Halloween (film)

	This page needs some cleaning up to be presentable. Tropes that apply only to one movie in the franchise need to be moved to pages for the individual movies.

"These eyes will deceive you. They will destroy you. They will take from you your innocence, your pride, and...eventually...your soul. These eyes do not see what you and I see. Behind these eyes, one finds only blackness, the absence of light. These are the eyes...of a psychopath."

—Dr. Samuel Loomis, Halloween (2007)

If you came to this page looking for the actual holiday, please proceed to All Hallow's Eve.

In 1978, John Carpenter made Halloween, a low-budget independent horror film. The success of this film popularized the Slasher Movies genre and inspired other similar franchises such as Friday the 13th -- and it also turned the film into the first of a major horror film franchise.

The series starts with the first two films:

• Halloween (1978): At the age of 6, Michael Myers stabbed his older sister Judith to death on Halloween; this led to his incarceration at a mental hospital. Fifteen years later, Michael escapes from the hospital on the night before Halloween and returns to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois to stalk teenager Laurie Strode and her friends. Only Sam Loomis, Michael's former psychiatrist, stands any chance of stopping Michael.
• Halloween II (1981): On the same night as the original film, Laurie gets taken to a hospital to recover from Michael Myers' attack, but the serial killer follows her there. The film soon reveals the reason Michael stalks Laurie: he wants to kill his long-lost sister, who doesn't know about the familial relationship between them.

Carpenter followed those films with:

• Halloween III Season of the Witch (1982):' A toymaker uses rocks from Stonehenge to create masks that cause children's heads to explode into writhing piles of snakes and bugs if they watch certain Halloween commercials. This plan also involves robots and lasers. Carpenter originally envisioned the Halloween franchise as a Genre Anthology series, which makes Halloween III the only film of the franchise that doesn't feature Michael. The film's poor reception killed the anthology idea, though.

From there, the films go off into a couple of different continuities. First, we have the three direct sequels:

• Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988): Michael Myers awakens from a ten-year coma just before Halloween to return to Haddonfield and kill Laurie Strode's young daughter, Jamie, who lives with a foster family.
• Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989): After the events of the previous film, Jamie lands in a mental hospital to help her recover. Michael uses his psychic link to Jamie to lure his young niece to him by stalking her friend Tina.
• Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995): Years after the previous film, a group called The Cult of Thorn try to kidnap an adult Jamie's newborn baby, Steven, as part of a plan involving Michael (who keeps trying to kill his niece).

The alternate continuity comes next:

• Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1998): This film ignores the events of the previous three films. Twenty years after the first two films, Laurie Strode -- who faked her death to escape Michael -- runs a boarding school under the assumed name of Keri Tate. After years of searching for her, Michael finally manages to track her down to finish the job he started twenty years ago.
• Halloween: Resurrection (2002): Michael finally kills Laurie, then returns to Haddonfield to find an Internet reality show has set up shop in his old house. The contestants and crew get more than they bargained for when Michael decides to kill the trespassers.

After Resurrection, the franchise laid dormant until Rob Zombie brought it back:

• Rob Zombie's Halloween (2007): This film, directed by Rob Zombie, remakes the original film while adding a more extensive look at Michael's childhood in the first half of the film. (The second half follows the events of the original film, albeit at a quicker pace and with bloodier violence).
• Rob Zombie's Halloween II (2009): On the night of the previous film, the body of Michael Myers -- who had been shot point-blank in the face -- disappears en route to the morgue. One year later, Laurie Strode continues to struggle with nightmares about Michael, Dr. Loomis attempts to spin his experiences with Michael into fame and fortune, and the still-alive Michael returns to finish what he started...

The original Halloween was added to the National Film Registry in 2006.

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The following tropes are common to many or all entries in the Halloween (film) franchise.
For tropes specific to individual installments, visit their respective work pages.

