The series began streaming on the horror service Shudder on September 26, 2019 and then premiered on AMC on May 4, 2020. Each episode features at least one short story by popular horror authors, including Stephen King, Joe Hill, and Josh Malerman, among others. Tom Savini directs the collection, and the series features actors from the first franchise, including Adrienne Barbeau.
Here is the official trailer
.
In October 2020, Shudder announced an animated special featuring two stories, by Stephen King and Joe Hill. A second season premiered in April of 2021, and a third season premiered September of the same year. A fourth season premiered in October 2023.
Tropes present in this work:
- Abusive Parents:
- Richie from "Gray Matter" didn’t start out as one, but after his wife died he became an alcoholic who neglected his son. He then proceeds to take the trope up to eleven after he begins mutating into a Blob Monster.
- Mrs. Bookberry from "Public Television of the Dead" is strongly implied to have been pushed into becoming the cruel, racist, and arrogant prima-donna television star she is today by her verbally abusive father. Her father's voice emanates (whether it is the work of the Deadites or the result of her own mental instability is not elaborated on) from her puppet, Henrietta the Bear, who berates her and furiously warns her not to screw up. This causes her to cower and tearfully promise "Daddy" that she'll make him proud.
- Hank from "Mums" is a cruel right-wing fanatic who verbally abused his kind son Jack and actively tries to indoctrinate him into his own racist mindset.
- Accidental Murder: In "Lydia Lane's Better Half", when Lydia and Celia's argument turns physical, Lydia shoves Celia, which causes her to stumble backward, fall over the couch and be impaled by Lydia's pyramid-shaped Woman of the Year award.
- Actor Allusion:
- Kevin Dillon once again appears in an episode of an EC comic book-based horror anthology television show as an Asshole Victim for being The Bully by getting dismembered by monsters in some fashion (previously Dillon went Off with His Head!, here he instead became Half the Man He Used to Be).
- Ashley Laurence plays a (debatably evil) psychiatrist in "Pesticide", and was previously the target of an evil doctor/psychiatrist in Hellbound: Hellraiser II.
- Adaptational Heroism/Adaptational Villainy: Occurs with "All Hallows Eve".
- In the original comic story, Skeeter is killed when a group of kids leave what is implied to a flaming bag of poop on the doorstep which accidentally burns down the house with the boy inside it. In revenge, the boy's ghost along with his friends murder the kids responsible. In the final scene the friends burn alive a very young kid who just tagged along. In the television episode, a group of teenagers burn down a treehouse, knowing that the group of friends are inside, but (apparently) unaware that the door was jammed from the damp weather, killing everyone inside. The final scene involves the ghosts getting their revenge on someone who's very much an Asshole Victim as opposed to the little kid in the original story.
- Affably Evil: Clark and Bob in "The Finger". The former is amoral, resentful, and Ax-Crazy while the latter is a murderous beast that brutally kills anyone Clark hates, but they’re both so lovable, dorky, and friendly that they wind up being some of the most likable characters in the series.
- Age Lift: In the original short story "By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain" the main characters are two young kids. In the 'Creepshow' episode they're much older teenagers.
- The Alcoholic: Richie from "Gray Matter" became one of these after the death of his wife, leading to him neglecting his son and making him get him a box of beer after school every day. Things get even worse when he drinks a tainted beer can that turns him into a Blob Monster with an insatiable appetite for humans.
- And I Must Scream:
- At the end of "The Last Tsuburaya", Wade is trapped inside of a painting in the form of a horrific and feral demon, presumably for eternity unless the painting is somehow destroyed.
- "Night of the Paw" addresses the issue with the classic Monkey Paw tale: even though Whitey wished Marjorie back to life, she still is stuck in the coffin, six feet under.
- And the Adventure Continues: "Bad Wolf Down" ends with the GIs turned werewolves using their abilities to wage a guerrilla campaign against the Nazis.
- An Arm and a Leg:
- Quist in "Bad Wolf Down" after stepping on a landmine.
- Inverted in "By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain". The only thing left of Chet is his severed leg.
- As Himself: Ted Raimi plays himself in "Public Television of the Dead", bringing the Necronomicon (which he claims has been in the family for years) onto an antiques show for appraisal. The host of said show stupidly decides to read the book aloud, turning Ted into a Deadite.
- Asshole Victim: Much like the movies, almost everyone who dies totally has it coming.
