Oogie Boogie (The Nightmare Before Christmas)

"Well, well. what have we here? Sandy Claws huh? (ironically): Ooohhh, I'm really scared! So you're the one everybody's talking about? Hahahaa!!!

🎵You're jokin', you're jokin', I can't believe my eyes! You're jokin' me, you gotta be, This can't be the right guy! He's ancient, he's ugly, I don't know which is worse!, I might just split a seam now If I don't die laughing first!🎵" - Oogie's memorable opening upon meeting up with Santa Claus in person for the first time

Oogie Boogie 🎵When Mr. Oogie Boogie says there's trouble close at hand You better pay attention now, 'cause I'm the Boogie Man And if you aren't shakin', there's something very wrong 'Cause, this may be the last time you hear the Boogie Song! Woohoo! (~WOA~) Woohoo! (~WOAH~) Wooah!! (~WOA-OW~) I'm Oogie, Boogie Man!!!🎵 Gender: Male Type: Gambling Sadist (movie) Egotistical Trickster (games) Lighthearted Nightmare-Host (Villains Unleashed) Age: Immortal Species: Bogeyman Sack of bugs Portrayed by: Kenneth Page Status: Alive Media of origin: The Nightmare Before Christmas

The Oogie Boogie Man, better known as Oogie Boogie, is the main antagonist of Tim Burton's 1993 animated stop-motion film The Nightmare Before Christmas, as well as its 2005 video game prequel The Nightmare Before Christmas: The Pumpkin King, its 2005 video game sequel The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge, and a major antagonist in the Kingdom Hearts series.

He is Jack Skellington's archenemy. He is voiced by Ken Page.

Background

He is a diverse personification of the common child's nightmare of the "Bogeyman", resembling a large burlap sack full of 12,000 bugs and one snake. A monster that is so threatening, even the other residents of Halloween Town are implied to be terrified of him. Oogie says it best: "And if you aren't shaking, there's something very wrong!".

He lives just outside Halloweentown, and is clearly despised by Jack and likely feared by the other residents. Not even his own henchmen like him much, only serving him out of fear, and are elated when he's gone. Oogie Boogie is one of the few monsters who does not live in Halloween Town proper, never leaving his lair and relying on his henchmen's Lock, Shock, and Barrel to feed him the news (and presumably regular victims) of what is going on. Where the movie is optimistic and lighthearted with most of the monsters being harmless pranksters who may love a good scare but would never dream of doing actual harm. Oogie Boogie, on the other hand, is a cruel, terrifying creature who's a cannibalistic serial killer, and one of the darkest villains in Disney history.

He is very boisterous and vile, having a level of expressive flamboyance to his energetic mien. His mannerisms resemble that of a snazzy bluesy African-American showman, as he typically enjoys dancing about his lair and singing show tunes. He is rather jovial and giddy, despite his heinous actions, but is also quick-tempered and hedonistic, making him somewhat unpredictable.

He may act friendly at first, but he's actually a sadistic monster who slowly torments people with rigged games of chance before cooking them up and eating them. Not only is he a big, nasty bag of bugs with a love of torture and casual cannibalism. He notably takes great pleasure in torturing and attempting to kill Santa Claus. He's hot-tempered and rude, plus he is no slouch when it comes to torturing anyone. He's big, intimidating, and very full of himself. This is until Jack makes his entrance. Jack may be the only person that Oogie is afraid of surprisingly enough! He also tried to kidnap all the Holiday Leaders to become the Seven Holidays King as a part of his revenge.

Oogie has a love of gambling and especially dice. His lair is decorated like a casino where everything glows bright colors under a black light. He also likes to make decisions by rolling dice and his life decisions all come from gambling. When preparing to drop Santa Claus and Sally into his stew, Oogie deliberately draws out the moment to relish in his sadistic game. He doesn't play fair, and he even cheats at dice due to being bad at actual gambling. Since his personal lair is very much a demented casino with sharpshooting slot machines and a torture roulette wheel, there are tons of bats and skeletons remaining there.