• Abandoned Hospital: The hospital from the second film is conspicuously empty, with Laurie and some babies being the only patients that are seen. Likewise, in Resurrection the mental hospital where Laurie is being held seems pretty understaffed, with only two guards seen.
• Accidental Murder:
  • In the original Halloween II a speeding cop isn't able to brake in time and winds hitting the drunken Ben Tramer, slamming him against a parked vehicle.
  • In The Return of Michael Myers a group of vigilantes accidentally shoot to death parkgoer Ted Hollister, thinking he might have been Michael.
  • Laurie seemingly kills Michael by chopping his head off with an axe in H20, only for the sequel to reveal that Laurie actually killed a paramedic whose larynx Michael had crushed before knocking him out and switching clothes with him.
  • In the remake Patty tries to blast Michael with a shotgun during his escape from Smith's Grove. Michael grabs an earlier downed guard and uses him as shield.
• Acoustic License: In Halloween Resurrection, Sara is in a college classroom in the beginning. When the professor asks a question, and she answers, her voice is barely higher than a whisper, yet the professor hears her clearly and responds.
• Action Girl: Laurie in H20.
• The Adjectival Man: Before any of the characters knew Michael Myers' name, they simply referred to him as "The Boogeyman".
• All Hallow's Eve: Speaks for itself.
• All Just a Dream: The entire beginning of the Halloween II remake.
• All There in the Script: Michael is never called "The Shape" in the movies, despite the script, credits and certain DVD covers referring to him as this.
• Anachronism Stew: It's a slight case, but in the remakes it's utterly baffling to try and figure out just when they take place. The openings with the Michael Myers as a child are definitely somewhere in the early 1980s judging from the clothing and hair styles, but after the Time Skip to "Seventeen Years Later" (which should put the events with Laurie somewhere in the mid to late-nineties), people talk on post 2004 cellphones, make references to Austin Powers, and watch flatscreen TVs like they're in 2007 (when the film was made). To confuse things even more, no one references music beyond 1990, all the cars are pre-2000, and nearly all the things seen on TV are pre-1970. No one at all seems to know when the movie actually takes place.
  • Word of God says this was deliberate. In a deleted scene from the sequel, Mya says she was born in 1990, though.
• An Axe to Grind: Michael uses one in The Curse of Michael Myers and Rob Zombie's Halloween II.
• And Starring: H20 had "introducing Josh Hartnett". He has done quite well for himself ever since.
  • Resurrection has two "and" credits — One for Tyra Banks and one for Jamie Lee Curtis.
• Asshole Victim: John Strode and Barry Simms in The Curse of Michael Myers, and a number of people in the remakes.
• Autobots Rock Out: In Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, several of Carpenter's themes from the original are remade on the electric guitar.
• Axe Before Entering: Michael Myers likes this trope.
• Badass Grandpa: Dr. Loomis in every appearance he makes. This guy took so many ass-kickings from Michael and still came back for more.
  • Donald Pleasence in real life. According to the writer of Halloween 4, he did most of his own stunts in the film. He did all this while pushing 70!
    • In addition to that, he also survived a plane crash and torture in a POW camp during World War II.
• The Bad Guy Wins: At the beginning of Resurrection, Michael finally manages to kill Laurie.
• Battle Amongst the Flames: The ending of Halloween: Resurrection.
• Bedlam House: The mental institution in Rob Zombie's Halloween remake. Michael Myers is kept chained at all times, his wardens degrade and insult him on a daily basis, and he is beaten at night. Even if he was a mentally stable individual, that sort of treatment would turn anybody into a Complete Monster.
  • Not to mention the female inmate that the orderlies gang-rape in front of him.
• Bedsheet Ghost: Michael kills Lynda while dressed as one in the original and the remake.
• Berserk Button: In the remakes, don't tease Michael Myers about how his mom is a pole dancer.
• Big No: Loomis has the biggest no of history in 4.
• Big Sister Instinct: Laurie to Tommy and Lindsey in the first movie; Rachel to Jamie Lloyd in the fourth movie.
• Billing Displacement: The original film had Donald Pleasence billed ahead of then-unknown Jamie Lee Curtis. By the time of Halloween II three years later, Curtis was enough of a star for them to employ diagonal billing.
• Black Dude Dies First: Averted in Resurrection. Freddie, played by Busta Rhymes, is the only person (besides the Final Girl, of course) to survive the movie. And the one who is killed isn't the first victim.
• Black Eyes of Evil: See page quote.
• Bloodbath Villain Origin: The remake.
• Bloodless Carnage: The original only contains two shots with blood, and neither is particularly explicit. This is mostly because the film relies on lighting and suspense for its scares. The sequels avert the trope to an increasing degree, and Rob Zombie's versions avert it hard.
• Bloodier and Gorier: The Curse of Michael Myers and the remake. The original, oddly enough, is pretty tame when it comes to blood.
  • The new Halloween II is even more violent, bloody and brutal than the remake.
    • The original Halloween II was written with this concept in mind. It even has a character slip in a pool of his co-worker's blood!
  • Arguably, the original sticks out so much because it was as scary as it was without massive amounts of blood. It was just scary and didn't rely on awful imagery.
    • Except for the two victims killed while completely naked.
• Bloody Handprint: In H20, Laurie leaves a bloody handprint on the door of a closet, tricking Michael Myers into thinking she was hiding inside.
• Book Ends: The ending of Halloween 4 would have applied this to the entire series, had the film bombed and no more sequels been made.
  • The theatrical cut of Zombie's 2 ends with Laurie committed to Smith's Grove, and having the same vision young Michael had at the beginning of the film.
