History WesternAnimation / TheNightmareBeforeChristmas

** Trying to copy another person's talents instead of focusing your own results in your work becomes a shoddy, offensive copy reviled by everyone. In a similar vein, if you are going to celebrate a cultural holiday then make sure you do extensive research on the ancestral history or cultural meaning behind the celebration, rather than just do it because it's aesthetically pleasing.

** Trying to copy another person's talents instead of focusing your own results in your work becoming a shoddy, offensive copy reviled by everyone.

* MassiveMultiplayerCrossover: The film combines elements from Halloween, Christmas, and Easter. On a more specific level, the Halloweentown residents are made up of monster types from folklore and pop culture alongside famous literary monsters like [[Literature/TheStrangeCaseOfDoctorJekyllAndMrHyde Mr. Hyde]] and FrankensteinsMonster. A witch resembling the old hag form of [[WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs Queen Grimhilde]] also makes a brief appearance.

** In one verse of "Town Meeting Song", various Halloween Town citizens try to guess what's in a gift box, and the Monster from the Black Lagoon offers "perhaps it's the head that I found in the lake?". Later on, a child receives a severed head in a box as a Christmas present - and since the head's hair appears to be either wet or very limp, it may have actually been in the lake.

* YouHaveGotToBeKidding: This is Oogie Boogie's reaction to Santa almost word-for-word.

** Lock, Shock and Barrel receive no comeuppance for going against Jack's orders to keep Oogie Boogie uninvolved. He even gives a god natured chuckle when one of them throws a snowball at him.

** How about Oogie? Honestly, how can anyone tell exactly how old that guy is?

* BabiesEverAfter: Not in the film proper, but on the original film soundtrack released in 1993, as well as the subsequent re-release "Nightmare Revisited", there's a epilogue poem where Santa visits Jack and Jack has "four or five skeleton children at hand, playing strange tunes in their xylophone band." There is much debate on whether they are [[spoiler: Jack and Sally's kids]] and [[spoiler: how they could have them, since, you know, one's ''dead'' and the other's a rag doll]].

** Santa is nicknamed "Perce-oreille" in French, which is translated as "earwig". What does Santa [[spoiler: stomp on when freed?]] An earwig.

* DamselInDistress: Sally briefly becomes one when she's [[spoiler: captured by Oogie Boogie at the end of the film]].

* DeathByIrony: Oogie planned to make Santa and later [[spoiler: Sally]] into snake-and-spider stew [[spoiler: and ends up having all his bugs fall into the concoction, becoming stew himself]].

* DisneyVillainDeath: Oogie Boogie ends up like this when [[spoiler: his sack is torn]].

* TheDogWasTheMastermind: Averted, [[spoiler:it was [[WhatCouldHaveBeen originally planned]] that Dr. Finkelstein was actually Oogie Boogie's true identity, leaving Jack Skellington confused, but it was cut because apparently Creator/TimBurton acknowledged the reveal would have been too confusing.]]

* HeroicBSOD: Jack undergoes two, once during "Jack's Lament" and again once [[spoiler: he realizes that he was accidentally ruining Christmas for the entire human realm.]]

** Oogie gets two big ones: 1) when he sees Jack on the platform instead of Sally and Santa and 2) [[spoiler: when Jack pulls the thread that keeps him together]]. He has several smaller ones as Jack passes each of his deathtraps, but these may be feigned, as he always has another trap ready.

* ShowSomeLeg: Played with: [[spoiler: Sally shows off a bit of leg to attract Oogie's attention, but it later turns out the leg is unattached, serving to distract Oogie while the rest of Sally unties Santa.]]

* ThereAreNoTherapists: Seriously, just ''look'' at Jack. He's dealing with both depression and a mid-afterlife crisis, and [[EpilepticTrees possibly]] bi-polar disorder and ADD. The bone man is in desperate need of a therapist

* TranquilFury: From the moment Jack [[spoiler: confronts Oogie, he never loses his affable composure as he dispatches his traps and gruesomely takes out the boogeyman, even scolding him beforehand for being such a shameful host to his friends.]]