Oogie's existence and villainy are truly an enigma. As his motives for the way he is nowadays are surrounded by mystery. Especially for the fact that he's a stitched sack of insects and yet, he can turn into a shadow to roam anywhere he likes. And for the fact that his lair is built through the tunnel of a kid's treehouse, who kept.

Why He's Our Oogie Boogie Man

1. He is a very memorable and unique take on the "Bogeyman", making this version more villainous than the original. Whereas the original legend of the Boogeyman depicts a monster who gives misbehaving children terrible nightmares to positively influence them while they're awake. Here, he's a sadistic, torturous coward who's also a gambler with a smooth manly voice, one that keeps victims imprisoned (or for worse, murdered) and tried to devour Santa Claus.
   • He's also a rare evil example of a boisterous bruiser. He loves singing and dancing... while he horribly tortures his victims and will later cook 'em and eat 'em.
2. He's the definitively evil counterpart to Jack- he's just as terrifying (if not more so), but unlike Jack Skellington, Oogie's more of a sociopathic monster than a well-meaning prankster.
   • Unlike Jack's high-pitched giggle, Oogie has a deep, baritone laugh that conveys his cruelty.
3. He's entirely enigmatic. We barely know anything about his origins or motives for his actions, yet has a solid and strong personality to make him enjoyable as the movie's twist-villain.
4. Ken Page did a brilliant job voicing him. His rambunctiously charismatic tone of voice is very euphonious and hammy, making many of his one-liners fun to listen to. Especially when his voice actor gives him a sinister baritone that underlines his cruelty but also makes him enjoyable to listen to, his singing especially.
   • He starts off with a deep bluesy voice, but as he loses the bugs which make up his body, his voice becomes higher pitched and squeakier and sounds like multiple voices speaking at once until he only has one bug left.
5. He's just as menacing and nefarious as residents of Halloweentown say about him before we get to see him in person (and what reveals him underneath). It's always been implied he is the only resident of Halloween Town to have actually killed people in cold blood. He also states that his gambling games are much more fun "when lives are on the line". (But not his, of course. Oogie far prefers preying on helpless victims. As well as seeing all of those skeletons in his lair, we can conclude that he has killed other people before trying to do it with Santa and Sally.)
   • Where all the citizens of Halloween Town dedicate their lives to scaring people, but they do it purely for laughs and are mostly harmless as regular citizens. Oogie is the only resident who is the really EVIL person there to make him different from everyone else, since it's been implied that he has actually killed people.
   • It's possible that Oogie doesn't think Halloween should be a fun holiday like everybody else does; he thinks it should be wicked and harmful, even going as far as to actually harm humans, which all the other citizens are against and strictly forbid.
6. He is the Halloween embodiment of a well-written and enjoyable 'Love To Hate' type of villain next to The Grinch and Muppets' Constantine.
7. He has a very expressive and comedically malicious personality to his villainy. Where he's evil and sadistic, but you can't help but love his entertaining personality and his sassy/witty rhymes that are always a joy to hear. Especially since his voicing and the fun writing of his character make him amazing as an extremely terrifying sadist who steals the show whenever he shows up and starts talking or singing, as well as rhyming with a twisted sense of humor.
   • The way he dances is very bouncy, stumpy, and wobbly, as well as being pretty flexible and over-the-top, making him lively and full of life.
   • His egotistical gloating and sadism is very hilarious, as the last few verses of his Villain Song have him boasting to Santa about how his situation is hopeless, all while Oogie is singing and prancing about his sadistic actions.
