We think it's safe to say that pretty much everyone is sick of seeing this one. Every year since Suicide Squad came out in 2016, there’s been a huge surge in Harley Quinn Halloween costumes and a fetishization of her abusive relationship with the Joker. The Halloween costume is so unoriginal that it gives off cheesy vibes more than anything.
Granted, some of the Harley Quinn costumes are really well-done and have been kind of interesting to see, but no matter how unique their take is, you can’t help but roll your eyes. Once you’ve seen the first 100 of them, you’ve seen them all. Is it just an elaborate excuse to wear pigtails in your 30s? Perhaps – but you shouldn’t need one.
For every Harley Quinn, there’s also a Joker. The Joker costumes are also way overdone to the point that the Joker has lost all his cool factor. Even Batman doesn’t want to have anything to do with him now. Be considerate to others, and give people something more interesting to enjoy this Halloween. Your costume isn’t just for you. We all have to look at it. We live in a society, after all.
There are so many iterations of the Joker at this point in cinema and in television that people really couldn’t care less to see another one on-screen either. Everyone has their favorite Joker but just because you have a favorite doesn’t mean you need to dress like your favorite. We get edgy people, you love the Joker. Good for you. Nobody cares.
Tiger King – the subject of the totally outrageous Netflix documentary that’s almost too insane to believe - is an internet sensation. He’s the subject of numerous memes, and in 2020, everyone was talking about him to the point that most people were sick of hearing about it. Even if you never saw the documentary, you felt like you did because people would just not let up.
In 2020, plenty of people were designing their own Tiger King costumes for Halloween. Now, you can buy them and you can be sure there are plenty available for purchase and that means you can expect to see a lot more of them out there, but really everyone needs to move on. If you are thinking of donning the Tiger King garb, do everyone a favor and just don’t.
Nurse costumes are almost always a miss. You are either going to dress as an actual healthcare worker and get mistaken for one or you are dressing as a sexy nurse of course and make a mockery of healthcare workers. Either option is pretty lame and the latter is just disrespectful.
It’s really time to get real about the sexy nurse costumes though. Nobody goes through the effort of going through an RN program just be viewed as an object afterward. On top of this, there is literally nothing sexy about the profession: not limited to taking care of the sick and dying, emptying bed pans, serving Jello and getting yelled at by impatient patients.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to express your sexuality through the clothes you wear, but Halloween isn’t really the time for that. There are so many unique costumes that you could go for, is making something sexy that isn’t normally seen as sexy the way to go about it? Often sexy costumes are teetering on the absurd. Most sexy costumes are just funny and not actually sexy at all.
Nobody really wants to see a sexy hamburger costume or a sexy Pikachu or a sexy Ronald McDonald – and sadly, yes, those are all real things. There’s a whole lot more to Halloween than sex. If sexy costumes are really something you are into, maybe keep that behind closed doors where you’ll enjoy yourself more. Dressing like a sexy pizza around a bunch of kids is just weird.
Native Americans are an ethnicity - not a costume. Dressing up in stereotypical Native American garb is not cool for a lot of reasons. For one, unless you are Native American yourself, it’s cultural appropriation. Another issue is that the costumes are not accurate to actual Native Americans and that in and of itself is offensive.
And yes, even dressing up as Disney’s Pocahontas is also offensive. There are plenty of Disney princesses out there for people to dress up as that you can easily pick one of them. Yes, this also goes for the men, too. Don’t dress up like a Native American chief no matter how awesome that sounds to you, because Native Americans are people, not a costume.
The Addams Family was first created in 1938, as a cartoon. It wasn’t until 1964 that it was turned into a live-action television series. The show quickly became a classic and there have been a few different iterations since. The strange aristocratic family have become gothic icons and people still enjoy them to this day.
But therein lies the problem. You can always count on someone dressing up at a character from the series and usually the same people: Wednesday, Morticia or Gomez – the best characters but also the most overdone of them all. And let’s face facts here: the Munsters have always been better.
There are a few things wrong with dressing up as Eleven for Halloween, but let’s start with the first: We’ve seen it. Stranger Things has been a huge success for Netflix, in part thanks to characters like Eleven. Sure, she’s pretty badass for a kid, but this costume is so overdone that it’s not clever in the least to make up your own or purchase one. We’ve seen enough of Eleven. We can move on now.
