"Free hugs!"
A Jack-in-the-box is often a staple of childhood playtime and entertainment. Most times, it can be a fun toy for children to play with, but occasionally, it can also be a form of Nightmare Fuel for some. Either way, you can expect to see Jack-in-the-boxes pop up in media.
May overlap with: Jump Scare, Surprise Jump, Monster Clown
Examples:
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Advertising
- Double subverted with the Farmers' Insurance commercial featuring a giant jack-in-the-box that fills the entire front of a classroom. The professor demonstrates how accidents could be "a little scary" by turning the crank, with the onlooking agents presumably thinking a giant clown will pop out and destroy the room. However, on the "POP" note nothing happens... until about five seconds later when a space capsule falls through the ceiling and crushes the jack-in-the-box.
Anime & Manga
- Done in Uzumaki as a part of its spiral motif. A Stalker with a Crush for the protagonist is likened to one because he keeps jumping out at her. He is later taunted by a sinister hallucination of his jack-in-the-box and attempts to prove his love by trying to stop a car with his body. When they check his grave his corpse comes to life and jumps after before its rotted legs break off and he starts bouncing with a suspension spring that had wedged into his midsection.
- In Yu-Gi-Oh!, Maximillion Pegasus summons his Bickuribox, a cackling, vaguely clownlike/Grim Reaper-ish monster jack-in-the-box, to deliver the deathblow to Seto Kaiba's Saggi the Dark Clown. Oh, and did we forget to mention that Bickuribox stores a big scythe in his mouth?
Comic Books
- Batman: Used frequently by the Joker in all of his incarnations, particularly during The Silver Age of Comic Books.
Comic Strips
- Cul-de-sac had a school jack-in-the-box which, when opened, shot a clown into the ceiling. The class then spent the rest of the day hiding from it under a table.
Film — Animation
- Fantasia 2000 has a jack-in-the-box as the main antagonist of the Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major segment. He gains a Villainous Crush on the Ballerina, and tries to kill her lover, the Tin Soldier.
- Downplayed in The Great Mouse Detective; though the jack-in-the-box in the toy shop is not really doing anything, it does loom over the characters.
- The "Heffalumps and Woozles" number from The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh featured "Woozles-in-a-Boxes."
- The Nightmare Before Christmas, naturally.
- Toy Story had Hand-In-The-Box, a Frankenstein-looking hand attached to the spring of a jack-in-the-box, yet actually turned out to be good and helpful, along with the other mutant toys.
- Averted with the jack-in-the-box who shows up in Toy Story 3 (the one who constantly yells "New toys!").
Film — Live-Action
- Muffy was handed a deliberately scary one in April Fools' Day when she was a child.
- Clue: When the house is plunged into darkness, Mrs White is searching the nursery. As she is fumbling around in the dark, she triggers a giant jack-in-the-box which springs out; making her scream.
- Deliver Us from Evil features a scary jack-in-the-box (and the accompanying tune, "Pop Goes the Weasel") multiple times.
- The Demonic Toys series features a hideous killer jack-in-the-box called Jack Attack.
- In Elf, Buddy is the jack-in-the-box tester and every time one "pops", it freaks him out. Later in the film, he has a nightmare about the cackling jack-in-a-box.
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: What Pavarti turns her boggart into. Subverted in the fact that it wasn't supposed to be creepy. It was supposed to be the humorous thought to keep the boggart at bay. Why Pavarti found it funny is beyond most of the audience— that thing was creepy!
- One of the most terrifying sequences in the 2015 comedy-horror film Krampus involves a Jack-in-the-Box monster called Der Klown, a massive snake like figure with an unhinged, split jaw, which enables him to swallow people whole.
- In Killer Klowns from Outer Space the spawn of the titular Klowns hatch from what appears to be popcorn, and then they grow into voracious baby Klown heads on top of long, spring-looking backbones, giving them a Jack-in-the-Box appearance. The script of the movie also identifies them as "jack in the box creatures".
