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The Books
In 50 years, the Goosebumps series will be studied in school literature courses.
Whole doctoral theses will be written on how these stories are masterpieces of the horror genre ranking with Edgar Allan Poe's work and The Martian Chronicles.- We can hope, can't we?
The events from "The Cuckoo Clock of Doom" are responsible for the Goosebumps 2000 series already ending in January 2000.
And for Goosebumps Gold to have been planned for a whole year later. After all, when 1988 never existed, you don't find that many twelve-year-old protagonists in 2000. At the end of "Let's Get Invisible", Lefty was just playing a joke
The twist is supposedly his mirror twin was successful in switching with him before the mirror was destroyed, but the book ends before it can be confirmed. Goosebumps Horrorland is Goosebumps Ultimate Universe.
More or less the same things that happened in the main Goosebumps universe happened there, too, but they happened much later and some (like, The Haunted Mask II) didn't happen at all. Some of the reprints share this universe, like the version of The Cuckoo Clock of Doom where the year that gets erased is 1998 instead of 1988. I Live In Your Basement is the REAL end to the Series.
The REAL Twist is that the Entire Series is All Just a Dream by Keith. Anything written after that is just more dream scenes. All Goosebumps titles exist in a multiverse like The Dark Tower.
The mascot Curly the Skeleton can travel between worlds a la Rod Serling of The Twilight Zone (1959). He was the voice saying "Goosebumps, viewer beware you're in for a scare" in the opening theme of the TV show. The Series is meant to be a Parody of the Horror Genre
It makes sense. Doesn't it?- Except of course when the stories are scary, right? Fridge Horror is quite common. The earlier stories are more of the type with an emphasis on direct horror. And there are the CYOA "Give Yourself Goosebumps" that in the same book may be a parody with one end, a subversion with another, a double-subverted discussed parody that then subverts its parody nature by becoming a Genre Savvy ending...and even just a couple endings that are played perfectly straight. Not to mention the use of ghostwriters, meaning canonical dissonance.
- Whoever said horror parody can't be scary? Let's remember Scream is both a horror parody and a scary horror film.
The girl on the front of The Curse of Camp Cold Lake is meant to be Sarah, not Della
She fits the description of Sarah a lot better along with being perfectly opaque, unlike see-through Della. And the surface looks like clammy cold white skin more than bone. Perhaps Sarah was killed by the snake, and her body was dumped in the lake to hide the evidence, but whatever magic was in the lake kept her from decomposing too much and somehow her soul stayed with her body/corpse and we got what we see on the cover today. As a result, she'll either be Nightmare Fuel, fetish fuel, or perhaps just Creepy Sexy/Ugly Cute in her way.- Wouldn't Sarah have turned into a ghost-like Della when she got bit by a snake?
The world where "Attack of the Mutant" takes place is Earth-Prime.
The creator of the Masked Mutant is psychically tuned to the Mutant's universe, what he thought was his imagination was events that happened. The Masked Mutant created an interdimensional portal that sent him to Skipper's world, via the comic book. The body-switch agency in "Why I'm Afraid of Bees" does illegal experiments with humans.
The reason there is no money involved is that they just want to test the switching method to make money later on. Of course, this is forbidden, so they aim at kids who are naive enough not to ask and of course, don't ask for their parent's permission. "Be Afraid - Be Very Afraid" is a never-ending loop because the book and card game is a trap.
The wizard character created a reality-warping card game and book which sucks unsuspecting individuals inside when they start to play the card game, and when it reaches a certain point, he gives the card and book set to someone else to keep the story going. The book gets longer or shorter depending on how many people are inside and whether or not they survive. For no other reason than For the Evulz. Wally is Mr. Wood.
In Slappy's Nightmare, another dummy, Wally, is introduced as his twin for Jimmy O'James to use for his show while Slappy tries to learn An Aesop about doing something nice for a change. Same cold blue eyes, the same expression, and looks exactly like him, except his hair color is never mentioned. In the first book, aside from their different outfits and the trademark chip on Slappy's lip, the only thing that could differentiate them otherwise is their hair color. Slappy is a brunette; Mr. Wood is a redhead. Therefore, it may be the same dummy with, a different name (and his brief appearance can be due to either the Goosebumps 2000 books being a separate series, or the All Just a Dream ending).
And a little on that note...
Slappy is a redhead in the show because the puppet was intended to be Mr. Wood.
