Toys / Living Dead Dolls

They may be creepy, but these ain't your grandma's dolls.

We're dead. Pure evil. We sleep with the worms.

Created by Ed Long and Damien Glonek in 1998, Living Dead Dolls are little dolls who died in an assortment of creative ways, and come packaged in coffins for you to enjoy, complete with death certificates. They are inspired, of course, by real toddler/child dolls, serving as a dark counterpart/parody to the more innocent ones, and the very first dolls were simply customs of the originally innocent toys.

Ed and Damien later got picked up by Mezco Toyz to mass-produce the dolls, and Mike "Mez" Markowitz, the founder who brought them on, has become involved in the creative process for the line. The earlier dolls had more basic articulation, but a few series in, the bodies were changed to have ball joints for greater motion.

So far, there are over thirty series (with an average number of five dolls in each set), not counting the many exclusives, Living Dead Dolls Presents lines, Resurrection series, and Fashion Victims. A separate LDD Presents line was launched to allow for Mezco to branch out and make less horror-themed LDDs, like Harley Quinn. Every year, two main series, a Resurrection series, an SDCC resurrection doll, and a Halloween exclusive are released. The dolls are treated as collector's items and no LDD product enters a second production run, making quantities limited and online resale prices steep. A complete listing of the dolls can be found in the Archive section of the official website.

While new series of characters dropped off for several years in the 2010s, the brand received a revitalization of sorts in 2024 with the "Return of the Living Dead Dolls" line, consisting of higher-end renditions of some of the original cast with moveable eyes, alternate faceplates, and much more articulation.

Compare and contrast Little Apple Dolls.

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These dolls provide examples of:

• Abandoned Mine: Series 34, "The Devil's Vein", features the ghostly inhabitants of a buried mining town.
• A Crack in the Ice: Frozen Charlotte was a girl who fell through the ice on the water she was skating on, and ended up drowning and freezing.
• All Witches Have Cats:
  • Zig-zagged with Salem in Series 32. She is a humanoid black Halloween cat and a witch.
  • The licensed Sabrina Spellman doll comes with her cat.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: The skin colors of the Living Dead Dolls have a very wide range, with several human colors, greyscale colors, and several dolls with bright saturated fantasy colors to illustrate a more monstrous nature or colorful aesthetic.
• Ambiguous Gender:
  • Series 31's boogeymen play with this to create a more otherworldly tone for its inhuman spooks. Thump has no makeup and short curly hair, making for a gender-neutral appearance, and is labeled with "it" pronouns. Since its design goes for a more primal-monster vibe, the unrelatability is appropriate. Kreek has a more masculine appearance but is referred to as "it". Umbral has a feminine appearance but receives no pronouns in the doll's poems, leaving things up in the air. The only Series 31 dolls with gendered pronouns are Bea Neath and The Dark, both referred in their poems with she/her pronouns that match their feminine designs, though they're no more humanlike than the other dolls in the series.
  • Maitre des Morts in Series 33 to a lesser extent, as he has an androgynous appearance and Damien Glonek is reported to have avoided his gender in conversation, but his name, character basis, and chipboard confirm him as male.
• American Gothic Couple: Two variants on the concept were made, with zombie dolls mimicking the characters in American Gothic.
• An Arm and a Leg: Some dolls have severed hands:
  • Gregory, whose exposed bone attaches into his ventriloquist dummy to replace his hand.
  • Fairy Fay, a brutalized victim of Jack the Ripper, whose arm wound is exposed with nothing covering it
  • The Hook, Hayze, Angus Littlrot, Captain Bonney, and the Madame all have hooks for hands. The Hook's hook comes off to reveal the severed-hand arm sculpt also used by Gregory and Fairy Fay.
  • Wurm has no limbs at all, and Eeriel has no legs, with her lower body being severed and replaced by a fish tail.
• Animesque: Maggot's dolls all style her this way with the three featuring across them a Japanese fashion/media slant including cutesy pigtails, a sailor dress, anime-style eye paint, and a square eyepatch or lower face mask for a punk manga edge.
• Art Shift: Series 32, "Vintage Halloween", has a more flat line-drawn art style for the dolls' faces to evoke the mood and visual style of the series concept.
• Autocannibalism: Series 32's Butcher Boop snapped and ate her own face, forcing her to get by with a crude and unsettling paper mask afterwards. Removing the mask reveals her unhappy skull underneath.
• Bedsheet Ghost:
  • Eleanor is a white-colored ghost girl wearing a sheet to evoke this classic ghost image per the trick-or-treat-Halloween theme of her series. The sheet is actually her burial shroud.
• A Birthday, Not a Break: Jubilee attends birthday parties and is a most unwelcome guest, as any birthday is sure to go wrong when she's present.
