Creator / Spirit Halloween

Spirit Halloween is a Halloween retailer (parent company is Spencer Gifts) that specializes in costumes and props. It is well known for its unique "themes", which are large displays that tie their animated props together under one concept, and their props are exclusive commissions that in later years have receieved written backstories and become signature characters referenced in other types of Spirit merchandise and displays after their debut. Their products are usually better suited to an audience of teenagers and adults, since many of the props are gory.

The props sold by Spirit Halloween are provided by other manufacturers, such as Tekky Toys, Seasonal Visions International, Yu Jia (YJ) Toys and Crafts, and a few others. Many of the props they sell are made exclusively for them, while others can be found elsewhere.

Spirit's "Monkey Chimes" prop was featured in the opening credits to American Horror Story: Freak Show.

Tropes used by Spirit Halloween include:

• Alas, Poor Yorick: Evelyn Leech is a crying bride who tragically holds up the zombified severed head of her (until recently) husband-to-be.
• Alliterative Name: Most of the prop characters with regular names have just the first name with an alliterative adjective before it, e.g.: Peek a Boo Penny, Lunging Lily, Bloodthirsty Betty, Waving Wally, et cetera. Roaming Rosie Red and Madame Morbida are examples that don't follow the pattern.
• All Webbed Up: The 2018 Cocooned Corpse, using the same writhing mechanism as previous dangling figures.
• All Your Powers Combined: The Spell Casting Witch claims that "all powers are mine now" in one of her spells.
• Anachronism Stew: Subverted. At first it seems like Peek-a-Boo Penny, an undead girl from the Victorian era or earlier, shouldn't know the "trick or treat" rhyme, but as it dates to the early days of the tradition, it's entirely possible she would know it from her living days.
• Ambiguously Evil: Heckles appears to be a sad and miserable clown who cries when people don't want to buy his balloons, but how much of it is a facade? It also helps that some of his phrases have more sinister undertones, and that his official description tells us that he fills his balloons with toxic gas.
• Ambiguously Human:
  • Most of the clown animatronics appear to be terrifying caricatures of people rather than humans in costumes. Henry Hustle is a good example of this, as he appears to be a normal human clown, until he reveals that he has a second, more monstrous head in his jump scare.
  • The 2014 Evil Scientist has Glowing Eyes of Doom, unnatural greenish skin, an exposed nasal cavity, and a mouthful of sharp fangs. Perhaps those were mutations from an experiment that backfired on him?
  • Little Daisy and the Maestro features the titular Maestro with glowing red eyes and sharp teeth along with a Voice of the Legion. In one of his phrases, he claims to be undead.
  • The Barnyard Butcher looks like a deranged man wearing a burlap sack over his head, but for all we know he could be just another evil living scarecrow.
• Ambiguous Robots: Thrashing Clown is activated by pressing down a TNT box, where he jolts to life with electric zapping sounds, and has a vaguely machine-like "powering down" effect on his crazed laughter when his animation sequence ends. Perhaps he's meant to be an in-universe example of a vintage boardwalk animatronic rather than a flesh-and-blood psychotic killer clown?
• Angry Guard Dog: The Jumping Dog, who "tries to take a bite out of everyone he sees". Also, Man's Possessed Friend.
• Autocannibalism: The Deady Teddy eats his own heart. Don't ask how that makes sense.
• Artificial Limbs:
  • 2021's Buzzsaw has a buzzsaw for a left hand and a hammer for his right.
  • Nozzles the Clown has nozzles for hands that dispense toxic gas.
  • Both of Zombie Soldier's hands have been amputated and replaced with mechanical buzzsaws.
• Awful Wedded Life: The Talking Skeleton Cameos joke about this.
  Male: Oh, my pet, you’re looking a bit melancholy!
  Female: Oh, I was just remembering how very happy we used to be, year after year after year…
  Male: And then we met! *both laugh*
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • Peek a Boo Penny's visual setup has you primed to watch her hands and that she'll move them to reveal her face. Her face ultimately reveals itself when her head pops up sharply behind them in a rapid startle.
  • Untimely Death isn't a statue of someone who died before their time...it causes your untimely death.
• Bedlam House: The "Spirit Hallows Asylum" theme in 2013. One of the nurses has been mutilated and tortured, a psychotic murderer is unattended, and many of the "patients" are zombies. An asylum or other abandoned medical facility also appears as a frequent setting in sneak-peek videos.
• Bedsheet Ghost: The Hovering Ghost and Bump and Go Ghost are two rare examples of this appearing in their catalogue.
• Big Red Devil: The Harbinger of Hell is essentially a cloaked reaper with red bones and horns protruding from his forehead.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: The Untimely Death Statue seems friendly and willing to protect you from evil...but the soul in her vase gives her away.
