise Circus]], [[Literature/{{Horns}} Treehouse of the Mind]], and the [[ComicBook/LockeAndKey Lovecraft Keyhole]].
*** Not to mention that Christmasland is apparently located in the Inscape equivalent of Western Colorado, like [[Literature/{{TheShining}} another infamous attraction]].
** After Wayne is taken, a cop mentions sending a Buddhist monk away to [[Film/TheShawshankRedemption Shawshank.]]
** A slightly ironic one. Bing complains about Wayne's name (his father is a comic fan, and named his son [[Franchise/{{Batman}} Bruce Wayne Carmody]]), saying that people shouldn't use silly comic book names, but normal names like John and Sue. If you use "Johnny" instead of "John", you get [[ComicBook/FantasticFour two very famous comic book characters]] -- a brother and sister who star in the same title, no less.
** Vic outright refers to the Christmas ornaments that Manx uses to trap the souls of children as "[[Franchise/HarryPotter Horcruxes]]".
** Tabitha Hutter may be a reference to the character Hutter (the Jonathan Harker stand-in) from the 1922 film ''Film/{{Nosferatu}}''. Tabitha is also the name of the author's mother.
** Bing Partridge lives on a street named [[Creator/RobertBloch Bloch]] Lane. (Perhaps coincidentally, there's a street in Franchise/SilentHill named after the same author.)
** Charlie Manx mentions the [[Literature/DoctorSleep True Knot]], and how they are in similar lines of work. The True and Manx have apparently mutually agreed to stay out of each other's way. In turn, Manx was mentioned by name by Dick Halloran's paternal grandfather, a sadistic pedophile who likely practiced black magic.
** [[Literature/TheThousandAutumnsOfJacobDeZoet Mister de Zoet]] is mentioned as listening to [[Literature/CloudAtlas the Cloud Atlas Sextet]], even mentioning Robert Frobisher by name.
** Probably one: The unfortunate Demeter family. (Of course you must know which ship brought Dracula to England...)
** Bing pledges "my life for you" to show his loyalty to Manx. The same words spoken by the Trashcan Man to Randall Flagg in ''[[Literature/TheStand The Stand]]''.
* SoulJar: [[spoiler:Manx's Christmas ornaments contain the children's humanity.]]
* SpeechImpediment: Maggie has a stammer, a side effect of using her tiles which gets worse the more she does it.
* SpiritAdvisor: The ghost of Wayne's grandmother appears to him, explaining how to postpone the loss of his soul.
* TheStinger: The "A Note on the Type" section includes a bonus scene.
* StuffBlowingUp: [[spoiler: The ending, with Vic blowing up Christmasland piece by piece.]]
* TomboyishName: Vic is short for Victoria, not Victor.
* TheUnblinking: At one point, Wayne realizes he's never seen Manx blink.
* UncannyValley: Manx manages to display this ''verbally''. His speech patterns are unfailingly formal, he largely avoids contractions, and he uses folksy expressions that sound more appropriate to a country store catalog than an actual human being. It might not seem unsettling at first, but he ''never'' speaks differently, even when he gets an ear shot off. Wayne even realizes at one point he's never seen Manx blink.
* UglyGuyHotWife: Lou and Vic. Lou starts out fat and is morbidly obese to the point of cardiac problems, while Vic keeps her beauty (for the most part).
* ViewersAreGeniuses: The "Spirit of Ecstasy" on Manx's Rolls Royce is referred to as "the bloofer lady" by Nathan Demeter. It's a reference to the original novel ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'' by Creator/BramStoker, but the connection is never explicitly stated; Nathan is only said to be thinking of "something he once read".
* VillainousBreakdown: [[spoiler:Bing has one when Manx abandons him, and Manx in turn has one when Vic destroys Christmasland.]]
* VillainousCrush: Manx develops a weird... ''thing'' for Vic. It doesn't make him stop hating her or anything, but then [[HemanWomanHater he pretty much hates all women anyway.]]
* VillainousIncest: It's implied that Bing raped his mother before murdering her. He later has a thing for mothers in general, with a specific predilection for "mommy titties".
* VillainousParentalInstinct: Charlie Manx is ([[OurVampiresAreDifferent more or less]]) an almost 120 year old vampire who has spent most of that time abducting children and taking them to his SmallSecludedWorld where they, like him, become vampires [[LackOfEmpathy completely lacking in anything like empathy and morality]]. He still instinctively jumps in the way of danger to protect his daughter from harm when [[MamaBear Vic]] is executing her RoaringRampageOfRevenge to get her son back from Manx. Vic notices it happening but it earns no sympathy from her, she just thinks to herself that all sorts of monsters can [[EvenEvilHasLovedOnes have people they care about]] or can believe that their horribleness is somehow good.
