The Nightmare Before Christmas/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Development Hell: Burton used to be a Disney animator and came up with the concept, presented as a poem, in the early 1980s.
  • Executive Meddling: The vampires playing hockey at the end of the film were originally using Burton's head as a puck.
    • Disney moving the film under its Touchstone label rather then releasing it under its own banner.
  • Fan Nickname:
    • Bone-Demon: Jack and any fan-made skeletons like him. Understood to be a sort of sub-species of either Undead or demon. Usually used in the camp that thinks Jack and Sally have kids by natural means.
    • Dr. Finkly: Dr. Finklestein, by his fans.
    • Jewel: Dr. Finklestein creation/wife seen at the end of the movie. While there's no evidence that Finklestein's "Be careful, my precious jewel!" is a reference to her name, the fans use it anyways.
    • Skeledoll: The name of Jack and Sally's fandom daughters. Can be either just ragdolls with bones or a mixture of ragdoll and skeleton.
    • Spiral Hill: The hill where Jack gets his first song and where Jack and Sally have their Big Damn Kiss. Kingdom Hearts calls it "Curly Hill", but if this poll is any indication, fans massively prefer "Spiral".
  • God Never Said That: This video claims that it's a deleted song that was replaced by "Jack's Lament". The song is actually "Hushabye Mountain" from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The lie should be obvious, really, considering one of the lines is "Daddy loves you" and Jack doesn't have children.
  • Hey, It's That Voice!: Catherine O'Hara voices Sally and also Shock.
  • Non-Singing Voice: Danny Elfman does the singing voice of Jack, while Chris Sarandon does the speaking voice. In Oogie's Revenge, the trope is averted with Sarandon singing the songs. Your Mileage May Vary on how well he did.
  • Talking to Himself: Averted. Elfman does the voice of Jack Skellington and Barrel, but since he's the singing voice of Jack, he nevers runs into this trope. Likewise averted by Sally and Shock, who are both voiced by Catherine O'Hara but never share a scene with each other.
  • What Could Have Been: Originally, Dr. Finklestein was going to be Oogie, disguised because he was jealous that Sally chose Jack over him and wanted to teach her a lesson. See here.
    • The line "You meddlin' stick figure!" was pretty funny.
    • Also This early script shows some changes, like we were going to see some of the other holidays at the beginning sequence, and "This Is Halloween" is considerably different from the final product (for example, Jack was going to come in on a Cool Horse Undead Horse).
    • There was also a couple of storyboards floating about the net (which seems to missing now) that had Jack and Oogie going at each other with, I kid you not, freaking maces.
    • Also, Sandy Claws might have been voiced by Vincent Price.
    • Danny Elfman was not the first choice to do the music. Instead, Giorgio Moroder was offered the project but turned it down.
    • Weirdest of all, the movie almost didn't get the Spiral Hill which codified Goth Spirals! On the DVD commentary, Henry Selick indicated that Tim was unsure about the hill because of his mandate that "magic does not exist in Halloween Town." (Specifically, the unwinding part seemed like magic.) Selick only changed his mind by saying, "All right, then, it's a mechanical hill."
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