- Bob specializes in murdering these in "the Finger", attacking anyone who angers or upsets Ted, from a rude trucker to a telemarketer constantly phoning him to his ex and his step kids, the son who had stolen his car and tried to sell it and the daughter, who had tried to seduce him so he would keep quiet on her drug habits.
- Alex and Carla in "the Man In The Suitcase". While Justin feels remorse and sets a time limit on hurting the titular man for 48 hours and getting the coins that he produces, the duo refuse to end it, pushed by greed to continue and even attempt to murder Justin, with Carla striking him with a wrench and knocking him down a flight of stairs. However, the man inside is a Djinn and punishes the pair by painfully stuffing them into their own suitcases.
- Billy in "The Companion", a Big Brother Bully who abuses Harold constantly. He chases his little brother to the abandoned farmhouse where the Companion is, with Harold eventually sewing his clothes to the bed while he sleeps and allowing the monster to devour him.
- The title character in "Lydia Layne's Better Half". After screwing over her assistant and lover for a promotion, it escalates to Accidental Murder. Trying to get the body out through the elevator and becoming trapped, she admits to the victim's corpse that she was threatened by her. Her lovers corpse awakens and holds her in the closing elevator doors when she tries to crawl free.
- Chet in "By the Silver Waters of Lake Champlain. The boyfriend of Leigh, Rose's mother, he only is with her for the life insurance, pushing around Rose and Thomas and planning to leave after stealing the find of Champy's dead body to get rich and famous, taking it from Rose (who wanted it as proof that her father wasn't crazy. He even tries to kill Thomas, a TEENAGER, when he gets in the way. However, it turns out the body was Champy's baby and she's none too happy when she emerges from the lake.
- Wade in "The Last Tsubaraya", who happily remembers refusing buying a vase for asking price from a man whose daughter desperately needed a heart transplant just to see the look on the man’s face at the possible loss of his child. He eventually bought it, but for a much lower price, selling it again later for a million. Also happily burns a priceless painting (the titular last Tsubaraya) after looking at it just so he's the only one who will ever see it. It makes his fate of becoming the demon trapped in the painting much more satisfying.
- Butcher "Bunk", a sadistic prison guard in "Okay, I'll Bite". Cruelly bullying Elmer a former doctor convicted for overdosing his mother when she was dying of cancer and framing the gentle man for attempting to hurt another inmate to deny him any chance of parole, this is all so Elmer has to stay in prison and make opium for the inmates. This eventually culminates in two prisoners working for him breaking Elmer's finger and crushing one of his spiders. Bunk eventually meets his end at the hands of a transformed Elmer.
- The Atoner: The woman prisoner in "Bad Wolf Down," who is haunted by all the people she killed and devoured in her werewolf form.
- Autocannibalism: Richard from "Survivor Type" gradually chops off his own feet and legs while he's stranded on a beach, eating both his feet and part of his legs, and eventually biting off the skin from his fingers.
- Badass Normal:
- Norm Roberts from "Public Television of the Dead" is a Vietnam veteran who proves very adept at killing Deadites.
- Wade Cruise from "The Last Tsubaraya", who fights a demon head on and eventually manages to kill it. Unfortunately for him, doing so condemns him to a Fate Worse than Death.
- Bad Boss: Bunk Dill and Polish Frank from "Okay I'll Bite" constantly abuse Elmer Strick, who they've forced to cook for their opium-running ring, whenever he isn't able to supply them with the drugs as fast as they'd like.
- Bad Santa: Kris Kringle in the Holiday Special was appointed by God to kill Bob, the progenitor of werebeasts. Unable to defeat him, he switched sides to join Satan, vowing to kill Bob's entire bloodline with his army of mall Santas.
- Bathos: True to Creepshow mythos, the tales pair horror with an subtle element of silliness.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: in "Tweeting from the Circus of the Dead," Blake peevishly wishes that the current family vacation be their last. She gets her wish.
- Bedsheet Ghost: Skeeter appears as one in "All Hallows Eve".
- Better to Die than Be Killed: Wade in "The Last Tsubaraya" chooses to impale himself on a spear rather than transform into a demon. It doesn't help.
- Beware the Nice Ones:
- In "Stranger Sings", Sara is initially shown as the gentle partner in the homicidal human/siren partnership. However, she becomes steadily more murderous until by the end, the former siren Miranda has to kill Sara and save Barry.