• Black Comedy: When they're not being scary, some of the animatronics can be morbidly humorous, especially the clowns.
• Black Site: Area 31, one of the 2017 themes, is a secretive research facility hosting monsters and aliens.
• Black Widow: The Grave Mourner and Black Widow Flaming Witch. Mourning Gory is a bizarre subversion; she's dead, but coming back to torment and probably murder her spouse.
• Blatant Lies: The Flaming Black Widow denies being a witch and having powers...while on fire from the inside.
• Blessed with Suck: Lost Her Way is a headless ghost...so, of course, she can't see and glides aimlessly around with no way to find her head, a story that lampshades her bump-and-go motion.
• Blind Mistake: Lost Her Way hopes to find her head again...but without it, she can't get very far.
• Body Horror: Several props move in very inhuman ways, like the Broken Spine Girl.
• Bowdlerise: The Morbid Enterprises Regan changes a very profane quote from the movie to "Do you know what she did? Your haunting daughter?"
• Bright Is Not Good: Invoked by 2013's Haunted Clown Mirror and Wacky Mole Clown, two evil clown props that are designed to pop under a blacklight.
• Burn the Witch!: Amusingly subverted by the Black Widow Witch, who revels in flames rather than being harmed by them. Apparently played straight for her family, though.
• The Bus Came Back: The effect that is created when certain props get re-released or remade after several years out of production. A new version of the phenomenon appears in 2022 with the crouching Li'l Skelly Bones— the return of the Li'l Skelly Bones character from 2015 with an entirely new animatronic mechanism.
• The Cat Came Back: Rosie Red's dialogue implies that her owner has tried to get rid of her before.
• Chainsaw Good: The burlap sack-wearing maniac Rusty threatens anyone who dares to reach into his candy bucket by raising his chainsaw in the air.
• Circus of Fear: The "Cirque du Spirit" theme in 2010 and the "Spirit Clown Train" theme from 2013.
• Clown Species: Indicated by some of the clown props' designs, which are caricatured and monstrous enough to not be (or ever have been) humans in the clowning profession.
• Conspicuous Gloves: Peek A Boo Penny wears a nightdress but also has gloves. This is because she's not as alive as she may look when her face is hidden.
• Creator Thumbprint: The different manufacturers who contribute to Spirit's lineup each have kinds of props that indicate the creator, usually due to recycled mechanisms.
  • Gemmy Industries was known for making life size figures that could collapse for easy storage up till 2011. When they returned to making them for Spirit in 2016, they used a pole based assembly.
  • Tekky is known for its "Rising from the Grave" and jumping props.
  • YJ commonly makes characters on swings. Seasonal Visions has started to make them too, most likely as competition.
  • Glow Parties and Morbid Enterprises sell many of the non-animatronic decorations. Most of the window clings and party banners are from Morbid.
  • Seasonal Visions makes towering props, rising props and grave grabbers. They also make several antique doll props.
• Creepy Cave: The 2020 'Jack's Cave' back theme is a volcanic cave within the tropical island setting.
• Creepy Child: Many of their most human props are examples of these.
• Creepy Circus Music: The vast majority of their clown animatronics have circus music playing in the background. Many of the songs used are in a major key, but when combined with the nightmarish characters they accompany, they are obviously meant to be scary.
• Creepy Doll: Several, ranging from roaming bump-and-go dolls to immobile dolls with sound chips. Some may rip off their faces, and some's faces may crack into giant jaws.
• Creepy Twins: The Double Trouble prop, two identical twin girls who speak in unison and turn their heads in perfect synchrony.
• Crossdressing Voices:
  • Several SVI witches were voiced by Mike Reynolds.
  • Tekky's Grave Mourner seems to be voiced by Mark MacLean, the primary voice actor for their animatronics.
• Cry Laughing:
  • In the background of Waving Wally's soundtrack, children can be heard giggling. As he keeps talking, the giggles shift into scared sobs.
  • Heckles the clown has a disturbing mopey demeanor which includes laughter that blends into sobbing.
• Cymbal-Banging Monkey:
  • Monkey Chimes is a toy-sized tabletop prop adapting the concept, being intentionally creepy. He got a successor in 2016, the Accordion Monkey.
  • Monty in 2022 is a larger-than life prop that more directly copies the appearance of the infamous Musical Jolly Chimp.
• Deadpan Snarker: The Talking Rotten Heads are pretty much undead, decapitated versions of Statler and Waldorf.
• Death of a Child: Their "Zombie Babies" collection features several monstrous, gory, and undead babies, and there are several older children among the undead props.
