The Nightmare Before Christmas/Fridge

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


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!"
    • If the plot didn't have Oogie Boogie, Jack would have been unredeemed.
  • Jack might have kept his tuxedo on beneath the Sandy Claws outfit because Sally's warning bugged him more then he let on.
  • Consider the fact that with the exception of the titular nightmare, that the Halloweentown citizens most likely only interacted with humans on Halloween. As humans wanted to be scared on Halloween, it makes prefect sense that the citizens would assume that humans liked to be scared on a daily basis!
  • As the WMG page detailed, the crush between Jack and Sally may not be as one-sided as one thinks.
  • Jack's got really long fingers, doesn't he? But he doesn't seem to have palms; his fingers just connect to his wrist. That's because he doesn't have skin to keep his metacarpals together!
    • Slight problem with that Brilliance -- if you look at Jack's fingers, there's only three bones to each finger. The only metacarpal Jack seem to have is on his thumb, the other fingers are the digital bones.
      • (counts knuckles) Oh yeah... good point.
  • When Jack first visited Christmas Town, he marveled at the elves kissing under mistletoe, suggesting that the concept of kissing didn't exist in Halloween Town. And at the very end, Jack and Sally kiss in the snow. So Jack did find something worth keeping from Christmas Town after all!
    • Except that we saw Dr. Finklestein, who has NOT been to Christmastown, kissing his brain when he made his newest creation, so kissing isn't likely to be a foreign concept to Halloweentown citizens. More likely it's the concept of kissing under mistletoe that's new to Jack.
  • Most people seem to think the Halloween Town citizens and the Mayor started worrying about Jack disappearing after a single day or night, but when you take into account that there are 54 days between Halloween and Christmas and they use about 36 of them to prepare their Christmas and it took Lock, Shock and Barrel that long to get To Christmas Town and back; just how long was Jack gone for? There’s around 18 days that are unaccounted for in the movie, some of that can be counted in Jack’s Christmas experiment’s and him taking a few days to decide to take over Christmas, but it seems to me Jack might of been missing for more than a night, which would give the Halloween Town citizens every right to start worrying about the Pumpkin King going missing.
    • During the conversation where they discuss Jack's mysterious disappearance, the mayor frantically states that they have only 365 days until next Halloween (at which point Wolfman corrects him, as there are 364 days left). So yes, Jack has only been gone the one night. The citizens apparently are just that lost without him, even for a few hours.
  • In A Nightmare Before Christmas, Jack tells Lock, Shock, & Barrel to bring back Santa Claus unharmed, before they sing a song about torturing and killing him. They do not get punished for this. But then I was looking at the entry for Blue and Orange Morality, and it clicked: they live in a world filled with The Undead. They were told not to hurt him by a talking skeleton. Unhurt to them is different than it is to us! - Stinkoman 87
  • I could never figure out why Jack's voice was different during the town meeting, until I realized that he was using a different voice to make him sound more powerful and more terrifying.
    • Also, Danny Elfman voiced all of Jack's songs, whereas someone else was his speaking voice. They still sounded pretty similar, though.
  • A bit of a meta one for the Nightmare Before Christmas decor in The Haunted Mansion - at first I thought it was a bit odd since the two don't actually have that much in common, apart from being 'scary' themed. Then I realised - they're both inhabited by supernatural, scary beings who don't want to scare! (They pretend to terrorise/Grim Grinning Ghosts come out to socialise, It's our job but we're not mean/In this town of Halloween)


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 it 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 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 obviously 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...
    • Why was Jack wearing his tuxedo underneath his Santa Claus outfit?
    • Tim Burton himself pointed out a Fridge Logic in commentary: Why would the Halloweentown citizens think Jack have died when he's already dead? Then he said that they thought Jack was gone.
    • Since he was taken out with artillery, they may have thought that he was blown apart into tiny pieces. The mayor actually alluded to this when he said "The King of Halloween has been blown to smithereens." --Biodroid
    • 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 Halloweentown could identify with.

Fridge Horror

  • There's an entire alternate reality universe devoted to Thanksgiving. Think about it for a moment. Brrrrrrrr.
  • 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 sew 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.
      • 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 of 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 Halloweentown's reaction to Oogie Boogie, it's unlikely they would make anything that would kill anyone.[1] 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 then Halloweentown children.
    • 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.
    • Also, consider that Jack specificly sought out Lock, Shock, and Barrel to kidnap Sandy Claws 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.
    • 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 and the people killed could have been Complete Monsters for all we know). Still disturbing.
    • If you look at the entries for The Woobie and Blessed with Suck, Jack's situation is actually pretty damn depressing. It makes Jack trying to be Santa look more like a desperate cry for help.
    • 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 overmuch.
  • 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.
  1. ↑ Blue and Orange Morality aside, the citizens still seem to believe killing = bad
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