History YMMV / ChristopherPike

* TearJerker: Near the beginning of ''Bury Me Deep'' Jean is on a plane ride when the guy sitting next to her [[spoiler: who turns out to be some kind of ghost stuck in limbo]] suddenly dies for no apparent reason. She can't stop thinking about it and later, when her friend asks what's wrong, she just suddenly bursts into tears on the spot.

* CriticalResearchFailure: ''The Secret of Ka'' portrays Istanbul as the capital of Turkey, which it [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankara isn't]].

* [[MagnificentBastard Magnificent Bitch]]: ''Last Act''. [[spoiler: Susan. She wrote a play under an anagram of her name, artificially aged it, hid it in a secondhand bookstore, bought it, and then proposed it to be the next school play. She then successfully tricked Melanie into becoming friends with her so she could get her involved in the play, gave her the role of the main character, and had it look like she killed Rindy opening night. And just before she died, Rindy realized what was going on and genuinely pleaded for her life to Susan while everyone thought she was just acting.]]

* CompleteMonster: Betty Sue [=McCormick=] from ''Whisper of Death'' is a very nasty piece of work, and she's implied to have been this way ever since she was little. She's used her powers to toy with other people or punish them if they displease her (Leslie was ungrateful that Betty Sue made her beautiful, [[spoiler: Pepper got her pregnant]]) as reflected by her ghastly Queen Beetle stories. She's even implied to have given one boy ''cancer'' just because he wouldn't kiss her. In fact, many boys who spurned her affection ended up mysteriously disappearing. Betty Sue traps Roxanne, Pepper, Leslie, Stan, and Helter inside a dead world and kills them off in malicious ways, and then when it turns out [[spoiler: all this is occurring while Roxanne is bleeding to death during her abortion procedure, Betty Sue planned to repeat the process over and over unless Roxanne chose to die for real. And even though Roxanne dies, Betty Sue is still free to torment Pepper and the other three.]] We're never even told where Betty Sue got her powers from or ''why'' she has them in the first place. She's one of the most mysterious villains Pike has ever created, and it makes her one of the most frightening. Especially considering the torment she puts Roxanne through when, out of everyone else she targeted in this book, Roxanne hadn't even actually done anything to her to begin with.

* MoralEventHorizon: ''Chain Letter 2'' is all about invoking this trope. Each of the protagonists is given a task to complete which will push them over the horizon. If the task is not completed, the character in question will be killed, effectively giving each of them the choice between death and damnation. The tasks given ranged from the truly horrific ([[spoiler: Kip's was to set his younger sister on fire and ensure her entire right arm was burned]]) to the FelonyMisdemeanor? ([[spoiler: Brenda cutting off her own finger and delivering it to one of the other characters was definitely a moment of {{Squick}}, but it's hard to see it as something worthy of eternal damnation]]).
** It wasn't so much about "eternal damnation" in the usual sense as it was about what would be ''personally'' damning to each person who had to complete the task. Kip's task was to [[spoiler: set his younger sister on fire and ensure her entire right arm was burned]], but this would be personally damning because [[spoiler: Kip loves his younger sister like fury, so Kip rather angrily refuses to harm the person he loves most. So the killer sets Kip on fire instead, but Kip's death is evidently preferable to what the killer was asking him to do.]] Meanwhile, [[spoiler: Brenda is a person who loves her own body and her own physical beauty and attractiveness more than anything else. So cutting off a finger would be personally damning to her, but unlike Kip, Brenda is afraid of death more than she's afraid of disfiguring the thing she loves most, so Brenda gets drunk enough to cut off her finger without too much pain.]]

* EvilIsSexy: One of the antagonist vampires in ''The Last Vampire'' series has a face full of acne scars.

** It wasn't so much about "eternal damnation" in the usual sense as it was about what would be ''personally'' damning to each person who had to complete the task. Kip's task was to [[spoiler: set his younger sister on fire and ensure her entire right arm was burned]], but this would be personally damning because [[spoiler: Kip loves his younger sister like fury, so Kip rather angrily refuses to harm the person he loves most. So the killer sets Kip on fire instead, but Kip's death is evidently preferable to what the killer was asking him to do.]] Meanwhile, [[spoiler: Brenda is a person who loves her own body and her own physical beauty and attractiveness more than anything else. So cutting off a finger would be personally damning to her, but unlike Kip, Brenda is afraid of death more than she's afraid of disfiguring the thing she loves most, so Brenda gets drunk enough to cut off her finger without too much pain.]]

* [[MagnificentBastard Magnificent Bitch]]: ''Last Act''. [[spoiler: Susan. She wrote a play under an anagram of her name, artificially aged it, hid it in a secondhand bookstore, bought it, and then proposed it to be the next school play. She then successfully tricked Melanie into becoming friends with her so she could get her involved in the play, gave her the role of the main character, and had her kill Rindy opening night, all the while Rindy realized what was going on and genuinely pleaded for her life to Susan while everyone thought she was just acting.]]

** It wasn't so much about "eternal damnation" in the usual sense as it was about what would be ''personally'' damning to each person who had to complete the task. Kip's task was to [[spoiler: set his younger sister on fire and ensure her entire right arm was burned]], but this would be personally damning because [[spoiler: Kip loves his younger sister like fury, so Kip rather angrily refuses to harm the person he loves most. So the killer sets Kip on fire instead, but Kip's death is evidently preferable to what the killer was asking him to do.]] Meanwhile, [[spoiler: Brenda is a person who loves her own body and her own physical beauty and attractiveness more than anything else. So cutting off a finger would be personally damning to her, but unlike Kip, Brenda is afraid of death more than she's afraid of disfiguring the thing she loves most, so Brenda gets drunk enough to cut off her finger without too much pain.]]
* UnfortunateImplications:
** In both ''The Midnight Club'' and ''Sati'', Pike has written two homosexual males who die of AIDS.
** Flynn's actions in ''Weekend''. He hides his identity partly so he can decide whether or not Robin deserves a kidney. If you analyse this at all it's pretty horrible to insinuate yourself into a relative's life so you can pass judgement on whether or not they deserve to die young.

* UnfortunateImplications: In both ''The Midnight Club'' and ''Sati'', Pike has written two homosexual males who die of AIDS.