Goosebumps (Literature)

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"Reader beware — you're in for a scare..."

In The '90s, R. L. Stine had an idea: "Why not write scary books for children?"

It was through this simple idea that one of the most successful and controversial pre-Harry Potter-era children's book series began.

The original Goosebumps series lasted for all of 62 books, including such famous titles as The Haunted Mask (which was also the first episode of the TV adaptation, shown as an hour-long special episode), Welcome to Camp Nightmare, the Night of the Living Dummy series (there were three in the original series, but the other spin offs and successor series have had at least one story with Slappy as the antagonist), and the Monster Blood series (the fourth and last of which is the final book in the original series).

It was The Twilight Zone for pre-adolescents, with a twist at the end of every book (sometimes cruel, sometimes not, sometimes non-existent, which is a twist in and of itself given the series). Stine cites Tales from the Crypt (published by EC Comics) as a source of inspiration, even though the series isn't nearly as gory and violent as the comics.

The series also became somewhat infamous for the "You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover" idiom exemplified by the books' cover art from time to time. Deep Trouble, for instance, had a picture of a giant shark going after a boy swimming in the ocean, which is only a minor point — the story was really about a boy finding a mermaid who was being targeted by scientists who wanted to experiment on rare sea life. Egg Monsters from Mars featured the monsters as horrible threats on the cover, but the egg monsters are a (relatively) benevolent force captured by (you guessed it) a Mad Scientist.

Later incarnations of the series included the more obscure Goosebumps Series 2000 (a Darker and Edgier Goosebumps series that ran for 25 books), and Gamebook series Give Yourself Goosebumps. Both ended in early 2000, but the series was eventually revived in 2006 with the Goosebumps Graphix series (adapting classic books into comics), and further spinoffs were released in 2008-2012 (the twelve-book Goosebumps HorrorLand series, a crossover between new and existing characters — it also got a video game adaptation and was continued with a second, seven-book story arc and then the six-book Hall of Horrors mini-series), 2012-2016 (Goosebumps Most Wanted, featuring a mix of classic and new villains in standalone stories) 2017-2023 (Goosebumps SlappyWorld with each book introduced by Slappy the Dummy), and 2023-ongoing (Goosebumps House of Shivers). There were also spinoff titles compiling various short stories, such as Tales to Give You Goosebumps and Goosebumps Triple Header.

There were also a pair of PC games in the 1990s: Escape from Horrorland, a follow-up to the original One Day at HorrorLand, and Attack of the Mutant, which had a different plot than the television episode or book with the same name. A phone game called Goosebumps HorrorTown premiered in 2017. IDW started publishing a comic series based on the franchise in 2017.

For tropes relating to the Goosebumps television series, look here.

Columbia Pictures released a film based on the series on October 16, 2015, starring Jack Black as R.L. Stine. View the trailer here. A sequel followed in 2018.

In 2016, Danny Abosch and John Maclay wrote the music and the book respectively to a musical based on the 24th book of the series, Phantom of the Auditorium. In 2021, an official cast recording was released, with the talents of Krystina Alabado, Noah Galvin, Will Roland, Alex Brightman, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Stephanie Styles, and even cameos from the man himself, R.L. Stine. Info about the show, as well as the album, can be found here.

There is also a bot that generates new Goosebumps covers daily; its creations can be found here.

If you're interested in a full review of the series, check out Blogger Beware.