• Blood from the Mouth: Resurrection Dottie Rose and Series 30 Edgrr's variant doll both feature designs of bleeding mouths. Other dolls have had bloody mouth designs, but moreso to imply they've been preying on victims rather than suffering an injury or disease.
• Bloody Horror: Many of the dolls depict heavily bloodied wounds for edge and horror. Countess Bathory and Resurrection Deadbra Ann are uninjured but covered in blood for horrific effect, and and Fairy Fay is the bloodiest wounded doll released in the brand.
• Bolt of Divine Retribution: Sinister Minister and Bad Habit were evil clergy "righteously struck down by lightning".
• Brain Monster: Purdy and Goria have sliced-off heads that expose their brains. The brains themselves are removable pieces inside the heads. Purdy's doll in the Lost in Oz series, where she's cast as the Scarecrow, has the brain missing per the role she's playing. It's up to collectors to get the Wizard in the series' variant set, who has the brain, to be able to complete (either version of) Scarecrow Purdy.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Resurrection Series 9's three variant sets are glow-in-the-dark, sepia-toned, and glow-in-the-dark sepia-toned.
• Buried Alive: Both Series 1's Posey and Series 12's Chloe were mistakenly presumed dead and buried while they were still alive. Posey, for her part, has since died and risen up as a zombie.
• Burn the Witch!: The fate that befell Ember, a young girl innocently dressing up like a witch as a Halloween costume. She was mistaken for the real deal and burned for it.
• The Butler Did It: Invoked in Series 23, a tea party where at least two of the characters suffer from tampered drinks that harm them. Agatha, the housekeeper/maid character is implied to be the cause of the tamperings, being written as resentful of newer dolls and a line in one poem about her keeping a secret about the tea being laced.
• By the Lights of Their Eyes: The teaser image for Series 31 is a dark bedroom with the glowing eyes of each of the dolls around the room, which also feature as the images on their coffin chipboards.
• Chinese Vampire: The Hopping Vampire in Series 27 is a Chinese folkloric jiangshi, complete with a spell tag to attach to its hat.
• Casting a Shadow: Tenebre is a powerful witch associated with darkness, and can control shadows.
• Color-Coded Characters: Series 28 uses this as its main design motif, with all of the party guests having white skin and black accents, and a signature color for each—each new character introduced in the series also has a name related to her color. Sadie (returning from previous series) and Onyx are just black-and-white, Ruby has red as her main color, Tina Pink has pink (obviously), and Hayze has purple. The variant set is thus more striking in its limited palette than some others, because it removes the color-coding and replaces everything with black and white and glow-in-the-dark skin.
• Composite Character: Maitre des Morts is heavily based on the Emcee from Cabaret, and seems based on the two most famous portrayals, bearing the suit of the Joel Grey portrayal and the hair, makeup, heavy androgyny, and skimpier torso coverage (and even a death date sharing the premiere date) of the Alan Cumming portrayal.
• Conjoined Twins: Hazel and Hattie are twins conjoined at the shoulder, leaving each sister with one arm.
• Corrupt Church: Judas is an evil altar boy, and Sinister Minister and Bad Habit are an evil priest and nun.
• Creepy Child: A large proportion of the childlike dolls represent literal children who have died and/or exhibit malicious or disturbing behaviors.
• Creepy Doll: All of the dolls, by design, though some are made to invoke the look of traditional antique dolls, and others are just representing their own characters through a doll medium. This has a parodic element as well as being straight horror, as they have a body design reminiscent of mainstream dolls and instead of adoption papers or birth certificates, they have death certificates, making the whole product mirror their sweeter inspiration.
• Creepy Housekeeper: Series 23's Agatha is styled as a porcelain doll of a traditional domestic servant in an austere black dress with a white lace collar, and has no cap, suggesting a role of seniority (contrasted to the later Series 25 scullery maid, Gretchen). Agatha is also characterized as very old and bitter, having sabotaged the dolly tea party she's participating in by tampering with the tea, and thus displays her own agenda and no loyalty to the "lady" she'd be serving, Betsy.
• Creepy Long Arms: Some dolls, Nosferatu being the first, have extended arms with clawed hands. Isaac has these and creepy long legs, due to his differently-proportioned plush body and unique hand molds.
• Crowd Surfing: Sheena died from a failed stage dive. She landed on her head instead of the crowd.
• Dark Is Evil: Tenebre’s name means "darkness" in Italian, she rules in the shadows, and is the most cruel of her witch sisters.
• Darkness Von Gothick Name: Several dolls have names with a morbid goth twist or lofty ominous tone, such as Tina Black, Daisy Slae, Mildread, GreGORY and Jennocide. The Three Sisters Tenebre, Lamenta, and Sospirare could be considered the Italian equivalent, and the cast of Series 33 are the French equivalent.