• Bottle Movie: Most of the movies take place over October 30/31.
• Break the Cutie (and subsequently kill) the Cutie: Jamie Lloyd and remake Annie. Both happen to be played by Danielle Harris.
  • Laurie in Zombie's 2.
• Buried Alive: Michael kills Lisa this way in the comic Halloween: Nightdance
• Camping a Crapper: Averted in Halloween: H20. A woman and her daughter go to a public bathroom and Michael Myers follows them in. After a tense scene in which the audience assumes he is going to kill them, he ends up stealing the woman's car keys instead.
• Canon Discontinuity: Halloween: H20, the seventh film in the franchise, completely ignores the fourth, fifth, and sixth films.
  • The third film may or may not be ignored as well, considering that it has nothing to do the Michael Myers plot of the other movies.
• Car Fu: In Halloween: The Return of Michael Myers, Rachel uses her car to run Michael Myers over. But since Michael is Michael, it doesn't faze him in the slightest.
  • Also, in H20, Laurie hijacks an ambulance van with Michael in it, and runs it off a cliff in order to kill Michael once and for all.
  • He also tries to run down Jamie, Billy, and Tina in Halloween: The Revenge of Michael Myers, and in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, runs Jamie off the road.
• Cassandra Truth: Dr Loomis' entire career in regards to Michael is this. No one ever listens to his warnings about the danger Michael poses to society...even after the dead bodies start piling up.
• Cat Scare: In the first film, there's a scene where Loomis and Brackett are exploring the abandoned Myers house and a broken gutter suddenly crashes through a window, causing a startled Loomis to whip out a handgun.
  • In Halloween II, a bumbling security guard stumbles around outside the hospital checking for a disturbance. He gets startled by a spring-loaded cat, sighs and relaxes. Three guesses who he encounters next...
• Caught in a Snare: Laurie has a snare trap set for Michael in H20.
• Character Development: Laurie goes from shy wallflower to action girl between Halloween II (1981) and H20 (1998).
• Chase Scene: Lot of chasing will happen when Michael Myers makes himself properly known.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Ben Tramer, the boy that Laurie has a crush on, is briefly mentioned in the first movie but never seen. In the second movie, he is killed in an explosion while wearing a Halloween mask, which briefly fools the police into believing that Michael is dead.
• Clean Cut: Michael is quite fond of this trope.
• Clothes Make the Legend: Michael's mask and boiler suit.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Various scenes in the remake, to the point where it's practically a second language there.
• Color Wash: Cinematographer Dean Cundey used this in the first film to give the daytime scenes an autumnal brown tint and the night scenes an eerie blue one. The most recent hi-res transfer "fixed" this, much to the dismay of Cundey and the fans.
• Continuity Nod: In the original Halloween, Laurie mentions having a crush on one of her classmates Ben Tramer. In the sequel, the police accidentally kill a costumed teenager after mistaking him for Michael Myers. Turns out that poor teenager was Ben Tramer.
  • Burn scars on Michael and Dr. Loomis in Halloween 4.
  • Tommy Doyle in Halloween 6, still traumatized by the events of the first Halloween.
• Continuity Reboot: Twice. H20 was a partial continuity reboot, ignoring Halloweens 4-6. Rob Zombie's 2007 film was a remake, ignoring all previous films.
  • H20 is more broad strokes. The newspaper article of Laurie's "death by car crash" is pinned to Loomis' wall during the credits.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Conal Cochran of Season of the Witch.
• Cut Phone Lines: Michael does this in practically every Halloween movie.
  • In The Return of Michael Myers, Michael doesn't just cut the phone lines of his victim's house. He cuts the phone lines and causes a blackout in the entire town.
• Cry for the Devil: Remakes.
• Daylight Horror: Michael Myers stalks Laurie Strode and her friends through the sunny, idyllic streets of Haddonfield in the middle of the day.
• Dangerously Genre Savvy: Michael Myers is savvy of a genre he helped to create.
• Danger Takes a Backseat: How Annie gets killed in the first film.
  • Michael pulls this off by clinging to bottom of a pickup truck in The Return of Michael Myers.
  • Also, Barry's death in The Curse of Michael Myers.
• Death by Mocking: Anybody who mocks Michael Myers in the Halloween remake doesn't last very long.
• Death by Sex: According to director John Carpenter, this was actually unintentional - in the first film, at least.
• Decoy Protagonist: In Halloween 5 it looks like Rachel is going to reprise her role as the Final Girl, but ends up getting killed twenty minutes in.
• Determinator: Michael spent fifteen years in a mental hospital, waiting for a chance to escape so that he could kill his sister. When he failed in killing her, he then spent the next ten years massacring everybody related to her. Then, depending on which canon you follow, he spent 10-20 years searching for his sister again.
• Developing Doomed Characters: While the earlier Halloween movies aren't so bad, the later ones revolve around the typically unlikable, rebellious teens with teen issues that are standard in many slasher flicks. In fact, Michael Myer's killings come off as more of a background issue to the love-triangles and teen angst of the protagonists.
  • This is especially prevalent in the Rob Zombie remakes where practically every character is a mean, brainless Jerkass who's scenes revolve around how awful they are. It seems to be Zombie's way of making the viewer sympathize with Myers, but it makes the scenes with any character who isn't Myers downright painful to watch.
• Does Not Like Shoes: In "Halloween II", Laurie is barefoot but justified since she had been admitted to the hospital.
• Don't Go in The Woods: Revenge of Michael Myers ends with Michael Myers chasing the protagonists into an eerie, foggy woodlands with a car. When he crashes the car, he gets out completely unscathed and proceeds to stalk the victims through the forest with a butcher knife.
