Characters / Scream: Jill Roberts

Main Character Index
Movies: Recurring Characters (Sidney Prescott | Gale Weathers | Dewey Riley | Sam Carpenter) | Ghostface (Jill Roberts) | Scream (1996) | Scream 2 | Scream 3 | Scream 4 | Scream (2022) | Scream VI
TV Series: MTV Series | Resurrection

Due to the nature of The Reveal, Jill’s pre-reveal tropes are listed separately. For tropes pertaining to her before the reveal, see the Scream 4 character page here. For others who have held the Ghostface title, see here.

Jill Roberts

"I was so believable today, wasn't I? I mean, I told so many lies that I actually started to believe them."

Played By: Emma Roberts

"My friends? What world are you living in? I don't need friends. I need fans. Don't you get it? This has never been about killing you, it's about... becoming you. I mean, for fuck's sake, my own mother had to die, no great loss there, so I could stay true to the original. It's sick, right? Well, sick is the new sane. You had your 15 minutes, now I WANT MINE! I mean, what am I supposed to do? Go to college? Grad school? Work? Look around. We all live in public now, we're all on the Internet. How do you think people get famous anymore? You don't have to achieve anything, you just gotta have fucked-up shit happen to you. So you do have to die, Sid. Those are the rules. New movie, new franchise. There's only room for one lead, and let's face it, your ingenue days, they're over."

First introduced as the seemingly innocent victim of the latest Ghostface killings, she is eventually revealed to be far from the Final Girl she's presented as. In fact, Jill Roberts is the mastermind of the fourth film's murders. The younger cousin of Sidney, she's a fame-hungry sociopath who is envious of her cousin's fame. Jill planned on framing her ex-boyfriend Trevor Sheldon for the murders and emerging as the "final girl" in the eyes of the media, riding it to celebrity status as Sidney had done. Tricking Charlie Walker into helping her, she intends to kill and frame him as Trevor's accomplice when she no longer needs him. She also had her "survival" filmed so that she could upload it to social media.

Tropes

#-L

• 15 Minutes of Fame: As she is taken from Kirby's home, Jill achieves this with the media describing her as a survivor of the new murder spree. When it comes out that she was behind the killings, presumably shortly after her death, the positive attention to her evaporates.
• All for Nothing: In the end, she not only doesn't get away with her scheme, but one of her planned victims, Kirby, survives and gets the attention Jill wanted.
• Allegorical Character: Jill is essentially a cynic's interpretation of a movie remake. Jill may be a modern, updated version of Sidney, but she will never live up to Sidney.
• Alpha Bitch: Especially as a murderous girl who only desires a huge amount of fame as a fake sole survivor (like her cousin Sidney).
• Ambiguously Absent Parent: She seems to only have her mother, and no father, but what happened to him isn't clear.
• Antagonistic Offspring: She is this to her mother, who is oblivious to how little her daughter cares for her.
• Arch-Enemy: She views Sidney as hers since she grew up in the wake of the latter's notoriety for surviving previous Ghostface murder sprees and grew to resent her for this. Jill even saves Sidney for last in her planned murders, which further solidifies the special enmity that she holds for her.
• Attack on the Heart: She dies when Sidney shoots her in the heart.
• Attack the Injury: She stabs Sidney in the stomach during her reveal at Kirby's house, and later punches that same wound when she attacks Sidney in the hospital.
  Jill: How're those stitches?
• Attention Whore: To the point of convincing Charlie to help her kill all of her friends and her mother, just for a few minutes of fame. She steps it up even more when she needlessly kills Charlie simply because she wants all the attention to herself as the Sole Survivor.
• Ax-Crazy: When she's revealed to be Ghostface. She's arguably the most overtly insane of all of the Ghostface killers — even Stu wasn't as crazy as her.
• Bad Boss: She kills her own underling, Charlie.
• Bad Influencer: Her motivation is social media stardom, and she films and stages everything in order to achieve that.
• Barbaric Bully: Her savagery that tops the previous killers, her disposing of Charlie much to his devastation, the way she inflicts wounds on herself to better look like an authentic survivor of a bloodbath, her being emotionally and verbally abusive, and a bad temper to boot definitely qualify her as such.
• Beauty Is Bad: She's attractive, attention-seeking, and murderous.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: She wanted fifteen minutes of fame, and she got them, literally. She's hailed as a heroic survivor for a very brief period of time, until Sidney kills her and presumably exposes her as a murderer and a liar.
• Beneath the Mask: Pretends to be a normal, nice schoolgirl being targeted by killers when she in fact is the killer targeting innocent people.
• Berserk Button: Being told what to do, as she only shoots Officer Hicks after the latter gives her what she wants (her gun) and tries to calmly defuse the situation by giving her an order.
• Beyond Redemption: Made very clear from Jill rebuffing Sidney telling her that she's not going to get out of her predicament and Jill later ignoring an attempt by Officer Hicks to defuse the situation by shooting her.
