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The Halloween Horror Nights 35 Poster Quietly Reveals an Icon Reunion, Including a Young Version of the Storyteller
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The Halloween Horror Nights 35 Poster Quietly Reveals an Icon Reunion, Including a Young Version of the Storyteller

Michael Travels
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The Jack the Clown and Dr. Oddfellow collection has reached shelves at Five & Dime in Universal Studios Florida, and the artwork on the poster reads like a cast list, one that runs well past the two icons Universal has promoted for Halloween Horror Nights 35.

A guest holds up the packaged Infernal Carnival of Nightmares poster in a Universal store. The artwork shows Jack the Clown as a marionette in the center, Dr. Oddfellow's grinning face at the left with glowing green markings, a teal-skinned woman in glasses holding a book at the top, a green-skinned figure holding chains at the right, a chainsaw-wielding figure in clown makeup at the bottom and a figure inside a teal birdcage.
The Infernal Carnival of Nightmares poster, with Jack rendered as a jointed marionette in the middle of the frame. Image: WDW News Today.

Jack and Oddfellow already had their billing for the event's 35th edition. They headline a haunted house, Jack & Oddfellow: Chaos & Control, and a scare zone, Infernal Carnival of Nightmares, whose name doubles as the overall theme of this year's event. What the merchandise adds is everybody else.

Who is on the poster

WDW News Today, which photographed the collection, identified the figures surrounding the two icons on the $20 poster. Jack is front and center as a marionette. Dr. Oddfellow looms to one side. Around them are:

  • Eddie Schmidt, Jack's brother, holding a chainsaw
  • Chance, Jack's assistant, inside a birdcage
  • The Caretaker
  • a young version of the Storyteller

The Storyteller is the detail worth pausing on. She headlined the 2005 event, Halloween Horror Nights: Tales of Terror, and every version of her until now has been an old woman. A youthful Storyteller is new. WDW News Today floated two readings, both speculative: either the event is showing her earlier in her life, or Oddfellow's magic is responsible.

A guest holds up a packaged three-dimensional Infernal Carnival of Nightmares magnet on a black Universal Studios header card, showing the same carnival artwork with the Halloween Horror Nights logo near the top and OF NIGHTMARES lettering across the bottom.
The $14 magnet carries the same artwork in a three-dimensional design. Image: WDW News Today.

The tumbler goes further

The refillable tumbler, at $28.99, uses similar artwork and reaches deeper into the back catalog. Per WDW News Today, it adds three more past icons on top of everyone already named: the Usher, the Director and the Pumpkin Lord.

A guest holds the clear plastic refillable tumbler with a dark red lid. The wrap artwork shows Jack the Clown with orange hair and a wide toothy grin reaching out of the design with a bloodied hand, over black and red lettering.
The refillable tumbler, with Jack reaching out of the wrap. The Usher, the Director and the Pumpkin Lord are on parts of the wrap that are not visible from this angle. Image: WDW News Today.

The rest of the collection is more conventional: a $60 pullover sweatshirt with Jack's face in a gray spray-paint style on the chest and Oddfellow on the back, a $30 light-up necklace, a $20 stoneware mug that carries the same cast around its exterior with the HHN 35 logo above Eddie, and $15 acrylic stand-up figures of Jack and Oddfellow that fit a separately sold carousel display stand. We covered the earlier, event-wide merchandise drop and its price list on August 7; this is a separate, icon-specific collection.

Why these particular names matter

Each of the figures on the poster carries its own history at the event:

  • Jack the Clown arrived for the 10th event in 2000 as the event's first original icon and is arguably the event's main mascot.
  • Dr. Oddfellow was introduced alongside him at Halloween Horror Nights X. In their backstory, Jack worked at Oddfellow's carnival, and Oddfellow killed him after Jack confessed to murdering several children, not out of any sense of justice but to keep from being caught for crimes of his own. Oddfellow went on to become the event's icon himself at HHN 32 in 2023, which explored his attempts to harness the Zodiac's magical powers.
  • The Caretaker was the event's second original icon, arriving in 2002 with Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear.
  • Eddie Schmidt was to be the icon of the 2001 event, Halloween Horror Nights XI. The event was scaled back after the September 11 attacks, and Jack took his place. Eddie has surfaced as a side character in the years since, and this year's event has a beer cart named for him, Edgar Schmidt's Draft Wagon.
  • Chance first appeared in the 2007 live show Jack's Carnival of Carnage and went on to headline the 2016 event.

WDW News Today notes that the pair's backstory is due for an update and a retelling inside the Chaos & Control house. Universal has already announced a second scare zone, Sideshow of Decay, in which Cindy uses Dr. Oddfellow's dark sorcery to open a portal in the carnival's junkyard and resurrect decayed nightmares from the past, so old faces turning up this year is not itself a surprise. What Universal has not said is whether these particular characters appear as walk-around roles, as scenes inside the house, or purely as artwork on a poster.

Halloween Horror Nights 35 opens on August 28 and runs on select nights through November 1. There is time for the event to confirm or deny what the gift shop has already hinted at.

Sources

Image credits: All photographs by WDW News Today.

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