• Dramatic Irony: Virtually the entire first film, and much of the later ones, is simply "Hey! There he is in the background! And the characters can't see him! Crap!"
• Dramatic Thunder: Used when Mrs. Blankenship mentions the boogeyman and later when Beth describes Judith's death in The Curse.
• Dramatic Unmask: At the end of the original Halloween, Michael Myers is finally unmasked to reveal...a surprisingly attractive man.
• Driven to Suicide: Mrs. Myers in the remake.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him / Real Life Writes the Plot: Sam Loomis dies offscreen at the end of the sixth movie due to Donald Pleasance's death.
• Drop the Hammer: Michael Myers uses a claw hammer to off a security guard in Halloween II.
• Dying Dream: Rob Zombie confirmed the ending of the director's cut version of his Halloween II is this for Laurie.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: "It's time, Michael..."
• Dysfunctional Family: Zombie's remake has Michael growing up on one of these.
• Early Installment Weirdness: The first movie is actually a fairly subtle Psychological Horror movie with relatively little blood and gore, and it frequently employs Nothing Is Scarier. It arguably has more in common with Psycho than with movies like Friday the 13th, which it inspired.
• Embarrassing Middle Name: The extended scenes found on the TV version reveal The Shape's full name to be Michael Audrey Myers. We now know the real reason behind his homicidal rampage.
• Empty Promise: Loomis to Jamie, in the school in 4. Subverted when she asks him if he really believes they'll make it out alright, and he gives a barely audible Little No.
• Enemy Rising Behind: Memorably in the first film. Also in the fifth, where Michael lurks right behind the oblivious Rachel. . .yet doesn't kill her. Not yet, anyway.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Michael is quite fond of his mother in the Halloween remakes. Not only does he kill the kids who insult his mom, he also has hallucinations about her wearing completely white and urging him on while he murders.
• Even Evil Has Standards: After Halloween II sparked controversy as inspiration for R.D. Boyer's crimes, the Moral Guardians, of all people, decided not to campaign against this or other horror movies, as "it would be silly, after all, to ban horror films just because Boyer claims to have thought that he was reenacting Halloween II."
  • At the conclusion of the Halloween: Resurrection prologue, Michael, after killing Laurie goes to give his knife back to the orderly that he took it from. When he does so, he hands it to him with the "safe" end first. That's right, kids. Even a psychotic, inhumane serial killer/mass murderer knows the proper way to hand someone a sharp object.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: In Revenge of Michael Myers, Michael chases the protagonists in a car. Even though the car is barely going at a running-pace, it still explodes when it collides with a tree. Though this does add to the creepy factor when Michael nonchalantly gets out of the car completely unscathed.
• Evil Clown: Michael's childhood Halloween costume.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Lester the family dog barks at Michael Myers hiding behind the bushes in the original film, and Max does precisely the same thing in the fifth.
• Evil Is Not a Toy
• Evil Makes You Monstrous: Michael Myers went from a super-strong, sociopathic human with plans to kill his sister to a completely unkillable supernatural being hell-bent on massacring half of Haddonfield. And if you follow the sixth movie's canon, his power is making him grow bigger in each movie.
• Evil Overlooker: The posters for Halloween: H20 and Halloween Resurrection do this with Michael Myers' Black Eyes of Evil looming over the frightened-looking protagonists.
• Evil Phone: In the original movie, Michael strangles Lydia to death with a phone cord just as she calls Laurie. Michael then picks up the phone to listen to Laurie's frantic cries, before calmly hanging up.
• Evil Uncle: Michael, to both Jamie Lloyd and John Tate.
• Eye Scream: Two of Michael's victims in Halloween II are killed with a syringe jammed to the eye.
• Faking the Dead
• Fan Service: Numerous examples, but probably the reason Laurie dresses as Magenta in Zombie's II.
  • Fan Disservice: ...before she winds up hysterical and covered in blood. The series really seems to like this trope...
• Final Girl: Laurie Strode and Jamie Lloyd.
  • And Sara Moyer from Resurrection.
  • Rachel from part 4 counts too.
• Fingore: The opening of the new Halloween II has a particularly squicky scene involving Laurie's fingernails...
• Flashback Nightmare
• Flipping the Bird: Donna flips off Jim when he comments on her legs in Resurrection.
• Foreshadowing: H20 has an excellent example of this. Laurie Strode (who now goes by the name Keri Tate) is teaching an English literature class on Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein. Molly, one of the students, responds to a question about the book and fate with this: "I think that Victor should have confronted the monster sooner. He's completely responsible for Elizabeth's death. He was so paralyzed by fear that he never did anything. It took death for the guy to get a clue." She goes on to say that Victor finally confronts the monster because he "had reached a point in his life where he had nothing left to lose. I mean, the monster saw to that by killing off everybody that he loved. It was about redemption. It was his fate." This foreshadows the final scenes in the movie where Laurie finally decides to stop running from Michael Myers and confront her monster. After 20 years of living in fear and seeing her loved ones murdered, she had nothing more to lose. It was time to face her fears and end the nightmare.
• Franchise Zombie: John Carpenter, in a 1982 interview, stated that Michael Myers and Dr. Loomis both died at the end of Halloween II and that he intended to make the series into an anthology "like The Twilight Zone but on a larger scale." After the financial flop of Halloween III Carpenter opted out of doing any more films in the series and signed away the rights to producer Moustapha Akkad, who quickly revived the original formula. Michael Myers went on to appear in five more films after his canon death, not counting the remakes.