   • Speaking of his rhymes, they're always witty and it all fits Oogie's egotistic traits as the villain.
   • His sarcastic mannerisms, hedonism, and arrogance are his strong points in character, which makes him all the more fun and hilarious as a villain.
   • His modus operandi is making a funny joke of his cold-blooded and heinous actions of torturing his victims to death. You probably won't meet a lot of characters who recite the passage ashes to ashes and dust to dust with so much mirth.
8. He's very brilliant as an isolated, devious murderer. Especially since he has a lot of machines he used to torture and kill off his victims.
   • Faking his charisma onto residents before showing his bad side. He's well aware of Jack's foolishness but also takes advantage of it to suit his purposes. He also uses his gambling motif to give his victims false hope that they can escape when he fully intends to kill them.
   • In fact, his complex schemes led to him nearly winning and achieving his conquest of power in Oogie's Revenge. As Oogie gets Jack to fight his shadow clones while Oogie was actually somewhere else the whole time, making him a deceptive threat to Jack and everyone else.
9. Despite being a sadistic gambler, he is quite creative. As he uses his large imagination to design his lair in imaginative ways that fit his casino aesthetic and also cause terror around Halloween Town. Where his megalomania, proactivity, and zeal nearly led to him becoming a powerful overlord as seen in Oogie's Revenge, especially when he gets giant enough to destroy buildings after kidnapping all of the Seven Holiday leaders, making it tough for Jack to beat him with all of his might.
   • This also enables him to innovate the contraptions he has installed in his lair to act as both a mechanism for his gambling and defense in case of emergencies (i.e. unwanted visitors).
10. His own song, "The Oogie Boogie Song", is the most unforgettable villain song to define Halloween in such a creepy yet whimsical way next to the movie's intro song "This is Halloween" defining Halloween in an iconic way. This song is also a great introduction to Oogie himself, setting up the vibe for how scary and unsettling Oogie is.
    • Unlike the song for other characters who get somber orchestral music numbers, Oogie Boogie's song is thematically associated with spooky blues music. Which helps him stand out from the other songs played in Halloween Town.
11. As stated before, in Oogie's Revenge, he's more of a global threat than his movie counterpart. Especially since he shows just how dangerous he can be when he actually gets up and applies himself; creating a successful empire to conquer Halloween Town with, swapping Finkelstein's brain to get an inventor to build him a massive army of skeletons and minions, and kidnaps all of the holiday leaders. He somehow develops dark powers and an army of malicious monsters for his campaign to conquer the Seven Holidays.
12. His popularity was so high, he even had his own friggin funky funhouse as a staged concert at Villains Unleashed, titled Oogie Boogie's Freaky Funhouse Show.
    • After Oogie makes his introduction to his audience and then the event becomes a wild performance show full of freaky dancers and a bunch of stunt acts that are meant to entertain the audience which Oogie refers to them as nightmares. The intro dedicates itself is an interactive version of Oogie's iconic song with a regular person entering Oogie's lair that has three newfound human henchmen that are dancers. Here the voice of Oogie Boogie, Ken Page, has moments of putting a new spin on said voice by making diversely goofy voice impressions of other characters to make him all the more entertaining than he already was.
    • Speaking of which, he has so many funny/hilarious moments to count. These include the time he spontaneously mocked Lumiere and Mrs. Potts from Cinderella, by making two different silly voices to exaggerate their existence and then having a comedic response by saying no and throwing him away in an incredibly humorous manner and the moment when he told the audience a witty pun about his dancers' first stunt with swallowing things.