• Deliberately Monochrome:
  • Some dolls, like The Lost, She Who Cannot Be Named, and Coalette, are designed with no saturated colors.
  • Several variant sets invoke this by limiting their original designs' color palettes.
    • Series 5 is a "golden age of showbiz" series with a black-and-white variant set like the films of the time.
    • Resurrection IX is based on famous historical murders and has a sepia-toned variant set to look like early photographs.
• Demonic Dummy: Gregory's dummy is attached where his hand was severed, and has apparently taken over his mind.
• Driven to Suicide: Several of the characters are said to have died by suicide.
  • Jezebel cut herself with a razor and died from blood loss. Her doll has painted bloody cuts on the underside of her arms.
  • Emo-themed Blue "drank a cup of bleach".
  • Jasper was a solipsist, believing everyone existed in her mind. Since she hated them all, she killed herself in an attempt at genocide.
  • The After drowned himself in the river to escape his schizophrenia.
  • Penny jumped out a window because she was bored.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The early dolls were less detailed and had lower-quality outfits of felt, though they soon became more polished.
  • The early doll bodies had a lower range of motion, with the swivel joints being replaced by ball joints starting in Series 9.
  • The earliest dolls with hook hands had a smaller, rounded old-timey hook, but The Hook doll introduced a larger, angular hook shape that seemingly replaced the rounded one, since the rounded version hasn't been seen again since.
• Eldritch Abomination:
  • Series 29's dolls are called the Nameless Ones, and all are spoken of with a fearful reverence like a legend that won't go away.
  • The spooks in Series 31 are implied to be this. They have no death dates, and are referred to as "it" rather than by more typical pronouns like "he," "she," or "they."
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Although some are colorful, there are many monochrome dolls with backstories and chipboards that invoke creepiness. The twins Jack and Jill are murderers, Maggot spreads diseases and is described as a peculiar critter, The Lost is a mysterious entity who invokes dread, Tenebre is a young sadistic cruel girl, Sospirare has no eyes and can kill with just her sighs, The Girl In Black feeds off of fear and She Who Can Not Be Named is a girl who lives near the dead.
• Enemy Mime: The Lost's Resurrection looks like this, with white skull-like face paint over the top of her face featuring lines and dots typical of mime makeup.
• Enfant Terrible: Most of the kids in the line would be terrifying even if they weren't undead.
• Escape Artist: Vincent Vaude was a rather unskilled one who suffocated inside his trunk.
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: Zombies have appeared in several series.
  • Posey was buried alive, died, and then came back as a zombie.
  • Dawn is a zombie styled as a more retro schoolgirl. Get the name?
  • Dee K is a zombie schoolgirl with braces.
  • The entirety of Series 22 is composed of zombie characters at different stages, including a patient zero.
• Evil Twin: Hattie to Hazel. Unfortunately for the latter, they're conjoined, and Hazel was killed by an undead Hattie despite her wishes to stay alive.
• Eyeless Face: A few dolls have black or hollowed eyes to this effect—sometimes for gore, sometimes for simple eeriness.
• Eye Scream:
  • Tessa, whose were gouged out and have the appropriate texture around her sockets. Since the trademark of the Resurrection dolls is their inset glass eyes, Tessa's includes them disembodied, and they can be popped back into her sockets.
    Tessa was a tattletale
    Who gossiped all she saw,
    Until she got her eyes gouged out
    Nerve endings and all.
  • Isabel removed hers out of dysphoric feelings toward them, and the subsequent blood loss was what killed her. She may have regretted it, or simply prefers the eyes as an optional accessory, since her masquerade mask seems to have her eyes implanted into it and the nerve endings on the back fit into her empty sockets.
  • Sospirare has the same gouged head mold as Tessa and hollow sockets, but no blood.
  • Larmes de Sang is missing one eye, with the socket having a pentagram carved around it.
  • Exclusive doll Jeepers lost an eye as well...
    Jeepers had one eye through which
    She would occasion a gruesome sight.
    The other shone only beauty,
    That everything was quite alright.
    So she plucked out the peeper she thought was so unwell.
    But it turns out she was wrong,
    Now all she sees is truly hell.
  • Iris’s missing eye is replaced by a pentagram-shaped scar, the same mold later used by Larmes de Sang.
  • Jennocide has half her face melted off by acid, resulting in the loss of an eye.
  • Maggot’s resurrection doll has an eye missing. Since she died from a mysterious disease, this doll shows the disease spreading, possibly leading to her eye being so infected that it had to be removed. Her original doll has both eyes and her body is simply covered with an infection.
  • The Dark has an eyeball on her tongue.
  • Thump has six pairs of eyes in its belly.
• Fashion Hurts:
  • The Frankenstein-esque patchwork Calico is implied to have been created by extended gruesome body modification replacing her pieces bit by bit in the pursuit of beauty.