- In MouseHunt, the shadow of one is the cause of a Cat Scare in the attic shortly before the mouse is first discovered.
- A scary jack-in-the-box appeared in Poltergeist.
- Played with in S.O.B., which has both a giant "toy" jack in the box and a man as a "jack" (or is it "jock"?) Both play major roles in the featured scene in the Show Within a Show, appearing in both G- and R-rated versions.
Literature
- The jack-in-the-box in Neil Gaiman's horror story Don't Ask Jack (which was apparently inspired by an actual jack-in-the-box someone gave him).
- In Jack Yeovil's Drachenfels, one character is murdered and set like this — his bones are removed and the rest of the body is folded in a box with a spring, then sent to a famous spoiled actress.
- The group of evil toys in Dean Koontz's Oddkins includes a jack-in-the-box.
- The Origin of Laughing Jack: Laughing Jack first came from a colorful "Laughing Jack-in-a-box", which aged from the time the clown was abandoned and trapped in his box. When Isaac uses the discolored, dusty box again as an adult, it plays a distorted, off-key tune of "Pop Goes The Weasel" before releasing the corrupted Laughing Jack.
- The goblin living in a snuffbox in The Steadfast Tin Soldier by Hans Christian Andersen is often depicted (and sometimes explicitly translated) as a jack-in-the-box.
- In the Disney Fantasia 2000 animated adaptation, he becomes an outright villain, and in the end falls in the fireplace instead of the soldier and the ballerina.
Live-Action TV
- A relatively benign example serves as a plot point in the Doctor Who story "Kinda".
- The Twilight Zone (1959): In the episode "It's a Good Life", Anthony the Reality Warper changes a man into a grotesque jack-in-the-box.
Theme Parks
- One was used as the "mascot" for Busch Gardens' Howl-O-Scream in 2005; the commercial
for the event that year had the memorable imagery of its crank turning on its own while blood seeped out from underneath.
- A "Killer Jack-in-the-Box" was but one of the ghouls in Universal Studios' former Ghostbusters Spooktacular attraction. Like his spectral cohorts, he was designed by the Chiodo Brothers, and became a character in his own right in one of Universal's Halloween Horror Nights stories.
Video Games
- The short Alone in the Dark game Jack in the Dark (a promotional game for Alone in the Dark 2) is set in a toy shop and has an evil jack-in-the-box (who has the appearance of the main game's Big Bad) for a villain. The jack-in-the-box turns the toys evil, using them to kidnap Santa.
- In American McGee's Alice, one of the weapons is a jack-in-the-box that breathes fire.
- The Joker is the most prominent villain in Batman: Vengeance, so obviously he has these in his arsenal. Unique in that they follow you if you get too close, and they seem to breathe fire. You can take them down with either two regular Batarangs, or one Electric Batarang. You can also get them to follow you into the ugly green water which flows through the Gasworks.
- In Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, in the Claptastic Voyage DLC, there's a side quest involving Claptrap's fears as represented by a Jack-in-the-box with it's head being a scarred Handsome Jack.
- Deltarune: Both Superbosses invoke this, as they embraced their true nature of toys that the player uses for their own entertainment.
- When hurt, Jevil has his head knocked back, revealing a neck that is a bouncy metal spring or chain.
- Spamton NEO's "Chained Heart" attack involves a big springing heart with his face on it back and forth from the yellow panel on his chest to shoot bullets. Later in the battle, he adds two smaller hearts.
- Mad Jack of Donkey Kong 64 is an enormous jack-in-the-box that tries to squash Tiny Kong flat.
- Dungeon Keeper 2: The Jack-in-the-Box is a Booby Trap that scares enemy Worker Units to death when activated, then scurries over to the enemy Dungeon Heart and explodes.
- Five Nights at Freddy's 2: A combination of this, Perverse Puppet, Creepy Doll and Demonic Dummy makes up the thing that is the Marionette. Suffice to say, if you start hearing "Pop! Goes the Weasel" in your office, prepare for impact.