* AscendedExtra: Almost all of the secondary characters in the film are derived from the background characters in the original poem's illustrations, including Sally, Finklestein, Lock, Shock, Barrel, the Mayor, Oogie Boogie and the majority of the other residents of Halloween Town are also taken from the original drawings.

* ButtMonkey: Dr. Finklestein is almost always shown getting hurt in some way every time he's on screen. The mayor also falls victim to this occasionally.

* ComfortingComforter: Sally takes the time to tuck Dr Finklestein in after she drugs him unconscious so she can leave.

* TheDogWasTheMastermind: Averted, [[spoiler:it was [[WhatCouldHaveBeen originally planned]] that Dr. Finklestein was actually Oogie Boogie's true identity, leaving Jack Skellington confused, but it was cut because apparently Creator/TimBurton acknowledged the reveal would have been too confusing.]]

* EarnYourHappyEnding: Sally is a rebellious creation who has to run away to get a semblance of freedom from her father Dr. Finklestein. She spends a portion of the movie warning her crush Jack about his plans, trying to sabotage the sleigh launch, and eventually attempting to rescue "Sandy Claws". Jack then looks at her with new eyes after he rescues her and Santa, and says that he wants to sit with her under the stars.

* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: Sally's (or possibly Finklestein's) potions, and Jack's books take this to a ridiculous extreme.

* GratuitousLaboratoryFlasks: Dr. Finklestein has some of this kind of stuff in his MadScientistLaboratory, most notably a big, globe-shaped flask with a severed hand floating in it. He never uses any of it, but he ''does'' loan it to Jack Skellington along with a microscope to use for his Christmas experiments.

* HiddenDepths: ''Everyone'', save maybe Lock, Shock and Barrel. Even Dr. Finklestein, who's basically ''lonely'', and likely created Sally for companionship.

* LimitedWardrobe: The only time Jack ever changed out of his tuxedo is when he [[BadSanta imitates]] SantaClaus (well, and one scene when he's in bed and wearing off-white pajamas, but that's only for a couple of minutes). Possibly even taken up to eleven, since in "Poor Jack", when Jack declares that [[LargeHam HE IS THE PUMPKIN KING!!!]], he rips off the tatters of his Santa outfit to reveal that [[DressedInLayers he's been wearing his tux underneath the suit all this time]]. Sally also wears the same dress throughout the film, though considering that either she's locked up by [[MadScientist Dr. Finklestein]] or [[StalkerWithACrush stalking Jack]], this is more justified.

* MagicVersusScience: Sort of. Santa can do magic (flying reindeer, flying away at the end followed by a trail of sparkly magic stuff), while Jack's way of going at Christmas is more scientific (employing Dr. Finklestein, reading books on UsefulNotes/TheScientificMethod). However, Jack can and does do magic in his own realm. It's probably a question of spheres of influence: Jack has no power over Christmas, so he has to use different tools than Santa. Tim Burton himself has said that magic does not exist in Halloween Town, so Henry Selick employed some loopholes to allow some of the effects he wanted.

* MeasuringTheMarigolds: Jack borrows scientific equipment from Dr. Finklestein in an attempt to uncover the magic of Christmas: he examines a holly berry under the microscope and accidentallly squishes it, dissolves the stripes off a candy cane, attempts to make a snowflake by cutting paper (and ends up with a paper spider), cuts open a teddy bear to analyze its plush stuffing, and crushes a glass ornament into tiny pieces and puts them into a beaker, and they emit a green glow. After perplexing research, he has a EurekaMoment when he realizes he's been overthinking the magic of Christmas and decides to spread his own brand of Christmas cheer, presenting his findings to the citizens of Halloween Town, which leads the Mayor to endorse Jack's plan to bring a Halloween themed Christmas to the world.