Books in the series:

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Original series

Tales to Give You Goosebumps

Give Yourself Goosebumps

(See Give Yourself Goosebumps)

Goosebumps Triple Header

Goosebumps Series 2000

Cry of the Cat
Bride of the Living Dummy
Creature Teacher
Invasion of the Body Squeezers: Part 1
Invasion of the Body Squeezers: Part 2
I Am Your Evil Twin
Revenge R Us
Fright Camp
Are You Terrified Yet?
Headless Halloween
Attack of the Graveyard Ghouls
Brain Juice
Return to HorrorLand
Jekyll and Heidi
Scream School
The Mummy Walks
The Werewolf in the Living Room
Horrors of the Black Ring
Return to Ghost Camp
Be Afraid � Be Very Afraid!
The Haunted Car
Full Moon Fever
Slappy's Nightmare
Earth Geeks Must Go
Ghost in the Mirror

Goosebumps HorrorLand

(See Goosebumps HorrorLand) (Also includes tropes for Hall of Horrors)

Goosebumps Most Wanted

Special Edition books

Goosebumps SlappyWorld

Other books

This series provides (usually multiple) examples of:

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In general

Abusive Parents: Multiple cases, usually of the emotional variety.
Adults Are Useless: Either that (with the grandparents in How to Kill a Monster being arguably the best example of this), or in on the conspiracy (as seen in such stories as My Hairiest Adventure, Welcome to Camp Nightmare and The Horror at Camp Jellyjam).
Affectionate Parody: The Gooflumps books by R.U. Slime, two unauthorized and unofficial parody books that lampoon the vastness of the series (the covers read "Buy two, that's it!"), the cover art by Tim Jacobus, and the story structure of the Goosebumps books.
- Stay Out Of The Bathroom, which is labeled as Book 2 1/2, is a parody of Stay Out of the Basement concerning aliens switching people through highly advanced toilet bowls.
- Eat Cheese And Barf!, which is labeled as Book 4 1/2, is a parody of both Say Cheese and Die! and Monster Blood, concerning a cottage cheese monster and vast amounts of Toilet Humour.
Always Someone Better: A lot of the Goosebumps stories usually have the antagonist as someone who is better than the protagonist at almost everything. (ex: Judith in Be Careful What You Wish For, Sari in The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb/Return of the Mummy, Courtney in You Can't Scare Me!, Wilson in How I Learned to Fly).
And I Must Scream: Often the nasty implications of the Cruel Twist Endings, but the biggest examples would have to be Mike getting frozen in place and put in a museum, people getting phased into another dimension forever after using the invisibility mirror too much while their counterparts take over their life and The Class of 1947 getting trapped in Greyworld, a place where you don't age and lose all your color.
Annoying Younger Sibling: So many, that it has it's own page. Really, it would be easier to list the siblings who don't fall under this trope, but notable examples include Letty in Let's Get Invisible!, Luke in One Day at HorrorLand, Ginny in Bad Hare Day and Ernie in Dr. Maniac Will See You Now, with the most infamous example being Tara in The Cuckoo Clock of Doom.
Anti-Villain: Quite a few of the villains, such as the Dark Falls Residents, Dr. Brewer, Spidey and Della have relatively sympathetic motivations.
Art Shift: The Goosebumps Graphix books (adaptations of several original series books into Comic Book form) all have varying art styles thanks to the different artists, including The Werewolf of Fever Swamp having a style similar to DC Comics, The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight having a far more detailed and realistic looking art style, The Abominable Snowman of Pasadena and The Horror at Camp Jellyjam being far more cartoonish in style, etc.
Asshole Victim: Quite a few jerks end up on the receiving end of the villains' actions, starting with the Beymer twins in Monster Blood. Also applies when the villains get their well-deserved comeuppance, such as the Man Behind the Man in the same book.
Attack of the Killer Whatever: Some of the monsters include Lawn Gnomes, a giant worm, and a sponge.
Badass Adorable: Any protagonist who learns to fight back will be this to some degree, with Billy from Welcome to Camp Nightmare being one of the first.
Big Brother Bully: Repeatedly, with Micah Brill of Revenge R Us as one of the worst examples, though Matt's brother and sister in Don't Go to Sleep! are also up there.