13. In Hocus Pocus, Oogie even gets to sing the uncut bit of his own song to make the song more spontaneous and have a different spin on the song from how Kenneth Page usually sings the song.
14. Many entertaining and quotable lines of dialogue he has provided to list in many of his appearances.
    • “I, am the shadow of the moon at night, filling your dreams to the brim with fright!”
    • “🎵You're jokin', you're jokin'! , I can't believe my ears! , Would someone shut this fella up? , I'm drownin' in my tears! , It's funny, I'm laughing! , You really are too much.🎵 And now, with your permission, I'm going to do my ssstuff... I'm gonna do the best I can.”
    • “🎵Well, if I'm feelin' ansty , And I've nothin' much to do ,I might just cook a special batch , Of snake and spider stew! And don't ya know the one thing , That would make it work so nice? , A roly-poly Sandy Claws to add.. a little spice 🎵”
    • “🎵Oh, the sound of rolling dice, To me, is music in the air, 'Cause I'm a gamblin' Boogie Man, Although I don't play fair!!🎵”
    • “🎵OOh brother, you're something! You put me in a spin!! You aren't comprehending! The position that you're in. It's hopeless, you're finished! You haven't got a prayer! 'Cause I'm Mr. Oogie Boogie, And you ain't going nowhere. Hahahahaa!!!!🎵”
    • “My, my!! What have, we, here?”
    • “Ahhh, lovely! Tickle tickle! Ah Tickletickle!”
    • “WHAT?! YOU TRY TO MAKE A DUPE OUT OF ME!?!?”
    • “You a gamblin' man, Sandy?”
    • “Tee three four, five six seven! HAhahaha!”
    • “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust! Ooh, "I'm feelin' weak"… with hunger! One more roll of the dice ought to do it! Ahahaha!!”
    • “WHAT?! Sssnake eyesss? Gugh! Eeelleven!!”
    • “Looks like I won, the JACK-POT! Bye-bye, doll face! and sand-man.”
    • “J-J-J-Jack! But they said you were dead. You must be... DOUBLE DEAD!”
    • “Well come on! Bone man!”
    • “You think are winning, but that's a lotta noise! But just to be a sport, Dear Jack, I'll SHARE my Oogie toys!”
    • “You beat my men, so what? Big deal! You even ran, the maze. Still can't stop me, I'M THE KING of Seven Holidays!!”
    • “Ha! That's funny Jack! It was a dream but now, it's coming true! 'Cause, even my mere shadow knows your days as king are, through.”
    • “Not if I cheat a little!”
    • “He mocks me, he fights me, I don't know which is worse!”
    • “Ta-ta talk, but I'll tell you! The giant's going nowhere! If I were you, I'd take a hike! There's danger in the air!!”
    • “Even if you catch me, you could never do me in! I'm ten stories high and I'm just as strong! Which means I'm gonna win.”
    • “I'm laughing to death!!”
    • “WoOoOw! Now it's time for you to see what it means to scare! Cause I'm Oogie Boogie Man although I don't play fair!!”
    • “This is it? Nobody disrespects ME!! NOBODY!!!”
    • “Wait. Something's not quite right. I, know what it is! We just need a little more of that Oogie flair!!!”
    • “Are you still here? Why don't you Oogie on back where you came from? You're cramping my style!”
    • “And why is this roly-poly red guy here? Time to go grandpa!”
    • “And if I'm getting a little antsy and there's nothing much to do, I might just cook a special batch of snake and spider stew! And you know the one thing that'd make it work so nice? A roly-poly Sandy sister and a little spice!” (From Hocus Pocus)
    • “You too just did son; Just made my, Oogie, Boogie list!” (From Freaky Funhouse Show)
    • “Tell me, Sonny Chris, you a gambling man? Well I am!” (From Freaky Funhouse Show)
    • “I love a freaky audience! With good taste!!” (From Freaky Funhouse Show)
    • “Oooh, that was a LOT to, SWALLOW!” (From Freaky Funhouse Show)
    • “I made myself well guests. Oh, Hohohoho! (French accent: "Look at me! I'm a talking, candle!") Ahh! (Nasally British accent: "And I'm toon the teapot, would you like some more tea?") NO!!!” (From Freaky Funhouse Show)
    • “You, look like you deserve to be on my, Oogie, Boogie, List!” (From Oogie Boogie Bash)
    • “Let's speak Spanish, shall we!? HahahaaaHahaha!!” (From Oogie Boogie Bash)
    • “Judging by the looks of this kid, I'd say there's trouble, close at hand!” (From Oogie Boogie Bash)

