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Fridge Brilliance

  • Santa was mad at Jack for obvious reasons, but it makes even more sense when you realize that Santa didn't know Jack told Lock, Shock, and Barrel to "leave that no-account Oogie Boogie out of this!"
  • Oogie Boogie might seem like a Plot-Irrelevant Villain (he's not even in Tim Burton's original poem), but just think: if the plot didn't have Oogie Boogie for Jack to save Santa from, Jack would have been unredeemed.
    • Oogie exists to keep Jack from being the most villainous person in the movie. It was Jack's idea to steal Christmas, and he directs the nightmare version while being the only one that knows what it used to be.
  • It was strange to hear the line "In this town, we call home, everyone hails to the Pumpkin Song," and then have a villain like Oogie. Then it hits you: Oogie doesn't live in town. Therefore, he doesn't have to listen to Jack and can do whatever he wishes.
  • Jack might have kept his tuxedo on beneath the Sandy Claws outfit because Sally's warning bugged him more than he let on.
    • Or it might be an inseparable part of him. It wasn't so much as singed by that flak fire at the beginning of the movie.
  • Consider the fact that except for the titular nightmare, that the Halloween Town citizens most likely only interacted with humans on Halloween. As humans wanted to be scared on Halloween, it makes perfect sense that the citizens would assume that humans liked to be scared daily!
  • As the WMG page detailed, the crush between Jack and Sally may not be as one-sided as one may think.
  • Jack's speaking voice during the town meeting is much more dramatic than the voice he uses when away from the public (best heard in the line "There's got to be a logical way to understand this Christmas thing"). It's implied that his more boisterous posh voice is a put-on. It makes his exhaustion with the holiday all the more reasonable, too: he's sick of putting on a strong facade while bored out of his skull by it.
  • A bit of a meta one for the Nightmare Before Christmas decor in The Haunted Mansion: Both the mansion and Halloween Town are inhabited by beings who, while scary, are not malicious (They pretend to terrorize/Grim Grinning Ghosts come out to socialize; It's our job but we're not mean/In our town of Halloween).
    • Also, in a place that is meant to be scary, Jack gets to spread his brand of Christmas after all with no harm done.
    • And since the inhabitants are already ghosts, of course, Jack's idea of Christmas is perfect
  • How is Jack able to hold a snowflake without it melting? He's an undead skeleton. He has no body heat.
  • "Just because I cannot see it, doesn't mean I can't believe it!". This is a much bigger epiphany than one may realize on a first watch. Christmas Town is based on magic and faith—the whole thing about Santa Claus as an entity and the belief that he brings you toys, etc. Halloweentown, on the other hand, is rooted in science—the Mad Scientist trope, the attempts to quantify Christmas, and discovering the unknown physically. This song is the very first time Jack has tried to understand abstract concepts like love and goodwill. The thought of actively believing in something you couldn't objectively observe is probably one that never occurred to him until just that moment.
  • Why does Jack believe that Santa has claws even after reading all those books? In the movie's universe, Santa wears red mittens, and he's probably depicted with them in most of the books. It's established that Halloweentown has never seen snow (until the end of the movie), so Jack wouldn't know what mittens were, and would mistake them for lobster claws. This is backed up by Jack's comparison of Santa to a lobster, and by his surprise at Santa having hands (implying that he wasn't expecting clawed fingers).
  • There is a good amount of Squick considering the doctor's...Ahem, relationship with Sally. He treats and talks to her as his daughter (and being her creator, this is not so strange), but there's also the matter that the guy 'replaces' her with a wife and seems to have some very none-fatherly feelings for her. A certain deleted scene makes it worse, with him outright stating that he meant to obliterate Jack out of jealousy. Viewing as adults, this quickly becomes squick, but that's the whole point. The implications are creepy (just as a Halloween movie is expected to be) for the adult audience and at the same time, naturally fly over the children's heads. This is a family-friendly film!