Blessed with Suck: A lot of the books start with the protagonist finding some kind of supremely powerful magical object that is awesome for about five minutes before terrible things start to happen, such as Monster Blood and the invisibility mirror in Let's Get Invisible!.
Blue-and-Orange Morality: Most of the monsters and creatures legitimately don't see anything wrong with their bizarre, horrifying antics. This makes the protagonists' situation even worse since it's nigh impossible to reason with them.
Bowdlerise: Some of the reprints of the original series have removed elements that have not aged well, such as Slappy's more abusive moments.
The Bully: There are quite a few of them, starting with the Beymer twins in Monster Blood; Conan Barber, who appears in the three sequels, is even worse.
Butt-Monkey: Many Goosebumps protagonists have lives miserable enough to qualify them as this. Special mentions go to Gary from Why I'm Afraid of Bees, Ricky from Calling All Creeps, Matt from Don't Go to Sleep!, Samantha from Be Careful What You Wish For, Sarah from The Curse of Camp Cold Lake, Crystal and Cole from Chicken Chicken, Richard from Dr. Maniac Will See You Now and Evan from the Monster Blood series.
Captain Obvious:
- A lot of chapters tend to end with a dramatic statement that is obvious to the reader.
- The Tag Line for Attack of the Mutant is "He's not a superhero, He's a supervillain!" Well duh! A horror story about a superhero wouldn't be very scary.
Cat Scare: This happens at least once per book, though it's sometimes subverted. One of the most frequent examples has a character (usually the parents) claiming to believe the protagonist about what's happening, or even to be in on it themselves, only for the next chapter to immediately reveal that they were just joking, much to the protagonist's chagrin.
Cats Are Mean: Many books and stories, like "The Cat's Tale", Cry of the Cat, Claws and Night of a Thousand Claws have supernatural, evil cats as the villains. Normal cats are usually depicted as lazy and mean towards the protagonists (Bonkers from Piano Lessons Can Be Murder being especially nasty). Stine himself said in an interview: "I've always been a dog person. You can tell I don't like cats — because I've written so many books about evil cats. It's much harder to imagine an evil dog."
Chekhov's Gun: Used in some books, but oddly subverted in some others, with some seemingly important things being given a lot of detail, such as Lucy's friend in The Girl Who Cried Monster having some fictional Frisbee-like toy which is given several pages of description, leading the reader to believe it will be somehow important to fighting the monster, only for it to never be brought up again. Whether this is deliberate or just bad writing is anyone's guess.
Chekhov's Hobby: A common thing in some of the books is that a character will have some sort of quirk that becomes important later, such as Luke's pinching habit in One Day at HorrorLand.
The Chew Toy: Fairly common in the series, which had several protagonists that get beaten up by bullies a lot and whose misery is at least partly treated as a source of amusement for the reader — such as Gary in Why I'm Afraid of Bees and Michael in The Cuckoo Clock of Doom. A later example is Ian in Slappy Birthday to You, who's regularly subject to violence from his cousins and younger sister.
Child Eater: Some of the villains try to outright devour the main character, as in The Girl Who Cried Monster. Some succeed in eating other kids offscreen as with King Jellyjam.
Child Hater: Several books have these, usually old and cranky neighbors. The postman in The Ghost Next Door is a particularly vicious example, as he chases kids with a loaded shotgun in the original.
Competition Freak: A recurring character trait and the people with it tend to be rivals of or annoyances to the main character. Sari from The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb is one of the earliest examples.
Covers Always Lie: This could be a big problem, as noted above.
Crapsack World: The series as a whole qualifies if you believe it's set in one universe. Apathetic adults, over-the-top bullies, murderous madmen, dangerous monsters... one wonders how these kids are going to grow up, if they survive their childhood.
Cruel Twist Ending: Used every so often, with the hero seemingly having things turn out good for them and then things going ugly again.
Crying Wolf: Many books include protagonists who are pranksters and then encounter an actual threat that nobody believes them about.
