Jack Skellington

Jack Skellington is the "Pumpkin King" of Halloween Town. He is responsible for coming up with new and exciting ideas for each year's Halloween festivities. He first appeared in Tim Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas".

The Nightmare Before Christmas
The film commences with the grand finale of Halloween Town's Halloween celebrations, which are hailed by Jack as being "the most horrible yet". However, when Jack sneaks away from the adoring citizens, it is revealed that he is tired of the same old Halloween, and he wanders off into the woods with his ghost dog, Zero. Accidentally sleepwalking through the Hinterlands, Jack stumbles upon a place in the forest he's never been before, revealing to be a grove of trees that have doors leading to different holiday towns. Jack is drawn towards the Christmas tree shaped door and opened it, thence finds his way into Christmas Town. Soonafter, 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 secretly loves 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 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 terror rather than joy to the children of the world. Wanting Santa Claus to rest, Jack had ordered the local trick-or-treaters Lock, Shock, and Barrel to bring Santa to Halloween Town; however, after Santa was firstly brought to Jack and greeted by him, the three kids took him to Oogie Boogie. He teased and eventually planned to kill Santa. Sally attempts to rescue Santa Claus after discovering that military forces are planning to defeat Jack, but she too is captured. Upon realising the error of his ways, Jack overcomes his identity crisis and reaffirms himself as the Pumpkin King. With 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 rescue Santa and Sally, and defeats Oogie Boogie. Santa Claus 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 Halloween Hill blanketed in snow and reveals his own affection for her, ending the film. 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. Given the ending of the movie, it can be assumed that the children are Jack and Sally's offspring.

=Video games=

The Nightmare Before Christmas: The Pumpkin King
Jack Skellington is shown to have had a rivalry with Oogie Boogie. Oogie makes plans to turn Halloween Town into a New Bug Day.After Jack learns of Dr. Finklestein's daughter's kidnapping, Jack takes it upon himself to save Sally (for the first time)and restore Halloween Town. Jack confronts Oogie's plan and thwarts him from taking over the town. Few of the Townsfolk actually saw Oogie himself, and so assume terrifying ideas about him. After Jack defeats Oogie, he banishes him to his underground lair. So, Jack defeated this threat and saved Sally ,thus enticing her love interest in him, and the town declares Jack, Pumpkin King, the king of Halloween and all things scary.

The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge
Tired of using the same old themes over and over on Halloween, Jack Skellington goes to Doctor Finkelstein, who gives him the Soul Robber, an invention that changes shape. Jack decided to leave Halloween Town to get new ideas for Halloween frights. When Jack comes back to town, he finds that Oogie Boogie has been resurrected. Now Jack has to set things right again. Jack dances, fights, and sings in this game to attack Oogie Boogie's minions. Jack is portrayed as inept to some degree in this game. It should be noted that Chris Sarandon did both the speaking and singing voice of Jack in this game.

Kingdom Hearts (series)
Jack Skellington appears in all four installments of the Kingdom Hearts video game series. He inhabits the world of Halloween Town, where the evil Heartless threatens its denizens. The games' main protagonists, Sora, Donald Duck and Goofy, befriend Jack and together they battle the Heartless and also Oogie Boogie. In combat, Jack uses some of his scary powers with demonstrations of some magic, making him a formidable sorcerer. Chris Sarandon reprises his role for the English version, and Masachika Ichimura provides Jack's Japanese voice.

Kingdom Hearts
Jack Skellington introduces himself to Sora, Goofy, and Donald Duck as the ruler of Halloween Town. Jack plans to use the heart that Finklestein created to control the seemingly docile Heartless to make a festival called "Heartless Halloween" so that Halloween can be frightening, but the idea fails when not only the first experiment cause the Heartless to go berserk, but Oogie Boogie steals the finished heart, and plans to use it to take over Halloween Town. At Oogie's manor, Jack, Sora, and the gang confront him. After Oogie is defeated, Jack finds out that Oogie uses dark orbs as his source of life, which Oogie combines himself with his manor to become a giant boss. Once the gang defeats Oogie once again, and his manor crumbles, revealing Halloween Town's keyhole. Jack is considerably shorter in this game than as he appeared in the movie.

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories
"Created" from Sora's memories of Halloween Town, when Jack Skellington wanted to ask Doctor Finkelstein what happened when he sniffs the potion that can bring "true memories", Heartless appeared. When Jack Skellington had found out that Oogie Boogie had stolen the Doc's potion, he must stop him before Oogie drinks the whole potion. They fail to reach him before he does, but they defeat him, as Oogie becomes overwhelmed with fear as a side effect of the potion. Sora becomes worried about what will happen when he discovers his true memories, but Jack reassures him that fear is a sign of a strong heart.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
In this game, Roxas arrives at Halloween Town while Jack is in the middle of trying to think of new, scarier ideas for Halloween. Jack is having trouble with thinking of things but gets inspiration when he sees Roxas leaving through a Dark Corrridor. Time after time,Roxas' adventures through Halloween Town inspire Jack to create such things as balloons filled with spiders, exploding frost pumpkins, and Halloween lanterns. When Roxas is sent to find the source of a terrible drop in heartless population, he finds the town overrun with monsters called Tentaclaws. After seeing Roxas defeating the source of the Tentaclaws, the Leechgrave, Jack invents a terrifying scarecrowish version of Roxas as his centerpiece for that Halloween.

Kingdom Hearts II
Following the film loosely to some degree, out of reference, Jack tries to take Santa Claus's place again. To that end, Jack asks Sora and gang to help him be Santa's bodyguards. But after fighting the Heartless and Oogie Boogie, who has been resurrected by Maleficent, Santa explains to Jack that they each have a job to do with their respective holidays. Despite this, he begins to wear a Santa suit Sally sewed together for him. In the second trip to Halloween Town, Jack still wears the Santa suit, as he still longs to deliver Christmas presents and feels that it would be rude not to wear the suit Sally worked so hard on. Along with Sora and the gang, he helps defeat Doctor Finkelstein's experiment, who stole Christmas presents from Santa in search of a heart. As a reward for all his hard work and assistance, Santa brings Jack on a ride-along with him in his sleigh for a while. After Santa drops Jack off at Halloween Town, Jack learns the true meaning of Christmas by understanding the act of giving. He dances with Sally in the end, finally realizing all of the gifts she had given to him were all from the heart and wishes to give her something in return. She tells him that the nicest present she could ever ask for is just to be with Jack. Jack responds telling her that she doesn't even have to ask for that, meaning Jack feels the same way for her. During a cutscene in the end credits, he is shown to be wearing his original suit, suggesting he has taken Santa's previous advice to heart completely, and apparently begins presenting new ideas for next Halloween.

Cameos
Jack Skellington once did a cameo as a pirate in the stop-motion animated movie James and the Giant Peach. He was the captain of the sunken ship that Centipede boarded in search of a compass. Perhaps in testament to his Shakespearean tribute, his head comes off during the movie.

Jack Skellington made his first onscreen appearance in Tim Burton's "Beetlejuice" (1988, Warner Bros./ The Geffen Co.). As Beetlejuice rises from the ground, a canopied miniature merry-go-round rests on his head; at the very top of the canopy is a comical white skull that would later become Jack Skellington's head.