  • Madame Dysmorphic (who represents Vanity in the Seven Deadly Sins) died on Dr. Dedwin's operating table when she tried to get plastic surgery. She's had so many surgeries that she wears a hospital gown as part of her everyday attire, although she has it on backwards so it looks more like a coat.
  • Eggzorcist was strangled by the noose-like drawstring on her bunny hood.
  • Toxic Molly wears a gas mask all the time, but she’s breathed in so much poison that it’s basically useless.
  • Ember was killed because of her witch costume causing people to burn her at the stake.
  • Sunday thought her angel costume made her a real angel and died when she tried to fly.
• Fluffy Fashion Feathers: Hollywood and Betsy both have feathered clothing pieces to make them look wealthy and glamorous, with Hollywood representing a classic star actress, and Betsy representing a rich tea-party hostess.
• Foreshadowing: Thump has a visual form of this, with its outfit that foreshadows what lies underneath. The six pairs of buttons on its double-breasted jacket match up to the six pairs of eyes from the souls it's consumed, which are visible in the crack on its body.
• Four Is Death: Alison Crux, who guides the dead to the afterlife, died herself on 4/4/1944.
• Fractured Fairy Tale: The Scary Tales line operates on the concept of altering fairy tale stories for the darker.
  • In Little Red Riding Hood, Grandma is the Big Bad Wolf by result of lycanthropy. Red kills her anyway and makes her into a cloak.
  • Both Beauty and the Beast are unhappy humans and it's unclear which of the two the titles refer to. Their Resurrection sticks closer to the fairy tale, and so Beast is just a monster after all, without strong enough beauty inside to keep him from his instincts.
  • Hansel and Gretel aren't at all victims- they eat the witch instead!
  • Snow White puts up a fight against the Evil Queen and prevails, never falling under the curse. The Queen, however, is missing her lower jaw.
  • Little Bo Creep is a Hannibal Lecter-esque killer who murdered and ate her flock of sheep, and wears one of their heads as a hat.
  • The Wizard of Oz set does this too. The Lost as Dorothy's version of Toto is roadkill on a leash, and Bride of Valentine plays the Tin Man (or is it Tin Woman?). Her eyes have been gouged out and replaced with screws, complete with oily fluid seeping out. Purdy as the Scarecrow wears a burlap sack mask, indicating that in this version of the story, the Scarecrow is literally a brainless corpse dressed up as a scarecrow.
• Frankenstein's Monster:
  • The Bride of Valentine is a clear reference to the Frankenstein mythos. She is bandaged and scarred and holds a disembodied organ (her heart) to match the famous monster concept of a reanimated construct, and has black-and-white hair and a name that specifically reference the Bride of Frankenstein. Her Resurrection dolls lean further into the Universal Studios iconography, with green skin on the main doll and bolts in the head and vertical hair on both versions.
  • Calico seems to be a more cartoony take on the monster archetype as would be seen in Halloween decor, with her being a body-modified person constructed of patches of green and blue stitched flesh, with elements of a fabric rag doll coming in through her purple yarn hair. The Bride of Valentine's Resurrection dolls have very similar body paint work to Calico, further making Calico's Frankenstein associations clear.
  • LDD Presents has also made licensed dolls of the Monster and his Bride.
• The Freakshow: Series 30 is a carnival freak show of people with unusual deformities and performances.
• Gender Flip: A few of the dolls based on public-domain characters do this.
  • The Minis line adapted the four ghosts from A Christmas Carol. The LDD Ghost of Christmas Present is depicted as female, despite that ghost being the only one of the three greater spirits in the book to have a concrete gender presentation, which is the opposite gendering of the LDD rendition- he's typically a bearded jolly man.
  • In the "Living Dead Dolls in Wonderland" line, the White Rabbit, Cheshire Cat, and Mad Hatter are all played by female original LDD characters, despite the roles being male in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
  • In the "The Lost in Oz" collection, the Scarecrow and Tin Man, male characters in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, are played by female original LDD characters, though it's possible, given that the Tin Man is still billed as such, that this would be a case of Crosscast Role.
• Ghostly Gape: Eleanor in Series 16 uses the screaming face mold to look like a wailing spirit, and the same goes for Series 34's Tommy Knocker.
• Girl Scouts Are Evil: Cookie is a scout who sells cookies laced with poison.
• Glasgow Grin: A few dolls have slashed cheeks in imitation of this type of injury.
  • Dahlia has stitched cheeks where this kind of scarring happened to her, as part of the doll mimicking the lurid injuries of the "Black Dahlia" murder victim Elizabeth Short.
  • Tina Pink has less gory stitched cheeks creating this effect.
