Jack Skellington

Mr. Unlucky

Bone Daddy

Bone Man

## Personal information

### Personality

graceful, patient, kind, empathic, intelligent, excited, naive, brave, bold, scary, spooky, good hearted

### Allies

Sally, Santa Clause, Easter Bunny, Vanessa Valentine, Tom Turkey, Patrick, Uncle Sam, All Halloween Town Residents, All Auradon Heroes, Mal, Evie, Carlos De Vil, Jay

### Enemies

Oogie Boogie, Vanessa Hearts

**Jack Skellington** is the "Pumpkin King" of Halloween Town, and the main protagonist of Tim Burton's 1993 stop-motion Walt Disney Pictures and Touchstone film, *The Nightmare Before Christmas*.

Jack Skellington is the patron spirit of Halloween, portrayed as being on par with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny within his own holiday. As a living skeleton, he is immortal and can remove parts of his body without harm, as is often demonstrated for comic relief. He is the most important of many Halloween spirits, with the implication that their job is to scare people in the real world on Halloween night, though all in innocent fun.

## Character Information

### Personality

Jack is very much an *undead* gentleman, graceful and patient in equal measures and can usually be counted on to do what is in everyone's best interest.

Though his logic is sound, his reasoning can be questioned at times - he was quite thorough in his Christmas research but opted to go with what he and his friends knew when he decided to give Santa Claus the year off and take over for him.

He was also oblivious to Sally's feelings for him throughout most of the story, showing that while among the more intelligent citizens of Halloween Town, he is very oblivious at reading people's feelings. This is backed up by the fact that he barely even recognized Santa's distress when they first met.

It seems that Jack might be slightly naive at times, as shown that he trusted Lock, Shock, and Barrel enough that he believed that they would simply bring Santa Claus to him without causing trouble, despite them being in cahoots with Oogie Boogie, as well as not realizing all the chaos he was causing on Christmas Eve before it was too late.

Jack almost never loses his temper and hardly ever raises his voice, but Jack was unable to contain his contempt for Oogie Boogie and did not hesitate to severely punish his old foe for endangering his friends with grim dedication. The closest he got to losing his temper was when Lock, Shock and Barrel abducted the Easter Bunny by mistake and then promptly started fighting amongst each other after Jack pointed out that Santa's Door looked like a tree, forcing him to make a scary face and roar at them to intimidate them back into obedience with his original orders.

It is also shown that Jack enjoys things that are new to him. He quickly became delighted with Christmas and grew increasingly excited as Christmas was being remade in Halloween Town just as he pictured, even giddily laughing as he gave out presents on Christmas Eve.

He is also highly optimistic, as he is very certain everything will go perfectly... that is until he realizes how "Everything's gone all wrong." Even when in despair after ruining Christmas, he is able to cheer himself up by realizing he didn't mean to do what he did and that "nobody really understood" (whether he is referring to Halloween Town not understanding Christmas or humans not understanding his intentions is unclear, though he could mean both). He is also humble enough to admit that he has failed and is willing to hand back the reins to Santa Claus in order to rectify everything.

## Appearences and Timeline

### Before Auradon

The film commences with the grand finale of Halloween Town's Halloween celebrations, which are hailed by Jack as being "the most horrible yet". During the tail end of *This is Halloween*, Jack, dressed up as a Jack-o-lantern-wearing scarecrow, rides into the town square and proceeds to cause a spectacle by ingesting a lit torch, immolating him while dancing, and then dives into a fountain before emerging as his usual self. However, when Jack sneaks away from the adoring citizens, it is revealed that he is tired of the same old Halloween. He expresses a sheer sense of emptiness and he wanders off into the woods with his ghost dog Zero.

While walking through the Hinterlands, Jack stumbles upon a place in the forest he's never been before, discovering a grove of trees that have doors leading to different holiday towns. Jack is drawn towards the Christmas tree-shaped door and opens it, therefore ending up in Christmas Town. During the song *What's This?*, he explores the town, loving how it works and soon after, he becomes infatuated with the holiday. After obsessively researching it, he decides that this year, the citizens of Halloween Town will manage Christmas in the hopes of "improving" it. Sally, an animated rag doll who is secretly in love with Jack, has a premonition that his plans for Christmas will be a disaster and attempts to warn him, but he politely dismisses her fear. Sally's premonition later proves to be right.

Not really understanding the "spirit" of Christmas, the citizens of Halloween Town create a celebration of the macabre rather than a "season to be jolly"; Jack, dressed as Santa Claus, unintentionally brings fear rather than a joy to the children of the world. Wanting Santa Claus to rest, Jack had ordered local trick-or-treaters Lock, Shock, and Barrel to bring Santa to Halloween Town, but under strict orders to keep Oogie Boogie out of this. However, he came close to losing his temper after the three trick-or-treaters brought him the Easter Bunny by mistake, causing him to roar and make a scary face to intimidate them back into line before apologizing to the bunny for the mistake and ordering them to find Santa again as well as return the bunny to his world before resuming the search. However, after Santa was first brought to Jack and greeted by him, the three kids took him to Oogie Boogie, who teased and eventually planned to kill Santa. Sally attempts to rescue Santa Claus after discovering that military forces are planning to destroy Jack, but she too is captured.
Meanwhile, as Jack continues his delivery of the horrifying gifts made by Halloween Town, he is fired on by the military with their artillery guns. He initially blows it off as celebrations until a near hit on his coffin sleigh causes him to realize they are trying to shoot him down, and another shot lands a direct hit, sending him crashing into a cemetery. Upon realizing the error of his ways, Jack overcomes his identity crisis and reaffirms himself as the Pumpkin King. With new ideas for next Halloween and determination to set things right, Jack promptly returns to Halloween Town, where he discovers that Santa has been taken to Oogie's Lair.
He manages to defeat Oogie and rescue Santa and Sally. Santa returns to the real world to save Christmas and, as a sign of no hard feelings, gives Halloween Town a taste of true Christmas spirit, fulfilling his former desire to a limited extent. Jack finds Sally atop of the spiral hill where he confesses his love for her, which leads Sally to reveal she loves him too, just as the two share a kiss.
The official film soundtrack CD contains an epilogue not in the film, stating that "many years later", Santa returned to Halloween Town to visit Jack, where he discovered that Jack had "four or five skeleton children at hand" who play together in a xylophone band. These are the Auradon kids Jack would raise all the way to current Day Auradon: baby Juliet, 12 year old Sara, 16 year old Katie, 13 year old Jake and 16 year old Judy.