• Big Bad: Of the fourth film. Her desire to reach Sidney's fame is what drives her to massacre her friends, and she quickly turns on her partner to frame him for the killing scheme.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Like most Ghostfaces, she is seemily very kind before The Reveal that is a cold blooded murder.
• Blatant Lies: She is constantly telling lies. She even is amused by the amount of them.
  Jill: I told so many lies today, that I actually started to believe them.
• Boom, Headshot!: She murders Trevor this way and threatens to do the same to Dewey if Judy doesn't give her gun to her.
• Breaking Old Trends: Jill is the first Ghostface that is shown putting their facade back up after being revealed as a killer.
• The Bully: Towards Sidney and anyone around her, as she's prone to insulting and unleashing her bad temper against others in her way.
• Bully Brutality: Jill is prone to lashing out, kicks Trevor in a rage, even shooting him in the crotch before killing him, and verbally abuses Sidney and later her friends when they find out the truth, before trying to off them too to tie up loose ends.
• By the Hair: She has Trevor's corpse rip some of her hair out to falsely convince detectives that he had grabbed her there while alive and trying to kill her.
• Cain and Abel: She's Sidney's younger cousin and is trying to kill her.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Jill is revealed to love being, proudly proclaiming that "Sick is the new sane."
• The Chessmaster: She is able to use Charlie as a means of misdirecting her role as one of the killers by having him cut her and appearing terrified when he's murdering someone or trying to attack her.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Literally everyone in Scream 4 who has any kind of relationship with Jill is someone she betrays; her friends are either killed or left for dead either by her or with her as an accessory, her own mother is murdered as part of her plan, her cousin Sidney is her final intended victim, and even Charlie, her accomplice, is betrayed and murdered by Jill, who refuses to share the limelight with anyone.
• Clashing Cousins: She's out for Sidney's blood, but not before she kills everyone else to make herself the Sole Survivor in the spotlight.
• Combat Pragmatist: Jill knows she can't defeat Dewey in a fair fight so she knocks him unconscious with a sneak attack.
• Composite Character: While Jill tries to invoke being an Expy of Sidney in a "reboot" of the original killings, she obviously subverts that while incorporating traits of all the Ghostface killers before her.
  • Like Billy, she's a wrathful bully who killed all her friends including both her love interests.
  • Like Stu, she is the more insane of the duo who killed her ex because he dumped her for someone else.
  • Like Mickey, her main motive is fame.
  • Like Mrs. Loomis, she betrays her accomplice and intends to pin all the murders on them after killing them.
  • Like Roman, she is a matricidal, envious relative of Sidney.
• Consummate Liar: With the exception of Charlie, she lies to everyone by framing herself as a normal teenager who is being gone after by the new Ghostface. Her lies extend to Charlie, as she fakes a romantic interest and desire in being his partner so that he will assist her in the murders.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist
  • To the original film's main Ghostface, Billy. While Billy and Jill are both acquainted with Sidney before the events of their respective films, Sidney feels intimacy with Billy while being much more distant with Jill. Sidney has suspicions about Billy being the killer, but never suspects Jill until the latter makes her murderous identity known. Although Billy and Jill both enjoy horror films, the former's love for movies plays into his speech to Sidney whereas Jill just finds them enjoyable. Both corner Sidney and reveal their plans to her, but Jill stabs Sidney and kills Trevor in front of her, in contrast to Billy only threatening her with a gun and having already killed all of his victims before the reveal. Although both inflict harm on their partner, Billy never tries to kill Stu (only wounding him to go along with their plot to pose as victims) whereas Jill kills Charlie.
  • To Scream 2's main Ghostface, Nancy Loomis. Mrs. Loomis is one of the oldest Ghostfaces while Jill is one of the youngest. Both assault Dewey, though Mrs. Loomis attempts to kill him (and fails) while Jill only renders him unconscious and uses him as leverage over Judy and Gale. Although both kill (or attempt to kill) their male partners, Mrs. Loomis takes on a mother-son relationship with Mickey that sees the latter helped with his college funding while Jill pretends to be romantically interested in Charlie. While Mrs. Loomis was motivated by the death of her son and wanted to avenge him before retreating to a life of anonymity, Jill has no sympathetic motivation and wants to achieve fame after posing as a victim. Both are defeated by the combined efforts of Sidney and her friends, but Mrs. Loomis is killed after trying to make a compromise with Cotton while Jill shows no interest in getting anything less than what she wants.
  • To the third film's Ghostface Roman Bridger. Roman is an established film director with fame whereas Jill seeks notoriety. Roman works alone and kills all of his cast while Jill works with Charlie and only directly kills some of her friends. Both played a role in causing the death of their own mother, but Roman only did the planning for Billy to commit the act while Jill murdered her mother. Although both are related to Sidney, the latter has never met Roman before the film whereas she's already acquainted with Jill. While both hold Dewey hostage, Roman attacks him head-on (causing him to lose consciousness after a fall) while Jill renders him in a similar state through a sneak attack. Roman appears to reconcile with Sidney (when faking his death) and is killed by an associate of hers (Dewey) while Jill never expresses remorse for her actions towards her cousin and is directly killed by Sidney.