Darker and Edgier: Welcome to Dead House, Stay Out of the Basement, A Night in Terror Tower, The Headless Ghost and I Live in Your Basement are exceptionally scarier and gorier than the rest of the original series.
Dark Is Not Evil: Often, the supposed "monster" of the story turns out to be rather benevolent, while the true villains are just sick, amoral people.
Defanged Horrors: The series can be scary, but is overall fine for children.
Denser and Wackier: The later entries in the original series tended to take this tone more and more, with a few exceptions.
Downer Ending: Used in more than one book, all the way back to Welcome to Dead House with the implication that not all of the Dark Falls residents are gone.
Early-Installment Weirdness: The first 20 or so novels feel very subdued compared with later entries. There are scares and supernatural elements, but Stine typically spends a good amount of time establishing character and atmosphere before moving on to the horror. Because of this, some of the early books (notably The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb and Welcome to Camp Nightmare) are uncharacteristically long (130+ pages, as opposed to the average of 110-120).
- Several of the early books were written in limited third-person narration, including books 2, 3, 4, 7, 10 and 11. Most (though not all) books after this point were written in first-person narration, similar to the first book in the series.
Earn Your Happy Ending: Some of the books do end with legitimate happy endings, such as A Night in Terror Tower and Beware, the Snowman.
Evil-Detecting Dog: More than a few canines are shown to sense evil, especially ghosts and other undead. It's a plot point as early as Welcome to Dead House.
Extruded Book Product: After a while, the series turned into this; it is possible that to keep up with the demand for more and more new Goosebumps books, R.L. Stine started working with ghostwriters to keep the new releases coming. Considering that a new title was published monthly and that Stine pumped out several other book series as well, this was almost inevitable.
- However, in a Reddit Q&A, R.L. Stine asserts that he wrote every single Goosebumps book. Although some of the spinoffs such as a couple of the Tales to Give You Goosebumps stories have been confirmed to be ghost-written.
Fate Worse than Death: Often the implication (overt or covert) of the Twist Ending.
Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Several sibling pairs fit this, going back to Josh and Amanda in Welcome to Dead House.
Foregone Conclusion: Subverted. It seems clear that if the book is told in first-person, then the protagonist must make it out okay, but that's not always the case.
George Lucas Altered Version: The Classic Goosebumps reprints and later the e-books made changes to update/remove some of the technology and pop culture references, such as deleting a reference to a VCR in Phantom of the Auditorium.
Gender-Blender Name: Far too many to count, perhaps to assist with the Purely Aesthetic Gender.
Genre Anthology: The Tales to Give You Goosebumps short-story books, the Triple Header novellas, and the TV show.
Ghostly Goals: Every ghost in the series has their mission, be it to find someone who can be their friend in death, or to carry out some unfinished business.
Grey-and-Gray Morality: Surprisingly. Quite a few of the protagonists (Evan, Sarah, Greg, Todd, etc.) can be insufferably selfish assholes, while some of the monsters and antagonists have sympathetic motivations for their evil.
Hand Waved: Frequent, usually because having preadolescent heroes means often ignoring basic common sense provisions so that they can get into the required dangerous situations. A great example is Why I'm Afraid of Bees; you'd think an 11-year-old kid would need parental consent to be the subject of a strange medical experiment like that. Also why there's no money involved.
Hate Sink: More often than not, the human side characters prove to be far more despicable than any of the monsters or supernatural entities. You can't exactly hate lonely ghosts and inhuman creatures. Greedy and stupid adults or sadistic children, on the other hand...
Here We Go Again!: A great many of the twist endings and up with another monster or other threat turning up.
Horror Comedy: The books are often a combination of scary and goofy at the same time. Although in some cases this is more due to Narm than a deliberate stylistic choice. However, Stine has mentioned his intention with the series for it to be usually both funny and scary at the same time.
Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: There have been several stories set around various holidays, such as Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween (with The Haunted Mask as the first) and Christmas.
Humans Are the Real Monsters: A surprisingly recurring theme, with Say Cheese and Die! and both Deep Trouble and Deep Trouble II as just a few examples of books where the human villain is either responsible for or a worse threat than the supernatural element.
Jerkass: A good number of these types of characters can be found in pretty much all these books. Special mention goes to Mr. Saur from Say Cheese and Die � Again!, Larry from Welcome to Camp Nightmare, Judith from Be Careful What You Wish For, Conan and Kermit from the Monster Blood series, Todd from Go Eat Worms, Mickey from The Barking Ghost, Chuck and Steve from The Haunted Mask series, and practically everyone who isn't Ricky or Iris in Calling All Creeps, most notoriously Wart, Jared, David, and Brenda.
Jerkass Has a Point: Oftentimes, when the protagonist first discovers whatever paranormal thing is going on in the book, he tells someone, (usually a teacher) who just blows him off, and we are meant to see them as a jerk for doing this, even though in the vast majority of cases their only evidence is their unverifiable say so, meaning most people who aren't Super Gullible would be skeptical.
Karmic Twist Ending: A recurring trope in the series. For instance, The Cuckoo Clock of Doom ends with the book's most unpleasant character being wiped from existence.
Kid Hero: Unfortunately, the protagonists don't always aspire to this. The closest examples are probably Hannah from The Ghost Next Door, Skipper from Attack of the Mutant, and both Billies from Welcome to Camp Nightmare and Deep Trouble.
Kids Are Cruel: Oh, so many. Several books contain bullies the same age as the main character (most of whom are 12 years of age) who display absolutely no redeeming qualities and are defined solely for their nasty, bullying ways.
Lack of Empathy: Many of the parents and adults, but special nods go towards Tara Webster, Brandon Plush, Mr. Saur, Conan, Micah, Judith, the counselors at Camp Nightmoon, and the HorrorLand Horrors.
Mad Scientist: Almost too many to count. Often the mad scientist (or some sort of researcher who, if not specifically "Mad", is at least a jerk who does his job due to promises of money and prestige) will prove to be the real villain of the story instead of the comparably harmless "monster".
Mandatory Twist Ending: The series does this to the point where the twist endings became played out after a while. Stine once said in an interview that he'd always write the ending first and then go back and think of twists later.
Negative Continuity: Most of the sequels ignore the twist endings of the previous books, and sometimes other plot elements.
Nephewism: It's very common for the books to feature a visit to aunts/uncles with little or no mention of parents (with Evan Ross of Monster Blood being the first), or an orphaned protagonist that lives with an aunt/uncle (such as Jaclyn from Beware, the Snowman).
Never Trust a Title: Often, the eponymous ghost/monster/whatever isn't the real enemy.
New House, New Problems: A common setup for the books, all the way back to the very first one, is the protagonist moving to a new house, only for it to contain some sort of evil.
Nice Guy: Although there's a Jerkass in almost every book, the protagonists are surprisingly reallt nice and friendly for their ages. Special mentions go out to Carly Beth Caldwell, Billy Harlan, Eddie Morgan and (debatably) Michael Webster and Greg Banks.
Non-Malicious Monster: Most of the various ghosts in the stories turn out to be this, but friendly.
Our Monsters Are Weird: And how. From shapeshifting creatures to a giant man-eating blob monster to a sponge that causes bad luck, many of the monsters are decidedly strange.
Paranormal Mundane Item: The books contain lots of those, with the camera in Say Cheese and Die! being one of the first.
Parental Favoritism: Seen to sickening effect in some of the books, with The Cuckoo Clock of Doom being one of the worst.
Parental Neglect: More than a few protagonists suffer from this; Evan Ross is one of the worst cases, basically being abandoned to the care of other relatives in all but his second book.
Platonic Boy/Girl Heroes: Even when the boy and girl heroes aren't best friends, a boy and girl are often grouped to enforce this trope. Sometimes the boy and girl don't get along that well.