• Death Row: The name of one of the props, a prisoner in an electric chair during his execution.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The rare prop may use a strictly black-and-white design, but most narrowly avert it by applying a red Splash of Color for blood.
• Dem Bones: Several versions of static skeleton props are offered by the company. Lil’ Skelly Bones, Grim, Bag O' Bones, and Bone Collector are non-reaper animatronic examples.
• Demonic Possession: The Possessed Wall Hanger, Broken Spine Girl, Resurrection Mary, Lunging Lily, Floating Ghost Girl, Bloodthirsty Betty, and Demonic Dahlia props seem to be cases of this. While not presented as such in the themes (where she's made to look like an alien victim), the Levitator Girl also evokes this.
• Disgusting Public Toilet: In the "Last Chance Gas" theme, one of the props is a toilet with a zombie that pops out of it!
• Eaten Alive: 2011's Eaten Alive is a unfortunate man who ended up being the twitching, still screaming dinner of a giant rat.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: While the signature has always been there, earlier years had less cohesive displays and the company did not film them or their props for consumer benefit, and early years of the videos are less professional and comprehensive. Spirit has become more invested in their theme displays through the years, even switching permanently to two larger displays per year, and has since made produced sneak-peek demo videos each year to hype up their products.
• Eldritch Abomination:
  • 2018's Nightmare Harvester claims to be a creature from "another world filled with nightmares."
  • 2020's Nightcrawler also appears to be one, being a quadrupedal, nearly-indescribable beast, although his backstory says that he used to be human. He's also depicted as a mutated human in one of the LCD screens in the Reaper's Monster Lab theme.
  • The 2023 Death Stalker is a monstrous vaguely alien robed figure with an eyeless giant maw for a head, resembling something from a Silent Hill title or Trevor Henderson's artwork.
• Enchanted Forest: 2009's Wicked Woods theme is a forest infested with witches, reapers, and zombies. 2017's Spirit Hollow theme is an abandoned bridge in a forest, with a number of frightening inhabitants.
• Enemy Rising Behind: Ophelia in 2021 is a little girl with a demon's head swaying back and forth over her shoulders, taunting her as her eyes dart from side to side in terrified confusion.
• Enfant Terrible: If a child character in an animatronic is not a victim, they're the perpetrator, either through possession, monstrous elements, or corrupt morals.
• Even Evil Has Standards: According to the 2020 remake of The Gatekeeper's backstory, he was sentenced to guard the gates of the underworld for a betrayal so evil that even the residential demons look down upon him.
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: One of the most common types of prop sold by the company.
• Evil Cripple: The Wheelchair Psycho has one foot amputated and is bound to a wheelchair, but that doesn't stop him from trying to slash at you with his knife.
• Evil Is Bigger: The aptly-named "towering" animatronics, depicting evil humanoid monsters over six feet tall.
• Evil Old Folks: Gruesome Granny, Undead Granny, Wheelchair Granny and Mean Ol' Gramps are all monstrous depictions of elders. However, Gruesome Granny sings a relatively tame song (Rock-A-Bye Baby), despite her and the baby she’s holding being zombies.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Used by several props, most notably by the Creepy Rising Doll and the similar Abandoned Annie when they transform.
• Exorcist Head:
  • Many props perform 360-degree head turns. 2020's Miss Mercy the nurse provides a variation, as her head spins upside-down, and Stilts in 2023 features the same upside-down spinning motion.
  • The character who performed it in the Trope Namer, Regan MacNeil, has featured multiple times due to Spirit selling 3 different animatronic versions of Regan over the years. Each of these props naturally features the head-spinning motion.
• Expy:
  • The Creepy Sailor Boy seems to be one of Robert the Doll, as both are sailor dolls with teddy bears.
  • The Tragedy Haunted Doll is a visual reference to Raggedy Ann, with the full name implied to be "Tragedy Ann". It also references the real-life Annabelle, a supposedly possessed Raggedy Ann doll.
  • The Sawin' Wood Doll is a twisted reference to Pinocchio, being made to look like wood and wearing a similar costume.
  • Menacing Molly takes heavy visual cues from Wednesday Addams.
• Eye Scream: Most of the doll props have empty sockets. The Kneeling Geist Girl's eyes are hanging out of their sockets. Upon closer inspection, it appears as if she's wearing them as earrings.
• Face-Revealing Turn: Revealing a monstrous face is a common scare gag, and some do so by spinning all the way around to reveal the face.
• Facial Horror:
  • The Evil Scientist, who looks relatively normal with his surgical mask on, but when it drops down, his face is nearly skeletal.
  • Abandoned Annie is a doll example, whose cracked skin disguises a jagged mouth that splits open, disrupting the pretty doll face.