  • Cuddles has had three versions of this injury across her editions. Her first doll has a slashed cheek forming one half of her clown smile, her Resurrection has both sides, and her Resurrection variant has her mouth cut even wider into a permanent gaping smile. Given that her boyfriend is a mix of John Wayne Gacy and the Joker, it makes sense.
• Good Wings, Evil Wings: Rain was a gentle and innocent angel with white wings. Tenebre has black wings, fitting for her dark and cruel personality.
• God of Darkness: Tenebre rules in the shadows and is darkness incarnate.
• Gossipy Hens: Tessa is a little girl who is unable to keep a secret. Her Resurrection doll puts an adult high-society spin on the idea, falling into this trope.
• Goth: The line is influenced by goth subcultures and has found an appeal there, with many of the dolls indulging in classically goth imagery and fashion. Some dolls that invoke the aesthetic with the music-based subculture include Tina Black, Tenebre, Maggot, series 7 variant Dahlia, most versions of Sadie, Lottie and Sanguis.
• Goth Girls Know Magic: Tenebre invokes the basic images associated with the subculture, and she is the daughter of a powerful witch.
• Granola Girl: Daisy Slae was a nature-loving hippie. Unfortunately, nature wasn't so friendly to her as she was to it.
• Grave Robbing:
  • Mr. Graves robbed graves, until he robbed the wrong grave and got bitten to death by its resident.
  Full of greed he used to exhume,
  In search of jewels he entered tombs.
  • Calavera collects people’s bones.
• The Grim Reaper: The classic Death reaper first appeared as a doll in Series 15, and he has had several subsequent releases. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in the A Christmas Carol Minis set is also depicted this way, which is common for the character but not true to the book, where the cloaked spirit has no visible skull or face inside the robe.
• Half the Man He Used to Be:
  • Dahlia has a bisection scar around her waist which is stapled together in imitation of the injured body of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia murder victim.
  • Viv, an unfortunate magician's assistant who died in the "saw the woman in half" trick has a body which can actually be separated at the waist into two pieces.
  • Eeriel has been sawed in half and attached to half a fish, giving her a gruesome “mermaid” body.
• Halloween Episode: Series 16, 18, and 32, and the Jack O Lantern, Sweet Tooth, and Vesper exclusive dolls are all explicitly themed on the Halloween holiday and its classic iconography.
• He Knows Too Much:
  • Tessa was blinded to keep her from picking up secrets to gossip about.
  • Ella von Terra learned too much about the seedy side of the Moulin Morgue, so she was hanged with her mouth sewn shut, all framed as a suicide.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: The devil-themed Lust, in all incarnations of her dolls, wears sexy vinyl/leather clothing.
• Historical Domain Character:
  • Lots of Lizes from the past appear.
    • Alleged axe murderer Lizzie Borden appears in Series 2.
    • Dahlia, in the entertainment-themed Series 5, is based off the murdered actress Elizabeth Short, better known as the Black Dahlia.
    • Infamous "Blood Countess" Elizabeth Báthory appears in Series 15.
    • Jack the Ripper was released as an exclusive, and Resurrection IX includes the alleged victim of his, Fairy Fay, who was most likely based on Emma Elizabeth Smith.
  • Captain Anne Bonney's name is one letter from the real famous pirate Anne Bonny.
  • Edgar Allan Poe shares a doll release with Annabel Lee, the woman from his final poem.
• Holy Burns Evil: Haemon has a cross burned into his forehead from a cross that was held against it.
• Hook Hand:
  • Angus Littlrot has one to add some menace.
  • The Hook, being based on the classic urban legend of the hook-handed man who narrowly misses a chance to kill a couple in their car.
  • Hayze, one of the guests at Ruby's party.
  • The Madame, leader of the Series 30 freak show.
  • Captain Bonney, to go with her Pirate Girl aesthetic.
• Hugh Mann: Hemlock and Honey, a poisoned and burned corpse, respectively, trick-or-treat as living human girls with the use of masks and wigs.
• Improbably Female Cast: While created by men for an adult-collector audience, LDD follows the standard of typical doll lines with far more female dolls than male dolls. Only one LDD series has had a male majority (Series 27), and most series have either one male doll, rarely two, and sometimes none.
• Institutional Apparel: Sybil has a straitjacket on both of her dolls. For the original doll, her arms are rubbery to be able to fold across her body, and for her Resurrection doll, she's already freed her arms.
• Irony: In a production sense, a few release formats have been paradoxical. Claret Winter, Patience Xero, Wurm, and Wizard are all characters exclusive to variant sets off dolls (but are not variants of anything themselves), and Fairy Fay is introduced in a Resurrection set, with Resurrection up until her being exclusively a mode of reimagining and rereleasing preceding characters.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Mr. Graves was a grave-robber who got eaten by Abigail Crane the ghoul for his troubles.