Bad Qualities

1. While he's an awesome twist-villain, we never understand or even know what his motives are unlike all of the other Disney villains.
   • He has nothing to do with Jack's main arc in the movie; his only purpose is to explain what happened to Santa after his kidnapping, something the original poem didn't say.
   • In the film, we are never given a reason for why he's so antagonistic towards Santa Claus cause outside of being "the meanest person in town", and his murderous actions don't have any understandable incentive to them outside of being exiled from the town due to the town fearing him.
2. His egotism and arrogance often led him to several setbacks or blunders, especially when he attempted to murder Sally and Santa in whimsical ways but Jack outfoxes him by surprise.
   • He was about to kill Santa... until he takes notice of Sally's leg and starts caressing it.
   • When he realizes Jack is furious enough with him as it is, Oogie very unwisely decides to try to kill the more powerful Jack, which does not end well for him.
   • He's big and strong enough to easily overpower his foes, yet spends more time sicking death traps on them. However, this is subverted in Oogie's Revenge.
3. He's a little bit of a coward when it comes to hand-to-hand combat despite being sadistic and intimidating.
   • While he's definitely scary and a threat to people who can't fight back, he is a total wimp when he has to put up with someone capable of fighting back. He relies on the machines in his lair to try and intimidate Jack, only for Jack to gracefully dance around them and defeat him rather easily. The minute he finds himself faced with Jack during the climax, Oogie has left a stammering, fearful wreck.
   • Despite being a hundred times bigger than Jack (at least in terms of sheer bulk), he whimpers and runs away if he even thinks Jack has the upper hand. Considering he's just a big burlap-stiched sack full of bugs, this behavior is reasonably justified.
4. His appearance without the burlap sack covering his bugs that are technically his skin (with a snake being his tongue and the spider supposedly being his brain), is horrifying in a fitting way.
   • Especially when his death basically amounts to him being skinned alive and then having the bugs, which serve as his organs, being melted alive. It's how people were once punished for High Treason. And Oogie had just tried to kill a king. On the upside, it means he recovers from this pretty easily, as he simply needs to be sewn back together. This doesn't take away from the fact that Oogie's death was one of the most gruesome deaths for any Disney villain ever.
   • Many can find Oogie himself highly unsettling for the fact he's made out of bugs and has a snake for a tongue, even before his skin was revealed.
   • In the 2020 game he starred in, his design is a little busy and not as memorable as his original design.
5. He's become much goofier in the Kingdom Hearts games, as he's a little more humorous and incompetent in the second and third games than in the first game. Despite this, he's nevertheless still a strategic trickster who effectively poses murderous threats in his boss battles before he gets an inevitable demise.
   • He is a punching bag in ReChain of Memories, as he doesn't do anything but stand there while Sora hits him.
6. His voice heard in the Halloween advertisements like the "Halloween Time at Disneyland Resorts" commercial, for example, sounds much more watered-down and flat compared to Ken Page's boisterously charismatic voicing of the character.

Gallery

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  His model in Kingdom Hearts games