• Cop Killer: Subverted. Jill seemingly shoots Judy dead, but Judy is able to stand back up and disclose that she was wearing a Bulletproof Vest.
• Corrupted Character Copy: Of Sidney: a dark-haired Final Girl whose cheating boyfriend turned on her and killed everyone around her. Unlike Sidney, who is an innocent victim and a badass Action Girl, Jill is the primary Ghostface, and sadistic and petty.
• The Corrupter: Considering how well her lies of wanting a romance with Charlie worked on him, she's heavily implied to be the reason he's a participant in the murder spree.
• Crazy-Prepared: Jill seems to be able to come up with solutions anytime parts of her plan do not go the way she intended. After the initial shock of Sidney still being alive wears off, she leaves her room and sneaks to Sidney's with the intent of finally killing her.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: She easily gets the better of Sidney by stabbing her when she is running from Charlie and has her pinned until delivering (what she thinks is) a fatal wound later on.
• Dark Action Girl: This is best exemplified at the hospital, where she takes on Sidney, Gale, Dewey, and Judy by herself, and comes close to killing them off.
• Death by Irony: While Jill was able to defeat Sidney at Kirby's house after a sneak attack gave the former the upper hand, Jill is killed via gunshot to the chest after a sneak attack from Sidney gave her the upper hand.
• Decoy Protagonist: A blatant Expy of Sidney, and was even heavily hinted as her possible successor as The Hero of the franchise, only to be revealed as Evil All Along and the fourth film's Big Bad.
• Deliberate Injury Gambit: Allows Charlie to slash her arm in order to make herself look like a Ghostface target.
• Determinator: She is really driven when it comes to killing her intended victims, just because she wants Sidney's fame and to be the center of attention.
• Devil in Plain Sight: Especially after her revelation as one of the Ghostfaces, combined with her small chances of redeeming herself.
• Didn't See That Coming: She is shocked to find out Sidney survived the stabbing she gave her at Kirby's house.
• Didn't Think This Through: Jill assumed that a couple of stab wounds would be enough to keep the famously hard to kill Sidney down for good, despite having access to a gun that could have finished Sidney in an instant. Once she realizes that Sidney did indeed survive, Jill is left scrambling to silence the witness she blabbed all of her plans to.
• Dies Wide Open: After she finally goes down for good, Jill's eyes are left open, staring lifelessly. Sidney takes a moment to look into her dead cousin's eyes just as Jill had done after stabbing her.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Jill murders Trevor and frames him for her murders as revenge for cheating on her (which includes shooting him in the groin and shouting, "I am NOT the girl you cheat on!"). While Trevor's infidelity was not her motivation for becoming the new Ghostface, she specifically targets him as a patsy because of it. Her reason for targeting Sidney, on the other hand, is simply because, like Roman, she's jealous of her fame and wants it for herself, despising her cousin for all the attention she got and feeling overshadowed as a result.
• Distaff Counterpart: To her immediate Ghostface predecessor Roman Bridger, due to their status as evil, jealous relatives to Sidney.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: Jill complains to Sidney that Trevor was a worse boyfriend than Billy because Trevor didn't make her famous, never mind the fact that Billy was a killer.
• Driven by Envy: Her jealousy of how much attention Sidney was getting drove her to wanting to replicate it, by killing others and making herself appear to be the survivor.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: She not only fits the physical description, but is also a terrifying serial killer.
• Engineered Heroics: The 2011 Woodsboro killings are the result of Jill wanting to be recognized as The Hero like Sidney, to the point of starting another Ghostface spree for her to play the role of the Final Girl survivor.
• Establishing Character Moment: When Jill stabs Sidney in a sneak attack and then smiles after she pulls off her mask, which reveals her as one of the killers, it establishes Jill as sadistic and taking joy in hurting others.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Before killing Gale, she consents to allowing her a last word. Though, this is mostly due to her feeling like she is guaranteed rather an actual standard on her part.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: She is bitterly jealous of Sidney's fame and seems to believe Sidney enjoyed it, despite it only coming about due to the death of her mother and her friends. The idea that Sidney might absolutely hate her notoriety and having such traumatic events define her life is something Jill can't seem to fathom.
• Evil Counterpart: To Sidney. She is set up to be a Sidney expy, and has a lot in common with her as a young woman...until she's revealed to be Ghostface. One might argue that she's also a Distaff Counterpart to her cousin, Roman.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: She takes joy in hurting others and is visibly happy to admit how sick what she's doing is.
• Evil Is Hammy: Especially in the scene where she's self-harming to make herself look like a victim of the killer, and when she behaves like a stuck-up Fun Personified Alpha Bitch diva after The Reveal.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • Goes batshit insane and kills her friends and mother because she wants to be famous.
  • She decided to frame Trevor for the Ghostface killings because he cheated on her. Jill even goes the extra mile of shooting Trevor in the genitals to torture him before putting a fatal bullet in his head.
