Halloween Trickery

Halloween is, of course, generally associated with costumes, treats, and the spirits of the deceased. Children especially enjoy Halloween traditions, notably door-knocking for candy. But what about those who are too old? Well, if you can't get treats, you can still engage in tricks.

Halloween Trickery is when people — usually, though not always, teenagers — pull pranks around the neighborhood to scare or annoy others. Such troublemakers can be seen egging houses, throwing toilet paper around trees, or making fun of kids. It is likely a result of boredom; upon reaching the age where they're too old to dress up, they realise there's not much to do on Halloween besides trick-or-treating and getting drunk. Another reason is that people may be easily spooked on the holiday, and far more susceptible to childish pranks.

Teens may use Halloween parties as an excuse to celebrate the holiday, but there's still a good chance they'll be painting the town red with tomfoolery. If what they're doing is illegal or cruel, they'll often receive their comeuppance. They may get arrested or punished by teen-hating adults. If not, they'll probably make it a yearly tradition. Another way the teens get punished is that they'll actually encounter the supernatural, and assume it is just someone playing a prank on them. In actuality, it's a vengeful spirit, a creature from hell, or even an evil mage.

Adults often engage with Halloween Trickery in the absence of children. Whether the kids are out trick-or-treating or partying, adults will use the time to have some fun for themselves. Afterall, you're never too old to celebrate Halloween.

Often, the prank goes wrong and leads to disastrous results. In rare cases, the prank injures or even kills someone.

Compare with Youth Is Wasted on the Dumb, Too Old to Trick-or-Treat, The Prankster, and Pranking Montage.

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Examples:

Films — Animated

• Invoked in The Nightmare Before Christmas. Three residents of Halloween Town are Lock, Shock, and Barrel, three kids in Halloween costumes who are constantly making trouble, whether it's by pulling pranks, or by assisting Oogie Boogie, the town's Token Evil Teammate. They are willing to cause chaos no matter what day it is, but they are still residents of the town that represents the holiday of Halloween.

Films — Live-Action

• Boo! A Madea Halloween: Madea's grand-daughter Tiffany sneaks out of the house to go to a college Halloween party. After being caught by her family, Tiffany is grounded. Madea reports the Halloween party to the police, and two obnoxious frat guys decide to pull a prank on Madea and her family. They lead them all to believe their house is being haunted, then chase everyone out dressed as zombies. Once Madea discovers it was a prank, she formulates her revenge. One of Tiffany's friends pretends to be dead in the frat guys' basement, and scares them into thinking they're responsible. Upon being arrested by the police, Madea reveals her plans, and the boys apologise.
• Halloween III: Season of the Witch: Exaggerated and Played for Horror. The Silver Shamrock company promise a TV special on Halloween that requires all the children to be wearing their Silver Shamrock masks in front of the TV. It turns out that they're planning to complete a ritual that will kill them all and turn their faces into snake-infested goo.
• Hocus Pocus: Max's bullies celebrate the holiday by throwing toilet paper on all the trees in the neighbourhood. They get their just deserts when they insult the Sanderson sisters and the witches keep them captive.
• Hubie Halloween: People from the town all mock Hubie for his love of Halloween, and they end up disappearing on Halloween. It's left up to the viewers' imagination if the kidnappings were a Prank Gone Too Far where Hubie's mother pretended she would burn them alive, or if she actually planned to kill them all.
• Meet Me in St. Louis: On Halloween night, Tootie and Agnes encounter a group of kids throwing furniture into a bonfire. They say that Tootie is too young to join in. To prove her maturity, she takes flour to the dreaded Mr. Braukoff and throws it at him, which the kids call "killing". She takes pride in her act, and the older kids let her toss the biggest piece of furniture into the fire.
• Mysterious Skin: In a flashback to one Halloween night, Neil and Wendy kidnap a young boy to pull a prank on him. Wendy is reluctant, but Neil is too persistent. They take the boy to a field and put him in a hole in the ground. Neil gets frustrated and puts firecrackers in the boy's mouth. He lights them, horrifying Wendy and the boy. We then see the boy collapsed on the grass with blood covering his mouth.
• Trick 'r Treat:
  • Our opening scene has a young boy smashing jack-o-lanterns, until he comes across the school principal, who calls him out for it, and gives him candy. Turns out, the principal poisoned the candy, and the boy forgot the rule of "Always check your candy".
  • Another segment has a group of young teens collecting Jack-o-lanterns, and then using them to tell a scary story for the purpose of pranking a girl. The joke turns sour, however, when the ghosts who were the subject of the story prove to be real.
  • A group of college girls are picking up guys for a Halloween party. The youngest girl is looking for a special guy, because she wants her "first time" to be special. She's attacked by a man dressed as a vampire, whom we'd seen kill someone else earlier. We cut to the party, where the girls scream as a body falls from the trees. It turns out to be the attacker, wrapped, with broken bones, and the girl who he attacked comes out of the woods, saying she'd followed one friend's advice to play hard to get, and the guy had bitten her. It turns out, he's the principal from the first segment, and he's in over his head, because the partying girls are, in fact, werewolves, and they'd invited the guys to dinner. The girl was looking for her first...kill.
• In I Was a Teenage Werewolf, the main character - a young man with anger issues - goes to a Halloween party with his fellow "teens" that is full of good-natured pranks. However, when he himself becomes the target of one, he violently lashes out. This is the moment when he finally realizes his anger is a serious problem and agrees to seek help, although unfortunately his therapist is a Mad Scientist who turns him into a werewolf.