And then there’s the other issue – the one that needs to be addressed and has needed to be addressed for quite a while now. Adults should not dress as child characters – it’s weird and uncomfortable. Whether you are talking about Eleven from Stranger Things, Alice, or as Harry Potter characters – it’s totally awkward at the very least, even if you don’t think it's creepy.
The Nightmare Before Christmas was a cool movie when it came out. At the time, there was nothing else like it and audiences fell in love with it and over time would love it even more. They, perhaps, love it a little too much now. The pop-culture market has become oversaturated with Nightmare Before Christmas merchandise.
So, it’s no surprise that Jack and Sally costumes depicting the characters from the movie are so popular. But I think we see enough of Jack and Sally all year round that we don’t need to see them at Halloween time. If you are looking for a couple’s costume, there are plenty of other options out there. Jack and Sally are not relationship goals. In fact, if you really think about it, Sally was unsupportive of Jack and a bit of a stalker.
The Shining is a classic horror film from Stanley Kubrick that will forever live in our hearts - and the Overlook Hotel. The twins are one of the creepiest elements in the film. The ghostly twin girls standing at the end of the hall always sends a chill down my spine when watching the movie - however, the costume versions – not so much.
Again, the idea of adults dressing up as children is creepy and weird. But let’s pretend for a second that they are not children, that they are in fact spirits that are older than the adult characters in the film. The issue is that an adult in the same costumes just doesn’t quite capture the spirit of the movie and really doesn’t look like anything at all – other than a full-grown individual in a child’s clothes.
Beetlejuice is a classic film from the ‘80s that’s perfect for Halloween time. But when we say perfect for Halloween time we don’t necessarily mean dressing like him. Watch Beetlejuice by all means, just don’t dress as the Beetlejuice character. This is one of the most overdone costumes out there, even some 30+ years later.
Beetlejuice has so many costumes in the movie, you may not see the same one every time, but you’ll never be surprised when it's not the classic white and black pinstripe either. And then you have couples going as Beetlejuice and Lydia, but again this is not the epitome of relationship goals. Lydia is an underaged girl and Beetlejuice is a creepy disgusting pedo ghost.
Cowboy costumes are one of the most boring costumes you could pick for Halloween. Not only have there been countless cowboys of the years, but the costume itself is also incredibly dull. Go to Texas and you’ll see people dressed like cowboys when it isn’t even Halloween. Wear a cowboy hat and sure, maybe you are a cowboy, or maybe you are just a country-western singer.
Sure, there’s always a wide selection of cowboy costumes but most of them are the same. Once you’ve seen one cowboy costume, you’ve seen them all. At a certain point, people aren’t going to figure out if you are Clint Eastwood or Garth Brooks. The old west is over, let’s leave it to the movies – but, actually, that well is rather dry at this point.
Robin Hood is another costume that’s always popular but and it’s a hero everyone can easily identify by name and appearance in most cases. It’s a character so iconic, however, you can’t really do anything special with it. Once you’ve seen one Robin Hood costume, you’ve seen them all, no matter how elaborate.
You can’t even try a unique spin on it or nobody will know what you actually are. There are so many popular characters with bows and arrows these days that you could easily be confused with them. Are you Legolas from Lord of the Rings, Hawkeye from the MCU, or Katniss from Hunger Games? There’s a lot that could go wrong. Nobody really cares about Robin Hood.
Jack Sparrow is a character most of us loved for a good 10 years or so but now the hype is diminishing. There have been so many Jack Sparrows over the years during Halloween that we’ve definitely had our fill. And let's face it: no man in costume can really live up to the real deal.
Jack Sparrow and pretty much every pirate out there has been overdone to the point of exhaustion. Pirates were cool until everybody wanted to be one. And now that it seems Jack Sparrow has been canceled by Hollywood, he’s pretty much irrelevant now. It’s time to hang up the Jack Sparrow costume now and come up with some new ideas.
Watching slasher horror films with your friends is a great pastime during the Halloween season, but as a costume, they are among the most unoriginal options you could choose and should be avoided at all costs. From Michael Meyers to Jason, Freddy Kruger to Ghost Face, movie serial killer costumes have all been done to death – no pun intended.