- Norm from "Public Television of the Dead" is a kindly, soft-spoken painter who rarely has a bad word for anyone. He's also a war veteran who kills Deadites with ease.
- Big Brother Bully: Billy in "The Companion." He's so horribly abusive to his brother Harold that Harold ends up siccing the monster on him.
- Bittersweet Ending: If an episode has a sympathetic protagonist, it usually ends with them having survived whatever horrific mayhem the episode revolved around, even though there's still been a ton of carnage.
- At the end of "Public Television of the Dead", the Deadites are all killed, the Necronomicon is sealed again, and Norm Roberts gets his show back and becomes insanely popular, but the Deadites were able to turn a few kids into Deadites before they were stopped.
- In "Skincrawlers", Henry is able to survive the leeches bursting from the bodies of anyone who allowed themselves to be injected with them and has made headway on overcoming his low self-esteem and body issues, but a ton of people are still dead.
- Black Comedy: It's a good, old fashioned, Southern pie-eating contest in Musky Holler! Except that the "contestants" are ravenous zombies and the "pies" are the faces of incapacitated prisoners.
- Blob Monster: Richie from "Gray Matter" slowly mutates into one, gaining a sensitivity to light and an insatiable appetite, at first for warm beer and then pets. By the end, he's moved on to humans, and it turns out he can multiply into more Blob Monsters, with the implication that he will more than likely wipe out the human race.
- Body Horror: In the trailer, we briefly see a heavily desiccated undead being, and some slimy, vaguely humanoid thing with an enormous, deformed mouth.
- The latter being is Richie from "Gray Matter", an alcoholic who slowly mutates into a horrific Blob Monster after drinking a tainted beer can.
- Pretty much the entirety of "Skincrawlers."
- Bolivian Army Ending: "Gray Matter".
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: Blake in "Twittering from the Circus of the Dead" spends most of the segment as one, tweeting complaints about her parents for taking her on a road trip through Colorado and Arizona. She drops the attitude only at the very end, just before being dragged off to become the new ringmistress.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Clark in "The Finger" narrates directly to the audience several times, even as he is in the middle of the event he's describing.
- Call-Back: The briefcase from "The Man in the Briefcase" and the monkey's paw from "Night of the Paw" appear briefly in the opening of "Time Out".
- Came Back Wrong: Anyone brought back to life by the monkey's paw.
- Circus of Fear: The titular circus in "Twittering from the Circus of the Dead" is one where zombie clowns are given people to chase down and eat. Most of the "audience" consists of a bunch of rotting corpses tied down to their seats.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: In "The Man in the Suitcase" a group of friends discover that hurting a man trapped inside a suitcase will cause him to vomit gold coins. They proceed to torture him in a get-rich scheme.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Wade Cruise from "The Last Tsubaraya" is a tech billionaire who uses his money to make people suffer just for kicks.
- Creator Cameo: Stephen King (in animated form) plays Pinzetti's friend Phil Hammersmith in "Survivor Type."
- Crossover:
- "Public Television of the Dead" is one between The Evil Dead and the shows of PBS, focusing on the Deadites taking over a public access television station after Ted Raimi brings the Necronomicon on an appraisal show and the host idiotically decides to read it.
- "Model Kid" has the titular character bring his models of the Gill-Man and the Mummy to life to get revenge on his abusive uncle.
- Cruel Twist Ending: "Familiar". Jack seemingly drowns the familiar after trapping it, only to find out he had inadvertently drowned his girlfriend Fawn instead when he's confronted by an undead version of her when he gets home.
- Darker and Edgier: The animated special is noticeably lacking in almost any of the humor of previous episodes aside from a bit of snark coming from the protagonists of each short. In fact, they're probably the most grim entries in the series since "Times is Tough in Musky Holler", if not even worse.
- Deadpan Snarker: Richard from "Survivor Type".
- Defiant to the End:
- In "Bad Wolf Down", Kommandant Reinhard, when faced with a bunch of angry U.S. soldiers-turned-werewolves, shoots them repeatedly and after he runs out of ammo, gives a "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner.
- In "Mums", Hank spends his last moment screaming profanity at the undead Bloom.
- Deliberately Monochrome: Some parts of the trailer are black-and-white footage, which appears to come from WW2-era Nazi archives in-universe. There's also a "real-time" shot of a facepainted gang at night-time, which is so desaturated that the only color comes from the leader's lighter.
- Denser and Wackier: The Holiday Special is probably the most straightforward comedic episode in the series, with almost everything being Played for Laughs and no serious drama whatsoever.