* ParentalMarriageVeto: Implied to be the reason why Jack doesn't see Sally as more than a friend. He highly respects Dr. Finklestein and knows her as his friend's daughter, so he won't interfere in their fights. [[spoiler:When he sees Finklestein with another creation at the end, Jack seems to realize what this means and goes to Sally]].

* ScrewYourself: Not only does the wife Dr. Finklestein made for himself look like a female version of himself, he gave her half of his own brain. Jack's shocked expression upon seeing them is pretty understandable, really.

* SlippingAMickey: Sally's preferred method of sneaking away from Finklestein is to sneak deadly nightshade into his tea and food. Because they're in Halloween Town and Finklestein may or may not already be dead, all it does is lay him out snoring.

** Not much of what she does is really stalking, either. The first time, she's hiding in the graveyard from Dr. Finklestein when Jack happens to show up and start singing. The next time they're in the same place, it's in a meeting where the whole town is invited. The next time, she gives him a dinner basket at his home, but he sees her and accepts it, so it's not like he shows any discomfort at the action. Every other time they meet after that is because Jack enlists her to make the "Sandy Claws" outfit, even if he is oblivious to her feelings at this point.

* WhoEvenNeedsABrain: Dr. Finklestein can casually take out half his brain to use as part of Sally's replacement, to say nothing of the fact that his skull cap is on a hinge.

* YouAreGrounded: Dr. Finklestein to Sally constantly. This is the source of the friction in their relationship.

* WhereTheHellIsSpringfield: The unnamed city Jack visits. Halloween Town counts too.

** Possibly justified if they believe the gifts to be an attack they must defend themselves from instead of a misdeed to punish. After all, it's Christmas. They aren't expecting scary-but-harmless pranks.

** The policeman taking calls about Jack during Christmas has a mug on his desk that heavily resembles the head of ''Film/{{Beetlejuice}}''.

* AffectionateParody: The whole film comes across as both a dark satire of the [[Creator/RankinBassProductions Rankin/Bass]] stop-motion animated specials of the past and a love letter to them. It features a similar setting and story as them, with worlds devoted to the assorted holidays on Earth and the people responsible for managing them facing trouble, but with more macabre imagery and BlackComedy.

* AffectionateParody: The whole film comes across as both a dark satire of the [[Creator/RankinBassProductions Rankin/Bass]] stop-motion animated specials of the past and a love letter to them.

Halloween Town and Jack also appear in the first three entries in the ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'' series. Every year during the Halloween season, the denizens of Halloween Town also take over the Ride/Disneyland and [[Ride/TokyoDisneyResort Tokyo Disneyland]] ''[[Ride/TheHauntedMansion Haunted Mansion]]'' attractions for the Haunted Mansion Holiday overlay. Since 2017, Oogie Boogie has also served as the mascot of Disneyland’s annual Halloween celebrations.

* CurbStompBattle: Jack's confrontation with Oogie Boogie is ridiculously one-sided; Jack is never fazed by Oogie's attempts to stop him, and defeats Oogie with casual ease. Foreshadowed by Oogie's OhCrap reaction when he first sees Jack in his lair.

** Subverted, since the people of Halloween Town are not actually evil; however, due to their existence revolving around (good natured) fear and horror, their innate inability to really understand the concept or point of Christmas is a big part of the reason that Jack's plans don't pan out. Even Jack himself, for all he desperately wants to, does not truly understand the niceties of Christmas.

** Played with. Although Santa does chew Jack out for messing with his holiday, he later calms down and brings a little Christmas to Halloween Town after he's set things right. While Santa was rightfully pissed with Jack for hijacking Christmas and leaving him at Oogie's mercy, once Santa reverses the havoc Jack caused, he returns to Halloween Town with a flurry of snow, giving its denizens their first snow day. He even shouts "Happy Halloween" to them, conveying that there are no hard feelings. The audio epilogue reveals he visits Jack and Sally regularly.

* AffablyEvil: Lock, Shock and Barrel. They're the Halloween version of nasty little kids; to them it's all a game.