• Living Shadow: Umbral definitely seems to be something like this, being solid black except for her red eyes and her translucent lower body makes her appear to float. Her name means "Shadowy" as well, and within the Series 31 theme of boogeymen, she equates to figures seen and misinterpreted in the shadows of one's room.
• Louis Cypher: Lou Sapphire is a male devil whose name clearly invokes "Lucifer".
• Mad Doctor: Dr. Dedwin and Nurse Necro are medical staff who harmed their patients as much as, if not more than, they helped. Dedwin is also credited with the excessive cosmetic surgeries that killed Madame Dysmophic (personification of Vanity), and he is cast as a Mad Scientist version of the Wizard of Oz in the "The Lost in Oz" doll line, where he has real human organs to implant into the Scarecrow and Tin Man.
• Mirror Monster: The most famous pop-culture mirror monster, Bloody Mary, appears in Series 17, with cuts on her face like she's just jumped through the glass.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: The patchwork Calico sure loves her pet Muzzy, who's composed of multiple types of animal.
  Some parts are scaly and some parts are fuzzy.
• Monster Clown: Schitzo represents this archetype. It's even implied that he murdered another doll, Cuddles, who also applies, mimicking his clown aesthetic.
  He'll hand out balloons,
  Then lop off your head.
  He's playful and witty,
  And also quite dead.
• Mouth Stitched Shut:
  • Siren was a singer who was strangled to death and then had her mouth sewn shut.
  • Ella Von Terra, done as punishment and torture.
  • Tina Pink has some stitches on her mouth which are seemingly aesthetic only.
  • Isaac, fitting his scarecrow nature.
  • Purdy as Oz's Scarecrow has these on her burlap mask.
• Mythology Gag: Most of the dolls have death dates relevant to their theme, either through holidays or well-known events that took place on that day, like Vincent Vaude the escape artist sharing a death date with Harry Houdini.
• Naughty Nuns: Lust is portrayed as a nun in her Resurrection dolls, and Lilith's Fashion Victims doll includes a sexy nun outfit to this effect.
• Nun Too Holy; Bad Habit is an evil nun. Valak the demon nun from The Conjuring 2 and The Nun has been made as well as a licensed doll.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Jasper was one with a fortunately low body count as part of a solipsistic delusion she suffered—while she hated the entire world, she also believed everybody else existed in her head, leading her to believe she could snuff out humanity by killing herself. She was the only one who died through her actions, but coming back to life didn't dispel her delusion—it's stated that she thinks she was resurrected to spare the people she died to kill, and that she intends to keep trying to die to wipe out the world.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: This is done with some dolls for a mysterious and eldritch feel, particularly in Series 29, "The Nameless Ones", who include She Who Walks the Night, The Girl In Black, The After, The Silent One, She Who Can Not Be Named. Other characters in this vein are The Lost from Series 8 and The Dark from Series 31.
• Our Banshees Are Louder: Banshee from Series 27 is appropriately described as a fairy acting as an omen of death.
• Our Vampires Are Different:
  • The first vampire character, Lilith in Series 3, comes complete with a stake and a chest wound.
  • Series 19 is composed of various vampire characters with different aesthetics.
  • Desmodus is a literal “bat boy”, since he has a baseball theme.
  • Ingrid takes her looks from Lily Munster.
• Parasol of Prettiness: Lottie carries one for sun protection. Her Resurrection trades it out for a raincoat.
• Patient Zero: Patience Xero, actually, who was exclusive to the zombie-themed Series 22 variants.
• Pirate Girl: Captain Bonney, with a Hook Hand, a peg leg, a sword, and a pistol.
• The Plague: This killed several dolls. Grace of the Grave, Maggot, supposedly, and Gretchen are all stated to be plague victims.
• Plague Doctor: Pestilence in the Four Horsemen group is portrayed as one.
• Post-Apocalyptic Gas Mask:
  • Toxic Molly was the first to wear one. War of the Four Horsemen followed, and Resurrection Lust followed War.
• Psychopomp: Series 14's Alison Crux became a guide for spirits to take them to the afterlife after she died herself.
• Punny Name: Several.
  • Dottie Rose's name merely describes her appearance, being a polka-dot-dressed character with pink hair.
  • The zombie Dawn, whose last name is presumably "of the dead".
  • Dee K., or "decay".
  • Bea Neath is the monster beneath your bed.
  • The zombie Ernest Lee Rotten, a homophone for "Earnestly rotten".
  • Mr. Graves the grave-robber.
  • GreGORY, an amputee ventriloquist whose dummy completes his bloody arm.
  • Edgrr, a two-faced, mean-looking circus freak who might growl due to speech difficulties or cruelty and has vague similarities to Edgar Allan Poe.
  • Viv, who was sawed in half, alludes to "vivisection".