  • While it does seem idiotic for Jack to trust Lock, Shock, and Barrel to get Santa Claus, it is possible that they were the only ones who closely resemble real children, and considering the other residents in town, it would probably be hard for Santa to trust any of them. Granted, they catch him before he could get a good look at them but Jack didn't know exactly how they would get them. Just that they were children, whom Santa trusts immensely.
    • Plus, as taking over Christmas didn't give a good example, Jack isn't an expert on planning things un-Halloween.
  • Santa says that Sally is the 'only one who makes sense in this insane asylum'. While he is referring to her objections to the Christmas plan, there may be another layer to it as well: Sally is a rag-doll, and technically speaking, could be considered a toy! Just like Jack can't understand things outside of a Halloween framework, Santa relates best to the one person in Halloween Town who is also closer to a Christmas-related object.
  • During the Halloween Town meeting, Sally awes at the Christmas decorations Jack brought while the other inhabitants gasp, and later seems suspicious when he tells the "tales" of Sandy Claws. There's a reason for that: not only did she hear Jack's Lament, she relates to the sentiment, so she knows Jack wouldn't be so excited over more scary stuff and sees the novelty he intended to show while the others just expect more of the same (that, and Jack's constant Suspiciously Specific Denial probably set her off too).
  • There might be another reason Halloween Town's Christmas went so wrong aside from the obvious: normally, each holiday town has a full year to prepare its festivity (the exception being probably holidays without a fixed date, like Easter), and we see the Mayor already freaking out for being one day behind schedule. However, now they have to do the same one-year-long work for only 54 days, without counting the lost time Jack spent on Christmas Town or obsessively studying Christmas. They were doing a rushed job with whatever they could find!
  • When Jack is shot out of the sky and crashes into a graveyard, he lands onto the outstretched arms of a stone angel sculpture. The position he's lying in is similar to if not the same, the sculpture of Jesus in Mary's arms after his crucifixion. That's Fallen Hero imagery for you right there.
  • During the Town Meeting song, some of the monsters, in their attempts at guessing what Christmas is like, mention things like locks, or pox. It seems strange that they would know about things like disease and torture (remember, scaring people is their job, but they're not mean). It makes sense if you consider that they only know about those things because people find them scary, and the monsters probably don't understand the significance of those things.
    • This also applies to everything in "Kidnap the Sandy Claws." The kids mention doing all these gory, horrible things to Santa, arming themselves to the teeth with axes and bear traps... and all they do is just shove him in a bag. The people of Halloweentown are comfortable with talking about torture, violence, and murder if it'll get them screams, but they would never think of actually going through with it.
    • Going off of the above, this might add an extra layer to Lock, Shock, and Barrel's thinking; they were saying a long list of ideas of how to torture Santa to scare him, and because Halloween Town's residents are still rather friendly (and how the three seem quite young) they never actually go through with any of it. After all, if you were being kidnapped, wouldn't it be pretty frightening to hear your kidnappers go through all of the awful ways they could harm you? They were trying to scare Santa, but probably couldn't comprehend hurting him, and dumped him off at Oogie Boogie's for the sake of dumping him somewhere.
    • In the town meeting song, the Monster from the Black Lagoon guesses that a present is "the head that I found in the lake" - later on, a child does in fact get a shrunken head as a Christmas present, so maybe that was the same head he was singing about.
  • Santa wears mittens/gloves in the movie. From a distance, Santa's glove/mittens can look like claws. Which may have given Jack the idea of calling him Sandy Claws.
  • As if Jack's line "I AM THE PUMPKIN KING!" at the end of "Poor Jack" wasn't powerful enough, it's also significant in a more subtle way. Where else in the movie do we hear monsters proudly stating their titles like that? In "This Is Halloween"! ("I am the one hiding under your bed...", "I am the clown with the tear-away face...", etc.) Of course, those monsters were proud of themselves because they were unadventurous and completely content with the status quo. But Jack saying this line indicates how, through his adventure, he too has learned to be proud of who he is.