As noted above, Mr. Wood is a redhead, and Slappy is a brunette. Note that there has never been an episode made for Night of the Living Dummy; it just starts with the second book. I have yet to find confirmation, but it's possible that there was meant to be an episode for the first book, but it was canceled for some reason (possibly because Mr. Wood is notably the more violent twin), and the puppet built to be Mr. Wood was just recycled as Slappy. The creators of the show were just too lazy to give it a quick paint job to be more accurate to the book.
- So that makes TV Slappy a Composite Character of the book version and Mr. Wood?
The world in Welcome To Camp Nightmare is the real setting of the entire series.
The Goosebumps series takes place in a horrifying Alternate Universe where various supernatural beings and mutants struggle for control of Earth.Camp Nightmare takes place in the future, where humanity has finally become aware of these dangers, and hyperspace travel to alternate worlds is accessible. Camps such as Nightmoon are organized so children can prepare to look for a better world.- Also, the various Crazy scientists seen throughout the series (Brewer, Deep, Hawlings, The Shopkeeper) are secretly researching weapons for the government to combat these supernatural menaces. After all, a bunch of deflatable green ogres wouldn't last 10 minutes against genetically engineered, carnivorous superplants.
The events of Stay Out Of The Basement led to My Hairiest Adventure.
Dr. Brewer's boss, Mr. Martinez forbid him from making any more plant hybrids, but secretly he reported Brewer's horrific experiments (as well as his kidnapping) to his superiors. The corporate heads decided to use his research to synthesize human and dog DNA for their alternative-child bearing project and had each couple swear to keep their child's real origins confidential. King Jellyjam was formed from Kraang Mutagen
In this case, the substance merged the snails and Jelly, as well as endowing it with budding Psychic Powers, similar to Dr. Rockwell and the Rat King. His existence was never revealed to the public since undercover Kraang agents carried away his body.- Or alternately, the campers he eats turn into the snails excreted from his skin.
The Masked Mutant was created by the typewriter in The Blob That Ate Everyone.
Or alternately, since the power was in Zackie's mind, not the typewriter, he was born from the imagination of another lightning-strike victim. The Masked Mutant planned for Skipper to defeat him.
Think about it. He knows full well he's a comic character created to appease a certain youth demographic, and he's not happy because he has no real control over his life. When the Mutant confronts the boy and reveals he'll have to kill him, he shows signs of remorse, even apologizing. The reason he targeted Skipper in the first place was that he knew the villain's weakness-why wouldn't he know that himself? He planned to scan the kid into the comic world, fake his death, and then run free in real life while Skipper became his successor. Both of the origin stories for Monster Blood are true.
After all, there's no rule saying a witch can't cast a spell on a dangerous military experiment. The military made it grow and make anything that consumes it grow; Sarabeth just made it obey her. Sarabeth's family were responsible for all the Monster Blood sequels.
The IDW comics reveal that Sarabeth had a granddaughter named Veruca Curry who's just as skilled in animation magic as herself, and still has fond memories of her Grandma. It's not that hard to imagine that Veruca's parents were enraged by Sarabeth's demise in the first book and worked behind the scenes to destroy Evan and Andy with the very thing that killed her. Slappy is Caesar.
His partnership with Susan worked out so well that he grew to prefer working with young girls. In Calling All Creeps, Ricky Beamer was always intended to be the Creep Commander.
The real Creep leaders had been observing that school for some time and concluded that Ricky would be the perfect candidate to forward their secret invasion since they needed a fairly intelligent, yet deeply bitter and troubled kid who'd be easily swayed to the dark side. They then planted Jared, Wart, Brenda, and David there (who'd be far too gullible, blindly loyal, and uncharismatic to lead themselves) and encouraged them to make life as miserable as possible for him, which would lead to him doing something drastic that "ousted" him as their commander. As what happens to every place touched by the Creeps, Ricky would soon kickstart the school's assimilation into a growing army, all under the impression that he was their true leader. After the events of Attack of the Mutant, Skipper becomes a Toon.
He turns into ink. Self-explanatory. 'Nuff said. Of course, he's probably a different breed from the Toons in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, considering that the comic book characters in this story can be hurt by things other than Dip. The Shopkeeper from Haunted Mask and Dr. Brewer are alchemists, with the Unloved/mutant plants being Homunculi/Chimeras
How else would they be able to create life so easily? Also, the Shopkeeper's disfigured face and the real Dr. Brewer's transformation into a flower? Truth's idea of a joke. At the end of The Cuckoo Clock of Doom, Tara isn't erased from existence, instead, she's teleported to an alternate universe.
