Bloody Mary folklore in popular culture

Both folk and urban legends have served as inspiration for a number of depictions of Bloody Mary, a ghost, phantom or spirit conjured to reveal the future;[1] these are especially prevalent in films and television shows dealing with the supernatural.

An early 20th century Halloween greeting card showing Bloody Mary

Specific cultural references

Specific reference to Bloody Mary are made in the following:

Film
  • Urban Legends: Bloody Mary, a 2005 horror film by Mary Lambert, is the third and final installment in the Urban Legend series.[2]
  • Bloody Mary, a 2006 film set in a psychiatric hospital.
  • Dead Mary, a 2007 film based on a screenplay titled Bloody Mary.[2]
  • The Legend of Bloody Mary, a 2008 film by director John Stecenko, includes a character, Amy, who goes missing for good after playing the game "Bloody Mary".
  • Ghost Killers vs. Bloody Mary, a 2018 Brazilian horror-comedy movie about a group of ghost hunting youtubers that are called by a school to calm down the students after Bloody Mary appears.

Stage
  • In 2008, for their annual "Halloween Horror Nights" event, Universal Studios Florida developed a new variation of the legend. In their version, "Mary" was a doctor who studied fear by exposing her patients to it.[3] but as time went on she became more and more twisted until she herself became the ghost bloody Mary that twisted legend and lore into something dark and sinister

Television
  • A season two episode of Charmed ("Chick Flick") involves a demon who makes killers from different horror movies come to life. One of these killers is Bloody Mary.[4]
  • In the Ghost Whisperer TV series' third season, an episode ("Don't Try This at Home") involves the Bloody Mary legend.
  • Supernatural, the paranormal TV series, had an episode titled "Bloody Mary" during its first season, involving a ghost that attacked those who were looking into a mirror while her name was repeated, although she was only capable of "leaping" into mirrors within a certain range of the mirror that she killed herself in front of. In the course of the investigation, it is revealed that the original "Bloody Mary" was an aspiring actress who was found dead in front of her mirror of an apparent suicide, but she wrote the first few letters of a name on the glass before she died, with the investigating detectives noting that Mary was said to be having an affair with a doctor, speculating that he was the actual killer, but there was no actual evidence to prove that theory. Due to her death, Mary's ghost would only attack people who looked in a mirror while her name was being invoked- whether they were the ones who said her name or not- if they had some secret relating to their role in the death of someone else. However, becoming a vengeful spirit corrupts Mary's judgement, with the result that she cannot distinguish between a man killing his wife and disguising her death as a suicide or a girl whose obsessive boyfriend killed himself because she left him, targeting both even though the girl didn't actually kill her boyfriend herself.
  • "Syzygy", an episode of The X-Files, concerns her legend.[5]
  • The two-part season 1 finale of the horror anthology show The Haunting Hour: The Series is called "Scary Mary", and mirrors, much like the Bloody Mary tale, play a major role in the episode, as Mary and her minions transport themselves through them and she can talk through them. However, she is described as being vain, dying from being inside a burning farmhouse, and her spirit is a face-stealer, as all of her minions are girls who have given their faces to her.
  • Episode 2 of Gary and his Demons involves Bloody Mary as an informant who helps the demon hunter Gary to go after the latest mirror monster.

Books
  • The main villain of Cyber Shogun Revolution takes the name of Bloody Mary as she terrorizes the United States of Japan.[6]

Video games
  • The Wolf Among Us, a video game based on the Fables comic book series, introduces the Bloody Mary legend as a Fable and one of the key antagonists in the game.[7] She is voiced by Kathryn Cressida.
  • Bloody Mary is set to appear in the horror fighting game Terrordrome 2: Reign of the Legends.
  • In the SNES JRPG Terranigma, Bloody Mary is one of the toughest bosses of the game.[8]

Music
  • American singer-songwriter Lady Gaga references Bloody Mary in her second studio album Born This Way, where Bloody Mary is mentioned by name on track 8 of the album. The song in question is also entitled 'Bloody Mary'.

Other

References and notes
  1. Bloody Mary at Urban Legends; About Urban Legends website;
  2. Pulliam, June; Fonseca, Anthony (26 September 2016). Ghosts in Popular Culture and Legend. ABC-CLIO. p. 35. ISBN 1440834911. Retrieved 18 December 2017.
  3. Bevil, Dewayne (2008-09-25). "Universal crafts Bloody Mary bio for Halloween Horror Nights". Orlando Sentinel. Archived from the original on 2008-09-30. Retrieved 2008-10-14.
  4. Charmed episode; TV.COM
  5. Lowry, Brian (1996). Trust No One: The Official Guide to the X-Files. Harper Prism. ISBN 0-06-105353-8.
  6. "Speculative Fiction Series with Fantastic Conclusions". Den of Geek. 2020-04-23. Retrieved 2020-08-14.
  7. Tito, Greg (2014-04-08). "The Wolf Among Us Episode 3: A Crooked Mile Review - Yes!". Escapist. Retrieved 2014-04-08.
  8. "Terranigma (Video Game)". TV Tropes. Retrieved 2020-08-14.
  9. The Bloody Mary Show at YouTube.
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