  • The details about Oogie's past revealed in The Nightmare Before Christmas: The Pumpkin King—that he's the king of forgotten Holiday called "Bug Day"—seem to raise a lot more questions than they answer since it's never quite made clear what Bug Day was supposed to celebrate (besides, y'know...bugs) or how it was observed. If Christmas celebrates charity and goodwill, Halloween celebrates horror and the unknown, Easter celebrates rebirth and new beginnings, Saint Patrick's Day celebrates luck, Valentine's Day celebrates love, Thanksgiving celebrates abundance and gratitude, and Independence Day celebrates a historical milestone, what's the actual significance of Bug Day? Well, if you believe that the rulers of the Holiday lands are effectively the gods of this universe, then it could be said that all of those concepts come from the Holidays rather than the Holidays coming from the concepts. Now that Bug Day no longer exists, the human mind is no longer capable of understanding what it was all about—just like the people of Halloween Town could never really understand what Christmas was all about.
  • Because they mispronounce his name as "Sandy Claws", the residents of Halloween Town initially assume that Santa is some sort of giant lobster. Considering that misconception, no wonder Oogie Boogie wanted to cook him! (Sure, Oogie seems willing to cook anyone, but maybe a giant version of something that people already cook was especially appealing to him.)
  • This is more of a Fridge Red Herring, but in the first shot of the interior of Finklestein's lab, you can see a cockroach held up by lab equipment. Now had the original idea panned out for the ending, this would have been a subtle hint at Oogie Boogie's real identity.
  • Oogie Boogie is voiced by a black man and is the only character who is explicitly killed on-screen. Even in this movie, Black Dude Dies First!
  • During "Jack's Obsession", Zero, upon being woken up, brings a picture of Jack to him, which prompts Jack to think of taking on Santa's role, imagining the red outfit on the picture. But why did Zero bring it to him? To remind Jack who he was— the Pumpkin King. Even the dog could tell there was a danger in Jack's behavior, but of course, Jack just took it as inspiration to further his ideas.
  • The reason we never see Mr. Hyde as Dr. Jekyll could be because an ordinary human in Halloweentown would appear out of place and he makes sure he never leaves home when the effects of the potion wear off.
  • In "What's This?", Jack seems to be already familiar with mistletoe, though not the traditions surrounding it, even though he doesn't even what snow is. Mistletoe is parasitic and poisonous, so of course, he would know what it is!
  • Glow-in-the-dark paint often looks green under normal light, and Oogie Boogie is made of bugs that glow in the dark...
  • Oogie Boogie being so terrified of Jack seems out of character despite the establishment that he's lost before but consider that Oogie's existence is the embodiment of fear, both spreading it and experiencing it. When he causes others to experience fear, he goes all out, and when he experiences fear, he goes all out. So being menacing while being a Dirty Coward is extremely consistent with his character.
    • Even towards this Jack this is expressed, as Oogie acts like a total Thin-Skinned Bully around him, cowering when Jack corners him but loudly mocking and goading him whenever he thinks he has him on the run.
  • It seems a bit odd that Halloweentown would include Lock, Stock, and Barrel, seemingly-normal children dressed for trick or treat, among the ghouls and monsters. But traditionally, trick or treaters would not only demand treats but also play tricks on those foolish enough to withhold or give out unsatisfactory treats (most often tp-ing the house or throwing eggs at it). So among the denizens of Halloweentown, these three would be the most horrifying to the average person on Halloween night!
  • In "Jack's Lament", the line about growing tired of "the sounds of screams" has a double meaning when you consider the Reality Subtext for Danny Elfman - Jack is talking about being tired of screams of terror, but since Danny was leaving Oingo Boingo to concentrate on film scores at this point, the "screams" in question could also be those of cheering fans at a rock concert.
  • The burlap sack that is Oogie Boogie's skin is removed and then the bugs that comprise his internal organs are boiled. That's how people used to be executed for High Treason. And Oogie just tried to kill a king.