• Family-Friendly Firearms: The Shotgun Blast Zombie is a "half-buried" zombie designed to fall backward flat on the ground when the gun he comes with is "fired". The gun, however, is a bright green Nerf-esque design that looks nothing like a shotgun in shape or color. It's likely an aesthetic sacrifice to make it so the gun can't be mistaken for a functional weapon.
• Fat Bastard:
  • 2021's Buzzsaw is an obese man with a buzzsaw and a hammer for hands, and is also a murderous criminal on the loose.
  • The 2010 Uncle Charlie, a predatory clown, has a heavyset frame, but averted with his 2020 incarnation, where he's made over to look Lean and Mean.
• Fire and Brimstone Hell: Where the Harbinger of Hell hopes to bring those foolish enough to cross paths with him.
• Fortune Teller: Madame Morbida the Misfortune Teller is a creepy twist on old-fashioned fortune-teller machines. Before she gives each misfortune, her head rotates to reveal a zombie-like face on the other side. When in the dark, the effect is more startling, as the lights in the booth turn off while the head rotates, hiding the rotation.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Invoked by the lunging props, which play on the typical animatronic "show", with a static pose and a cheesy script about capturing the viewers...before actually trying. Also invoked with props like the Sitting Scarecrow, Jack Straw, and Demonic Dahlia, who are sitting props you would expect to stay as posed. Unfortunately, the Scarecrow pops up to an upright pose, and Dahlia and Jack lunge forward to stand on their feet.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: Spirit's animatronics may be aimed more towards teen and adult collectors, but they don't go too far when it comes to gore and other taboo aspects about them. However, there are a few examples of this trope coming into play:
  • Mr. Salty is a clown in a trench coat who literally flashes you, only to reveal a clown attached to him at waist height who is named "Little Willy" and lurches at the audience.
  • The Magic Power Hanging Ghost Girl hangs from shackles that are chained to her wrists. There's nothing really inappropriate about it, but in one of her phrases, she moans seductively and talks about how she's been "so bad."
  • This little bit from Peek-A-Boo Clown's description:
    Some stories say he got those ghastly scars from the Strongman after playing peek-a-boo with his wife.
• Ghostly Glide: This is invoked by the Roaming Antique Dolls and Lost Her Way, whose dresses cover their wheeled base mechanisms, and the Floating Candle.
• Giant Spider: 2022's Deadly Creeper. The Jumping Spiders and many static spider props are also fairly large.
• Glasgow Grin: The Creepy Rising Doll has a crack along her jaw that resembles one. When she changes, the crack splits open and turns the jaw into a moving mouth. Abandoned Annie's face splits into a mouth in a similar fashion but averts this trope. It's more surprising with her because her face is so cracked you can't see the seam.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: The Talking Cherubs are living sculptures of a cutesy young angel and demon, resembling the common "conscience" depictions.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: A lot of props are scarred or disfigured. Here, it's always indicative of evil.
• The Grim Reaper: Several, though many of them take the image of a cloaked skeleton and have different roles detached from the classic personification of Death.
• Half the Man He Used to Be:
  • Limbless Jim is a zombie with no legs holding onto a walker with his arms keeping him upright.
  • The Undead Fred and Crawling Cathy Grave Grabbers are legless zombies that move like they're clawing at the ground they lie on.
  • Poor George is a clown who was bisected and holds himself upright on his arms, and flips back and forth on them with his torso and head never brushing against the ground.
• Haunted House: The House of Horrors from 2011/2012 and the 2013 Haunted Mansion themes are classic examples of haunted houses.
• Hellevator: The 2016 Hotel display's elevators each contain one of their props; a screaming banshee, a corpse tangled in wires, a possessed girl, and the Boogie Man.
• Hell Hotel: One of the 2016 themes is a hotel full of monsters.
• Hell Hound: The Cerberus and Latex Hellhound props both depict monstrous dogs.
• Hell Is That Noise: Nightmare Harvester makes unearthly roaring noises between each of his phrases.
• High-Voltage Death:
  • Death Row, a depiction of a man frying in an electric chair. The control switch that can serve as the prop's trigger is actually called "High Voltage".
  • The Electrified Maniac has a more atypical version of this trope, with wires crossing him and shocking him through his wrists.
  • The Electrified Corpse is an example, too, being a man who died tangled up in and pierced by a mass of hanging wires.
• Hillbilly Horrors: Invoked with 2014's 'Last Chance Gas', 2015's 'Spirit Swamp Tours' and the 2018 farm themes, all depicting archetypal American Southern areas full of monsters.
• Hillbilly Moonshiner: Alluded to with the Moonshine Barrel Zombie, who resides inside a barrel some moonshiner (if not himself in life) must have made.