• Freak-Out: Laurie at the end of Halloween (2007). Further explored in the sequel, where Laurie is depicted as an embittered, psychological wreck that is further destabilized not only by the return of her accursed tormentor, but also a traumatizing revelation about her past.
• Genius Bruiser: Micheal has proved that he ain't just a dumb brutish killing robot. He usually observes his victims closely, figures out their weaknesses, take advantage of it, kills their friends and family in order to make them weak mentally, cuts out all escape routes before he goes in for the kill and he knows when and who he can kill and when not.
• Genki Girl: Tina from Halloween 5.
• The Ghost: Ben Tramer, Laurie's crush in the first movie. When he shows up in the sequel, he only gets a minute or two of screen time, he has no lines, and he's wearing a mask that obscures his face.
• Going by the Matchbook: In the original, Loomis finds a plumber's abandoned pickup, and in it is the same matchbook carried by the nurse who was with him when Michael Myers escaped the previous night; she left her matches in the car Michael stole, and they wound up in the truck of the guy he stole his jumpsuit from.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: Freddie tries to bring Michael Myers down with his fists in Halloween: Resurrection. Surprisingly, Freddie actually survives this encounter.
  • Surprisingly? It's common knowledge that being played by a rapper is the strongest Plot Armor in existence.
• Gorn
  • Ironically, the first film in the franchise, which arguably invented the modern, gorn-loving slasher genre, features very little gore.
• Groin Attack: Laurie knees Michael in the groin in H20. It doesn't do anything except cause him to give her a nasty glare.
  • And Freddie actually electrocutes Michael in the groin in Resurrection
• Gross Up Close-Up: Rob Zombie seems to like these. In his Halloween II, we're treated to close views of Laurie having her head sewn shut, a man's face after he's mutilated by a crash, a guy having his head sawn off with broken glass, Big Lou Martini getting his arm snapped...
  • There's plenty in the original series as well from Halloween 2 onward (for example, when he kills a nurse by repeatedly dunking her head into scalding water, and that's just ONE of many instances in the film). Or Halloween 5, where he impales two coupling teenagers with a pitchfork. Or Halloween 6, which finds Jamie being impaled on a corn thresher.
• Half-Empty Two-Shot: The first movie has a famous example, when Michael emerges from the closet to attack Laurie.
• Hallucinations: In Rob Zombie's Halloween II, Michael Myers has hallucinations about his mother...and some rather random things, including pumpkin-headed aristocrats and white unicorns.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In Part 5, Tina sacrifices herself to give Jamie a chance to get away from Michael.
  • Inadvertently done by Brady in Part 4 who tries to shoot Michael, then futilely struggles with him, ultimately giving Jamie and Rachel a chance to escape.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Almost. By the fifth film, Dr. Loomis is ready to use blackmail, threats and physical force to make sure Michael is gonna be put down. It goes so far that he used Jamie as a bait to lure Michael in to a trap, and then beat him savagely with a plank so that Michael got unconscious yet he continued to beat him, all while screaming "DIE! DIE!" for each hit.
• Hearing Voices: The Curse establishes that The Man in Black provides voices (that command to kill) to those chosen to perform the sacrificial familicide.
• Hollywood Darkness: Halloween was one of the first horror movies to use the blue filter.
• Hollywood Kiss: Most of the characters kiss this way.
• Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: Halloween was a trope codifier for this too.
• Hospital Hottie: All of the nurses in Halloween II.
• The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: At the end of H20, in what is Laurie's Moment of Awesome, she turns the tables on Michael Myers and hunts him down with an axe.
• I Can't Hear You: When Jamie gets inside the truck she found in The Curse, she tries to tell its owner that Michael is near him but he can't make out what she's saying because the windows are closed.
• I Love the Dead: The Squick-tastic ambulance driver in the H2 remake.
• Immune to Bullets: Michael Myers alternates between bullets hurting-but-not-killing him and bullets causing nothing more than a minor nuisance.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • Bob being pinned to the wall with a knife in the original film and the remake.
  • Kelly being impaled to the wall with a shotgun in The Return of Michael Myers.
  • Spitz getting impaled with a pitchfork in the midst of sex in Halloween 5.
  • Jamie getting impaled on a tractor in The Curse of Michael Myers, plus John Strode being pinned to a fuse box later on.
  • Rudy's impalement to a door with three knives in Resurrection.
  • A redneck's impalement on antlers in Halloween II(2009).
• Impending Doom POV: The beginning of the original film.
  • And at the end of the fourth.
• Implacable Man: Guess who. A particular example is in the seventh film, after getting an axe in the chest, Michael nonchalantly rips the weapon out and keeps going.
• In Name Only: Halloween III has an entirely separate story and characters from the other films.
• Intro-Only Point of View
• Joisey: Averted. Michael Myers' hometown of Haddonfield is in Illinois. The real Haddonfield is actually located in New Jersey.
• Karma Houdini: Josh Pinder in the spin-off book The Old Myers Place. He at first appears fairly normal, but his status as a spoiled, assholish Rich Bitch soon becomes apparent, and he eventually tries to rape the main character (with it being revealed he tried doing the same to another girl the previous year). You'd think all that would cause Michael to zero in on him like a homing missile, but no, he survives.
• Kill'Em All: Zombie's Halloween II has Loomis, Michael, and Laurie all dying.
