History YMMV / Coraline

* FriendlyFandoms: One has sprung up between this movie and ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'', ''WesternAnimation/{{ParaNorman}}'', and ''VideoGame/{{Psychonauts}}''. The four together make up a group dubbed the "SugarWiki/MysteryKids".

* AccidentalAesop: If you find an area in a building that's been blocked off, don't try to explore it further. It was probably blocked off a reason.

** The Other Mother's M.O. has a lot of parallels with the tactics that are used by [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything pedophiles grooming children]]. These include over-the-top gestures and gifts, "love bombing" or showering the child with a lot of special attention right away, purposely targeting children who are neglected or lonely, gaslighting, becoming angry or upset when the child pulls away or tries to set a boundary, making negative comments about the child's family/friends/other support system to drive a wedge between them and isolate the child, and slowly pushing the child's boundaries over time.

** The Other Mother's M.O. has a lot of parallels with the tactics that are used by [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything pedophiles grooming children]].

* NoYay: The Other Mother's creepy obsession with Coraline. Not only is she the parallel version of her real-life mother, she almost fixates on taking care of Coraline by feeding her, bribing her with treats, and playing with her [[spoiler: in hopes of devouring her soul]]. She also displays {{Yandere}} tendencies, and tells Coraline "You ''know'' I love you..." while [[spoiler: in her true emaciated spider form]] and strokes her face, to which Coraline reacts with "You have a very funny way of showing it!"

* MemeticOutfit:
** A real life example: a contest was held on the official site where winners received custom-made Nike Dunks sneakers, which were made to look stitched together with patches, featured big, black buttons on the sides, and had blue soles with white stars, much like the sweater the Other Mother makes for Coraline. (This is what the "For Those In The Know" message at the very end of the credits was for).
** Coraline's hat has gained quite a following too.

** Likewise, the Other Father has received a disproportionate amount of attention compared to his screentime, since he's largely secondary to the Other Mother; like the Other Wybie, his actions and dialogue in the film (including in his short song for Coraline -- provided by the vocalist of ''Music/TheyMightBeGiants'', giving yet another reason to like him) have enough hidden nuance to them to prompt [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPzieU1_AQI entire]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68x91RdYl5U video essays]] scrutinizing him in more depth.

** A real life example: a contest was held on the official site where winners received custom-made Nike Dunks sneakers, which were made to look stitched together with patches, featured big, black buttons on the sides, and had blue soles with white stars, much like the sweater the Other Mother makes for Coraline.

* LesYay:
** In the movie, Coraline dyes her hair blue, and the outfit the Other Mother makes for her is a blue starry sweater. On the first day at the Pink Palace, the father diverts his daughter's attention by asking her to go around the apartment and list the number of windows and all blue items, suggesting that blue is her favorite color.
** The very fact that Coraline is dissatisfied living at the Pink Palace seems like a metaphor for her rejecting female stereotypes and preferring to be a tomboy.
** In the Other World, during the first theater performance, Coraline, excited to see Other Spink perform on stage, squeezes Other Wylbie's arm and happily declares, "She's practically naked!" It looks like she was longing to see this...

* SoOkayItsAverage: The overall reaction to the console game -- from those people who actually went out of their way to play it, of course. It's a very relaxing and inoffensive game. The DS Game received a [[NoProblemWithLicensedGames markedly better reception]] than the console game.

* SoOkayItsAverage: The overall reaction to the console game -- from those people who actually went out of their way to play it, of course. It's a very relaxing and inoffensive game.

** The scene where Coraline finds the first soul/eye, specifically the Ghost Boy's dialogue. "Bless you, Miss, you found me! But there are two still lost." The cheery tone combined with the line itself makes it sound more like "[[VideoGame/SuperMarioBros But our princess is in another castle]]!"

* BigLippedAlligatorMoment: '''[[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments MY KINGDOM-M-M-M-M FOR A HORSE!!!]]''' (cue things falling over)

* RealismInducedHorror: Kids find the Other Mother/Beldam scary because she is a child-eating HumanoidAbomination with a terrifying transformation and a NightmareFace. Adults find her scary because she is an accurate portrayal of an {{Abusive Parent|s}} who showers her "children" with shallow affection only to turn into a nightmare when they dissatisfy her and sees them as tools for her own satisfaction. Quite a few posters on [[Website/{{Reddit}} r/raisedbynarcissists]] [[https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/1ucmkr/has_anyone_else_seen_the_movie_coraline/ have expressed]] how much [[https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/55y0rm/coraline_nailed_it/ she reminds them]] of [[https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/fj6gwb/anyone_else_relate_so_much_to_coraline_with_the/ their own mothers]].

