Credit: DisneyTim Burton has made his feelings about a Nightmare Before Christmas sequel very clear, but it turns out that if you ask him nicely, you can still insert a spooky homage to the iconic 1993 stop-motion film into a critically acclaimed TV series. According to Fargo creator and showrunner Noah Hawley, he had to get Burton’s permission to even use masks of the Nightmare Before Christmas characters for his show, but nothing else would create exactly the same creepy atmosphere.
In “Insolubilia,” the recent fourth episode of Fargo season 5, a young mother (Juno Temple) defends her home from a group of kidnappers led by the vicious Gator Tillman (Stranger Things star Joe Keery) on Halloween night. A home invasion would be scary enough, but Tillman and his thugs raise the ante a little bit by wearing eerie masks of various characters from The Nightmare Before Christmas, adding an especially sinister edge to the thriller series.
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Noah Hawley revealed (via Collider) that Tim Burton had to approve the homage, saying, “I had to get Tim Burton’s permission. Yeah, you could wear any Halloween mask and it might be creepy, but why that one? Why is there so much Nightmare Before Christmas in this season of Fargo, I think is a great question for the audience to puzzle over. Also, what’s amazing is that the Disney corporation will spend all this money to allow me to do something that I think is funny. How whimsical is that?”
As you can see, Joe Keery, the lead villain in the scene, naturally wears a mask of the Pumpkin King Jack Skellington, while another kidnapper is disguised as the Mayor of Halloween Town.
Another is dressed as Lock, one of the trio of malevolent trick-or-treaters that features in the Henry Selick-directed film.
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A previous episode of Fargo season 5 featured “This Is Halloween,” the Danny Elfman song that scores the opening scenes of The Nightmare Before Christmas, so it’s clear that Noah Hawley really has a thing for the classic film. As of yet, the season has not had a scene in which Jack Skellington attempts to kidnap Santa Claus, but you can never tell what will happen next.
ITM reached out to FX for comment on the connections between Fargo and The Nightmare Before Christmas, but did not hear back by the time of publishing.
What’s your favorite Nightmare Before Christmas character that should appear in Fargo? Let us know in the comments below!