• Kill the Cutie: Jamie Lloyd, who winds up impaled on and ripped open by tractor harrows courtesy of Michael.
• Lampshade Hanging: How did Michael learn to drive?
• Late Arrival Spoiler: Laurie Strode is Michael's sister; something that is spoiled on the Halloween II DVD cover.
• Leitmotif: The simple piano melody played throughout the series.
• Lightning Reveal: Mixed with Stealth Hi Bye when Michael is stalking Jamie in the barn in The Curse.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Laurie to Michael, probably.
• Loony Fan: The radio show callers in The Curse of Michael Myers, Harold in Resurrection, Chett in Halloween II (2009).
• Machete Mayhem: One is briefly used by Michael to massacre the Cult of Thorn in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.
• Mad Artist: Some see Michael as one of these, due to how he sets up and, in a few cases, seemingly admires the corpses of his victims.
• Made of Plasticine: Practically every victim in the series is this.
• Made of Evil: Dr Loomis believes that Michael is this....and he may be right.
• Made of Iron: Michael Myers started out Made of Iron, but it was later Ret Conned into supernatural Nigh Invulnerability.
• The Man They Couldn't Hang: Michael in Resurrection.
• Mask of Power: Especially in the first film; Michael doesn't kill anyone except when wearing a mask. In the intro he froze when his dad removed his clown mask, and later when Laurie knocks his mask off he takes the time to put it back on, giving her a better chance of escaping. First thing he does before starting his spree is steal the mask, but not for disguise since he never takes it off and few people would recognize him. In the sequel, he still wears the mask (getting an innocent lookalike killed) and is discovered to have scrolled Samhain (basically, Halloween) on the wall of the mask store he robbed, suggesting he somehow links dressing up with murdering people; he becomes the Boogeyman.
• Menacing Stroll: Michael's highest level of speed, at least when the camera isn't on him.
• Mirror Scare: Michael Myers.
• The Mountains of Illinois: Literally.
• Mugging the Monster: In Rob Zombie's Halloween II a redneck duo decide to pick a fight with Michael when they find him crossing their property on his way to Haddonfield.
• Mundane Made Awesome: 5's opening credits has someone carving a pumpkin lantern, which is shown with quick cuts that makes it seem that someone is being stabbed.
• Murderer POV: Sometimes accompanied by Vader Breath.
• My Car Hates Me: Justified in the original II due to Michael tampering with cars outside the hospital.
• Mythology Gag: The 2007 version includes many of these referencing the original.
• Neck Snap: Grady's death in The Return of Michael Myers, the hermit in The Revenge of Michael Myers, and Mrs. Strode's death in the remake.
• Never Found the Body: Michael has a habit of pulling disappearing acts after seemingly being killed.
• Nightmare Sequence: Michael and Laurie have these in the remake of Halloween II.
• Nonchalant Dodge: Michael's response to Laurie's knife throwing act in H20
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: In the remake, the only security guard in the institution who ever showed Michael compassion and stopped the others from bullying him is given an over the top and painful death.
  • In the sequel, the daughter of one of the rednecks who beat down Michael for trespassing pleads with them to leave him alone, and at least apologizes when they leave him for dead. Dead just the same.
• Not Quite Dead: Done again and again throughout the series, but used to full effect to justify Halloween: Resurrection: it turns out that Laurie had killed a paramedic instead of Michael at the end of H20; Michael had attacked the paramedic, crushed his larynx, and switched places with him before "Michael's" body was carted out to the ambulance.
• Obviously Evil: Averted. Unlike Freddy, Jason, and Leatherface, when Michael is (briefly) unmasked in the climax of the first movie, he's revealed to have an almost angelic face.
• Offscreen Teleportation
  • Possibly justified; Michael seems to take joy in scaring people, not just killing them, so he may very well be running when they can't see him in order to invoke this trope.
  • Though its played with beautifully in some of the movies, there are the films where he appears in one part of the town mere moments after appearing in another part of the town.
• Off with His Head:
  • The paramedic Laurie beheads with an axe in H20, thinking he was Michael.
  • The deaths of both an asylum guard and Jenna in Resurrection (the latter being decapitated with a single swing of a regular kitchen knife).
  • The ambulance passenger having his head sliced off with a glass shard in Halloween II (2009)
• One-Scene Wonder: Ken Foree in the remake - "I'M BIG JOE GRIZZLY, BITCH!"
• Only a Flesh Wound: LL Cool J can survive getting shot in the head.
  • The bullet apparently only grazed his head, rather than entering.
• Oops, I Dropped the Keys: Molly in H20 does this.
• Orderlies Are Creeps: Practically everyone who works in the Smith's Grove Sanitarium in Rob Zombie's remake.
• Peek-a-Boo Corpse: Michael is a master of this.
• Police Are Useless: The Haddonfield Police Station gets massacred in both The Return of Michael Myers and Halloween 5.
  • In Rob Zombie's Halloween II, Sheriff Brackett asks Andy, one of his deputies, to protect Annie. To say he fails horribly shouldn't come as a shock.
• Prolonged Prologue: H20's prologue goes for almost 20 minutes before the opening credits begin.
• The Public Domain Channel: Laurie watches it in Halloween II.
• Quizzical Tilt: Michael Myers does this when examining some of his victims.
• Recut: The Halloween films had many TV Cuts made:
  • During the filming of the sequel, John Carpenter shot more scenes for the ABC broadcast of the original to help it pad out the allotted time. While largely just character exposition, one scene (a visit to Michael's asylum room where the word "sister" is carved in the door) serves to help validate the twist of the second movie..
  • The sequel itself has a few new things for the TV Cut. These include some alternate cuts of scenes, some scene and dialogue extensions, and a scene added to the end that takes place in the ambulance.