Platonic Life-Partners: The series features many storylines where the main characters are a boy and girl who are best friends who are inseparable but have absolutely no romantic interest in each other. A few of them even use She's Not My Girlfriend and mean it. As most of the characters are children who aren't thinking about romance in the first place, this is Justified. Completely averted in How I Learned to Fly.
The Prankster: Many characters often venture towards this, more likely the Annoying Younger Siblings, the older siblings, and even some of the protagonists' friends.
Proscenium Reveal: It happens sometimes for an opening fake-out, such as in Series 2000s Scream School.
Pseudo-Crisis: At the end of nearly every chapter.
Puppy Love: The books almost always featured a strictly platonic Boy-Girl hero setup without any consideration of potential romance between the two, which makes sense given their age or that they were sometimes siblings. There are a few exceptions, though.
Random Events Plot: Quite a few of the stories, such as Legend of the Lost Legend and The Beast from the East largely consist of a bunch of weird set pieces loosely tied together.
Red Herring: A frequent occurrence is the books' twist endings rendering what the characters had believed most of the time to be the cause of the strange events to be completely irrelevant.
Reed Richards Is Useless: This comes up quite a lot, given a lot of the stories about science gone wrong.
Religious Horror: Largely avoided; while the series has more than its share of supernatural events, organized religion is typically not involved or even mentioned. Plenty of ghosts and vampires but no killer nuns or demons from H-e-double-toothpicks. Stories in the franchise that deal with Christmas likewise stick to its secular aspects.
- Characters� religious identities are usually not explicitly stated either, although for some characters, one could possibly hazard a guess based on their names.
Sham Supernatural: In several books such as Attack of the Jack-O'-Lanterns, Scream School, and You Can't Scare Me! the supernatural creatures end up being fakes, or at least not the type of supernatural creatures that the protagonists thought they were.
Shout-Out: Some of the titles are blatant movie and TV references, such as Night of the Living Dummy, Phantom of the Auditorium and A Shocker on Shock Street. The second HorrorLand arc contains Little Shop of Hamsters. The "Most Wanted" series' third book is How I Met My Monster.
Sliding Scale of Comedy and Horror: Varies a lot between books. Some are pretty far toward the comedy end (Attack of the Mutant being a good example) while others are rather dark and have few funny moments (The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb probably being the darkest.)
Sliding Scaleof Idealism Vs Cynicism: Very much on the cynical side. Most of, if not all of the books end with Cruel Twist Endings. Every book has at least one Jerkass character with almost no redeeming qualities at all. The protagonists themselves can be miserable StrawLosers on their best days and Designated Heroes on their worst. Whenever a protagonist has an older or younger sibling, said sibling is often an obnoxious jerk or brat towards them. The adults are idiots who often favor the older or younger siblings over the protagonist. If they aren't a villain, almost anyone who does something bad is always a Karma Houdini.
Summer Campy: Close to a dozen books and short stories are set at summer camps where things go rather strange, with Welcome to Camp Nightmare being the first and Creature Teacher: The Final Exam being the most recent as of 2021.
Surprisingly Happy Ending: This occasionally happens, with some twists rendering the entire story happier (or, in the case of The Ghost Next Door, bittersweet) in hindsight. There are also times where the ending is the result of a Tomato Surprise, resulting in an Esoteric Happy Ending with intentional Protagonist-Centered Morality in play.
Take Over the World: Some of the series' villains, going back to the titular villain in Attack of the Mutant, have this as their goal.
Teens Are Monsters: With a few exceptions, teenagers have usually been portrayed as completely condescending or just downright nasty Kick the Dog bullies to the main characters and their friends (who are almost always 11-12 in the novels), which could make sense since they most often the older siblings of the protagonist and being portrayed through the younger kid's most likely somewhat biased point-of-view.
