YMMV / Spooksville

• Complete Monster: Madeline Templeton, far worse than in the books, was originally a witch who was going to be burned at the stake but escaped her fate via the Raven's Eye. Her only living descendant is Ann Templeton, who is really a slave of her supposed dragon Moorpark, who in turn works for Madeline, and makes Ann do various villainous deeds, such as afflicting Adam's friend Sally with a curse that nearly kills her. In "The Dark Corner", Ann tries to use a spell to reunite Adam with Laurel, his Missing Mom. The spell takes them to a Parallel Universe where Madeline rules and has ruined most of the world with a Zombie Apocalypse. The gang manages to rescue Laurel, but she remembers little about how she got stuck there. In one episode, we find out a crazy homeless guy who calls himself "The Mayor" really was the Mayor, until Madeline used a spell to drive him insane. At the end, we find out Madeline has survived so long by transferring her spirit into her descendants, which basically erases their personality and makes them a copy of her, and that all the evil things Ann did were either under duress or an attempt to avoid getting possessed herself. We also find out that Madeline either somehow possessed Laurel or is her in disguise.
• Cult Classic: While the books were never anywhere near as popular as, say, Goosebumps or Animorphs, they still do have committed fanbase, and were popular enough to spawn a TV series.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the book version of The Wicked Cat, there is a neighbor named Mr. Coat.
• Retroactive Recognition: The two male leads are Hugo and Evan Moore.
• Spiritual Adaptation: With its premise of someone coming down with an illness that will kill the, The Fire Inside is the closest the show gets to adapting The Dangerous Quest.
  • The TV episode The No-Ones having Watch pretending to side with villains who want to turn humans into something else, making Adam and Sally think they have been betrayed arguably makes it a better adaptation of Phone Fear than the episode they named after it later on.
  • The episode of The Darker Corner has them going to an alternate ravaged Spooksville where a Templeton reigns, making it closer to the book of The Secret Path than the episode was.
  • While Blood Drive is not a direct adaptation of Night of the Vampires, it does share certain elements such as the head vampire turning out to be someone they thought was a good guy and said head vampire being killed on screen. Both also had someone they know that isn't part of their group being the first to become a vampire.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: According to Pike, the series was especially popular in the U.K.
• Squick: The episode "Critical Care," where all the tonsillectomy patients lose their tonsils because the head doctor needs them to keep her internal organs in her body after a tanning bed accident caused her midsection to melt and her organs to spill out.
• Tear Jerker: Watch's death, and subsequent funeral at the end of The Dangerous Quest.
  • Adam finding his mother's grave in the episode of The Dark Corner. Granted, it turns out she isn't dead in the end but it's still a sad moment.
  • The ending of The Maze, where The Mayor has lost all his memories.
  • At one point in the book version of "The Dark Corner" the kids are chained up by the demons, and Sally actually apologizes and admits the whole thing is all her fault, and is very clearly Trying Not to Cry, both of which are rather unusual for her.
  • A small one in The Creepy Creature: Olos says she does not have a mother, to which Watch says he knows how that feels.
• The Woobie: Watch. In the books, his parents and sister are spread out and he states he did not have an easy childhood. He often feels lonely as a result, even with his friends. In the show, he feels like an outcast due to how awkward he can be and his dad died sometime ago.

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