• Eye Scream: Sidney pokes her in the eye to escape from being strangled.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: She's played by then-family film and television genre actress Emma Roberts.
• Fake Relationship: She has one with Charlie as she clearly doesn't reciprocate his feelings given that she kills him.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: Jill plans to stage herself as the heroic Final Girl of the new murders. She nearly gets away with it, but is killed in the hospital and presumably exposed as a fraud afterwards.
• Fame Through Infamy: Though unlike Mickey, she wants recognition not as a killer, but as the hero who stopped a massacre, having seen her cousin Sidney become famous for her ordeal and ride that to appearances in movies, talk shows, and books.
• Faux Affably Evil: Puts up a nice girl façade to hide her true monstrous colors, and then brags to Sidney after The Reveal like some fun-loving party girl having the time of her life, just before she stabs her to put the final touches on her murderous con.
• Femme Fatale: Jill is an attractive girl who does not take cheating well nor has an issue with taking a life. Both of the boys that she at first shows romantic interest in, her former boyfriend Trevor and her fellow Ghostface Charlie, end up dying by her hand.
• Final Girl: Subverted. Her goal is to usurp Sidney's position as the new Final Girl of the Ghostface massacres and ride it as her claim to fame... by donning the mask herself.
• Foil:
  • To Dewey Riley. Dewey is an older friend of Sidney who has a close relationship with her and has risked his life to save her while Jill is the younger cousin of Sidney who is distant to her and wants to kill her. Dewey is an officer who cares about his subordinates while Jill is a law-breaker who only cares for herself and is fine with the deaths of her friends. Dewey is in love with Gale and cares greatly for her well-being while Jill pretends to be romantically attracted to Charlie and cares so little for him that she ends his life herself.
  • To Gale Weathers. Both are dark-haired residents of Woodsboro, although Jill was raised there while Gale became a resident only after marrying Dewey. Both aspire to write, though Gale struggles with finding a topic to write about while Jill wants to falsify a tale of her survival in the new Woodsboro murder spree. Both set up methods to record, though Gale does this to catch footage of the happenings and possibly the killers as a means of stopping them while Jill wants recordings so she can watch her murders repeatedly. While both have had friction with Sidney at various points, Gale at her worst still tried to help Sidney against Ghostface (particularly Billy and Stu in the original spree) whereas Jill at her best simply wants her dead.
  • To Kirby Reed. Both are high-schoolers and interested in horror movies. Kirby is an ardent driver while Jill is never shown operating a vehicle. Both display a dislike of Trevor, although Kirby's distaste is limited to her rhetoric whereas Jill plots a revenge scheme to frame and murder him. Both arouse the attraction of Charlie, though the latter feels that Kirby took too long to reciprocate an attraction to him, and has no problem stabbing her, while being completely smitten with Jill and being stabbed by her. They also differ in their fates, as Jill dies while Kirby survives.
• Foreshadowing:
  "You think it's all about you."
• For the Evulz: While the main Ghostfaces before her had Freudian Excuses, flimsy as they were, Jill has none, and openly admits she's evil, committing multiple murders purely to get 15 Minutes of Fame.
  Jill: That's sick, right? Well, sick is the new sane.
• Glory Seeker: Resenting Sidney's fame and being in her shadow, Jill's plan for her and Charlie's killings is to usurp Sid's place as a famous survivor so that she can bask in the adoration of the media. When she gets a taste of this, with reporters bombarding her with questions and cameras flashing in her face, Jill has to fight to keep from smiling, clearly adoring the attention.
• Green-Eyed Monster: It's quite clear that she's envious of the attention and fame her cousin got for surviving the previous Ghostface killings when she was a young girl, despite Sidney never wanting it in the first place.
  Jill: Do you know what it was like growing up in this family? Related to you? I mean, all I ever heard was Sidney this, and Sidney that, and Sidney, Sidney, Sidney. You were always just so fucking special! Well, now I'm the special one.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: As Trevor finds out the hard way, do not make her angry.
• Hate Sink: Her sole motivation for planning a killing spree (with the help of her former accomplice Charlie) was just for her to garner as much media attention as her cousin Sidney did, making her reason behind such crime of hers a very petty one.
• He Knows Too Much: After finding out that Sidney survived her initial stabbing, she attempts to do away with her in the hospital in order to finally tie up loose ends and prevent her from revealing what really happened. She also attempts to off Dewey, Gale, and Judy to desperately cover up her tracks when they realize the truth and come to Sidney's defense.
• Hero Killer: After unmasking herself, Jill murders her ex-boyfriend Trevor before admitting that she was the Ghostface who killed her own mother Kate Roberts. She also comes close to killing Sidney, Dewey, Gale, and Judy by herself at the hospital.
• High-Voltage Death: Subverted. Jill appears to die when she is shocked from behind by Sidney with a defibrillator, but gets back up a short time later.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: At her final moments, she was eventually killed with the gun she took from Dewey by Sidney.
• I Did What I Had to Do: She sees her killing of her friends and other innocent people as justified given it will help make her look more sympathetic as the only person who was not killed.