- Died on Their Birthday: Implied in "A Dead Girl Named Sue". If the cupcake Cliven holds during her flashback is any indication, then poor Sue met her horrific death at his hands on her birthday.
- Dirty Cop: Butcher "Bunk" Dill from "Okay I'll Bite" is a corrupt prison guard who forces hapless prisoner Elmer Strick to cook opium for his drug-running ring, and torments him whenever there are complications.
- Dirty Coward: Quist in "Bad Wolf Down", who locks up his squadmates in a jail cell after deciding they were a liability in attempting to escape the Germans.
- The Ditz: Fawn from "Familiar". It gets her killed when she climbs inside the trap Jack set for the familiar, and he promptly accidentally drowns her when he mistakes her for it.
- The Dog Bites Back: A general rule of thumb in the series is that if you torment or wrong someone, you better be damn sure they'll get revenge is karma doesn't do it for them first.
- Downer Ending: Plenty of episodes end with the protagonist being killed or subject to some other horrible fate, though they usually deserve it. The endings of "Twittering from the Circus of the Dead", "Time Out", and "Gray Matter" particularly qualify, since they end with the implicit deaths of sympathetic protagonists who clearly didn't deserve what they had coming to them.
- The Dreaded: The adults regard the Golden Dragons club kids with terror in "All Hallow's Eve". It is revealed this is because they are vengeful ghosts picking off their killers... who happen to be the adults' sons, and the adults can do nothing to stop them.
- Dumbass Has a Point: Henry Quayle is not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he's smart enough to realize that getting your fat sucked off by a leech is maybe not the greatest idea.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Barry, an OBGYN doctor in "Stranger Sings", who is forced to perform an operation to transfer a voice box from a Siren, Miranda, to a human woman, Sara. When it seems that he'll suffer Double Standard Rape and eventually devouring by the newly transformed Sara, he's saved by Miranda, who stabs Sara and kills her. It also seems that the pair are going to start a relationship, as the pair are now bonded.
- Eccentric Exterminator: Harlan King from "Pesticide", who clearly enjoys his job a little... too much.
- Eldritch Abomination: In "Okay, I'll Bite," Elmer combines with an already-huge spider to become this.
- Elevator Failure: In "Lydia Layne's Better Half", an earthquake causes an elevator that Lydia's riding to lose power, trapping her with the corpse of her girlfriend that she had recently killed by accident.
- Establishing Series Moment: The first episode, "Gray Matter", features this dialogue from Tobin Bell's character, which perfectly sets up the tone of the series:I remember something that my daddy used to say to me. He'd say, "Son, there are things in the corners of this world, that if you look 'em right in the face, they'll drive you insane."
- Evil Uncle: Kevin Aurora from "Model Kid" is an abusive, alcoholic wretch who cruelly torments his wife and nephew to vent his frustrations out on the only people he has any power over. He's basically a middle-aged Porn Stache-donning Les Wilton who transpose his abuse of his pledges onto his family later in life after graduating from college.
- Expy: Uncle Kevin from "Model Kid" is basically a middle-aged Les Wilton, down to being played by the same actor.
- Eye Scream:
- In the trailer we briefly see a (presumably) dead body with a gaping hole in his eye socket.
- Kelly in "Skincrawlers" dies when the leeches emerge from her eyes.
- In "Okay, I'll Bite", Elmer, after transforming into a Giant Spider, gouges out Bunk's eyes.
- Facial Horror:
- Well, it doesn't get more horrific than seeing a man's entire face get chewed off by the undead.
- Shortly before, Polish Frank gets a close up shot of one of Elmer's spiders sinking its fangs into his eye.
- Ted Raimi is also left with a charred eyeless face after it is set on fire in "Public Television of the Dead."
- Fate Worse than Death: "Man in the Suitcase" has Alex and Carla, who feel absolutely no remorse for torturing the man in the suitcase and even resort to attempting to kill the remorseful Justin, get trapped into bags themselves by the suitcase man who is revealed to be a genie testing their character.
- A Father to His Men: Captain Talby from "Bad Wolf Down" will do anything to protect his men, including turning them all into werewolves to fend off a squadron of Nazis. Of course, as Quist learns, he’s not so protective to deserters.
- First-Person Smartass: Richard narrates "Survivor Type", and is a complete smartass, even as he goes insane.