• Retraux: Generally averted. Since these dolls all died at different times, the old-fashioned and retro dolls are often meant to be from the times where that was actually the fashion, not modern people adopting the look. Some do apply, however, living and dying after the time of their fashion's vogue. Some dolls even dress in fashion after their time—classically 1950s-style Dottie Rose actually died a few decades earlier in 1904.
• Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue...: The Twisted Love dolls are girls named Rose and Violet, and their outfits are red and blue, respectively.
• Sailor Fuku: Maggot's dolls invoke this style of sailor dress, and her Resurrection dolls lean into a more Japanese manga/anime influence with her hairstyling and eyepatch and face mask
• Saw a Woman in Half: Viv, the Great Zombini's assistant, has been actually sawn in two without any trickery, and her doll's body can separate into the two gory pieces.
• Scary Scarecrows: Isaac is a scarecrow doll with straw hair and a floppy plush body with longer limbs and branch-like plastic hands. He also has a stitched mouth and creepy patchwork details.
• Scary Stitches: Several dolls feature gruesome stitching, but Calico and the Resurrection Bride of Valentine have the most, with totally patchwork body coloring.
• Scary Teeth: Thump hides these under its coat's tall collar, along with a crack in its body full of the souls it's consumed.
• Scullery Maid: Gretchen, who, even when stricken by the plague, worked on until she died.
• Series Mascot: Sadie, the first Living Dead Doll, and the most recurrent character in the series, having multiple rereleases and uniquely appearing in a few standard series after her debut as well.
• Seven Deadly Sins: The dolls of Series 7 exemplify them, with each being designed as a representation of one of the sins.
• Shout-Out:
  • Damien doesn't even pretend not to be modeled on the kid from The Omen (1976).
  • The first Halloween-themed series includes Pumpkin, a slasher killer with workman's coveralls, referencing Michael Myers, the central killer of the Halloween franchise. Resurrection Pumpkin carries a machete, and one of his variants has a mask with little detail and round eyeholes, bringing in distinct notes of Jason Voorhees instead.
  • In the color-coded Series 28, Hayze is primarily purple.
  • Series 29 features The Girl In Black.
  • The "mermaid" of Series 30's freakshow is named Eeriel.
  • Ye Ole Wraith is directly based on this vintage ghost drawing◊, horns and all.
  • Butcher Boop seems to take her name from Betty Boop, given their similar hairstyles, and the mask she wears to try to be beautiful. She is also based on Leatherface, being a curly-haired butcher wearing a crude "pretty woman" mask like the famous slasher does in the original film. Boop's wearing the mask because she cut her own face off, though, and her mask is like a cheap Halloween papier-mache rather than skin.
  • As mentioned above, Maitre des Morts references both famous versions of Cabaret's Emcee.
  • Little Bo Creep kills and eats her flock and is fitted with a Hannibal Lecter mask, to make a The Silence of the Lambs pun.
  • Rotten Sam and Sandy are clearly based on Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy.
  • Deadbra Ann the prom queen's Resurrection variant is not wounded, but she is covered in blood.
  • Carotte Morts is a parody of Carrot Top.
  • Madame La Mort is based loosely on Sweeney Todd per the theatrical theme of her series. She has a slit throat, is implied to be a serial killer, and is mentioned to use a razor as a murder weapon.
  • The "three sisters" witches Tenebre (darkness), Sospirare (sighs) and Lamenta (tears), are themed after the "Three Mothers" witch mythos of Dario Argento.
• Significant Birthdate: Inverted. Given the morbid theme of the brand, it's the dolls' deathdates that are disclosed and often chosen for a significant purpose (none of the dolls' birthdays are known). Deathdates often connect to the characters thematically by referencing holidays, popular media releases, or events related to famous people.
• A Sinister Clue:
  • Every doll with only one hand has the right one as the missing appendage, leaving their left surviving.
  • Isaac has an interesting variant. While it's unknown which hand he uses, it doesn't matter because he has two left hands. And an extra finger, also once considered demonic, on his left left hand, making that one doubly evil!
  • Conjoined twins Hazel and Hattie are connected together by their inner shoulders, leaving each with one arm on the sides of their bodies that aren't facing each other. Evil twin Hattie is on the left, and thus, with the two arms between them, it's Hattie who has the left hand.
• Slashed Throat: Madame La Mort, who covers it with a bowtie, but the blood drips coming from underneath it reveal its presence.
• Southern Belle: Goria is dressed up like a classic Southern belle with a poofy skirt and fancy hat. Under that hat, she hides her exposed brain.
• Stealth Pun:
  • Series 21's Absynth is a green fairy named for absinthe, an alcohol often called "the green fairy".
  • As mentioned above, Series 28's Hayze is very purple-themed, referencing Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze".