• I Have No Son!: A cousin variant: it's implied by Sidney's words after she kills her that she no longer sees Jill as her cousin, but as a murderer who got what was coming to her.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: A twisted example. She's already loved by, or close to those who knew her personally (including her accomplice Charlie), but she actually wants the public's admiration for her as a fake Sole Survivor more than any of her interpersonal relationships.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Her reason for being a Ghostface is to stage a murder spree where she can portray the sole survivor and become famous for her supposed trauma. She even tells Sidney "now I'm the special one" to show her resentment towards her cousin for overshadowing her.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Subverted. While she has people like Kirby who seemed to genuinely like spending time with her, Jill couldn't care less about this and would rather have fans.
  Jill: "My friends? What world are you living in? I don't need friends; I need fans."
• I Never Said It Was Poison: She unknowingly reveals herself as the killer by mentioning that she and Gale have "matching wounds". Considering that the details about Ghostface's assault on Gale were never released to the public, the only way Jill could know this was if she attacked Gale herself.
• Idiot Ball: For someone who was able to pull off such a well-thought-out and intricate plot, blowing her facade by claiming she and Gale had "matching wounds" was pretty boneheaded. Justified since her plan had succeeded much farther than any Ghostface prior, so she probably got too overconfident.
• Improvised Weapon: Jill takes the cake among the Ghostfaces when she successfully takes out an armed Dewey with a bedpan before taking his gun.
• In the Back: Jill is initially incapacitated when Sidney hits her with a defibrillator from behind.
• Irony:
  • The seemingly wholesome new Final Girl turns out to be the killer this time.
  • Killing Sidney's publicist Rebecca was Jill's envious way of impeding Sidney's fame, but Jill didn't know that Sidney just fired Rebecca minutes before the attack, rendering Jill's murder of Rebecca mostly pointless.
  • She shot Sheriff Judy Hicks with Dewey's gun, expecting the latter to be dead. Later, Sidney finally manages to kill Jill with that same gun of his. What's even more ironic about Jill's last attack is that Judy was able to survive it with a Bulletproof Vest.
  • The ending of Scream 4 has Jill get her much-desired fifteen minutes of fame... immediately after she's dead and set to be exposed as a murdering psychopath.
  • Jill claims that Trevor's infidelity makes him a worse boyfriend than the murderous Billy Loomis; the fifth film reveals that Billy cheated on Sidney as well, gutting Jill's already hollow argument.
• It's All About Me: Jill is willing to kill all her friends and her mother in a twisted attempt to become famous like her cousin Sidney.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Although she initially appears to be critical towards Sidney, she does try to bond with her. After The Reveal, however, it all turns out to be an act. She even goes as far to kill Charlie, who was her accomplice, so that she can claim all the fame to herself, which subverts Even Evil Has Loved Ones.
• Just One Little Mistake: If she had not made a remark about Gale's wounds, which only her attacker would know, Dewey would have not caught on to her being the killer and its very likely she could have killed Sidney before anyone arrived to aid her.
• Karmic Death: Gets electrocuted and shot by Sidney after spending the whole night trying to kill her, as well as murdering her own mother, who was also Sidney's aunt.
• Kick the Dog: Her brutal murder of Trevor, who only wanted to make up with her, and confessed that he really did love her before she shot him.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: After learning that Sidney is still alive in the hospital, Jill attempts to kill Sidney in her ICU room, after she's already critically injured her. Unfortunately for her, Sidney refuses to go down that easily.
• The Killer in Me: Jill is the secretive version of this trope. Scream 4 seemingly sets her up as the new Final Girl to replace Sidney, only to reveal that she was one of the killers all along.
• Kinslaying Is a Special Kind of Evil: Jill isn't too far behind Roman in this department. She commits matricide, and tries to kill Sidney, her own cousin.
• Lack of Empathy: Being a Ghostface, this is a given, but Jill takes it to another level; previous Ghostfaces, while all detestable people, managed to show at least some concern for or camaraderie with (if no one else) their partners, and even Jill's immediate predecessor, Roman, had a backstory where he wanted to reconnect with his mother. Jill, by contrast, has no attachment to or regard for anyone, not her friends ("I don't need friends; I need fans"), not her own mother ("no great loss there"), or her partner Charlie ("what the media really loves, baby, is a sole survivor; just ask you-know-who"), and she casually throws away all the love and affection shown to her as part of her sick desire for fame. Even while keeping up the facade of an innocent victim, she lets her true self slip through by bringing up possibly writing a book about her "ordeal" mere hours after she supposedly survived a bloodbath.
• Laser-Guided Karma: A retroactive example. Jill's end goal was to gain fame for being the Final Girl of a massacre she herself had planned from the start. The fifth film reveals instead that Kirby, whom Jill intended to kill as part of this plan, survived her wounds, and is implied to have gained fame from her survival, further emphasizing that Jill's plan amounted to nothing in the end.
• Legacy Character: Invoked; she wants to be seen as Sidney's successor as the sole survivor of Woodsboro killings to bask in fame and adoration.
