The Nightmare Before Christmas

In the ancient Holiday worlds, the king of Halloween, Jack Skellington has had enough. Every year, it's the same thing: Screams, scares, horrors, blah blah blah. He so desperately wants something different, and eventually wanders out and into Christmas Land.

He is tremendously enamored with this new thing. He loves the concept and feeling he gets from this place, and tries to share it with his fellow Halloween creatures. But they misunderstand, thinking of Christmas as being a new style of scaring.

Eventually, Jack decides to have Halloween Land do Christmas this year. So he gathers everyone in the Land and has them work on bringing Christmas, Halloween-style, to the world. He even has Santa Claus kidnapped, claiming that he's doing this to give Santa a break this year.

Unbeknownst to Jack, the three little rascals he has capture Santa have sinister plans in mind for the Christmas icon. They give him to Oogie-Boogie, the Boogie-Man, the most vicious, evil creature in Halloween. And Oogie-Boogie loves to play deadly games, which he always rigs in his favor...

Halloween assembles their version of Christmas, and starts to head out. Sally, a shy, but free-spirited rag-doll created by the town's mad scientist, who loves Jack dearly but has enough sense to realise how wrong Jack's plan is, tries to stop him, but Jack heads out.

So Sally decides to take things into her own stitched-together hands, and heads off to rescue Santa Claus. But things don't go as planned, and Oogie-Boogie captures her as well.

Jack delivers his sinister brand of Christmas to children all over the world, giving shrunken heads, demonic toys, killer jack-in-the-boxes, man-eating wreaths, and everything eating giant-snakes, all innocently given, unaware that he's causing even more scares. Jack is too blinded by the simple act and feeling of giving something to the people to see what's happening, a horror that everyone in Halloween Town save for Sally (who hates it) and Oogie-Boogie (who's unaware of what's going on) is enjoying greatly.

The military is brought in, and Jack is eventually shot down. He lands in a graveyard, in the arms of an angel-statue. It's there that he finally realises how badly he has screwed up. But he also realises what he IS good at, and becomes excited at the thoughts of next Halloween. Then he realises that he has to save Christmas first.

Other mistake: When Jack first arrives in Christmas Land he doesn't know what is falling from the sky (snow) but he somehow knows that the children are throwing snowballs.

More mistakes in The Nightmare Before Christmas

Dr. Finkelstein: That's twice this month you've slipped deadly nightshade into my tea and run off.
Sally: Three times.

More quotes from The Nightmare Before Christmas

Trivia: At one point during the song "Jack's Lament", Jack pops up between two tombstones. The tombstone on the left is a figure from the painting "The Scream", and the tombstone on the right is the horse from Picasso's "Guernica".

More trivia for The Nightmare Before Christmas

Question: How did Jack save Sally and Santa Claus in Oogie Boogie's lair by transporting them from the lava pit to the Iron Maiden? Wouldn't they be killed by the Iron Maiden?

Answer: Except they're a reanimated corpse and a skeleton. They are either already dead (or undead), or, given how things seem to work, the normal natural laws don't apply to Halloweentown.

Greg Dwyer

But how did Santa survive the Iron Maiden? Especially with how big he is, he certainly would have been killed.

You're trying to apply the rules of the real world to fictional magical beings.

LorgSkyegon

Answer: He was hiding behind Sally.

sabrinafan17

More questions & answers from The Nightmare Before Christmas

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