- Fold-Spindle Mutilation: The Man In The Suitcase. Even looking at how he's crammed in there is painful.
- Alex and Carla suffer the same fate when they fail the man's (really a Djinn) Secret Testof Character.
- Foreshadowing:
- The "Missing Pet" flyers from the opening shots of "Gray Matter". And the newspaper article about the missing twin girls seen later in the shop.
- After getting back from the airport in the beginning of "The Man in the Suitcase," Justin stumbles upon a cartoon about a genie while channel surfing. Shortly afterwards, he starts hearing muffled screams emitting from his suitcase ...
- From that same episode, the titular "man in the suitcase" warns that no “Western” hospital can help him with his condition. Of course, Western medicine would have little effect on a Djinn.
- Formula-Breaking Episode: The Halloween special being a cartoon.
- Genre Anthology : The series adapts short stories by Stephen King and a number of other well-known horror authors.
- Genre Roulette: The show loves switching up what genre of horror any given episode will fall under.
- Genre Savvy: In "Skincrawlers" Henry Quayle is the only guy who realizes that using giant, creepy-looking leeches that are super rare that no one knows anything about to suck out fat is a supremely bad idea. This winds up saving his life.
- Gilligan Cut: In "Familiar", Jack tells Boone that he'll never buy the crate. In the next shot, he lugs it to Dawn's studio.
- Greed: Alex and Carla end up falling victim to this in "The Man in the Suitcase." It proves to be their grisly undoing.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Happens to Uncle Kevin at the end of "Model Kid" after getting tag-teamed by the Gill-Man and the Mummy.
- Haunted House: Evie's new dollhouse in "House of Head" is revealed to be one, with an evil severed doll's head haunting the house and the dolls inhabiting it.
- Horror Host: The Creep from the original films serves as the host.
- Immune to Bullets: The Nazi platoon opens fire on the werewolf GIs in "Bad Wolf Down." Naturally, it has zero effect since the bullets aren't silver.
- Idiot Ball: The ending of "Meet the Belaskos" runs on this. The ending is dependent on Anna, a vampire, carrying her human boyfriend Alex to an ER to get treatment for his injuries. However, for this to even be possible it has to take an extended period of time for the sunlight to kill her.. In spite of this, she never seems to be rushing, and doesn't even attempt to seek cover after he's been handed off to medical professionals to deal with.
- In Medias Res: "Times is Tough in Musky Holler" takes place not only after the Zombie Apocalypse, but also in the middle of an uprising to capture and kill the people who used the apocalypse to take over the town.
- I Want My Mommy!: Bunk screams for his mother as the Strick!Spider Monster closes in on him.
- Jawbreaker: The Nazi commander from "Bad Wolf Down" gets his jaw ripped off by a werewolf.
- Jerkass: Too many to list. Most don't survive the tale.
- Karma Houdini: The fact that Polish Frank and Bullet survive the events of "OK I'll Bite" is pretty surprising for a series that loves dishing out heaps of karmic death to sociopath bullies.
- Large Ham: Plenty of them, thanks to the series being filled with a ton of over-the-top characters that give actors an excuse to go hog-wild.
- The Nazi commander played by Jeffrey Combs from "Bad Wolf Down".
- The Deadites from "Public Television of the Dead", as per usual, but the hammiest out of all of them would be Deadite Ted Raimi, who would really like you to "PLEDGE TO US"
- Uncle Kevin from "Model Kid", in a manner that enhances how much of an obnoxious, abusive dick he is just like his actor's past horror anthology television character Les Wilton."It's CHORE DAY!"
- Overly evil and classist slumlord Victoria from "Pipe Screams", who repeatedly makes over-the-top declarations that just show how much of an asshole she is.
- Sleazy Eccentric Exterminator Harlan King from "Pesticide" devours the scenery anytime he steps into the room.
- Lower-Deck Episode: "A Dead Girl Named Sue" takes place during the events of Night of the Living Dead (1968), and concerns a cop trying maintain his sense of law and order in spite of a lynch mob enacting vigilante justice due to the zombie apocalypse and ultimately winds up joining them in the end, following him feeding a Karma Houdini criminal to one of his past victims, now zombified.
- Magical Native American: One of the dolls that Evie from "House of Head" purchases to deal with the evil severed head is a First Nations brave. He fares no better than any of the other dolls.