- Hello Puppets!: There is a jack-in-a-box styled after Mortimer. Turning its crank plays a music box tune until... the top panel opens slightly. Scout says that you must have done it wrong - but then Mortimer's head pops out, scaring (and annoying) Scout. On the head's hat is part of the security pin that is needed to proceed.
- In King's Quest VII, this is one of the ways Rosella can die. In the tree house in Ooga Booga land, there's a jack-in-the-box that will kill you if you open it.
- A creepy eel-like face pops out of a wind-up box in one of the Last Half of Darkness games.
- Shaco in League of Legends can put these on the map as traps. They even cause Fear when sprung!
- Lethal Company: The Jester is an indoors-spawning enemy who is a wind-up box with a pair of legs and a single arm. If it spots a player, it will follow them until it begins cranking itself. When it pops, it reveals that it has a Skull for a Head and will chase any player in the building for a one-hit kill until every player has left, in which it'll go back into its wandering phase.
- Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon has them, and it's made worse by this theme/laugh that plays when you activate them.
- One of these is used at the very beginning of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga by Cackletta and Fawful to steal Princess Peach's voice, spraying her with a strange gas that is then sucked in by Fawful's vacuum helmet to do so. If one looks closely, it can be seen that the Jack-in-the-box resembles Cackletta herself.
- Mortal Kombat 3: Played for laughs in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (as well as Trilogy), where some of the ninjas' Friendships consist of cranking up jacks-in-the-box for their opponent, which gets scared and runs off. Each jack-in-the-box is appropriate to whichever ninja you use; as such, Reptile's is a snake, and Scorpion's is a skull.
- There's a Spider-In-The-Box version in Nancy Drew: Legend of the Crystal Skull, although it's not all that frightening.
- Sometimes while crafting toys, a Sim from The Sims 2 will build a black version of a Jack-in-a-box which, unlike the normal ones, is rather sinister looking. It will scare most of the Sims that play with it, leaving them with a bad memory.
- Jacques from Spyro the Dragon (1998) is the penultimate boss of the game and the main boss of Dream Weavers. His appearance is very much like a Monster Clown Jack-in-the-box.
- In Wizardry 8 "Jack in the Box" is a buildable gadget that acts like a weak fear spell. Or you can put in the same box a demon doll instead and make insanity-inducing variant.
Webcomics
- Girl Genius has a really big one, in the castle of the maddest mad scientists around. In the nursery.
Western Animation
- In one episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, The Joker freaks out Guy Gardner during a forced death-race using a jack-in-the-box (with his own face, naturally), causing Gardner to lose his concentration and de-materialize his energy-car.
- Jack-in-a-Box, one if the villains in Cool McCool, is a maniacal crook in red-and-yellow jester attire that hides in a jack-in-a-box to scare and attack his victims. Whenever he speaks, his waist bounces up and down and his voice vibrates like a jack-in-a-box spring.
- Darkwing Duck features the ghost clown Paddywhack who lives inside a jack-in-the-box.
- In the Family Guy episode "Killer Queen", Stewie is terrified of the cover to the Queen album "News of the World", a fact that Brian exploits for his own amusement. At one point, Stewie finds a jack-in-the-box in his room, and very cautiously turns the crank, expecting the worst-only to have a regular little jester pop out. Stevie is relieved- until he turns around, and sees the entire wall has been painted to look like the album.
- Averted with Zebedee from The Magic Roundabout, who's a jack-in-the-box figure without a box. Played straight with his Evil Counterpart, Zeebad.
- Averted with Charlie-In-The-Box from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. He’s a good guy, just disappointed that his name isn’t Jack.
- Averted in the special Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town with the song "First Toymaker to the King."
''"The jack-in-boxes will always pop at every regal command."
Real Life
- Walgreen's has intentionally-scary ones in its stores during Halloween. Turn the crank, and "Pop! Goes The Weasel" plays, only for a Monster Clown to pop out and gives an electronically-rendered Evil Laugh.