• Horsemen of the Apocalypse: The Pestilence/Sickening reapers claim to be "Pestilence incarnate".
• Human Head on the Wall: The Zombie Head Wall Plaque is an undead mounted trophy head.
• Humanoid Abomination: Boogie Man embodies this trope with his unnaturally long arms and warped face.
• Human Popsicle: The Cryo Chamber Corpse awakens from cryostasis, seemingly not the best preserved.
• Hungry Jungle: Invoked with the 2020 themes, which depict a scary tropical island.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: 2023's The Black Heart embraces a dead or dying woman, telling her that she will be with him for all eternity before lowering his head and concealing her with his robe. Judging by the Bad Black Barf dripping from his jaw and her mouth, it's heavily implied he's been kissing her.
• It Always Rains at Funerals: Mourning Gory carries an umbrella paired with her black funerary gown.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: The Collector refers to his victim as "it" in one phrase, and remarks how "you'd think 'it' would have the common courtesy to die."
• It's Quiet… Too Quiet: Lampshaded by the Looming Strawman, noting that silence is usually a precursor to a Jump Scare...one which he delivers.
• Jerkass:
  • Johnny Punk is a bully on a swing set who taunts you in his phrases. The prototype at the Flagship store featured phrases which took this trope a step further by insulting the audience with pejoratives like "pickle-face."
  • Baphomet, while being a terrifying demonic entity, is also rather petty, including calling the viewer "crybaby" in one phrase.
• Jump Scare: Numerous props manufactured by Tekky Toys and Crazy Create operate solely on delivering these, though startles have been used as a secondary function for some props as well and have come from other manufacturers as well.
• Killer Teddy Bear: The Deady Bear, Deady Teddy, Peek-A-Boo Teddy, and the Creepy Roaming Bear are various takes on an evil or monstrous stuffed bear.
• Large Ham: Almost all of their "character" props (that is, with dialogue) have over-the-top voice acting, such as the Flaming Black Widow and Talking Busts.
• Later-Installment Weirdness: Spirit's product videos have shifted from basic in-studio demo clips to produced, on-location sneak peek videos in the vein of Grandin Road's example, with the simpler videos dropping off after 2015, perhaps due to the rise in online review videos eliminating the need, or the increased focus on pre-opening hype. Later on, the themes narrowed in focus as well, with 2015 marking a shift from three themes to two per year, and 2018 marking a shift to making the two large themes each year be tied together under one setting or concept. Spirit also began treating its props' characters as more than one-off animatronics, penning backstories for the props, selling merchandise based on prop characters and having props begin to connect narratively to each other through their names and spoken dialogue.
• Laughing Mad: Most of the clown props cackle madly, though they're far from the only ones who feature crazed laughter.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The 2021 Factory themes use the setting as a fictional factory where Halloween itself is made, and the varied cast of characters is explained as the product of that factory via blueprints both displayed and sold. It's essentially a playful depiction of what Spirit Halloween does as the distributor and commissioner of these props and characters, in a way, being a factory of Halloween in its own light.
• Living Statue: The Talking Busts, Talking Cherubs, Cemetery Angel, Untimely Death, and Grim Graven Angel are all depictions of animate sculptures.
• Living Toys: Many props depict living dolls, teddy bears, and other classic toys gone wrong. Many years featured dedicated shelves for the small tabletop props of evil toys since they numbered highly enough. The Fright in the Box, Monty, and Mr. Punchy are life-size examples of monster toys.
• Looks Like Orlok: 2011's Vampire in Coffin and 2020's Lord Dakhanavar are visually derived from the distinctive look of Count Orlok.
• Mad Scientist:
  • The Mad Scientist, Undead Laboratory Technician, the Evil Scientist, and Dr. Illume are all animatronic depictions of mad scientists.
• Mad Scientist Laboratory:
  • 2008's Chop Shop theme depicted a Mad Scientist’s lab with various body parts and weapons strewn about, suggesting more sinister activities taking place there.
  • 2022's "Reaper's Monster Laboratory" theme features Edison Ball towers, bubbling test tubes, and fan projections that show twisted experiments involving some of the animatronic characters in CGI animations.
• Madwoman in the Attic: A mad scientist, his victim, and four possessed/undead girls reside in the Attic, one of the 2014 themes.
• Milky White Eyes: Several props have them for scary effect. The Rising Swamp Hag even references this feature of herself verbatim.
• Monster Clown: The Spirit Clown Train theme in 2013 was full of scary clown animatronics, and clown props have been a consistent and prominent presence in most other years.