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  His shadow in film

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  Freaky Funhouse Show

Trivia

• This is currently the fifth longest page on this wiki among its other contenders.
• Despite him being the main antagonist of the movie, Tim Burton has said before that he does not necessarily consider Oogie to be a villain. The reason for this is unknown, but it is possible that this is because many of the other residents of Halloween Town were also fairly morally questionable.
• Lines in both "Kidnap the Sandy Claws" and "Oogie Boogie's Song" state that Oogie eats "snake and spider stew". Because snakes and spiders are some of the creatures that compose his innards, this would mean that Oogie is also a cannibal.
• An alternate idea for Oogie's identity was for him to be Dr. Finkelstein in disguise, gaining revenge on Jack and Sally. However, it was not pursued past storyboards; this is visible on the Special Edition DVD. Tim Burton hated this idea, and allegedly kicked a hole in the wall when he heard about it.
• Oogie Boogie is meant to represent one of the worst things that anyone can get on Halloween: a bag full of bugs.
• He has all of the seven deadly sins as personality traits.
  • Envy, which is shown by how much he resents Jack for being the Pumpkin King, and in the video games The Pumpkin King and Oogie's Revenge, he tries to take over Jack's position due to this jealousy.
  • Gluttony, Oogie loves cooking his victims into his special snake-and-spider stew. As he also planned to make said stew out of both Sally and the very large Santa.
    • If his huge girth and fondness for snake and spider stew is any indication. In Oogie's Revenge, Jack even warns Lock, Shock, and Barrel that despite all they're doing to help him, Oogie is probably just going to eat them as a reward for their troubles. In the Hocus Pocus Villain Spelltacular, he also plans on eating the heavyset Mary Sanderson.
  • Greed, Oogie heavily themed his lair after casinos and gambling. In the video games, however, he also shows a thirst for power.
  • Lust, Oogie showed perversion when he was easily distracted by Sally's leg when Sally used her leg to get his attention.
  • Pride, the most definable about Oogie. As he considers himself superior to all of the other monsters. Much of his Villain Song has him gloating about how awesome and scary he is.
  • Sloth, In the movie, Oogie has never left his lair, and did this instead of letting his henchman Lock, Shock, and Barrel brings victims to him (although this may be justified since Oogie is an outcast; no one in Halloween Town except for his henchmen wanted anything to do with him.)
  • And finally, Wrath. It's shown that he gets pissed off at Sally for trying to distract him so she can rescue Santa, so much so that he kidnaps her and planned to drop her into his pot of stew as well, especially since his lair is full of death traps. In the video games, he is a fighter himself.
• He was brought back from the dead in Oogie's Revenge by Lock, Shock, and Barrel, who gathered enough bugs to sew him back together with.
• The song This is Halloween has Oogie's shadow appear over the moon, with the video game Oogie's Revenge providing further confirmation.
• His popularity led to him being not only the main antagonist of the prequel and sequel games, in which he is no longer an irrelevant villain, and a guest villain in the Kingdom Hearts series, but also the central character for the Disneyland Halloween event, "Oogie Boogie Bash".
• He was the heaviest puppet for the animators to work with. As his model was needing the tightest joints in his armature skeleton for proper movement. He generally has a very porcine figure, emphasized by a deleted part of his song in which he did a flex.
  • Ironically enough, he's canonically the lightest character in the movie (based on the official website) since he's made of nothing but burlap and insects.
• Despite the fact that the town shuns him for being a truly evil person, it appears they allow him (or at the least, his shadow, which Oogie's Revenge confirms can function as a separate entity) to participate in their Halloween festivities, given his appearance in the opening musical number.
  • He's also apparently able to take part in the festivities of the Haunted Mansion Holiday as "Oogie Claws".
• According to his origins, he's a direct inspiration of Audrey II.
• He was inspired by Cab Calloway, especially his appearances in Betty Boop cartoons. His exchange with Santa "What're you gonna do?" "I'm gonna do the best I can." is lifted directly from the Betty Boop short The Old Man of the Mountain and Cab's appearance in Minnie the Moocher, where Cabby played the titular character.
• According to Ken Page, Oogie's vocal performance was a mix between Bert Lahr's portrayal of the Cowardly Lion in the 1939 film adaptation The Wizard of Oz, and Mercedes McCambridge's performance as the demon, Pazuzu, in the 1973 film The Exorcist.
• In The Nightmare Before Christmas edition of the Hasbro board game Operation, Oogie Boogie takes Cavity Sam's role as the patient that anyone must cure.
  • Oogie is also the only Disney Villain to be a patient in Operation.
• His character was briefly argued as a racist stereotype for including references to The Old Man of the Mountain (and for the fact, Oogie Boogie is a derogatory term for African-Americans as Oogie is voiced by one), but was defended by director Henry Selick as a part of Danny Elfman's inspiration for Cab Calloway.

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