Jack Skellington's Beetlejuice Cameo Explained

"The Nightmare Before Christmas" is a perennial holiday favorite for many. Interestingly, despite coming out in 1993, Tim Burton pitched the idea a full decade earlier in 1983. Fans studying that decade-long span will spot "Nightmare" protagonist Jack Skellington pop up a few times across Burton's earlier efforts, including his 1988 horror comedy "Beetlejuice."

Toward that film's climax, Lydia (Winona Ryder) summons Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) to save the Maitlands' ghosts from her family's exorcism. Beetlejuice emerges from the floor, wearing a carnival-themed mobile on his head. For a quick second, you can see that the top of his mobile-hat has a skull on it that looks an awful lot like Jack. The skull even has bat wings on top that allude to Jack's iconic tie. Burton had been toying around with design ideas well before production began on "Nightmare," and "Beetlejuice" is far from the first place where Jack can be spotted.

Burton had a Jack-looking fellow in his 1982 stop motion short film "Vincent," about a young boy with dark, twisted fantasies who wishes to be horror legend Vincent Price (with Price himself providing the narration). Toward the end, his nightmarish visions come to haunt him, one of which looks like Jack. Although Price was originally supposed to voice Santa in "The Nightmare Before Christmas," he would work with Burton again on "Edward Scissorhands." 

Jack Skellington has cameoed in numerous other places in the years since "The Nightmare Before Christmas" hit theaters. Henry Selick, the actual director of "Nightmare," has added Jack easter eggs to several of his projects. Skeleton pirates modeled off of Jack's design show up in "James and the Giant Peach," an outline of Jack's face appears in an egg yolk in "Coraline," and the Pumpkin King can be seen during the end credits of 2022's "Wendell and Wild."  

But "Beetlejuice" and "Nightmare Before Christmas" feel the most like kindred spirits, likely due to the familiar faces and voices appearing in both. Catherine O'Hara, who plays Lydia's mother, Delia Deetz, in "Beetlejuice," voices Sally in "Nightmare." Glenn Shadix pops up in both "Beetlejuice" as Delia's friend Otho and "Nightmare's" Mayor of Halloweentown. Additionally, "Nightmare Before Christmas" sees a black and white snake moving through the holes of Oogie Boogie's (Ken Page) die, lifting its pattern and shape from the Saturn sandworms in "Beetlejuice." 

The connections even continued into 2024's "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice," as seen when Delores (Monica Belluci) sews herself together when all of her body parts are disassembled similarly to Sally. At this point, skeleton men and ragdoll women showing up in a Tim Burton project is practically a given.