History Film / ChildsPlay

* BreakTheCutie: Andy while sitting in juvy breaks down into tears when he sees Chucky coming for him and Dr. Ardmore fending off his pleas to let him out.

** The sequels make this [[spoiler:a straight up DownerEnding; neither of the cops choose to tell the truth about what happened, Karen's insistence that it was the doll got her committed, and Andy is put into foster care. And to add death blow to injury, Chucky was resurrected anyways, rendering everything AllForNothing]].

* UngratefulBastard: Even after John tells him on how to get out of the Good Guy doll's body before it's too late, Chucky is all too happy to kill him afterwards anyway. Though John ''did'' refuse to tell him the first two tortures.

** The sequels make this [[spoiler:a straight up DownerEnding; neither of the cops choose to tell the truth about what happened, Karen's insistence that it was the doll got her committed, and Andy is put into foster care]].

** The violence and kills (at least until towards the end) have less of an emphasis on visceral brutality, while the sequels would progressively embrace them with open arms.

** The violence and kills (at least until towards the end) have less of an emphasis on [[{{Gorn}} brutality]], while the sequels would progressively embrace them with open arms.

** The first film is considerably more serious than the sequels, and there's even an AttemptedRape partway in. ''2'' and ''3'' would add more humor into the mix, where as ''Bride" and ''Seed'' (the latter especially) were straight-up {{Horror Comed|y}}ies. Curiously, the most recent two (Curse and Cult of Chucky) have got darker again and more in line with the first film in turns of tone).

* IncompletelyTrained: Chucky was trained enough in the voodoo arts to conduct a soul transfer, but not so well trained that he understood the fine print. In novelizations of the sequel films this is further highlighted, with Chucky lamenting at points that maybe he was a ''bit'' hasty in killing his old mentor before getting all the information he could out of him.

* LethalChef: Andy, but he is only 6 years old. He tries to make his mother breakfast, but his idea of that is 2 slices of incredibly burnt toast with half a stick of butter smeared on them plus an overflowing bowl of cereal in which he has no sense of measurement of when is enough milk or cereal. Then he starts smothering the whole cereal with white sugar.

* UngratefulBastard: Even after John tells him on how to get out of the Good Guy doll's body before it's too late, Chucky is all too happy to kill him afterwards anyway.

* AttackOnTheHeart: John reveals that Chucky can only be killed by attacking his heart, as that part of him is "almost human". [[spoiler:While it ''does'' put him down at the end of this film, later sequels prove that Johh was ''perhaps'' a bit too optimistic in saying that would be enough to kill Chucky permanently.]]

* AttackOnTheHeart: Chucky's mentor reveals that he can only be killed by attacking his heart, as that part of him is "almost human". [[spoiler:While it ''does'' put him down at the end of this film, later sequels prove the voodoo priest was ''perhaps'' a bit too optimistic in saying that would be enough to kill Chucky permanently.]]

** The first film is considerably more serious than the sequels, and there's even an AttemptedRape partway in. 2 and 3 would add more humor into the mix, where as "Bride" and "Seed" (the latter especially) were straight-up {{Horror Comed|y}}ies. Curiously, the most recent two (Curse and Cult of Chucky) have got darker again and more in line with the first film in turns of tone).

** The first film is considerably darker than the sequels, and there's even an AttemptedRape partway in. 2 and 3 would get a lot lighter, where as "Bride" and "Seed" were straight-up {{Horror Comed|y}}ies. Curiously, the most recent two (Curse and Cult of Chucky) have got darker again and more in line with the first film in turns of tone).

* ElectrifiedBathtub: This was originally going to be the babysitter's death, but the special effects to make it happen would have been too expensive. The idea stuck around, though, and was eventually used in ''Bride of Chucky''.

* BittersweetEnding: At the end [[spoiler:Chucky is dead and Andy is saved, but nobody besides Mike, Jack, and the Barclays are going to believe a doll committed the murders.]]