Literature

• The Berenstain Bears: In "Trick or Treat", it's Halloween and Too-Tall says he wants to "put the trick back in trick-or-treat." He plans on pranking Miz McGrizz by tying knots in her clothesline, TPing her house, and smearing some glue on her broomstick. However, Miz McGrizz comes out before Too-Tall and the kids can do this.
• The Blue-Nosed Witch: After Child Hater Old Man Skinner is cruel and gives the children rotten apples as a prank—and accuses them of stealing from him and upsetting his hens—one kid suggests they should soap his windows. Blanche at first has Brockett yowl loudly, but when Skinner chases the kids off with his slingshot, Blanche flies up and blows his smoke backwards down his chimney—making him think his house is on fire—and then buzzes around his head as he runs back.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: On Halloween night, a truck full of teenagers go around spraying trick-or-treaters with a fire extinguisher. They later chase down Greg and Rowley when they threaten to call the police, and later throw toilet paper over Greg's grandmother's house.

Live-Action TV

• Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Once a Season. The Halloween Heists are a deliberate yearly tradition where the 99 try to outsmart and fool their colleagues in pursuit of the prize of "Ultimate Detective/Genius." Everyone takes it too far.
• Freaks and Geeks: Lindsay ditches her mother to hang out with the gang on Halloween, and ends up hitting mailboxes with a baseball bat.
• Modern Family: the Halloween Episodes run the gamut of this behavior. As Claire is extremely devoted to being scary, she usually tries to pull pranks on everyone, especially Phil and her kids, which Phil repeatedly tries to emulate, and Mitchell pranks her another year.
• Parks and Recreation: Every Halloween, local teenager Greg Pikitis vandalizes a particular statue, so one year Leslie sets up various safeguards to stop him, including spying on him with her police officer boyfriend all evening. Once she's convinced that Greg has been thwarted, she returns to city hall to discover that the Parks Department office has been vandalized. Greg snuck into city hall right after Leslie left work to vandalize the office, then spent the evening hanging out with his friends in a public place knowing she'd be watching him, giving himself an alibi.

Web Animation

• Homestar Runner:
  • Strong Bad is frequently seen indulging in Halloween pranks in the site's Halloween cartoons, like plotting to TP and egg people's houses in "3 Times Halloween Funjob".
  • In the Teen Girl Squad "Decomposing Pumpkins", the members of Brainkrieg sing a song about egging people's houses and shoving rotten jack-o-lanterns in their mailboxes for giving out lame treats.
    An apple is not candy!
    (You get egged, you get egged, you get egged!)
    Granola bars are not candy!
    (You get egged, you get egged, you get egged!)
    Pretzels are not candy!
    (You get egged, you get egged, you get egged!)
  • In "Halloween Hijinks", Coach Z is shown scolding the Sad Kids for some half-assed attempts at Halloween pranks, which involved leaving a few sheets of toilet paper on his front porch and offering him a plate of deviled eggs.

Western Animation

• Bob's Burgers: In "Full Bars", the Belcher kids take a ferry off the mainland to visit a wealthy neighborhood on Kingshead Island. They discover the residents are much more generous to trick-or-treaters, but also find out too late about the "Hell Hunt", where teenagers go around pulling pranks like throwing balloons of urine at kids. The Belchers thwart the Hell Hunters' plans by stealing one of the teen's crushes' phone, and texting about a fake party. This distracts them from tormenting the local children, and the Belchers save the day.
• The Loud House: Exploited in "Tricked!". Two bullies steal Lincoln and Clyde's candy, so to get revenge, the Loud family leads them into a scary maze, dumps fake blood on them, and in Luna's case, sings a scary song to them.
• Regular Show: In "Terror Tales Of The Park", Rigby throws eggs at a creepy old house on Halloween. It turns out the person living there was an evil wizard, who curses Rigby. Rigby turns into a house so the wizard can throw eggs and see how he likes it.
• In the Walt Disney short, aptly titled "Trick or Treat", Huey, Dewy, and Louie go to Donald's house to trick or treat, only for Donald to trick them. This is observed by a witch, and she uses her magic to help the nephews get even with their Uncle Donald.