This Loser Is You: Goosebumps protagonists tended to be nonathletic, dorky, social outcast bully magnets. Very rarely, if ever, was the protagonist of a book tough or popular. Steve Boswell from The Haunted Mask II is an exception as he was the main bully in the first book.
Title Drop: Some happen in the individual books but Slappy does for the whole franchise in the very end of The Streets of Panic Park. He also drops the name of Slappyworld in the first entry.
Tomato in the Mirror: More than a few protagonists find out they aren't human in the climaxes. My Hairiest Adventure is rather infamous for its reveal that the main character was originally a dog before being made human, and the whole plot was about the transformation wearing off.
Tomato Surprise: Multiple works end with the reader finding out the main character was a monster or alien of some kind the whole time, such as Welcome to Camp Nightmare and My Best Friend is Invisible.
Troperiffic: Inevitable, considering how long it's run.
Twist Ending: Usually on the last page, maybe even the last paragraph, of almost every book. Many variations, including Tomato in the Mirror, Here We Go Again!, Dead All Along, The Bad Guy Wins, From Bad to Worse, and the occasional Karmic Twist Ending. Many of them were also Cruel Twist Endings.
Undead Child: Just about every single ghost story has these.
The Unfavorite: A number of the protagonists suffered from this when compared to their sibling or siblings, most of whom were pretty rotten. Notable examples include Wade from Revenge R Us, Matt from Don't Go to Sleep!, Dana from Egg Monsters from Mars, Amy from Night of the Living Dummy II and most infamously, Michael Webster from The Cuckoo Clock of Doom.
Untranslated Title: When four of the most books were rereleased in Sweden in 2015, the series was called Goosebumps, just like the movie released the same year.
Villain-Based Franchise: With Slappy, especially with the SlappyWorld series.
Werewolves Are Dogs: One of the early books has a wolf that turns out to be good in the end and plays fetch with the main characters.
Wham Line: A lot of the twist endings are presented in this manner; doubly so if it's the last sentence of the book.
What Cliffhanger: Practically every other chapter.
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: This verbatim quote, and numerous variations of it, is often uttered by characters who are about to do a task that usually will end in disastrous results later on.
With Friends Like These...: Given that a lot of the protagonists are Straw Losers, often enough their friends turn out to be total dicks who will sell them out, turn on them, or abandon them in their time of need.
World of Jerkass: Every book has at least one jerk. But the one that fits this trope the best out of all of them is easily Calling All Creeps, in which everyone, except Ricky and Iris, is an asshole.
Would Hurt a Child: By the protagonists always being kids or preteens, nearly all the villains are perfectly willing to harm children — some even make them their primary targets.
You Have to Believe Me!: A very common staple of the series is the protagonist discovering the book's main villainous threat, telling people, and having them dismiss them. One of the short stories is even called "You Gotta Believe Me!"

Series 2000 — In general

Bloodier and Gorier: The Series 2000 books were a bit more brutal in terms of violence and horror.
Darker and Edgier: The Goosebumps 2000 series.
Mundanger: It's very rare to encounter a Goosebumps book that doesn't feature fantasy or supernatural elements. The Series 2000 books Are You Terrified Yet? and Scream School are among the few that qualify.
Nonindicative Name: You'd expect Series 2000 to start at the turn of the millennium, right? Well, it debuted at the start of 1998 and ironically ended at the start of 2000.
Questioning Title?: Series 2000's Are You Terrified Yet?
Revenge of the Sequel: Nearly all of the sequels in this series use stock titles of this type — Bride of the Living Dummy, Return to HorrorLand and Return to Ghost Camp — rather than numbering them.
Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The Goosebumps 2000 series loved this trope.

Most Wanted — In general

Covers Always Lie: The Most Wanted series falls victim to this a lot. It's hard to believe their claim of the series contains the "most wanted" monsters when they are often not the ones depicted on the cover.

Literature / Goosebumps

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