• Mouth Stitched Shut: The Evil Rag Doll does this to herself, with the use of a giant needle and spool of thread.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Toothy the Clown claims that he shaves with a chainsaw in one of his phrases.
• Murder by Cremation: The Incincerator Zombie depicts an undead corpse popping out of a crematory, indicating that either the body revived while inside, or that the zombie survived an attempt to dispose of it by burning it up.
• Murderous Mannequin: Subverted. The Mannequin prop is haunted, but by an unhappy and plaintive spirit trapped inside without any evident malice.
• Neck Snap: The Widow from 2022 has a variation— she's a woman who snaps her own neck to the side under the influence of demons.
• The Necrocracy: The Emperor of Souls prop is a skeletal king sitting on his throne, and is implied to be the ruler of the Underworld.
• Nightmare Face: Several props have these, and many of them feature the reveal of their face through some means as their scary punchline, such as Peek a Boo Penny, the Face Off Baby Doll, Mourning Gory, and Henry Hustle.
• No Name Given: Since her successor, Rosie Red, was released, the Roaming Antique Doll seemed sorely lacking of a name. However their Haunted Doll counterparts in 2015 revealed the original Roaming Doll's name to be "Lost Lizzy".^note Although, since the small Rosie doll is "Red Rosie", it could be assumed that the larger blue doll's name is "Lizzy Lost".
• Non-Indicative Name: Cocooned Corpse is still alive and kicking despite being referred to as a corpse with no evidence of being a zombie... Unless he's slowly dying from suffocation/spider venom and will soon be a corpse, that is.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: The Animated Zombie Soldier is a zombified soldier... Who's also a cyborg with buzzsaws for hands.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Life Sentence appears to be the barred window of a dungeon or prison cell that fogs and shakes as loud, angry growling noises could be heard. All we see of the monster trapped inside are its hands gripping the bars.
• Nuclear Mutant: The Toxic Zombie and Hazmat Zombie both seem to be products of radiation or nuclear waste.
• Off with His Head!:
  • Lost Her Way is a stumbling spirit searching for her head, and is a life-size bump-and-go roaming prop.
  • Headless Help is an undead butler holding his own severed head. His backstory states that the man he was serving decapitated him with a sword after getting his drink order mixed up.
  • 2008/2012's Beheaded Bride is a similar example.
  • The Ghost Girl with Head holds the severed head of one of her victims.
• Ominous Music Box Tune: Many of the haunted toy props feature music box tunes in their audio tracks.
• Our Banshees Are Louder: The Twitching Banshee is an almost skeletal woman who screams loudly and thrashes wildly. The prop itself fulfilled the "loud" part pretty strongly and lacked a volume control option.
• Our Monsters Are Weird: Throughout the years, we've gotten some pretty strange and frightening creatures mixed among more recognizable Halloween-oriented figures, such as Boogie Man, Nightcrawler, and Death Stalker.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: All the werewolf props have very wolf-like faces and very human-like bodies.
• Playing with Fire: The Flaming Black Widow seems to be burning from the inside, and her dress has flames going through it.
• Plague Doctor: In 2015, Spirit carried a small hanging plague doctor who has been chained up due to unethical practices and/or unnatural control of the disease, and in 2020, featured a life-size hooded fogging plague doctor prop.
• Plant Person:
  • The Nightmare Harvester leans a bit toward this, as he has root-like feet as if he grew from the ground.
  • The Pumpkin Patch Prowler appears to be a monster made out of vines, tree bark, and a pumpkin for a head rather than a traditional scarecrow.
• Poisonous Person: Nozzles the Clown dispenses toxic fumes from the nozzles that are his hands.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • Subverted with 2014's Barnyard Butcher and Witch of Stolen Souls, who have been the first couple of props to use the word "Hell" in their dialogue, which shocked many commenters on their demo videos.^note Unless you count the Gemmy Pinhead animatronic from 2010. However, they only referred to it as the place. 2018's Bump 'N Go Chucky plays this trope straight by saying "Who the hell are you?"
  • The Talking Rotten Heads from 2004-2006 use the word "crappy" in one of their songs, a more vulgar level of language than most of the animatronics' dialogue ever features.
• "Psycho" Strings:
  • Scary strings are Used in the Undead Granny's soundtrack to complete the reference to the film itself, as the Granny is a creepy elderly motel owner with the same hair as "Mother" Bates.
  • The Creepy Towering Clown's background music features repeating notes that evoke the famous Psycho stings.
• Pumpkin Person: Most of Spirit's pumpkin-headed monsters are farm scarecrows, but Pumpkin Nester and Lil' Nester are more humanlike, the Pumpkin Guardian of the Grave is more like a grim reaper, and the Pumpkin Patch Prowler is purely plantlike.