- Malevolent Masked Men: The trailer shows a group of creepy and clearly malevolent men, though instead of wearing masks they use corpsepaint to obscure their faces.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: "Lydia Layne’s Better Half" and "The Finger" leave it unclear whether something supernatural really happened, or it was all the protagonist’s delusions. "Survivor Type" has no supernatural elements.
- Monster Clown: "Twittering from the Circus of the Dead" has monster zombie clowns.
- Monster Is a Mommy: In "By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain", Rose stumbles upon what she believes is the corpse of the Lake Monster that her father had spent years trying to find. In truth, she just found Champy's baby, and Champy is still alive and well.
- Mouth Stitched Shut: Whitey clips the stitches holding his late wife's lips together in "Night of the Paw", once he belatedly realizes he hadn't specified where she should be restored to life and has dug up her grave.
- Ms. Fanservice:
- Somewhat in "Night of the Paw." While Angela is a key character, there really was no reason for her to be shown in her underwear as Whitey operates on her hand.
- "Twittering from the Circus of the Dead" features a beautiful young woman in a Stripperiffic ringmistress getup. Blake notes both her brother and her dad perk up when she appears.
- Mythology Gag:
- Much like the original film, the marble ashtray from "Father's Day" is hidden throughout every segment.
- A book about Upson Pratt appears briefly in "Okay I'll Bite".
- Nice Character, Mean Actor: Mrs. Bookberry from "Public Television of the Dead" is the kindhearted, sweet host of a popular kid's show... when the cameras are rolling. When they aren't, she's a demanding, cruel, selfish, racist, and unhinged prima donna.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Norm Roberts from "Public Television of the Dead" is basically Bob Ross, if Bob Ross were also a badass Vietnam veteran who fought Deadites. Similarly, Mrs. Bookberry is a dark version of Shari Lewis, although Bookberry's PBS show is modelled more along the lines of Levar Burton's "Reading Rainbow".
- Not Using the "Z" Word: The Man in the Suitcase is very clearly a genie, but the word's never dropped.
- Older Than They Look: Tim in "Time Out" is entering his middle age while he's still in his early thirties. This is because his time in the wardrobe is drastically aging him.
- Only Sane Man: Henry Quayle in "Skincrawlers", mainly thanks to being extremely Genre Savvy.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: The severed head from "The House of the Head".
- Our Vampires Are Different: The vampires in Sibling Rivalry" don't even seem to notice sunlight, much less be harmed by it. They also can only be killed by decapitation, although it's never shown that they can't be killed by a stake thorough the heart.
- Our Werebeasts Are Different: In addition to werewolves, the Holiday Special features wereboars, wereturtles, werecheetahs ... and furries.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Each of the G.I.s in "Bad Wolf Down", when transformed, adopts the stance and features of a different cinematic version of a werewolf: Rivers is a bipedal full-body hybrid a la The Howling, Doc is a bearish quadruped in the style of An American Werewolf in London, and Talby is an old-school The Wolf Man type.
- Plot Hole: In "Bad Wolf Down," the Nazi commander orders the men to assault the station at sundown. Instead, they inexplicably attack at night, which is much later than sundown.
- There was absolutely no reason to wait at all to attack, as the GIs already knew they were there, and his platoon were all ready to assault.
- Naturally this in service to the story since the GIs are now werewolves, but it's still a glaring plot hole, as the Nazis would have won easily if they executed the plan as ordered.
- Police Are Useless: Double Subverted by Chief Connors in "Gray Matter", who stays in town during a hurricane to prevent looting and attend to people who may need help. When he learns Richie has been neglecting his son Timmy and sent him out into the storm to get beer, he immediately goes to arrest him. However, Connors didn’t account for Richie having turned into a Blob Monster who feeds on humans, and is taken out easily.
- Punny Name: The Aurora family in “Model Kid” is named for Aurora Plastics, a legendary manufacturer of monster models.
- Redemption Equals Life: In "Man in the Suitcase", Justin is the only one who feels remorse for torturing the suitcase man and tries to help him out. He is the only one out of his friends who survives (albeit with a head injury given to him by his other more evil friends) and is thanked by the genie and offered help with anything he could possibly need.
- Sanity Slippage: Happens to Richard in "Survivor Type", who slowly goes insane from isolation and hunger while stranded on a desert island. Being forced to eat his own limbs doesn’t help."I wonder if I'm even human anymore. Well, they say you are what you eat, so I guess I'm at least half-human. Or a quarter."