* VillainyFreeVillain: The detective Daltry has nothing to do with Manx or Bing and doesn't do anything evil. He thinks Vic either killed her son or is in business with whoever did, but all the law enforcement characters suspect her for most of the story. Nonetheless, he's one of the most unpleasant characters in the book, so much so that Hutter is briefly tempted to spray mosquito repellent [[EyeScream directly into his eyes]] at one point.
* WakingUpAtTheMorgue: Manx dies in prison after the Wraith, which is heavily damaged, has its engine removed. He later wakes up ''after'' his autopsy when the unwitting Nathan Demeter, who was restoring the Wraith as a pet project, replaced the engine.
* WalkingTechBane: Manx, or rather his Wraith, can make lights, TV and radio go on the fritz just by coming vaguely near them; it's regularly used to announce their imminent arrival. This is eventually revealed to be a common occurrence around Strong Creatives (like Manx, Vic, and Maggie) who are using their powers.
* WellIntentionedExtremist: Manx genuinely believes that he is saving his 'children' from being abused or neglected by adults by keeping them as kids forever.
* WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: Subverted with Bing. He seems like this at first, being mentally disabled, coming from a background of parental abuse, and being the victim of Manx's lies and manipulation. As the story goes on, though, he gets ''way'' too into doing Manx's dirty work and starts coming across as every bit as much of an irredeemable monster as Manx himself.
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!!Tropes specific to the series:
* AdaptationalBackstoryChange: Most of Manx’s backstory in the show is different from the novel and tie-in comic. The entire basis for Christmasland is different; rather than being a fake amusement park that Manx is swindled into buying into it is now an imaginary story that Manx relays to his daughter.
* AdaptationalHeroism: Manx’s mother and wife are considerably more sympathetic than in the source material. In ''Wraith'', both are depicted as being cruel and even abusive at times; Charlie's mother, for example, would make him sleep in a coffin.
* AdaptationRelationshipOverhaul: Vic and Bing start out as friends in the series.
* AdaptationalAttractiveness: Manx is described as having weasel-like features and an overbite. For the television adaptation he's being played by Creator/ZacharyQuinto. The impressive combination of makeup work and physical acting when Manx is in his degenerated state, however, play up this aesthetic to a LooksLikeOrlok degree, creating an interesting contrast to his ClassicalMovieVampire looks when he's freshly fed.
* AdaptationExpansion: The end of the second season goes past the ending of the book and sets up storylines for a potential third season.
* AdaptationalLateAppearance: Lou Carmody shows up in the final episode of the first season.
* AdaptedOut: In the book Manx has two daughters, Millie and Lorrie. In the show Millie is an only child.
* AffectionateNickname: Vic calls Wayne "Bats".
* AirVentPassageway: Vic escapes Manx's house this way when he sets it on fire as she's locked inside.
* AscendedExtra:
** Maggie is an important character in the book but only appears in a few chapters. In the show she's the one of the lead characters.
** Millie Manx is a minor character in the novel. In the show she is a main character for the second season.
* TheAtoner: Bing realizes Manx and he are monsters, trying to kill them both so no other children will be harmed. It doesn't work however.
* BackFromTheDead: Manx gets resurrected (even after he's partly dissected, with ''a scalpel in his heart'') once his car gets started up again by Bing.
* BadGuyBar: Parnassus, which exists in an inscape called "The Night Road" that can only be accessed by Strong Creatives with darkness in them. Manx is a regular patron, and is on friendly terms with several of the others.
* BittersweetEnding: Much like the novel. [[spoiler: Vic and Maggie destroy Christmasland, Manx is dead, Lou officially adopts Wayne and all of the children he kidnapped are free and human again. Unfortunately, Vic and Wayne now have long-lasting trauma, Maggie and Tabitha break up, and Millie Manx is still alive, with plans to rebuild Christmasland.]]
* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Manx has a very broad definition of what constitutes bad parenting. For instance, when he meets a father who exhorts his little son to be nice to old people and to reduce his sugar consumption for the sake of his health, Manx calls this father "cruel" for denying the boy the sugar cane he tried to give him. This very boy is later seen in his Wraith, already corrupted beyond help. He also thinks that women should be chaste, so a mother merely being with her boyfriend makes her by definition unfit as a parent in his eyes.