And this is not to say you should dress up like real serial killers either, like Ted Bundy or the Zodiac. Absolutely not. There’s nothing amusing about that, and there’s already an unhealthy obsession and idolization of serial killers out there. There’s plenty of ways to be scary without pretending that you murder people for fun.
Hocus Pocus is one of the most popular movies of the Halloween season, particularly with us ‘90s kids that grew up with the movie. The Sanderson Sisters have become a Halloween staple and with nostalgia going strong these days, people continue to dress like them every October 31st. But let’s get real for a second.
Hocus Pocus is just okay. It’s not the quintessential Halloween film by any means, and the quality of the production is low enough that it could be mistaken for a TV movie. Hocus Pocus doesn’t need to go away. By all means, show it to your kids, but don’t dress up like the Sanderson Sisters because it’s not as cool as you think.
Walter White. There, I said his name. Oh, sorry, Heisenberg. Anyway, we get it, you saw, Breaking Bad and so has just about everyone else at this point. It’s a good show but a terrible Halloween costume. When you really think about it, it isn’t really a Halloween costume at all. And it doesn’t look like anything to people who have never seen the show.
The whole point of Walter White’s appearance is that he looks like a nobody. He just looks like your average middle-aged guy that just happens to be a meth dealer. There were tons of people out there looking like Walter White when it’s not even Halloween, and there were people looking like that before the show too.
I think every parent can agree with this one. We might support our children wanting to dress up like Elsa, Anna or Olaf because we want to be good parents, but simultaneously we really wish they could have picked something else. Once Frozen blew up, you could never get away from it - even today, “Let it Go” is still stuck in our heads.
And on Halloween, it's like 1 out of 10 little girls are dressed up like Elsa. All these little ice queens roaming the neighborhood trying to collect candy door-to-door, and you have to pretend to be impressed, when in your heart you know it’s really time to let Frozen go. There are plenty of other great princesses and queens out there for kids to choose from. So, parents, it may be time to steer your kid in another direction.
It’s time to kill the past. The Darth Vader costume has been popular since the ‘70s when Star Wars first came out. Back then, Darth Vader was an intimidating figure - acclaimed as one of the best movie villains of all time, and for the most part that’s still pretty true, but only from a historical perspective.
The market has become so oversaturated with Darth Vader merchandise and his iconic costume that his appearance has lost all meaning. And then there are the prequels, which let's face it: killed Darth Vader. Now we can only see him as a whiny teen or a dorky little boy that says “wizard!” and complains about life being unfair. Since then, Darth Vader has lost all his cool.
Superheroes are everywhere these days. It seems like most movies that come out are superhero movies and 25% of the costumes you see on Halloween are superhero ones. People are starting to have their fill of superheroes and it's really time to start exploring other areas of interest. Plus, these costumes usually look just plain terrible.
Most of the time, superhero costumes just look like superhero pajamas or sometimes superhero pajamas with some muscle padding. Either way: adults look ridiculous in superhero costumes. For actor in a superhero movie inhabiting a fictional world – it’s fine. But for a full-grown man or woman in a superhero costume, it usually looks ridiculous.
The Plague Doctor costume is certainly neat, and I don’t mean to sound like a hipster here, but I was into it before it was cool. Then 2020 happened with COVID being compared to the black plague and the plague doctor costume turned into a bit of a joke. Now, you’ll see plenty of people dressed up like plague doctors that it's lost all its uniqueness.
If there is any costume that really encapsulates 2020, it would have to be the plague doctor costume – so much so in fact that it only serves as a reminder of all we suffered from. Nobody wants to be reminded of 2020 or COVID for that matter. It’s talked about quite enough that I don’t think we need to be thinking about COVID on Halloween other than making sure we are taking the necessary health and safety precautions.
Women are not a costume. Back in the day, this was “acceptable” but it certainly wouldn’t fly now. Making a mockery of women in general or as a bad joke about trans people is a terrible idea and you should not consider it in the least. If you aren’t a woman or transgender woman, don’t dress like one as a joke. It’s not funny.
However, if there is a specific woman that you admire that you would like to dress as – go for it. Helen Keller, Amelia Earhart, Cleopatra or Cher – all of these women would make great costumes for any gender. The difference is in dressing up like a person or character, and not a gender itself.