• Like Mother, Like Daughter: Downplayed. While both she and her mother Kate have issues with Sidney overshadowing them, Kate isn't a murderous psychopath like her daughter.
• Light Is Not Good: She wears light shirts that are usually white or some variation of blue but is anything but heroic.
• Love-Interest Traitor: Jill had previously dated Trevor, who spends the movie trying to reconcile their relationship. Jill manages to also be this for Charlie, as she planned to betray him and take all the fame for herself.

M-Y

• Made of Iron: The girl scratches herself, pulls out her hair, stabs herself in the shoulder, runs her face into a glass picture frame, and then throws herself through a glass coffee table in order to give herself convincing wounds. At the hospital, she's still able to start up another rampage, nearly killing Sidney and Dewey. A defibrillator to the head only momentarily slows her down. It isn't until she's shot directly in the heart that she stops. She's probably the toughest killer yet, and she's just a teenage girl!
• Manipulative Bitch: She fools almost everyone into thinking she was an innocent victim targeted by Ghostface, when the truth couldn't be further from that.
• Mask of Sanity: As her appearances up to The Reveal show, Jill is adept at appearing and acting completely normal, barring occasional, brief lapses in composure. However, when she finally drops the act, she proves to be completely and utterly insane, and a danger to everyone around her.
• Matricide: While it's unclear whether Jill or Charlie stabbed Kate while wearing the Ghostface costume, the fact remains that Jill deliberately orchestrated her mother's death.
• Meaningful Echo: When she finishes inflicting injuries on herself, Jill lays down next to the seemingly deceased Sidney with their faces turned toward each other. After finally being killed by the latter at the hospital, and falling to the floor, her corpse is on the side of Sidney with their faces turned toward each other again.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Her name is similar to "Billy," which hints at her true nature.
  • Her first name is a Shout-Out to Jill Johnson, the protagonist of When a Stranger Calls. In fact, she shares many similarities with the 2006 remake version of Jill Johnson, which plays into Scream 4's remake theme. Like Johnson, Roberts is a high schooler who just broke up with her boyfriend for cheating on her and receives threatening phone calls from a serial killer. This double as an Ironic Name though since Roberts is one of the killers herself rather than the hero.
  • Interestingly, when considering her surname Roberts, in its etymologyical sense, it means "bright fame," reflecting her desire to have a substantial amount of widespread attention as a fake Sole Survivor (even though she's really the mastermind behind the 2011 Woodsboro killing spree).
• Meaningless Villain Victory: Although Jill was able to either kill or incapacitate everyone at Kirby's home and briefly get the attention she wanted, she still failed to kill Sidney, was later found out for her misdeeds, and wound up dying before the night was even over.
• More Deadly Than the Male: She blatantly killed both her ex-boyfriend Trevor and her ex-accomplice Charlie, and has managed to pragmatically knock out Dewey after he finds out about her true nature.
• The Napoleon: Emma Roberts is 5'2" and portrays a psychopathic killer.
• Narcissist: You know how people think they are the main character of their own story? Well Jill realized early on that she isn't, and that drove her batshit insane. So she decided to try and actualize herself as the main character of her own story by killing her friends to "reboot" her cousin's survival story with her as the new Sidney. Her Evil Gloating is also so self-congratulatory on her own performance as the "good girl", it was as if she won an Oscar and was giving the least humble acceptance speech ever.
• Near-Villain Victory: Out of all the Ghostfaces so far, Jill comes the closest to nearly killing Sidney and getting away with her murders. It's only due to not finishing the job properly, unwittingly revealing she knew about Gale's stab wound despite it never being revealed to anyone, and grossly underestimating how much of a fighter Sidney is that she's ultimately thwarted at the endgame.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Her telling Dewey that she and Gale can write a book with their matching scars causes Dewey to realize a short time later that she is the killer and thereby bring about the sequence of events that cause her defeat.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Between kneeing Sidney in her stab wound, hitting Dewey in the head, and shooting Judy, Gale ends up being the only person able to stand when Jill is finally killed.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: With the exception of Sidney, Jill always tries to kill her targets as quickly as possible, and only may stop to make a deal or command.
• Not Quite Dead: With Gale stalling for time, Sidney is able to sneak up to Jill and electrocute her with a defibrillator to the head, briefly knocking her out. As Sidney and Gale are checking on Dewey, Jill grabs a glass shard and tries to sneak up behind Sidney. Sidney grabs Dewey's gun and turns around to shoot Jill in the heart, finally killing her.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: She pretends to not understand why Ghostface has returned when speaking to Sidney when she secretly is fully aware as one of the two killers.
• Offing the Annoyance: After becoming annoyed with Trevor, she finally kills him after stating her intent to frame him for the murders.
• Oh, Crap!: Her reaction when Dewey tells her there's a chance Sidney might survive her injuries; she manages not to let it show, but the implications of Sidney surviving clearly hit Jill like an anvil to the head, and as soon as she's alone, she gets up and rushes to make sure Sidney won't recover.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: She seems to have this attitude toward Sidney, as her stabbing of the latter causes Charlie to back off from trying to attack Sidney further, and she only tries inflicting a fatal wound after she has already killed Charlie.