* BreakThemByTalking: Manx does this when held at gunpoint by Lou, the biker who helps Vic. Given his abilities he knows not only Luke's name, but also his weak spots, and distracts him enough with this to get away.
* ButNotTooBi: Vic is bisexual, though she prefers men and she's only seen with guys.
* CompellingVoice: Hourglass can make people do what he wishes when the sand is falling. Using this, he orders the FBI agents to kill everyone they're guarding except Wayne for Manx and Bing. They attempt to, but fail.
* ContinuityNod: Manx mentions Dewey Hansom as being one of his former helpers. Dewey appeared in the comic ''Wraith: Welcome to Christmasland''.
* DaddysLittleVillain: Millie, Manx's daughter, is almost exactly like him and turned evil at the same time (she's the first of his vampirish kids).
* DefiledForever: Manx gets pissed when Craig claims to have "consummated his and Vic's love" because now she's no longer pure in his eyes and therefore unfit for his plans for her. For some reason he thinks that a non-virginal woman is incapable of properly caring for children.
* DisappearedDad: [[spoiler:Craig is killed before he even knows he's gotten Vic pregnant, leaving her to raise their baby. However, Carmody becomes his dad after this.]]
* DoNotCallMePaul: Wayne is never called by his first name Bruce until Manx, and insists no one does (perhaps because together this makes up {{Franchise/Batman}}'s name).
* TheDogBitesBack: Bing attacks Manx after being left behind and realizing he had no intentions of bringing him to Christmasland.
* TheDreaded: Manx seems to be this to other famous villains (see LawyerFriendlyCameo) at the Parnassus bar; when they see him they immediately get up to leave.
* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: Manx turns out to have a daughter named Millie whom he clearly loves in his own twisted way, while she loves him in return (Millie's also evil, so this counts for her as well).
* FateWorseThanDeath: In the second season, Charlie Manx and Bing attempt to kidnap Vic's son Wayne. She knows very well that if successful he'll face a {{fate worse than death}}, turning into one of Manx's vampiric children.
* FromBadToWorse: Episode 8 of the series really isn't kind to Vic. [[spoiler:First she discovers that her mom sold her dirtbike, then Maggie ducks out of helping her get it back (for good reasons, though), then her mother finds out she's been taking drugs, forbids her from going to college and basically throws her out of her house, and to top it all off, Bing waylays her in the woods as she's running away.]]
* HealingFactor: Manx is capable of healing any injury, even coming {{back from the dead}}, so long as his car is running and intact.
* HeelRealization: Bing belatedly realizes he's a bad guy for helping Manx, trying to kill them both afterward.
* HopeSpot: Bing turns on Manx, trying to kill both of them. However, Wayne stops him, not realizing what he's doing in his vampiric state.
* IHaveYouNowMyPretty:
** Bing kidnaps Vic with the intent of killing her to get back on Charlie's bad side. Before doing so, it's implied he wants to rape her first but she escapes.
** He later tries this on Manx of all people.
* IntimateMarks: Maggie has had a large rose tattooed onto her left breast in the second season.
* LawyerFriendlyCameo: The Parnassus bar has patrons who resemble [[Literature/{{It}} Pennywise]], [[Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet Freddy Krueger]] and [[Literature/TheRing Sadako/Samara]].
* LecherousLicking: Occurs between Bing and Vic when he has her captive.
* LipstickLesbian: Maggie is revealed to be a lesbian (by abruptly having sex with a woman she's just met). She's got a faminine style, with long hair, wearing stylish blouses and skirts while using makeup. The woman she hooks up with in the scene is also quite feminine, and has a style that's similar.
* LoveMakesYouStupid: After Vic got kidnapped by [[spoiler:Bing, Craig grabs a baseball bat and goes on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge against Bing despite his promise to Vic to not do this. Predictably, things don't turn out so well for him.]]
* {{Matricide}}:
** [[spoiler:Charlie]]'s revealed to have killed his mother.
** Millie killed her own mother after turning evil.
* ModestyBedsheet: After having sex with Carmody, Vic's got the covers around her chest.
* MurderSuicide: Bing tries to kill himself and Manx by destroying the Wraith in a crusher. Wayne stops him however.
* MyGrandsonMyself: When Manx gets recognized as similar to his younger self at a road stop he's frequented, he says that's his grandson.