• Punny Name: The Ghost Writing Book, Wacky Mole Clown, Deady Bear, Corn Stalker, Chester the Jester, and several others have pun-based names.
• Ragin' Cajun: The Rising Swamp Hag's voice indicates that she's a New Orleans bayou witch.
• Recycled Soundtrack: Many Tekky Toys props sold by Spirit suffered this in the early days of the company. Seasonal Visions props will also occasionally reuse audio.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The blue-eyed, blue-dressed Lizzy roaming doll is more playfully threatening, but red-dressed, red-eyed roaming Rosie is more outwardly aggressive in her threats.
• Repulsive Ringmaster: The Rotten Ringmaster is a freakishly tall circus ringmaster (with a Monster Clown face) holding a screaming little girl in a cage. His dialogue makes it clear that he kidnapped the girl when she wanted to join his circus.
  Rotten Ringmaster: My little friend here had dreams of joining the circus, where all her wishes would come true. How's that working out for ya? Hahahaha!
• Retraux: Waving Wally's non-threatening, faded appearance and subtler dialogue make him feel like an old boardwalk animatronic from the 1970s or so, giving it something of a meta element.
• Resistance Is Futile: A few props, such as the Roaming Antique Doll, taunt you by saying escape is impossible.
• Sackhead Slasher: The Barnyard Butcher and Rusty are both murderous characters with burlap sacks over their heads.
• Scare Chord:
  • Many of the Tekky jumping animatronics utilize a jarring, mechanical sound when they lunge at you, sometimes even including the sound of a girl screaming.
  • 2021's Ghostface uses a drawn-out organ chord after he pops out from the side along with the sound of someone being stabbed to death.
• Scary Jack-in-the-Box: Chester the Jester evokes this, as he's a jester who pops out of a toy chest. The 2020 Fright in the Box is a more straight example of a jack-in-the-box.
• Scary Scarecrows: Spirit has sold numerous scarecrow animatronics since 2007 including the Haunted Scarecrow, the Harvester, the Barnyard Butcher, Strawman, the Looming Strawman, the Swinging Scarecrow, and the Sitting Scarecrow (and his Scary Sitting Scarecrow remake).
• Scary Stitches: Prominent creepy stitching features on the Deady Bear, Evil Rag Doll, and Deady Teddy.
• Schmuck Bait: The 2016 to 2019 store displays featured the Sitting Scarecrow^note A startle prop who sits up and yells when its candy bowl is touched, whose try-me button is in the middle of its candy dish. The button is actually a decoy; the prop is set to sensor to provide a genuine scare rather than an anticipated one.
• Self-Made Orphan: The Double Trouble twins are described as these, and mention killing their mother in their phrases. Mommy's Favorite in 2020 may be another case.
• Sibling Rivalry: Betty Sharpe in 2022 puts a grim spin on it—dialogue indicates she's the sister of Mommy's Favorite and has done something awful to her involving her writhing bag so Betty could take her place as favorite.
• Sickening "Crunch!": Used by some props in moments of gruesome unnatural motion.
• Sinister Subway: "Spirit Station Z", one of the 2015 themes.
• Skeletal Musician: The Janglin' Bones Trio are skeletons playing instruments.
• Soul Jar:
  • The Witch of Stolen Souls' lantern traps the souls of lost children to keep it glowing. The lantern was also sold separately from the animatronic.
  • The Untimely Death Statue holds one in her hands.
  • While the written story for Heckles the Clown says his balloons contain poison gas, the balloon he holds flashes with images of a ghostly face, indicating he keeps souls in them as well.
• Spiders Are Scary:
  • The very popular Jumping Spider prop that debuted in 2011, which comes in black, brown, and red/black versions. The 2016 Attack Spider is more realistic, and darts forward laterally, rather than jumping upward.
  • The 2018 Cocooned Corpse is a thoroughly wrapped-up victim of scary spiders.
  • The Deadly Creeper from 2022 is a huge animatronic spider, so large it couldn’t easily fit into the normal displays at Spirit which left it to be a “box-only” animatronic.
• Spiritual Successor: Several props have recycled technology or concepts, such as the series of different roaming dolls or the Electrified Maniac following the retirement of Death Row.
• Stage Whisper: The Grave Watcher and Lunging Lily speak in loud whispers.
• Stock Scream: The Broken Spine Girl, Resurrection Mary, and Twitching Banshee use different versions of common horror stock audio of a tortured female scream.
• Stock Sound Effects: Several props use stock audio as sound effects.
• Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: The Ghost Girl with Head/Donna the Dead prop is a pale black-haired ghost wearing a black nightgown instead of the usual white kimono. Several other female animatronics invoke this appearance, with most of them being possessed girls.