Laurie: We made it. We made it!

• • Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers has the most stunning example of this. Apparently, the film ran over time and budget, so the suits decided to take it over to see how they could screw it up. Their version is the Theatrical Cut. When the film was shown on TV, someone got a hold of the now infamous Producer's Cut. While the violence and cursing were trimmed, an assload of alternate takes and different opening narration were shown, and the entire last 20 minutes of the film is RADICALLY different from the Theatrical Cut. The main change is that the explanation for Michael's killing ways is altered: The Theatrical version offered a scientific reason, but the Producer's Cut says the reason is supernatural (which also explains why Michael is also growing bigger in each previous film. It's because his power is growing). It also shows a final scene with Dr. Loomis realizing that he has been cursed by Thorn. This was likely altered when Donald Pleasance died. An early trailer showed that the film was originally going to called "Halloween 666: The Curse of Michael Myers." This version is only available through bootleg video releases.
  • Halloween: H20 has a TV Cut that does the violence and cussword trim, but also has some alternate scenes fun. One added scene gives the counselor played by Alan Arkin some development by revealing that his mother cheated on his traveling salesman father, and he got blamed for knowing, but doing nothing.
• Redemption Equals Death/Stupid Sacrifice: Loomis, in Zombie's 2.
• Retired Badass: Loomis in the sixth movie.
• The Reveal: Halloween II reveals Michael is Laurie's brother. The Curse of Michael Myers reveals the Man in Black is Dr. Wynn.
• Sassy Black Woman: Ronnie's wife in H20.
• Say My Name: Laurie at the end of H20:

"MICHAAAAEEELLL! MICHAEL!"

• Series Continuity Error: Several.
  • At the end of the first film, Loomis shoots Michael six times, and he falls off a covered balcony at the back of the house; in the sequel, this scene is shown again at the start - and Loomis shoots Michael seven times (despite only having a six-chamber revolver), sending him flying off an uncovered balcony at the front of the house. Made all the worse when Loomis goes around shouting "I shot him six times!" in the first few minutes of the film.
  • In the original Halloween, the Myers house is a modest two-story home. By the time we get to Halloween 5, it's a huge, Gothic-style mansion. Then when we get to Halloween 6, it's back to being a typical two-story house--that still looks completely different from what we saw in the original film. At the time these movies were made, they were on the same continuity as the first one, so there's no excuse for the discrepancy.
  • Following the end of the second movie, Michael had burn scars (which we typically saw on his hands) in 4, 5 and 6. No such scars are seen in H20. While the preceding three movies are ignored by H20, the second movie isn't. Unless you think the reason why he didn't turn up for twenty years was because of extensive skin grafts.
• The Sheriff: Leigh Brackett, in the first two films (and Rob Zombie's remakes); Ben Meeker, in 4 and 5.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Myers finally kills Laurie in Resurrection, along with several Red Shirt characters, and he's still Not Quite Dead at the end.
  • Jamie takes the cake though. She gets mocked for being related to Michael, becomes mute due to a powerful connection with Michael, has all her friends, her sister, and her dogs killed, gets kidnapped by a cult and is forced to have sex with Michael, and she's finally impaled by farm equipment. Jamie has to be the most depressing character in all of horror.
    • She literally gets shot to death in the Producer's Cut of The Curse of Michael Myers.
• Shooting Superman: In a non-superhero example, Michael Myers. This trope gets referenced in the commentary of Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers - in a scene where a cop clumsily shoots at Michael, one of the commentators mentions that, as a lifelong resident of Haddonfield, the guy should have realized shooting Michael just pisses him off.
• The Shrink: Loomis.
• Single Mom Stripper: Note to cruel kids: Do not tease Michael Myers in the remake about how his mom is a pole dancer.
• Single Tear: Strangely enough, Michael Myers has a Single Tear moment in the fifth film...before reverting back to his Complete Monster self, of course.
• Sinister Scythe: Used to kill Samantha in 5.
• Slashed Throat: Appears to be Michael's default method of killing.
• Smoking Hot Sex: Lynda and Bob in the original Halloween.
• Soft Glass: Probably one of the craziest examples ever happens in Curse of Michael Myers when Kara flies face first through a window and belly flops to the ground two stories below with no discernible injuries from either the glass or the fall. Honestly, with Made of Iron abilities like that, why the hell is she afraid of Michael Myers?
• Something Completely Different: Halloween III: Season of the Witch.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream...
  • Love hurts...
• Spiritual Successor: In many ways, the first film is this to Psycho. One of the two main characters is played by Janet "Marion Crane" Leigh's daughter, and the other has the same name as Marion's lover. Many of the stylistic choices are also clearly influenced by Hitchcock, like a repetitive Leitmotif used for a butcher knife-wielding bad guy; and the camera work in Michael's first kill, where we never see knife penetrate flesh.
• Start of Darkness: The remake is pretty much this for Michael.
• Stalker Shrine: In H20, it is revealed that Dr. Loomis' office is a shrine to Michael Myers, with three decades worth of newspaper clippings about Myers taped all over the office walls. To add to the creepiness, he also has high school photos of Laurie (Michael's sister) stuck to the wall too.
• Stock Subtitle: Halloween Resurrection.
• Stopped Numbering Sequels: Textbook example.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome:
  • Doctor Loomis and Michael in Halloween II (they get better).
  • Rachel Carruthers in Halloween 5.
  • Jamie Lloyd and possibly both Doctor Loomis and Doctor Wynn in The Curse of Michael Myers.
  • Marion Whittington and Doctor Loomis (again) in H20.
  • Laurie in Resurrection.
  • Annie, Laurie and Doctor Loomis (again) in Halloween II (2009)
• Suddenly Voiced: The director's cut of Rob Zombie's Halloween II actually has Michael scream "DIE!" before killing Loomis.
• Tagline: "The night he came home!"
• Take Me Instead!: When confronting Michael at the diner in the fourth movie, Loomis invokes the trope - saying Michael could kill him in exchange for leaving the people of Haddonfield alone. Michael remains still following this, suggesting he turned it down and prompting Loomis to try to shoot him.
• Take That: In Part 4, Michael is coincidentally looking for a new mask at a store the same time Jamie is. He grabs a Ronald Reagan mask and walks off screen. A few seconds later, he throws it away and grabs the bleached William Shatner mask instead. The scene was cut for being too funny.
• Thematic Series: As mentioned, the franchise was originally meant to be a series of horror movies centered around Halloween but poor reception of the third movie killed any chances of this idea being carried through.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The Curse of Michael Myers has Michael preparing to kill a bunch of sanitarium employees by overlooking a tray filled with medical tools. At first, it looks like he's going to grab a scalpel, but, having apparently gotten tips from Jason Voorhees, he decides to grab a huge machete (that was there for some reason) instead.
  • In 'the new 'Halloween II, Michael stabs a nurse in the back. And then does it again. And again, and again, until after about an entire minute filled with stabbings, he rams the knife into her skull and leaves it stuck there.
• Things That Go Bump in the Night: The Shape (aka Michael Myers), from the original Halloween, is repeatedly compared to the boogeyman, apparently unkillable, and deeply enigmatic. He also seems to particularly target teenagers who are transgressive against social norms. In a subversion of this particular trope, he doesn't show much if any interest in actual children.
• Time Skip: The original film skips from 1963 to 1978, while both of Zombie's films open in Michael's childhood and then the Laurie storyline 17 years later. There is a second time jump in the sequel to two years AFTER the events of Halloween (2007).
• Too Dumb to Live: Countless examples, though especially prevalent in Zombie's films when several people insult and even strike Myers. This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that Myers in those films is A SEVEN FOOT TALL GIANT!!!
  • Justified in-universe. It's implied in The Remake that Michael took the janitor's words about about living in a world inside your own head to heart - aside from his mask-making and when they occasionally drag him out for probation hearings, he is functionally catatonic most of the time.
• Tragic Dream: In the remake, Michael just wants to meet Laurie and live happily with her.
• Traumatic C-Section: In a flashback sequence in Halloween: The First Death of Laurie Strode, a young Michael Myers is shown daydreaming about cutting baby Laurie out of his mother during a meal.
• Trailers Always Spoil: The original theatrical trailer gives away the first scene's twist - that the killer is the victim's six-year old brother.
• Trope Codifier: The first film, along with Friday the 13th, is this for the entire slasher genre.
• Two-Person Pool Party: In Halloween 2, Nurse Karen and Budd get busy in the hospital's hydrotherapy pool before Michael Myers strangles Budd with a length of cord and drowns Nurse Karen after dunking her face into scalding water, causing her face to blister and boil.
• Unexplained Recovery: Dr. Loomis surviving the explosion of the first floor of a hospital in Halloween II, returning in The Return of Michael Myers with a slightly burnt face, a limp and mangled hands.
  • The same goes for Michael seeing as before the explosion, he got shot in the eyes by Laurie, causing him to become blind. To be fair, it's implied that he isn't exactly human...
  • Loomis could've always been blasted out of the wall as the writer of 4 wanted to do.
• The Un-Reveal: In the first film, Michael is unmasked - and he looks like a normal 23 year old boy.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: The Cult of Thorn apparently believe Michael killing his relatives will bring world peace... or something.
• Vader Breath: Michael.
• Villain Based Franchise: Played semi-straight, in that Dr. Loomis (the hero in the first movie) came back for every sequel until Donald Pleasence's death, with Laurie Strode (the original's final girl) appearing in the remainder of the sequels. Whilst Michael is the only character in every installment (barring the third one), he is always opposed by one of the survivors from the first movie.
• The Voiceless: In the original series Michael never spoke and only ever uttered generic noises like grunts, which themselves are barely audible in most cases. In the remake series Michael's shown to talk, but only as a child.
  • ... until the director's cut for Halloween II (2009), where screams "DIE!" at Loomis before stabbing him multiple times.
  • An early version of H20 also had Michael speak. Right before Laurie kills him with a javelin, he would've said her name.
• Waking Up At the Morgue: Done in the ending of Resurrection.
• Weapon of Choice: The knife. Also strangulation.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Loomis himself realizes what an asshole he's become in Zombie's 2.
• White Mask of Doom
• Woman in White: Mrs. Myers in the Halloween 2 remake.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Michael in the Zombie directed films.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Michael takes Howard down with a choke-slam in Halloween II ('09), before he stomps his face in.
• Writing Around Trademarks: In Zombie's 2, Laurie and her new friends Mya and Harley attend a party dressed as Magenta, Columbia, and Dr. Frank-N-Furter, respectively, but none are identified by name. Harley only describes herself as "...a chick, dressed as a guy, who wants to be a girl."
• You Kill It, You Bought It: One of the Chaos! comics has Laurie taking Michael's place after killing him in H20. This was ultimately rendered non-canon by Resurrection though.
  • The ending of Halloween II (2009) on the other hand ends with Laurie becoming as crazy, evil and twisted as Michael, even briefly putting on his mask, after killing him.
• You Look Familiar: In 2009's H2, the actor who gets stomped to death behind the strip club later turns up as the green-faced host of the big Halloween party.
  • Which itself becomes funny when Bill Mosley, the original actor, dropped out from playing the role. The reason why its funny is because he had a victim role in the re-shot scenes of the 2007 remake, appearing the theatrical cut of the film.
  • Halloween III: Season of the Witch includes appearances by Nancy Loomis as Challis' ex-wife and (via voiceover) Jamie Lee Curtis as a telephone operator.
• You're Insane!: Loomis to the Thorn leader in The Curse.

Dr. Loomis: "You are... a madman."

• Your Head Asplode: John Strode's death in The Curse of Michael Myers. Michael impales him to a fuse box, electrocuting him to the point that his head messily blows up.