Wren: Anyone in town could be a monster! Even. Your. Mom.
Everett: My mom made pancakes this morning and warmed the syrup! Would a monster do that?!
While trying to get their very own store bought costumes of Abe Lincoln Jr: Interdimensional Mega-Hero Wren, Reynold, Everett, and Lucy stumble upon Norm’s, a costume shop housing some home-made materials for costumes of their own design. The costumes come in handy when they’re attacked by a nougat-hungry monster in a human suit, upon which they’re transformed into the costumes they’ve created for themselves and fight the monster off! Now possessing great power and not knowing who they can trust, the four must team up to stop the monsters!Everett: My mom made pancakes this morning and warmed the syrup! Would a monster do that?!
Based on the video game of the same name by Double Fine, Costume Quest is an Animated Adaptation created by Frederator Studios. The first half of Season 1 premiered on March 7th, 2019.
The Costume Quest animated series provides examples of:
- Animorphism: Most of Lucy's costumes are animals, employing this trope. The other kids occasionally get in on it with some of their own as well.
- Artistic License – Geology: In this universe Nougat is a candy mineral that is mined straight from the ground.
- Becoming the Costume: The kids turn into the home-made costumes they create from the costume parts they get at Norm's.
- Broken Pedestal:
- Forget about Roody Toots being an ugly gremlin repugnian, he's a condescending abusive sell-out who advertised cheap uninspired Halloween costumes by insulting everyone else's original handcrafted creations. Wren doesn't take the insults well.
- Wren also doesn't take learning about Norm being a monster very well.
- Canon Foreigner: Norm the costume shop owner never appeared in the games.
- Captain Ersatz: Parodied. Wren insists her costume is of the famous character Hat Detective, but Everett correctly assumes she's talking about Sherlock Holmes and has no problem naming the Public Domain Character himself.
- Cooking Show: Baking Betty, the show that Norm and all the main four's parents watch in "Baking is Best with Friends", also a Show Within a Show.
- Company Town: Auburn Hollow is a parody of mining towns, where the main export of their mines was nougat.
- Force and Finesse: Wren is force with her hard-hitting offensive costumes (like Abe Lincoln Jr. or a dinosaur), while Reynold is finesse with his costumes leaning more towards defense/support (such as his ghost or magician costumes).
- Fan Convention: The setting of "The Big Con" takes place entirely at one, the focus being primarily on Roody Tootz and his Abe Lincoln Jr. costume contest.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: the main cast fit into each Temperament quite nicely, with Wren as the hotheaded leader (choleric), Reynold as the constantly worried foil to his sister (melancholic), Lucy as the calmer quiet smart team member between her and Reynold (phlegmatic), and Everett as the people-oriented optimist (sanguine).
- Fusion Dance: In the third episode Lucy guides the kids into using their imaginations to combine into an elephant to escape a room they're trapped in.
- Gender Bender: Almost all of Wren's costumes are of male characters, keeping with her Tomboy persona.
- G-Rated Drug: Nougat functions as this for the monsters, causing them to drool purple and abandon all reason trying to get to it.
- Headless Horseman: Wren's costume in "Baking is Best with Friends" is Headless Horse-Wren, actually.
- Heel–Face Turn: Rudy Toots and a pair of Grubbins turn against Bob in the climax.
- Human Disguise: The monsters have them, and it's why the kids don't know who they can trust.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Norm's plot in "Baking is Best with Friends" involves him becoming a Nervous Wreck trying to relate to the parents of the kids when they invite him over. It's also why he hides the fact that he's a monster from the kids in "Secrets and Lies".
- Latex Perfection: The Human Disguise suits the Repugnians wear, to the point that when Wren zips one up to use it as a disguise, she can move around perfectly despite it being much taller than her, and the monster who normally wears it is much too big to fit in it if it were a normal costume.
- Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Wren and Reynold, respectively.
- Mining for Cookies: Nougat
, a confection that's a part of some candy bars, is mined and shipped out as the main export of Auburn Hollow. - Nobody Can Die: Justified. The monsters have personal human lives, and the kids have doting parents. If either of them go missing during Halloween season, the town will freak. Violently. Both sides also have a Last Chance Hit Point ability; the kid's costumes revert and the monsters turn into 'grubbins', tiny cowardly imps.
- Polar Opposite Twins: Wren and Reynold.
- Power-Up Food: Nougat, for the Grubbins.
- Pragmatic Villainy: "Hey, why don't we just eat the children-" *One-Hit Grubbification*Bob: Missing kids equals angry parents equals angry town! The last thing we want right now is a mob of pitchforks and torches!
- Souvenir Land: Nougatown, the theme park in Auburn Hollow in which multiple episodes take place.
- Stumbled Into the Plot: Our four protagonists' Origin Story is that they were trying to look for Halloween costumes and went into Norm's store.
- Tomato Surprise: Due to the monsters having very convincing Human Disguise suits, characters are revealed to be monsters in disguise with some frequency, so far the most important among them being Roody Tootz and Norm.
- Unobtainium: Nougat in Auburn Hollow is mined. Apparently that's why it gives certain monsters superpowers.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: All of the kids when they're Becoming the Costume.
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: When one of the Repugnians wonders why they don't just try and eat the kids, their boss Bob replies that if the kids go missing, it could cause a panic and disrupt their plans.