Of course, you can add Scooby Doo characters to the list of overdone costumes. How many Velmas, Daphnes and Shaggys can you possibly need to see on Halloween. After all these years, we’d have to say that even one is too many. And yeah, it’s time to get real for a second – Scooby Doo ain’t that great.
It may have been fun as a kid, but the show was always a disappointment because the ghosts were never real. Yeah, that’s the point but it’s always the same thing. The characters do the exact same stuff every time and get into the same exact situations every time. And why are they scared of ghosts, when they should know it’s probably not really a ghost but some disgruntled janitor who happens to be some kind of special effects expert. It doesn’t make sense.
Want to announce to the world how dull you can be on a day that’s supposed to be fun? Dress up like one of the elements from the Periodic Table. This costume usually consists of one or a group of people wearing the symbol for an element such as hydrogen (H) or gold (Au) or any other symbol from the Periodic Table of Elements.
This is the most unimaginative and lazy costume that only science nerds will appreciate. Everyone else will just have their eyes rolling at you. It’s been done so many times too, that its lost every shred of originality. Announce to the world you don’t like dressing up for Halloween without saying it – dress up as an element.
The time from 2016 to 2020 was unpleasant for a plethora of reasons that we really don’t need to be reminded of it with a Donald Trump costume. Plenty of people are sick of looking at him at this point that we can definitely do without seeing him on a day that’s supposed to be fun.
In fact, we could probably do without most political costumes. Maybe consider picking something scary or actually funny. Who wants to deal with politics around holidays? Halloween is the perfect time to let loose, not be so political. Donald Trump is yesterday’s news and even if you love Donald Trump, a costume isn’t going to bring him back.
Ah, misogyny! What better way is there to announce to the world what a lousy individual you are than to wear the female body inspector (FBI) costume. Not in any way funny unless you enjoy that low IQ frat humor, the Female Body Inspector shirt for Halloween is low effort and low quality.
For real, there’s enough sexism in society that we really don’t need tasteless joke costumes like this. They even make these shirts for kids which is totally weird inappropriate. Let’s maybe try not to pass on internalized and externalized misogyny onto our youth. Maybe keep that to yourself or better yet – grow up yourself.
The Wizard of Oz is a timeless classic. The characters from the story and especially the 1930s film are unforgettable and enjoyed by generations but much less so with the current generations. Even for kids that have never seen it, these characters are so familiar that they are completely unremarkable.
At least if you are going to go with a Wizard of Oz character, you should have a unique spin on it. Maybe do a scary Wizard of Oz-like zombies, perhaps gothic Wizard of Oz or steampunk Wizard of Oz, but for the love of all that is good and holy, please don’t do sexy Wizard of Oz, but I’ll rant about that a little later.
There is something uncomfortable about the recently popular Handmaid’s Tale costume. The show isn’t one that glorifies misogyny and the costume in the show is symbolic of the oppression of women. To glorify that costume in any way by trying to replicate it is extremely awkward. It never should have been made into a Halloween costume.
To make matters worse, there are even sexy versions of the handmaid costumes, which is even worse. It’s like the person who thought up that costume has no idea what the show is actually about or what its message is. Even though it’s a fictional story, the Handmaid’s Tale encapsulates some very real-world ideas that should not be celebrated or made light of as a costume, and that’s all there is to say about that.
Yeah, I know I said it was okay to dress up as Cleopatra, earlier, but to clarify - it only is in theory. Really, nobody should be dressing as Cleopatra because it’s been done to death. There are plenty of other interesting female historical figures that you could replicate. It doesn’t need to be Cleopatra.
Cleopatra was the last ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, a real person, but there is so much myth surrounding her that people are more in love with the legend than the person. There are so many iterations of her story and portrayals in books and film that nobody knows who she even really was.
Be it Mickey, or Minnie Mouse, this is definitely a costume we are tired of seeing. When you want to see Mickey, you go to Disneyland. But to everyone else and everywhere else, Mickey is a corporate symbol that no longer brings joy to people as it did many years ago. Mickey Mouse is such a brand that you might as well dress as a Coke can.
Do kids even watch Mickey Mouse cartoons anymore? There seems to be so many computer-generated animated films and live-action Disney shows, very few kids are actually watching any Mickey Mouse cartoons – and the new stuff out there is really low quality. Ahem…Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. So ditch the Mickey and Minnie couples costume, it’s just too cringe.