• Only Sane Woman: Compared to Billy and Stu, whose plan she copies as part of the "remake" killings, Jill's plan is much more carefully thought out and better executed; she makes sure to wound Sidney before exposing herself as the killer, kills Trevor and Charlie before she's done monologuing, and stabs Sidney a second time to seemingly kill her before beating herself up to look like an innocent victim, never taking unnecessary risks that might make her lose control of the situation, like Billy and Stu did. As a result, Jill's plans come very close to success, with only Sidney's unexpected survival and an unwise remark being Jill's undoing.
• Parental Issues: Implied given we never see her mention her father and she had no problem killing her mother.
• Pay Evil unto Evil:
  • Her Bad Boss murder of Charlie, who was her partner in her killing spree.
  • There's also her kill of Rebecca Walters, who was behaving very callously about the murders.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: She's able to lift and throw Sidney, and then beat Dewey senseless with a bedpan.
• Playing the Victim Card: One of the most pathetic of the Ghostfaces in regards to her attempts at doing this. Jill clearly believes her life was far worse than Sidney's because she isn't famous. At one point, she claims that Trevor was a far worse boyfriend than Billy because his cheating on her didn't thrust Jill into the limelight. She is blissfully unaware of the obvious cognitive dissonance.
• The Prima Donna: While Jill's scheme to become famous ultimately failed, her behavior during her reveal scene evokes this, between gloating about how perfect she was in her role as the Girl Next Door, killing Charlie so she can hoard all the attention as the Sole Survivor, and making it clear to Sidney that she intends to take the spotlight away from her.
• Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: To Trevor. She personally kills him (after shooting him in the balls), and planned to frame him for her crimes.
• Psychopathic Womanchild: She's basically a sadistic 7-year-old child all grown-up whose plan amounts to is starting another massacre so she can get so much as a second of fame, a hopelessly banal and childish motivation for so much carnage.
• Pull the I.V.: As soon as Dewey leaves her hospital room, she pulls out her IV and gets up from her bed in a final bid to kill Sidney.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: She makes a point of shouting that she wants her turn at fame when describing her motive to Sidney.
• Sadist: She films all her murders to watch over and over again. She also clearly enjoys watching Sidney crumble after she stabs her with a look of sheer satisfaction coming over her.
• Sadistic Choice: Presents Gale and Judy with the choice of either giving them Judy's gun or she shoots the unconscious Dewey.
• Saying Too Much: Jill's idle remark about her and Gale's "matching stab wounds" turns out to be her undoing, as it clues Dewey and Gale onto the fact that Jill knows where Gale was stabbed, something only one of the killers would know.
• Secret Relationship: She convinces Charlie that they have this, only revealing her true intentions to Sidney shortly before Charlie's death.
• Self-Disposing Villain: Between killing the other Ghostface (Charlie), and stabbing Sidney non-fatally which allows her to relocate to a hospital and around others who can help her fight back against Jill, Jill causes more damage to her own cause than the protagonists. Justified as her scheme is incredibly high-risk and requires taking a lot of chances.
• Self-Harm: Does this to authenticate her role as the survivor of a murder spree committed by Trevor and Charlie.
• Self-Made Orphan: She kills her mother Kate, simply so she can emulate Sidney's own loss of Maureen.
• Seven Deadly Sins: Her desire for attention, mainly as a fake Sole Survivor, via serial killing has every single one of them being applicable to her.
  • Envy: The primary motivation behind her killing spree. She's so unnecessarily jealous of Sidney's legacy as a sole survivor that she'll try to emulate that status by planning such crime with Charlie.
  • Pride: She doesn't care about anyone but herself, even when she gets the attention she wanted as a fabricated sole survivor.
  • Wrath: If her plans as a fake sole survivor don't go as expected, she'll definitely loose her temper in front of anyone.
  • Sloth: She mocks the concept of working for fame and prefers to manufacture an image for herself.
    Jill: "How do you think people become famous anymore?! You don't have to achieve anything!"
  • Greed: All she ever wanted was to garner fame in front of the media to her self, especially so that she could be seen as a sole survivor in front of others.
  • Gluttony: She hungers for a huge amount of attention from others more than what's humanly edible.
  • Lust: She gets turned on from the public attention more than from her previous romances of both Trevor and Charlie.
• Sickbed Slaying: She tries to do this to Sidney when she realizes she has survived her injuries and can tell everyone the truth of Jill's role in the murders.
• The Sociopath: Even more so than any of the previous Ghostfaces, and a worse Bad Boss then the previous Big Bads towards their right-hand man. Even Roman wasn't as diabolical as her. Think about it for a second.
  Jill: I mean, for fuck's sake, my own mother had to die, no great loss there, so I could stay true to the original.