  • Little Bo Creep is displayed as a sheep killer with a Hannibal Lecter mouth mask to create an elaborate joke about The Silence of the Lambs.
• Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: A licensed doll of the most famous example, Sadako Yamamura, has been made, but folkloric Yuki-onna also applies. Resurrection Revenant and The Lost also fit this trope. They are all undead pale female dolls with long, stringy black hair and most are dressed in white.
• Superstition Episode: Each of the Series 13 dolls is based on a common superstition about bad luck, like a broken mirror or black cat encounter.
• Supervillain: Onyx tried to be a world-conquering technological villain, but a ray gun accident killed her before she accomplished much. Not that death has stopped her.
• Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: Series 31, "Don't Turn Out The Lights", is based on boogeymen and the fears of a darkened bedroom. The Dark represents darkness itself, Umbral alludes to shadowy figures interpreted in the darkness, Kreek alludes to creaky unexplained noises and floorboards heard at night, Bea Neath is the monster under the bed, and Thump is the most visually monstrous and is described as the thing that actually goes "bump" in the night.
• Tear Off Your Face:
  • It appears that Madame La Mort lost her face or just stole someone else's to wear, as the face she has doesn't match the rest of her skin and is bloody all around the edges.
  • Butcher Boop ate her own face. Her exposed skull is hidden under her paper mask.
• Tears of Blood:
  • Lamenta has bloody tears, but unlike most examples she doesn't seem to suffer from them.
  The third of three sisters who pollute our world
  The offspring of a witch who had three little girls
  Lamenta is the most beautiful and holds the most power
  Her sweet tears of blood shall rain down like a shower
  • The Hopping Vampire's doll has them, though its description doesn't mention them at all.
• Torso with a View: Maitre des Morts has a bloody hole straight through his chest. It's especially hidden because his coat is difficult to remove.
• Toyless Toyline Character: Sort of. Moana and Dementia are characters exclusive to the rag doll spinoff line, and haven't been made into standard dolls.
• Two-Faced:
  • Jennocide lost half of her face via acid, which she thought was tea, creating a horrific split-faced effect.
  • Edgrr literally has a conjoined second face, with an eye shared between them.
• Urban Legends: Series 17 was inspired by them and includes The Vanishing Hitchhiker, The Hook, The Unwilling Donor, Spider Bite (a victim hosting a new brood in her cheek), and Bloody Mary.
• Updated Re-release: The Resurrection series and Scary Tales revisit, which provide new and occasionally very different takes on older characters.
• Visual Pun:
  • Eve-A-Go-Go, who represents Envy, is green.
  • The Wizard of Oz includes the gifts he gives to the party of heroes at the end. For Purdy as the Scarecrow, he has a physical human brain, for the Bride of Valentine as the Tin Man, he has a human heart, and for Teddy as the Cowardly Lion, he has courage... represented by a small drawstring pouch with two brass spheres inside. It's a ball sack containing brass balls!
• Voodoo Zombie:
  • Macumba turned himself into one in the effort to create one.
  • Menard provides this flavor to zombie-themed Series 22, being created by enchantment.
• Weakened by the Light: Dottie Rose had a deadly sun allergy, which killed her when she had to chase after her dog outside.
• White Mask of Doom: Butcher Boop wears a thoroughly unsettling sloppy white papier-mache mask with a crudely-drawn woman's face on it. It's to cover her own mutilated face, which is almost entirely devoid of skin.
  She tried to construct a mask
  she thought would resemble a beauty queen.
  But the crude replacement mask
  was as gruesome as what lay beneath unseen.
• Wicked Witch:
  • Ember dressed up as a Halloween witch, only to be taken for the real thing and burned.
  • Holle Katrina follows a similar classic witch theme.
  • Salem is a classic witch who is also a black cat.
• Wingding Eyes: Sybil has spiral pupils to emphasize her insanity. Quack has spiraling eyes to signify her tea was drugged/poisoned.
• Witch Classic: Tenebre, Sospirare, and Lamenta (based on Dario Argento's Three Mothers witches); Asa; Beltane; Lammas; Samhain; and Walpurgis all represent an older, more arcane or paganistic type of witch unrelated to Halloween or fairy-tale iconography.
• You Dirty Rat!: Hush from Series 6 invokes rats as dirty, vicious vermin. She was a strange child who befriended rats down in the sewers, only to slip and fall to her death and become rat food during one visit. Hush herself is made to look bedraggled and ill, and her rat pet Shriek is depicted with solid red eyes and a ravenous snarl. Hush's Resurrection variant doll is dressed in a full rat costume to take her animal association to the extreme.
• Youkai: Yuki-Onna from Series 24 represents Japanese folklore in the series' theme of folklore from around the world.
• You Must Be Cold: The ghostly Vanishing Hitchhiker has the letterman jacket lent to her for the cold in the urban legend.