• Subverted Trope: A few props invoke this, subverting common visual gags or Halloween prop tropes by presenting a situation with an expectation before going completely against that expectation. For example:
  • Peek A Boo Penny is a girl holding her hands in front of her face. The expectation, per the name and visual, is that she moves her hands to reveal her face, but her hands are completely static. Her head isn't.
  • The lunging props play on the expectation that they're mostly static and only recite a cheesy script about taking you with them...but then they actually try.
  • The Sitting Scarecrow, Rusty, and Jack Straw are take on the classic "dress up like a scarecrow" prank. They look like harmless sitting stuffed dummies, but when trick-or-treaters go for candy, the Sitting Scarecrow sits up straight with a scream, Rusty raises a chainsaw while shaking madly, and Jack Straw springs forward to stand on his feet.
  • Mourning Gory covers her face with an umbrella. Instead of raising it, she sharply twirls it around to the side with a removed panel, revealing her face behind it.
  • The Broken Spine Girl and Menacing Molly are both props facing backwards. Most props with their back to you will perform a Face-Revealing Turn via Exorcist Head. Instead, they bend their backs at unnatural angles.
  • Menacing Molly has an extra subversion in that swinging props commonly do nothing but speak to the viewer, so her startle is unexpected to those familiar with the more cheesy or atmospheric swinging props before her.
  • 2021's Henry Hustle at first looks like a successor to Waving Wally, being a retro-looking clown with a simple arm gesture. Turns out he's actually more like Peek A Boo Penny, as his true head pops up from under the fake one in a startle scare.
• Swamps Are Evil: One of the themes in 2015 is a sinister Voodoo Swamp populated by zombies, a witch, a haunted doll, and a werewolf rug among others.
• Television Portal: The Terror TV has a ghostly face that pushes out from behind the screen.
• That Makes Me Feel Angry: The original trio of Haunted Dolls and Roaming Rosie Red say different forms of this phrase.
• Things That Go "Bump" in the Night:
  • The Boogie Man prop is named after the boogeyman trope and resembles a monster from a scary story or nightmare.
  • 2015’s Lil’ Nester mentions that you shouldn’t be afraid of such beings in one of his phrases.
• Torso with a View: See Thru Sindy, a static prop, and the Shotgun Blast Zombie, an animated one, both feature circular holes right through their torsos.
• Undead Child: Pretty much every child character depicted by a Spirit prop is implied to be undead or possessed...or perhaps both.
• Updated Re-release: Spirit has rereleased several props with mechanical or aesthetic tweaks, and has developed a pattern of reviving props that had retired several years prior with tweaked rereleases or complete remakes.
• Vader Breath: The 2020 Plague Doctor's audio only consists of creepy heavy breathing and wheezing sounds.
• Volcanic Veins: The Smoldering Zombie props have glowing fiery veins going through their blackened skin.
• Waking Up at the Morgue: The Bloody Bag of Jokes is a bloody clown in a body bag, who seems perfectly alert. The John Doe prop also depicts this scenario, as well as the similar Toe Tagged Corpse.
• Wall Crawl: A couple of possessed props depict people clinging unnaturally to the walls. The Possessed Wall Hanger is explicitly meant to do this, and one display option for the crawling Bloodthirsty Betty is to mount her on a wall.
• When Trees Attack: The Haunted Tree, Talking Tree Face, and Deadly Roots props are all monster tree animatronics.
• Wicked Witch: Many of the witch props are examples of the classic Halloween image, with pointy hats, green skin, sharp faces, and brooms or cauldrons.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • The Towering Boogeyman and the Towering Sweet Dreams Clown both have kicking and screaming children in their clutches. Whatever they plan on doing to the poor kids is anything but pleasant.
  • Clowning Around has two children held in both hands, and even sings about biting off their heads in one phrase.
  • The Tug-Of-War Clowns take it a step further by playing tug-of-war using a little girl.
  Chatters: Just don't pull so hard this time. You broke the last one.
  • The Harvester of Souls devours the soul of a little girl.
  • Ophelia is a child tormented and/or possessed by an evil spirit looming behind her and taunting her.
• X-Ray Sparks: The Electrified Maniac has a black bag over his head that cartoonishly reveals his glowing skull underneath as he gets electrocuted.
• Your Soul Is Mine!:
  • 2020's Harvester of Souls holds a young girl up and has fog effects as if sucking out her soul.
  • Several other props feature dialogue indicating they plan to take the viewer's soul from them.
• Zombie Apocalypse: 2011’s Zombie Wasteland, 2014’s Last Chance Gas and 2015’s Spirit Station Z themes are populated foremost by zombies.