  • In "This is Halloween," the Harlequin Demon is one of the monsters who sings the line "Red and black and slimy green." He has all three colors.
  • It seems that despite being the ones to give Santa over to Ooogie Boogie that Lock, Shock, and Barrel never get any comeuppance. However, there are a few defenses for their behavior;
    • The biggest is that the three are very young children who might not understand that they are putting Santa in genuine danger, not "it's Halloween so it needs to be scary" danger.
    • People in Halloweentown seem much more durable than regular humans, and while the kids' song "Sandy Claws" has the three going through a list of ways to torture and kill Santa, every line of the chorus ends with something like, "then see if he talks/ is sad, is mad" or describing things that would kill him but mostly just sound frightening, without once explicitly stating that they intended to kill him. So, it's possible that the three don't register that actual murder indicates a Cessation of Existence, and they think Oogie Boogie is only intending to do what the rest of Halloweentown does.
    • Another reason is that most of the people in Halloweentown are undead, so they can't actually die since, you know, they already are. Jack removes his head near the beginning of the movie and falls several thousand feet from the sky near the end no worse for wear, and when Sally throws herself out of a tower and falls apart, she simply wakes up after a few seconds and puts herself back together. It's possible Lock, Shock, and Barrel assumed Santa would abide by the same rules since everyone else in town is capable of being completely fine after experiencing a mortal injury that would kill a normal person. They probably thought that even if Oogie killed Santa, he would simply wake up no worse for wear, not realizing death is an entirely different thing to people who aren't already undead or supernatural in some way. Thus, they would have seen it as a prank to scare him rather than believing he was genuinely in any danger.
  • Why is Oogie-Boogie a swarm of bugs contained in a sack. Because in some cultures, the Bogeyman is synonymous with the Sack Man.
  • How was the military able to find and shoot down Jack? There's an IRL tradition at NORAD to pretend to track Santa's sleigh on Christmas Eve. In this universe, they really are tracking the sleigh, and when Santa goes rogue, they're able to feed targeting information to bases around the world.
  • "Jack, please, I'm only an elected official, I can't make decisions on my own!" Of course he can't; he's only the Mayor. Jack is the King, and therefore holds all the real power in Halloween Town.
    • And why does Halloween Town have both a King and a Mayor? Because it's the capital of Halloween. Many capital cities often tend to have a head of state (either a monarch, a president, a governor, or a prime minister) rule the greater area, while the mayor is only charge of the city itself.
  • Jack and Sally falling in love with each other makes a lot of sense if you think about it: Jack is known as the Pumpkin King; the king of Halloween, and he's worshipped in town for it. But that's the thing: it's all everyone in town knows him as, so it's always Halloween every single day, meaning he can't have an actual conversation with anyone without it being about the holiday. Heck, he went away for two days and that was enough for everyone to start panicking and not know what to do. Given this, it's reasonable to assume Jack has never gotten to take a break since he's always being pestered about next Halloween every time he's out in public. Sally, meanwhile, actually took the time to get to know Jack as a person and likes him for reasons beyond his title. It's likely Jack realized Sally was the only one in town who actually understood him and saw him as someone other than just the Halloween guy, and it only took almost ruining Christmas for him to realize this.
    • Another reason could be that Jack realized Sally trying to stop his Christmas plan was out of genuine worry and concern, while everyone else just treated it as yet another Halloween. The fact that he could actually talk to Sally about what was on his mind without bringing up the holiday probably also helped.

Fridge Logic

  • A minor one, but if Jack can survive being blown up and at least a mile-high fall onto a stone statue without ill effect, why does Sally pricking him with a needle hurt him?
    • Just because he can survive doesn't mean it didn't hurt him like the Dickens. To quote Iago (no, not that one - the other one): "You'd be surprised what you can live through."
    • I say he survived it because an angel caught him.