** A still image of [[https://i.redd.it/c7slncep71q41.jpg Coraline's father at his computer]] has made the rounds on Twitter usually as a representation of exhausted moderators or other Internet dwellers. It's often paired with a similar still image from WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles.

** A still image of [[https://i.redd.it/c7slncep71q41.jpg Coraline's father at his computer]] has made the rounds on Twitter usually as a representation of exhausted moderators or other Internet dwellers. It's often paired with similar a still image from WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles.

** A still image of [[https://i.redd.it/c7slncep71q41.jpg Coraline's father at his computer]] has made the rounds on Twitter usually as a representation of exhausted moderators or other Internet dwellers.

* CompleteMonster: [[BigBad The Beldam]], or the "[[OneBadMother Other Mother]]", is a sinister temptress who lures children to her otherworldly lair under the promise of a better life. Spoiling them so they'll want to stay with her, she then convinces them to [[EyeScream sew buttons on their eyes]] to [[{{Yandere}} lock them in her realm forever]] so she can [[WouldHurtAChild murder them and lock away their souls]] to replenish her own energy, and she attempts to do the same to the title character. In order for Coraline to save her parents and the souls of the children the Other Mother kidnapped before her, she's forced into a horrifying game of finding the dead children's eyes and her parents' souls as the world crumbles around her. When the Beldam's servants fail her, she turns them into horrifying abominations and sets them on Coraline's tail.

* SugarWiki/DevelopmentHeaven: As if the sheer amount of FridgeBrilliance and {{Foreshadowing}} isn't enough, apparently the animation is good enough that many uninformed people thought that it was made with CGI.
** For Coraline, they made more than 20 puppets, each one taking months to make. And since it uses puppets instead of clay, they had to make thousands of mouths that they painted individually and replaced between frames.
** On average, only ''a few seconds'' of footage are produced per day, assuming no mistakes are made. The film is 100 minutes long.
** [[SceneryPorn The garden scene? The mice circus? The theatre with hundreds of Scotties?]] All of them were made in stop-motion. The mice circus alone took two months to animate.
** Most of the flowers in the garden scene really lit up. It's not digitally enhanced.
** The lady who made the costumes actually ''knitted'' them, using the same techniques that would be used to make full-sized clothing but with needles the size of human hairs.
** The hair for the characters had to be "injected" strand by strand. The opening credits with the Coraline doll being assembled actually show a version of this being done.
** The scene where the Other World "disappears"? They did that in stop-motion too.
** They wanted to shoot the movie in 3D, but the sets were too small to fit two cameras side-by-side like for live-action films. So what did they do? They shot each frame twice from different angles with a single camera. The result is a movie with some of the most highly-regarded 3D effects ever.

* NarmCharm: The Other Mother changing her room into a spiderweb, then diving down towards Coraline while [[EvilIsHammy shrieking and cackling madly]] in the final confrontation can inspire a few chuckles for some viewers while still being unsettling.

* AuthorsSavingThrow: While there is a bit of a BrokenBase regarding the changes made in the transition from book to movie, one thing that everyone was okay with was changing the appearance of the Other Mother from a tall, skeleton-thin HumanoidAbomination to a much more attractive and [[BitchInSheepsClothing nice-looking lady]], giving the audience more of a reason to believe that Coraline can trust her. Even then, her skeletal form still appears in the movie, she just turns into it permanently ''after'' [[TheGlovesComeOff revealing her true intentions]].

** The Other Mother devouring "cocoa-beetles from Zanzibar" with squishy noises and a [[SickeningCrunch sucking crunch]] as she crunches through their shells.

* MainstreamObscurity: Considering the overwhelming popularity of the Neil Gaiman book and the Henry Selick animated movie, very few even know a ''Coraline'' video game even exists (the video game page went in up in 2020, ''a whole decade'' after the movie page was created). Even hardcore ''Coraline'' fans tend to be surprised of this games' existence. Though, considering the reputation licensed games [[TheProblemWithLicensedGames tend to have]], you honestly cannot blame them.

** The Beldam, in her spider form, catches Coraline trying to escape her web by feeling the vibrations that her movements make. This is actually how [[ShownTheirWork real spiders are alerted that something has been caught in their web]].

*** A real life example: a contest was held on the official site where winners received custom-made Nike Dunks sneakers, which were made to look stitched together with patches, featured big, black buttons on the sides, and had blue soles with white stars, much like the sweater the Other Mother makes for Coraline.
** Coraline's hat has gained quite a following too.

* MisaimedMarketing: During the TV broadcast of the movie, they aired an advertisement for [[Toys/{{Lalaloopsy}} a brand of dolls]] that have [[NightmareFuel buttons for eyes]]. They also made real-life replicas of the "Little Me" doll, which would be a horrible gift to anyone scared of this film.