So in the story that we know, Michael as a baby accidentally knocks the year 1988 off the clock, making Tara cease to exist because that's her birth year. Well, that's according to the 1995 print of the book. According to the 2003 reprint, Tara was born in 1996. Why? That's because, at the end of the 1995 print, she is sent into an alternate universe where Mr. and Ms. Webster gave birth to a daughter in 1996 instead of 1988. At the end of that book, she is sent to yet another alternate universe where Mr. and Ms. Webster now gave birth to a daughter in 2008 thus explaining the events of the 2015 e-book. Nick from the Horror Club in the Give Yourself Goosebumps book #3 "Trapped In Bat Wing Hall" is Nick Cave who grew up to form the band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
There's no indication that the book is set in the present day (or what was the present day when the book came out) there are enough Totally Radical elements to indicate the story is set around 1980, most notably how the game that all the kids love is a late 70's/early 80's style coin-op arcade game. Spidey and Mr. Chameleon are linked somehow
- They are both people who make magical evil cameras (Ok Spidey didn't intend to make his camera evil but maybe Chameleon sabotaged it somehow)
- Perhaps Chameleon is the guy Spidey stole the camera from.
The gas in Vampire Breath is the same gas from Welcome To Dead House.
- Both stories feature a similar gas/vapor that is necessary for the undead.
- The townsfolk from Welcome To Dead House are essentially vampires, just more haggard. The town's zombie-like qualities could be seen as withdrawal symptoms.
- The substance from Vampire Breath is bottled. The substance from Welcome To Dead House comes from a factory. Perhaps a bottling factory?
Should the comics continue, we'll eventually get appearances of past protagonists as adults.
- Since this series seems to mostly take place in the 2000s/2010s, (while the original series is in the 90s) it'd be an interesting opportunity to find out what just happened to these kids and how their supernatural experiences have affected them as adults.
- Carly-Beth is now a child psychologist who examines kids with anger issues and personality disorders.
- Billy and Sheena are renowned marine biologists who founded the "Deep Foundation", which seeks to protect endangered and rare sea life from threats both man-made and supernatural.
- Skipper Matthews still has his Elasticity powers and puts them to use as a private detective, because he's aware there are worse things than the Masked Mutant out there.
- Evan and Andy are a married couple and will usually pop up as Recurring Extras, with Evan still frustrated that no one believes his Monster Blood stories.
- Ricky Beamer, thanks to his newfound power, has become the CEO of a seemingly charitable organization that takes in homeless youth, but in truth, this is a front to amass more young hosts for the Creeps to infest. He might even be the villain of a future story arc.
IDW's Secrets Of the Swamp will feature the return of characters from the first Fever Swamp book.
- As the comic suggests, Will Blake was just one of a clan of werewolves living in the swamp. Both he and Grady will show up to help fight off the werewolf hunters, having made amends for Will's actions. And on that note, Cassie O Rourke will appear as well, but as one of the antagonists. It turns out that finding both her friends became savage wolf creatures drove her fascination with Werewolves into fanatical hatred, and she's since joined the hunters in a bid to purge Fever Swamp of the creatures for good.
- Jossed, unfortunately.
The Giant Enemy Crab in "Shell Shocker" actually kept Tara as a pet, rather than eating her.
- It would make an appropriately silly Twist Ending for Goosebumps (i.e. humans keep hermit crabs as pets, so a big giant one would want to keep humans as pets.)
Horrorland was created by monsters from Monsters Inc who weren't willing to adopt the new laugh energy.
In at least some of the books, Unreliable Narrator is in full effect.
Feel free to suggest which ones below.- Calling All Creeps-While Ricky may not be particularly popular, the extent to which he is actually targeted by bullies is *severely* overstated to help him justify his willingness to sell out humanity to the Creeps.
- Monster Blood and its sequels-The first book may very well be mostly true, but Evan did not have nearly as many adventures involving Monster Blood as he claims.
The aliens from Welcome to Camp Nightmare want to visit Earth because of all the supernatural entities that exist there.
Hence why the camp implied supernatural stuff was going on as part of its Secret Test of Character-Billy needs to be prepared in case he encounters a werewolf, vampire, or ghost, which are not hazards on the planet Welcome to Camp Nightmare is set on. The Series
The series takes place in an alternate history where Canada took over the United States.
It's the only way to explain why almost every character has a Canadian accent. This show and 'Are You Afraid of the Dark' take place in the same universe.
Both shows are similar. Maybe Ghastly Grinner and Masked Mutant knew one another. The Movie