* DirtyCoward: Eddie Caputo leaves Charles Lee Ray behind for dead [[NoHonorAmongThieves to save his own skin when he himself was being chased by the cops]]. This bites him back when Chucky was created and took his revenge for this act of traitorous cowardice on his backstabbing partner-in-crime.

* JerkassBall: Karen isn't exactly the greatest mother a kid can have. Andy really wanted a Good Guy doll, and although Karen didn't get him one, she still wrapped up jeans for him in boxes with ''Good Guy'' wrapping. Then Karen tried to please Andy with a Good Guy tool kit claiming she didn't have the money to buy him a Good Guy doll, even though a tool kit would definitely cost just as much if not more than the doll itself.

* TooDumbToLive: John Bishop aka Dr. Death, the voodoo priest who taught Chucky everything he knows about the dark arts, keeps a VoodooDoll of ''himself'' around. [[WhatAnIdiot And he told Chucky where to find it.]] Chucky also points out it was unwise of him to tell him where it is.

* InsaneTrollLogic: Karen isn't exactly the greatest mother a kid can have. Andy really wanted a Good Guy doll, and although Karen didn't get him one, she still wrapped up jeans for him in boxes with ''Good Guy'' wrapping. Then Karen tried to please Andy with a Good Guy tool kit claiming she didn't have the money to buy him a Good Guy doll, even though a tool kit would definitely cost just as much if not more than the doll itself.

* YouWontFeelAThing: One of the mental institution's doctors says this to Andy as he's about to inject Andy with some sort of sedative through a syringe.

!! This film contains examples of the following tropes:

* TooDumbToLive: John Bishop aka Dr. Death, the voodoo priest who taught Chucky everything he knows about the dark arts, keeps a VoodooDoll of ''himself'' around. [[WhatAnIdiot And he told Chucky where to find it.]]

* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: Chucky more or less says this to his former voodoo teacher after torturing him into revealing how to escape the doll's body. Though Chucky knew his teacher would turn on him.

* APupilOfMineUntilHeTurnedToEvil: While it's not very likely that there was a time that Chucky ''wasn't'' evil, his voodoo mentor clearly at one point believed he wasn't evil, or at least not as evil as he actually is. Said mentor becomes furious when he sees what Chucky has done, calling him "an abomination that has to be stopped". Pity the mentor turns out to be TooDumbToLive...

* TooDumbToLive: John Bishop aka Dr. Death, the voodoo priest who taught Chucky everything he knows about the dark arts. To make it even worse, he keeps a VoodooDoll of ''himself'' around. [[WhatAnIdiot And he told Chucky where to find it]].

* [[ManBitesMan Doll Bites Woman]]: Chucky has no problems with sinking his tiny doll pearly whites into Karen Barclay's arm. She shows the wound to Detective Norris as proof that Chucky is real, but it still takes an attempt on his life by Chucky himself to convince him.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The first film is considerably darker than the sequels (number 2 and 3 would get a lot lighter, where as "Bride" and "Seed" were straight-up {{Horror Comed|y}}ies. Curiously, the most recent two (Curse and Cult of Chucky) have got darker again and more in line with the first film in turns of tone).
** This is the only film with the rule where Chucky must be [[AttackItsWeakPoint shot in the heart]] to kill him. In all the other films in the franchise, he just [[RasputinianDeath got subject to massive amounts of damage and disfigurement before he finally perished]].
** There is an AttemptedRape midway through (when Karen goes to talk to the guy who sold the Chucky doll), which seems rather out of place in the franchise compared to the other movies.

* AttackItsWeakPoint: Chucky's mentor reveals that he can only be killed by attacking his heart, as that part of him is "almost human". [[spoiler:While it ''does'' put him down at the end of this film, later sequels prove the voodoo priest was ''perhaps'' a bit too optimistic in saying that would be enough to kill Chucky permanently]].