    • WMG: Jack (and possibly all of Halloween town) follow the rules of the Fair Folk or something similar, and the needle was made of Cold Iron. Or maybe needles are his Kryptonite Factor. Or maybe he's only Nigh Invulnerable when he's expecting danger?
    • Another troper mentioned on the main page that his 'powers' may operate on what is scary and what isn't scary... so maybe only non-scary things can hurt him... Falling from the sky = scary, while being poked with a sewing needle is not scary at all.
    • Then there is the possibility that since Jack is dead that means that nothing can hurt him. The man can yank off his head and pull out his ribs for the fun of it, for crying out loud. He may simply have been annoyed by Sally's carelessness and was just being dramatic to make her feel bad.
      • Alternatively, he may have been startled by the needle rather than hurt by it (provided he can feel things touching his body, being a skeleton with no nerves). This troper accidentally says "Ow!" instead of "Ah!" when startled, so it may have been the case.
    • Another possibility is that Jack can feel PAIN, but can't DIE (as he's already dead). So a long fall onto a statue (which wouldn't hurt much, but would be fatal to a living human) is, at best, mildly painful and mostly inconvenient, but getting poked with a sewing needle hurts enough that Jack feels it.
  • Another one comes from the DVD Commentary: Tim Burton said that there is no magic in Halloweentown - yet there are witches. The potion they make is quite magic, though this could be an oversight on Tim's part.
    • The No Magic thing gets a little silly when you consider he is implying that Spiral Hill is mechanical.
    • Non-magic does not mean non-living.
    • No magic complicates quite a lot of things. If there is no magic in Halloween Town, how exactly do the dead walk around? And what would be the point of a non-magical witch? I seem to recall them flying around on their brooms in the opening sequence...
    • Perhaps he meant that, if moving hills and flying on broomsticks is normal for Halloween Town citizens... then it's not considered "magical" to them, and therefore magic doesn't "exist"?
    • Witches on broomsticks are generally accepted as part of the scenery. I interpret it as, "There's magic, and then there's magic. Halloween Town doesn't have the latter."
    • ... Unless you're counting Kingdom Hearts as "canon", which in that case anything is up for grabs and Tim Burton was just a Trolling Creator.
    • I don't remember seeing the Witches cast any spells. Their potion could be dismissed as alchemy or just mixing plants. Heck, a lot of the things in Halloween Town can be explained scientifically—vampirism and lycanthropy, for instance, can be explained as blood diseases, the dead coming back to life, in general, can be explained by viruses or similar, etc. So in a way, Halloween Town really CAN work without magic (though with all that said, not sure how to explain the Witches' brooms).
  • Why was Jack wearing his tuxedo underneath his Santa Claus outfit?
  • Not one of the Christmas Town books Jack absconded with had a picture of Santa Claus or his description?
    • He may have thought "Santa," "St. Nick," and "Sandy Claws" were different people, but that's still quite a stretch.
    • If this is in regards to Jack's description of "Sandy Claws" in the song at the town meeting, remember he said to himself "Might as well give them what they want" when the rest of the denizens completely misconstrued the purpose of everything else he presented, he decided to present "Sandy Claws" as someone that the citizens of Halloween Town could identify with.
      • This may have been an intentional exaggeration of his misconception, however. In the montage scene where Jack is trying to figure out Christmas via science, a shot shows his chalkboard with "Sandy+[drawing of a lobster claw]=?" written on it. Also when they meet:
    Jack: Why you have hands! You don't have claws at all!
    • Or, those books didn't have pictures in them.
      • The pictures of Santa likely had him wearing mittens, which to the people of Halloween Town would look like lobster claws.
  • When Boogie's boys try to stuff Santa down the chute Santa is revealed to be wearing a robe with his mistletoe print underwear showing. Why isn't he wearing red pants like Santas in other films? He lives at the North Pole so wouldn't it be way too cold for him to be walking around without pants? I know this is a random question but it always bugged me.
    • He was double-checking the list when Barrel and friends, so he was likely relaxing/wearing something comfortable, and the full suit, including pants, is his work uniform.