- Scary Scarecrows: One made of straw, cloth, roots, animal bones and a homemade Valentine shows up in "The Companion." It is both highly affectionate to its creator and violently homicidal to anyone else.
- Secret Test of Character: In the episode "Man In The Suitcase", has one of these involving the titular man. He is painfully contorted and stuffed into a suitcase, begging for help to get free, but coughs up highly valuable coins while in pain. At the end of the episode, the man in the suitcase reveals himself to a Djinn and his situation to be one of these. Alex and Carla, who show no remorse to the man, torturing him horrifically for the money and almost kill Justin when he shows remorse and tries to get help, fail the test. They suffer a Fate Worse than Death, painfully contorted and forced into suitcases like the man had been. Justin, who was remorseful and wanted to help him, passes. The Djinn gives him a get-well bouquet while he's in the hospital with a note that has an offer to help him with anything he needs written on it.
- Sociopathic Soldier:
- Chet in "By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain" was one of these back when he was in the army, and he hasn’t changed a bit since then.
- Quist from "Bad Wolf Down" attempts to shoot the wounded Frenchwoman to get the other G.I.s to abandon her, then locks his former comrades-in-arms in the jail cell and throws away the keys rather than wait for them.
- Space Whale Aesop: The moral of "Gray Matter" is that you shouldn’t be an alcoholic, or else you’ll turn into a Blob Monster that will destroy the world.
- Those Wacky Nazis: Show up in "Bad Wolf Down".
- Through the Eyes of Madness: The ending of "The Finger" implies some, if not all of the story took place inside Clark's delusional mind.
- Too Dumb to Live:
- Clearly, Angela did not learn a thing from Whitey's tragic tale in "Night of the Paw." Hell, everything that went wrong for her throughout the episode was her own fault. Her poor wording in bringing her husband back to life, her irresponsible use of the monkey's paw, even her Mercy Kill of her husband was poorly thought, since she shot him in the face instead of merely pulling the plug on his life support. She fits this trope to a T.
- In "Public Television of the Dead", Goodman Tapert, host of a parody of Antiques Roadshow, finds that guest Ted Raimi has brought the Necronomicon onto the show for appraisal. Despite recognizing the book and realizing that it holds evil powers, he decides to read the book out loud, even as Ted tells him not to do so. This results in the book's forces being unleashed to wreak havoc throughout the studio, with Ted and Tapert turning into Deadites.
- Total Eclipse of the Plot: A solar eclipse that is described as a once-in-a-century occurrence causes the leeches in "Skincrawlers" to emerge from their hosts.
- Vengeance Feels Empty: A slight variation occurs in "All Hallows Eve", where the Golden Dragons express how tired they are of spending every Halloween hunting down the other teenagers who killed them, and how they would rather just move on to their eternal rest.
- The Voiceless: Played with. The Creep never speaks (we sometimes hear his laughter) but we see dialogue from him on the comic pages that pop up.
- Was Once a Man: The fate of Richie in "Gray Matter", who goes from a man into a Blob Monster Immune to Bullets that has a taste for humans and will likely destroy the world.
- Wicked Cultured: Elmer Strick from "Okay I'll Bite" is well-versed in both the biology and behavior of spiders and various religions, especially Ancient Egypt. Though he's not so much evil as he is creepy.
- Wicked Stepfather: Chet from "By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain" is an abusive drunk who bullies his stepchildren, who he outright tries to murder at one point, and admits he only married his wife to mooch off of the life insurance she got from her husband’s death.
- Would Hurt a Child:
- The monster in "The Companion," who gruesomely impales a Girl Scout.
- Chet from "By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain" is an abusive drunk who bullies and almost murders his stepchildren. He is only stopped by the arrival of a vengeful Champy, who believes he murdered her child, which all the characters had mistaken for her after finding her washed up on the shore of the lake.
- Xenomorph Xerox: Once fully-grown, "Bob" from The Finger looks like a miniature, bone-white one. Not that his size makes him any less lethal.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: The wardrobe in "Time Out." The time outside stops while you are inside, but time also accelerates for you: an hour inside saps a week off of your life.
- And that's only if you have the key on your person. If you don't, decades pass for you in seconds. Both Kitty and later Tim quickly die of old age and decay to dust when trapped inside.
- Zombie Apocalypse:
- One happened offscreen in "Times is Tough in Musky Holler".
- "A Dead Girl Name Sue" takes place during Night of the Living Dead (1968), so you can bet this counts.