* NailEm: Bing kills both his parents and one of the mothers of Manx's 'children' with a nail gun.
* NextThingTheyKnew: A young woman comes into the library to ask Maggie about a book. With no interval, we then see her giving Maggie oral sex in the stacks.
* NoSell: Tabitha shoots Manx in the head at close range. He shrugs this off within seconds.
* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Millie is only occasionally called by her full name, Millicent.
* PaperThinDisguise: Bing's idea of a disguise consists of donning the distinctive jumpsuit he wears at work, masking the name and company tags with some duct tape, and putting on a gas mask that is hilariously ineffective at hiding his identity. Justified of course by his diminished intelligence, and it still does the job because he never seems to encounter any witnesses during his criminal acts.
* ParentalSubstitute: Carmody becomes Wayne's surrogate dad in the second season, and gets addressed as such.
* PsychicAssistedSuicide: After failing in the task Hourglass sent him on, the male FBI agent shoots himself under his influence.
* RaceLift: Tabitha, Lou and Maggie are black in the show.
* RapeDiscretionShot: Bing in the television show rapes his mother off-screen.
* RelatedDifferentlyInTheAdaptation: Lou is Wayne's stepfather rather than his biological father.
* SexStartsStoryStops: Early in the series, Maggie is sorting books in her library when a woman her age walks in to ask for a book. One cut later, and that woman is eating Maggie out in a scene that serves no purpose other than to establish Maggie's sexual orientation, which a later episode does again, only much better. It's then subverted when the two are interrupted before Maggie can finish.
* SexyDiscretionShot: Both times Vic is with her boyfriends, the scene fades out. Maggie, [[SubvertedTrope on the other hand]], gets a [[GirlOnGirlIsHot far more explicit scene with a woman]].
* ShellShockedVeteran: Vic is clearly traumatized from her experiences in the second season. It's mentioned that Vic hallucinates ringing phones and other electronics going haywire, while Carmody says every Christmas she'll drink until she passes out. He finally insists that she get professional help after one freak out causes a fire to start accidentally, endangering Wayne. It doesn't happen though -- she's off after Manx soon after.
* ShoutOutThemeNaming: Vic names her son "[[Franchise/{{Batman}} Bruce Wayne]]".
* SinisterCar: Manx's Rolls Royce that travels between worlds and feeds on human souls.
* SlutShaming: Manx is extreme about this, viewing all mothers who have sex outside marriage to be unfit, no matter how good they actually are with their kids. He kidnaps their kids as a result, taking them away into his domain.
* SomeoneToRememberHimBy: [[spoiler:Just after losing her boyfriend in the effort to stop Manx, Vic learns that she's pregnant by him.]]
* SoulJar: [[spoiler:The ornaments near the entry to Christmasland turn out to hold the souls of the children Manx has taken. Only by smashing them will they be freed.]]
* SparedByTheAdaptation: Maggie, Bing, Vic and Millie all die in the book. In the show they have all survived past the events of the novel.
* SuperStrength: Not to comic book hero levels, but Manx in his younger form is much stronger than a man of his build should be. At one point he throws Vic's dirtbike several meters without visible effort.
* TomboyAndGirlyGirl: Vic and Maggie display this contrast. The former is a bit of an {{unkempt beauty}} who has fairly masculine clothing, works as a mechanic and rides motorcycles, while Maggie has more feminine looks, working in a library (at first anyway).
* TokenMinorityCouple: In the second season, Maggie's girlfriend is also black.
* TwoferTokenMinority: Maggie, who is a lesbian, becomes black here.
* VomitDiscretionShot: When Vic sticks her fingers down Maggie's throat to force her to puke up some drugs she took, the camera cuts away right as all the shit comes up... only to [[VomitIndiscretionShot stay on it]] in the very next cut when Vic immediately does it again.
* WouldNotHurtAChild: Manx insists that Bing ''never'' manhandle a child, and gives him a single warning after he grabs Haley (only temporarily, as she quickly breaks free by kicking him in the shin). Knocking them out with gas though doesn't "count" in his eyes, as he feels he's rescuing children from abuse (often just mild neglect at worst).
* YouHaveToBelieveMe: Vic struggles to convince people that Bing killed Sharon Smith, but with no evidence it naturally doesn't sway police. After she tells the detective who is lead on the case just ''how'' she knows about this (and Charlie Manx) she's referred for psychiatric help.
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