Goosebumps/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Adult Fear: The Horror at Camp Jellyjam. Imagine being a parent who has sent their kid to a seemingly legit, if not oddly named, sports camp. Then you've lost contact with the camp. Then you learn that your children have been exploited for slave labor at the behest of a gigantic purple monstrosity that ate any kid that stopped working!
  • Canon Sue: In the TV version of You Can't Scare Me, Courtney comes off as this.
  • Complete Monster: Many, but not all of the villains, including Slappy, Ahmed from The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, the Masked Mutant from Attack of the Mutant, Mr. Toggle from Piano Lessons Can Be Murder, the Shadow from The Ghost Next Door and the Lord High Executioner from A Night In Terror Tower have their moments (although Slappy is more a Jerkass until Fridge Horror kicks in), but Mr Toggle and Ahmed are the truest complete monsters. But one particularly noteworthy is the Big Bad of Goosebumps Horrorland, called the Menace. When he was completely alive, kids died on his rides but he didn't care, due to his experiments in fear. that park so was scary it somehow ended up in an alternate universe. later, he found out horrorland was made on his park, so he got contact with a horror to invite guests there so he get them to panic park, and make them bring the fear meter up so he can PP back to the normal world. it's implied he's done this before...but the previous kids got so scared they died and he simply doesn't care. He even got several goosebumps villains to follow him, including other monsters like Slappy, and King Tutten-Ra from another GBH book. However, this could also be a case of Blue and Orange Morality, since the Horrors had their own set of morals.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Slappy
  • Evil Is Hammy: The Masked Mutant and Slappy come to mind, especially in the TV show.
  • Fridge Horror: The ending of Egg Monsters from Mars is much more disturbing to read as a seventeen-year-old than as a twelve-year-old, for instance. This example also counts as a Late to the Punchline moment. For those who haven't read it: the protagonist, a boy mind you, lays one of the titular eggs, showing that he had more than a friendly bond with the creatures (That Came Out Wrong) while kidnapped by a Mad Scientist. And the eggs are about the size of a football. It's thankfully not specified which um...point of exit was used. Also in The Curse of Camp Cold Lake, at first you think the girl on the cover is supposed to be Della, the ghost girl that torments poor Sarah Maas all story long. Until you read and find Della looks perfectly normal but transparent. This girl is not transparent and looks like a female version of the Skin Taker from Candle Cove. The ending implies that Sarah is killed by Brinna in the Mandatory Twist Ending. Perhaps that living corpse we see on the cover is Sarah since it actually fits more of the description of what we know of Sarah than it does Della.
  • Hell Is That Noise: The Chalk Closet.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: The monster in How to Kill a Monster sure does look a lot like The Evil Thing.
    • In the Tv Episode of "Night Of The living Dummy 3", Zane (played by a young Hayden Christiansen), Slappy turns him into a dummy and makes a pun that he looks wooden. Hmmm, Hayden Christansen being seen as Wooden...
  • Paranoia Fuel: Not only some of the stories but some of the cover art as well if you look a little too much into it.
  • Recycled Script: Taken to ridiculous lengths with the number of summer camp stories:
    • Welcome to Camp Nightmare (Original Series #9): A boy goes to a summer camp said to be haunted by a monster in the woods and his bunkmates keep getting injured and disappearing (Turns out the place is a Secret Test of Character for the protagonist and that he and his family are human-looking aliens ready to go on a vacation to Earth).
    • The Horror at Camp Jellyjam (Original Series #33): A brother and sister on a road trip crash their trailer into a sports camp where everyone is obsessed with competing and winning in sports so they can be slaves to a giant purple blob whose cronies are the Brainwashed and Crazy Stepford Smiler counselors.
    • Ghost Camp (Original Series #45): Two brothers go to a summer camp where everyone is a ghost and the only way they can escape is to possess the body of a living being.
    • The Curse of Camp Cold Lake (Original Series #56): A girl at a water sports camp finds herself haunted by a murderous Yandere ghost girl who can't go to the afterlife unless she has a buddy.
    • Fright Camp (Series 2000 #8): A group of horror movie fans win a trip to a camp that is said to be home to a horror movie director's creations.
    • Return to Ghost Camp (Series 2000 #19): A boy switches places with another camper on his way to the ghost camp from the original series and enjoys living his life -- until it's revealed that the boy the protagonist switched places with is prepped to be sacrificed to a monster in the woods.
    • Escape From Camp Run-For-Your-Life (Give Yourself Goosebumps #19): You (the reader) find yourself in a camp filled with zombie children.
    • Welcome to Camp Slither (HorrorLand #9): A brother and sister find themselves in a camp infested with snakes.
  • So Bad It's Good: Most episodes of the TV show.
  • Tastes Like Diabetes: A Holly Jolly Holiday, about a disgustingly sweet Christmas movie which gradually turns viewers into the protagonist, Susie Snowflake. People who enjoy that kind of stuff may actually be happy to turn into Susie Snowflake.
  • Tear Jerker -- The ending of The Ghost Next Door (both the book and the TV episode).
  • Toy Ship:
    • Since almost every book has at least one major character in each gender, it's to be expected that this would happen at least once. Perhaps realizing that the target audience wasn't likely to be thinking in these terms, one of the few explicit examples of a Love Interest, in "How I Got My Shrunken Head", turns out to be a Manipulative Bitch who never gets redeemed.
    • Another overt love interest turns out to be manipulative and evil in Werewolf Skin.
    • Yet another one is Lilly in Attack of the Mutant. (She turns out to be the titular mutant, though.)
    • Played straight in How I Learned to Fly.