  • Why does the mayor call them "Boogie's boys" when Shock is a girl?
  • Santa uses his magic to fly out of Boogie's lair when Jack rescues him. Couldn't he have just flown himself and Sally to safety? Does he need his hat to do magic? Does he need to touch his nose, and Oogie was being savvy by tying his hands together?

Fridge Horror

  • Remember how Sally pulled her leg off to distract Oogie while the rest of her went to rescue Sandy Santa? Next time we see them, Sally is tied up with Santa - and all her body parts are sewn back on. One assumes that she sews herself back up until you realize that her hands were untied to save Santa. So who sewed her back together again? One sincerely hopes it's Santa, since what with Oogie already being attracted to Sally's leg, him being the one who sewed Sally back together has some pretty creepy implications.
    • Also, at the end we see Santa setting things right and rescuing everyone from the Halloweenish-Christmas toys — except for the little old lady who gets a man-eating wreath.
      • We didn't see him deal with the snake either. Presumably, a lot happened off-screen.
      • Oh, it gets worse. Consider the fact that the military shoots Jack down over a suburban area. This is quite a dangerous move, but think of what must have happened for the military to resort to such a tactic. Considering that a lot of the toys were attacking children, one has to ask what the hell did you do Jack!?! Though this Fridge Horror is subverted when you consider Halloween Town's reaction to Oogie Boogie, it's unlikely they would make anything that would kill anyone.note  Then it's Double Subverted when you realize that with Blue-and-Orange Morality, the citizens may not realize that human children are more fragile than Halloween Town children.
      • There may be an additional explanation for the military action against Jack. It would be very odd for a military base to be using searchlights any time after the Second World War when radar became standard, and the anti-aircraft guns also fit into that period. So, there may have been a reasonable mentality behind taking out the heavy artillery after what did not seem to be too terrible of an event, particularly with all the confusion there seemed to be.
    • Jack had to go to dozens of houses, and we didn't see him visit all of them, nor did we see Santa fix all of them. I highly doubt Santa would leave an old lady to die.
      • This troper always looked at that differently: The toys, while scary, just want to scare and have no intention of harming others. The people in Halloween Town like to scare, not to hurt, so why they would make toys that hurt others? Sounds like it goes against what they stand for (harmless scares and fun). The only reason they are afraid of the Oogie Boogie is exactly this one (because he enjoys hurting, not scaring). Perhaps those toys didn't want to hurt anyone, just play. (Although I wonder why on Earth they thought a giant snake would be harmless, you got the idea).
      • The giant snake was herbivorous. It only swallowed the Christmas tree.
      • Nah man, the first time you see the Snake (In the "Making Christmas" Song), he's eating the guy who's trying to shove presents down its throat. I don't know if you see him again, but I guess that the Snake eventually vomits everything it eats and doesn't digest anything. And if you don't see that guy again, then the snake was just a plain bad idea...
      • The guy who got eaten was the Corpse Dad, who IS seen again during the finale, opening a window, in his pajamas. So yes, it can be presumed the snake was just playing and spit him out later.
    • Yeah, even if things were set right and the folks who got said "toys" survived, I seriously doubt ALL of them got over it. We're talking about very young children that were downright terrified, especially at a time that's supposed to be filled with joy and holiday cheer. Safe to say that the ones we saw off-screen may have been traumatized for life.
  • Also, consider that Jack specifically sought out Lock, Shock, and Barrel to kidnap Santa Claus. Now, where did Oogie get those bodies from . . .
    • Now, add this to the Fridge Horror: the skeletons in Oogie's lair are still sentient, so the torture doesn't stop after you're dead.
    • The skeletons in Oogie Boogie's lair look much more like humans than the monsters and ghouls of Halloween Town. Which possibly means that his victims were kidnapped from our world.
      • Averted if you think about it through another fridge trip: All manner of beasties are found in Halloween Town, including skeletons, like the ones hanging from the walking tree. Plus, it seems implied that the denizens enjoy pain to an extent, so probably the torture devices don't bother them over much.
