"You" are being taken to a carnival once more... only discovering too late that it's the Carnival of Horrors you faced before! Now, you must once again face the carnival rides or its midway in order to escape before midnight, lest you be trapped forever.
It was the first and only book of the GYB series to be a direct sequel to another book in the same series, and the first GYB book to be a sequel to any other Goosebumps book.
This book provides examples of:
- Amusement Park of Doom: The Carnival of Horrors, as in the first book.
- Calculator Spelling: Challenging Big Al to the games and you get your final score: 53507 34. Or "HE LOSES" when flipped around.
- Cutting Off the Branches: This book assumes one of the good endings from its prequel, despite there having been several — and it's actually a plot point, since one of the first things you do on one story path is try to find the same ride you escaped in the first time.
- Exact Words: The frog-like owner of the road race game promises that if you lose you won't be killed by a blue tornado like the previous loser was. Once you lose the game, you are instead killed by a purple tornado.
- Eye of Newt: You can pick up a can of Ghoulie-Cola, but then you check it's ingredients and finds out it contains "Eye of Newt, Toe of Frog..." you immediately decides you're NOT thirsty anymore and chucks the can away.
- Failure Is the Only Option: Playing Q Quest will end badly regardless of what number you pick. This is because A: You're told to pick a number between 8 and 14, but no matter what number you pick, you'll land on the skull image, and B: There's only one page you can go to and it leads to an ending where you're turned into a skeleton.
- Food Eats You: One of the worst endings in the book sees you getting devoured by hot dogs.
- Giant Squid: There's a water tank in the carnival containing one such creature, which can drag you in via tentacles if you enter the water. There's also an inversion where you face off against a horde of tiny baby squid instead.
- Here We Go Again!: You can escape the Carnival, just like in the previous book, but you'll be rewarded with Free Passes to re-visit the carnival.
- Hollywood Acid: One ending features acidic slugs that burn "you" to death instantly.
- Intercontinuity Crossover: One of the items you can obtain and use is the cursed camera from Say Cheese and Die! — you even lampshade that this reminds you of one from a Goosebump book you read about a haunted camera.
- Rapid Aging: Used as a bad ending — you don't die, but you become really old within seconds.
- Sequel Episode: To Escape from the Carnival of Horrors. You're even the same character from that very book.
- Series Continuity Error: This book assumes that you followed one particular storyline of Escape from the Carnival of Horrors and achieved a certain ending (see Cutting Off the Branches.) However, Return also refers to several elements of the first book's other storyline, which "you" are supposed to have encountered when you visited the carnival before — even though this would be impossible, if you reached the ending that Returns takes as canon.
- Snake Pit: A botched escape from the roller coaster sees you dropping into a dark pit, which is home of a kid-devouring giant python.
- Stripped to the Bone: Losing the Q Quest and you turn into a living skeleton on the spot.
