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Series In General
"You will not destroy the game. THE GAME WILL DESTROY YOU!"
- The Stalker, as pictured on the right. A demonic Grim Reaper-like figure who is implied to be at least the avatar for whatever sentience controls Jumanji (expanded material explicitly describes him as both Jumanji's protector and a "Game Over" demon). In the episode "No Dice", he wants the titular dice and is a total Implacable Man. He continues to follow Alan, wanting to kill him and restore the game, chasing him deep into the clockwork that makes up the game.
- His first appearance in "No Dice" has him riding out of a tunnel with a fiery light behind him. It makes it look like he's coming out of Hell.
- In addition to being technologically adept like the other villains, the Stalker has a form of in-game invulnerability (like Van Pelt below) and is implied to have a Touch of Death. When he encounters Van Pelt, he's holding the now-dead jaguar Van Pelt was hunting. After he grabs Peter's foot and Peter slips out of the shoe he grabs, the shoe melts in the Stalker's grip.
- The Stalker appears in several other episodes as well. He doesn't get any less scary. Not at all. The scariest part about the Stalker is that everything else in the game is terrified of him (a Manji warrior runs away screaming as soon as he sees the Stalker). When he recruits other villains, they are flat-out horrified he showed up, including Van Pelt and Professor Ibsen. Also, he's able to make those villains, who do not like each other and have worked against each other in the past, team up.
- While the Fridge and Headscratchers pages argue that, in the movie, Jumanji actually bends the rules to avoid killing its players and giving them a chance, that is explicitly not the case here. The very first episode has Alan explain that most of his toys are the only things left of other kids who found the game and rolled the dice.Van Pelt: Jumanji IS NOT A GAME!
- Van Pelt is explicitly an Ax-Crazy psycho who lives to kill anything he can find. In one episode, the kids have to sneak around in his house to steal his hat and accidentally wake him up while he's sleeping. They initially send him back to sleep by claiming to be the maid, but then he bolts upright and reminds himself that he shot the maid yesterday.
- In episode 4, right before Aunt Nora escapes from Van Pelt, you can see heads of children mounted on his wall. Van Pelt later tries to do the same to Nora and the kids.
- The Reveal that the game requires that there must always be a hunter, so if you kill Van Pelt, you immediately take his place. Which means Van Pelt might not be the first, but may just be an unlucky previous player.
- Worse in that the above nearly happens to Peter, before Alan and Judy figure a way to bring Van Pelt back. Made even worse in that Peter intended to GOAD Alan into killing him so that HE would become Van Pelt forever.
- Professor Ibsen is an exceptionally terrifying case of a Mad Scientist, since he creates all sorts of deadly creatures for Jumanji simply because the game tells him to and he sees himself as above any responsibility his creations do when killing the players. In his first appearance, he uses a laptop taken from the real world to take over Jumanji and essentially declare himself "Jumanji" (effectively God). He becomes more vengeful and dangerous after the kids foil his plans.
- In Episode 7 of Season 2, he captures and replaces Alan with a robot duplicate, and does the same with Peter. He plans to send Robot Peter into the real world to lure more children into Jumanji to provide the jungle with more victims while he repopulates the real world with more of his automatons until eventually he'll replace everyone and basically kill off all the real people in favor of his automatons. He says all this with a giddy glee.
- The show's opening
is quite creepy, showing several animals with huge sharp teeth and empty blank eyes, many of which roar or even downright jump at the screen, all set to dark backgrounds and ominous music. Heck, even the antelope looks like it's about to eat you! - The scary theme that plays every time the Main Characters are trying to survive in Jumanji is hauntingly ominous. Especially when you consider it is the same theme that played in Courage the Cowardly Dog when King Ramses first appeared.
- The Transvector of Jumanji. This ancient and mysterious device has the power to open a portal into a desolate and hellish nightmare dimension. And of course, Alan gets the honor of experiencing this world first hand. Highlights of this nightmare world include: flowers that inflate Alan like a balloon presumably to make him pop, Killer artificial trees and robot spiders, crumbling ruins, and last but certainly not least, a massive worm that can assimilate anything into it. First Ibsen’s road roller-like vehicle falls on it. The worm emerges now mechanical and with a grinder in its mouth. Then the worm munches on a tree and it can now transform into a cannon that fires logs like cannonballs.
Specific Episodes
- In "The Masked Identity", the Manji Tribe uses a ritual to make Peter into one of them. While he certainly looks silly as a Manji (sort of like a big potato chip with a face), Peter slowly starts to lose his humanity and nearly forgets his human life. This brings up the possibility that many of the Manji Tribe are actually children who played the game…
- In "The Magic Chest", Peter finds and takes a small chest full of gold coins from Jumanji, which turn out to turn whoever touches them into an animal. When he returns the Brantford, he uses one of the coins to buy a Super Squirter Water Jet from a toy store. Shortly after, the surly shopkeeper who Peter gave the gold coin to transforms into a frightening rhinoceros hungry for more of the gold coins. He does turn back to normal after Peter throws the chest into the ocean in Jumanji.
- "Nothing to Fear" breaks the Never Say "Die" trope for good and has Alan worrying about growing old and dying in the game. While being subjected to Ibsen's Triangle of Terror, which can read and materialize your worst fears, he is confronted by his own tombstone (which laughs at him) and a mad version of himself in his old age.Old Alan: What's the hurry? You got nothing but time!
- In one of those fears, Alan finds himself in the house, where adults Peter and Judy leave the latter's daughter with a babysitter while they visit Jumanji to try to free Alan. We see Judy's daughter looking up at the intimidating-looking babysitter. Perhaps one of the reasons Alan wants the pair to give up trying to free him is because he doesn't want them to grow up to be neglectful parents because of him or, worse, they might never come back.