• Sole Survivor: Subverted. She wanted to be the only one who survived the assault at Kirby's house but Sidney and Kirby both survive too.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Invoked by Jill when she kills Charlie to take the spotlight as the Sole Survivor for herself. Jill also has twice as much screen time post-reveal as Charlie, who dies within five minutes of announcing himself as a killer.
• Stealth Insult: Jill consoles Sidney for Rebecca's death, but in reality, she is actually taunting Sidney for getting someone else killed.
  Sidney: I'm so sorry about Olivia.
  Jill: [beat] I'm sorry about your publicist.
• Suddenly Shouting: She has this during her exchange with Trevor after her true nature is revealed, and when she explains her motive to Sidney.
• Superior Successor: She gets further in her plans than anyone else before her. She even stabs Sidney! Just not fatally.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
  • While she initially looks like an Expy of Sidney, she actually turns out to be this to Sidney's half-brother Roman, especially with her motivation for wanting Sidney's fame for herself.
  • She can also be regarded as one to Billy, since her scapegoat plan is more or less the same as his, and she betrays both of her lovers.
• Tap on the Head: Delivers one to knock out Dewey after the latter runs into Sidney's room to stop Jill from killing her.
• Teens Are Monsters: And quite possibly the most monstrous of them all in the series.
• Third Act Stupidity: Jill rants about her plot to Sidney instead of killing her and making sure she stays dead. She decides that one stab to the gut is enough and doesn't bother with performing a Double Tap on Sidney, which allows her to be transported to a hospital and receive medical attention that ends up saving her life.
• Tranquil Fury: She speaks calmly before stabbing Sidney with the intent of killing her. She repeats this tone of voice when confronting her in her hospital room.
• Ungrateful Bastard:
  • Sidney wanted to protect Jill from Ghostface and even stayed around to make sure she and her friends were safe. She was rewarded by being stabbed by her cousin.
  • Both Dewey and Judy were the leading officers to find the injured Jill after she made injuries to herself and she likely could have died if her injuries went untreated. She later attacks both of them that night when they arrive to protect Sidney from Jill.
• Unholy Matrimony: With Charlie, until she kills him too.
• Victory by Endurance: She only wins the confrontation at Kirby's house because the latter and Sidney pass out and she assumes them to be deceased.
• Villain Protagonist: Played with. Scream 4 gives Jill plenty of screen time and narrates a good portion of the story from her perspective, but the Woodsboro survivors still get a good amount of focus too.
• Villain Respect: Jill seems to have this for Sidney. While she shoots Judy for giving her orders, and inflicts pain on both Dewey and Gale with no concern for their understanding of her, she takes the time to tell Sidney of her plot while the two are alone together in Kirby's home and never calls her out of her name like she does with Gale.
• Villain with Good Publicity: If only very briefly. The ending of Scream 4 shows several reporters praising Jill for surviving the "Woodsboro Massacre Reboot" but it can be inferred that the truth of her being Ghostface all along came out not too long after, considering that four people witnessed Jill's true colors and survived her attempts to silence them.
• Villainous Breakdown: In the end, after her plan falls apart, it turns into a desperate He Knows Too Much, with implications of Taking You with Me.
  Jill: Is this how it's gonna be, Sid? The ending of the movie was supposed to be at the house. I mean, this is just silly.
  Sidney: Consider this an alternate ending. You're never gonna get out of this, Jill.
  Jill: Of course I will!
• Villainous Valour: A thoroughly unsympathetic case. Like the previous killers, she doesn't know when to give up, hunting down Sidney just for her 15 Minutes of Fame to satisfy her selfish Greed, even if she has to endure an enormous amount of physical punishment. Rather than making her a badass however, the intention is more to show her as snarling and bloodthirsty rabid dog at heart, well beyond any possibility of redemption.
• Viler New Villain: Compared to the Ghostfaces of the original trilogy, she lacks a desire for revenge for a loved one like Billy and Mrs. Loomis, being content with being known for her crimes like Mickey, or frustration over not having a meaningful relationship with someone like Roman.
• Virtue Is Weakness: She invokes this when threatening to shoot Dewey to get Judy to give her the latter's gun, as she knows how much his wife Gale cares for him and would do anything to keep him safe.
• We Can Rule Together: Jill sells a version of this to Charlie to make him complicit with her killing spree, though she had no intention of following through.
• Why Won't You Die?: Has this response when she confronts Sidney in her hospital room.
  Jill: You just won't die, will you? Who are you? Michael fucking Myers?
• With Friends Like These...: She even lampshades this after mercilessly killing Charlie, stating to Sidney that she doesn't need friends, but fans (which is a strong indicator for her Lack of Empathy and being an Attention Whore).
• The Woman Behind the Man: She is behind Charlie's actions as Ghostface.
• Woman Scorned: Tells Trevor that she's not the girl one should cheat on before killing him.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Jill mutilates herself in order to make people think she was a victim.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Tries to kill Sidney after using her in a plot to mimic the latter's encounters with Ghostface so she can become famous.

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"Is this how it's gonna be, Sid? The ending of the movie was supposed to be at the house. I mean, this is just silly."