      • However, Oogie Boogie is stated as coming from a holiday that is no longer celebrated (Bug Day). He found Halloween Town and tried to make it into the new Bug Day, but was defeated. Because he is originally from another holiday, he isn't like the other citizens of Halloween Town and appears to torture his victims (as he almost killed Sally and Santa, if not for Jack). He doesn't scare for fun and those skeletons are most likely past victims, not just regular living skeletons.
      • Holy shit what exactly did people do on bug day?
    • Jack explicitly tells the three to "leave Oogie Boogie out of this", meaning he knows full well that Oogie's bad news. And he immediately realizes what's up when he hears Sally's scream from Oogie's lair. How could he have possibly known how bad Oogie is unless it happened before to someone else? And it's likely Jack wasn't able to save them since he didn't know how far Oogie was willing to go the first time around...
      • It gets even more disturbing when you take into account that Oogie had killed multiple people before to the point where everyone in town knows he's bad news. Yet Jack still either didn't or couldn't get him to leave town.
      • Oogie lives just outside of town.
  • Another Fridge Horror moment: you don't pay attention to the Mayor's speech before Jack's take-off because of the fog rolling in (because Sally put Fog Juice into the fountain) but some of the things the Mayor praises about Jack are "you who have frightened billions into an early grave!" and "You who have eh, devastated the souls of the living . . ." That's right, Jack has frightened people to death (Then again, the Mayor could have been exaggerating). Still disturbing.
  • If you look at the entries for The Woobie and Blessed with Suck, Jack's situation is pretty damn depressing. It makes Jack trying to be Santa look more like a desperate cry for help.
  • In Oogie Boogie's song; a snake keeps popping out of his mouth. But then if you think about it, that snake is probably his tongue... So every time he did that; he was licking Sandy Claws.
  • Sally poisons Dr. Finkelstein to keep him out of the way for a bit because she knows he'll just wake up a little bit later. But what about the first time she did it...?
    • It's pretty safe to assume that the daughter of a mad scientist would know a thing or two about the ingredients she uses. He might have told her what they did or used them as sleeping pills, or she asked around. It would be extremely out of character for Sally to try to kill her father.
    • Considering he can open his head and even tears out half his brain with no ill effect he likely isn't in danger from ordinarily deadly things. Much like Jack and Sally herself.
  • One of the residents of Halloween Town is a living tree, with living skeletons being hung from his branches! Let me repeat that, A sentient tree monster, with a bunch of sentient skeletons, with nooses around their necks, hanging from said tree... Imagine all the Unfortunate Implications of this being if you will...
  • This verse from "Kidnap the Sandy Claws"; "We're his little henchmen, and we do our job with pride. We do our best to please him and stay on his good side." Add to this the fact that Lock, Shock, and Barrel are not only terrified of him but serve him anyway, and the fact that they are implied during the ending (and much of the film, really) to be mostly harmless tricksters, and you begun to wonder just what Oogie did or said to get the trio THAT MUCH under his thrall. No wonder they don't care if he's dead or not.
    • There is the hint of an answer in the song. We the viewers know Jack and he doesn't seem like he would ever hit children, but the kids assume he will "beat us black and green" if they screw up, not even seeming particularly worried about it, which implies that has happened to them an awful lot of times. Cartoon torture-victim skeletons are one thing, but casual confirmation of a character beating small children bloody is a bit more of a realism-tinged fear.
    • While it's likely that Lock, Shock, and Barrel are fairly harmless on their own, almost all of the suggestions given for kidnapping "Sandy Claws" by Lock and Barrel would have been immediately fatal. How many people have they accidentally (or intentionally, under the orders of Oogie) killed?
  • The very first shot of the opening "This Is Halloween" musical number gets a hell of a lot more unsettling when you realize that the pumpkin-headed scarecrow standing behind the Halloweentown sign was Jack in disguise. Not the disguise, mind you, but the fact that there's an undead skeleton hiding in plain sight and looking right at you, and you probably had no idea the first time you watched the movie. Jack may be a nice guy, but stuff like that reminds you why he's the Pumpkin King; the man has a natural talent for scaring people.
  • As scary as he may be, Oogie Boogie's gambling habit initially might seem like a simple garden-variety supervillain gimmick, done to make him stand out. But then you realize that even though Oogie loves to gamble with his victims, he always cheats. This raises an important question: why force your victims to gamble for their lives if you know you're just going to kill them in the end anyway? Simple. Oogie doesn't enjoy gambling because he likes taking risks, he enjoys it because he likes to give his victims a glimmer of hope that they'll be able to save themselves, making it all the more painful when he dashes their hopes and sends them to their deaths. Oogie isn't just playful, the man is outright sadistic.
    • Why wouldn't he? Anyone who has walked into a casino knows that The House always wins in the end. His victory is always assured, and he gets to have a little sadistic fun in the process, feeding off the fear he can generate before his opponent runs out of luck.
  • Given their intentions to torture and kill Santa, how are we so sure Lock, Shock, and Barrel brought the Easter Bunny home?
    • The trick-or-treaters are terrified of Jack's power, and unless Oogie Boogie ordered them otherwise, they would obey out of respect and fear.
  • Given the above aspect with Oogie possibly running on Blue-and-Orange Morality due to being the king of a forgotten holiday, one wonders just what kind of holiday Bug Day actually was for someone like Oogie to be its Anthropomorphic Personification. Oogie Boogie is actively sadistic, murderous, and enjoys gambling with the lives of others. That in and of itself implies some very disturbing ideas.
  • There is some of this with Sally and Dr. Finklestein possibly. In the DVD Commentary, Tim Burton refers to Sally as a daughter — yet there are lines in the film like "You're mine, you know!" and "You can make other creations!" that doesn't sound like a rebellious daughter/overprotective-dad relationship, but like something else entirely. Consider that the creation Dr. Finklestein makes to replace Sally looks awfully like a wife — that looks exactly like him — and that an alternate ending had Oogie Boogie be Dr. Finklestein, jealous that Sally chose Jack over him. In an earlier script, the father/daughter relationship was a lot more obvious with lines like "I'm grown up now. I'll have to leave sometime"... yet there are bits like The scientist smiles, feeling Sally under his sway again that sounds rather creepy.
  • During 'Kidnap the Sandy Claws,' Lock and Barrel bow worshipfully when Shock sends the bug down to Oogie Boogie. Assuming that this is something Boogie made them do, and not an affectation on their part, it says something very disturbing about him. Jack is the King of Halloween. Oogie Boogie wants to be its god.
  • Here's some Paranoia Fuel for you: After its short appearance in "This Is Halloween", we never once see the One Hiding Under Your Bed again. For all we know, it could be watching the characters almost anywhere throughout the movie... and while you could argue that that's not a bad thing because the citizens of Halloween Town are friendly, we know from Oogie Boogie that not all of them are, and we don't know that the OHUYB is good... only that it has teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red...
    • Well, to be fair: The Pumpkin King prequel game said that Oogie wasn't even from Halloween Town. He came from Bug Day, and people stopped celebrating that just because of how messed up it was. The OHUYB still seems to be from Town, and would share their philosophy of "Scary, not mean". It might just like to keep to itself most of the time is all!
  • Jack shows up in Halloweentown driving a snowmobile and towing a trailer full of Christmas items. Considering the citizens of Halloweentown have never even heard of Christmas, this means that Jack must have stolen everything he brought back with him.
  • Did Lock, Shock and Barrel actually bring the Easter Bunny home when Jack told them to after capturing him instead of Santa? Given how readily they disobeyed Jack after he told them to leave Oogie Boogie out of it, who's to say they didn't just dump him to Oogie's lair too (or worse) before fetching the real Santa?

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