The Complete Guide to “Bob’s Burgers” Halloween Specials
Part 2: Seasons 10-16
No time to read? Click the button below to listen to this post.
Pig Trouble in Little Tina (2019, Season 10/Episode 4)
Because of redemption or something like that, my least favorite episode on this list is followed by my favorite. “Pig Trouble in Little Tina” is an episode I’ve watched… too many times. It’s an absolute pitch-perfect Nightmare on Elm Street homage that manages to hit many of the beats of that movie while still being incredibly grounded in the world, kindness, and characterization of Bob’s Burgers.
Tina has two major problems: Tammy is boxing her out of the making-out hayride, and she has to dissect a fetal pig. Unfortunately for T, her piggie is a bit homely, and making fun of it earns her the coveted spot on the hayride, but at a price. Her dreams are soon haunted by a quippy, dissected swine, and holy smokes, Bob’s nails the Freddy of it all. However, this IS Bob’s. So while this episode would certainly have scared the shit out of me as a kid (everything did!), the greater focus is on the fact that Tina is a sweet kid who never wants to hurt anyone (or anything).
Once again, the show understands its characters so well that the fine details sing. Louise, having to draw a little blood from Tina for a pig-demon appeasement ritual (god, I love Bob’s Burgers), but not actually wanting to hurt her sister, is so on brand. Gene, wishing to turn into applesauce? Yes. Of course.
Bob and Linda usually take a bit of a backseat in the Halloween episodes, and this one is no exception, but their B-plot is a lot of fun. Bob has some earwax blocking his ear (again: I LOVE Bob’s Burgers), and Linda becomes invested in clearing it on a personal and relatively insane level. It is so much fun.
Costume Count
Louise: The Baby Bjorn Identity
Gene: Fiona Applesauce (Fiona’s saucy aunt)
Notable Guest Voices:
Paul Rust, Jenny Slate
End Credits Song:
Sung by the actual Fiona Apple. 10 out of 10. No notes
Heartbreak Hotel-Oween (2020, Season 11/Episode 4)
A great episode that—unusually for a Bob’s Halloween episode—focuses on Louise’s monomaniacal grudges.
The kids establish that 2 years prior, a house ran out of candy before Louise could get her full bar. In a moment of unusual magnanimity, she accepts the promise that they’ll give her two full bars the next year, but when they show up the following Halloween, they’ve forgotten. And because she is Louise and handles the situation poorly, they end up sending her away with no candy at all. Louise remembers everything and wants to go back for more blood (i.e., stealing the entire bowl).
Tina is Tina and wants nothing to do with this. Gene is Gene and wants… candy.
Everything gets thrown into stark relief when the kids deliver a burger to a woman trying to summon the spirit of her old lover, specifically to send him to hell, because she believes he cheats on her. Tina sets out to prove the cheating didn’t happen, and things take a mysterious (and, of course, silly) turn. However, this is Bob’s, so there is also a surprisingly poignant message about the price we pay when we hold onto anger.
It’s also incredibly funny, while holding tight to the roles we’ve established; Tina is young but mature, and more than anything, this sweet dork just wants to hang out with her siblings because she loves them. Louise is bitter, BUT when someone turns on her sister, she is 100 percent team Tina. Gene’s hungry. But he’s not leaving his sisters behind.
In a fantastically silly subplot, Linda and Teddy bully Bob (famously squeamish about blood) into donating blood at a mobile bloodmobile. It gets very goofy, and anyone who’s ever gotten nauseous donating will be sympathetic to Bob’s plight.
Costume Count
Tina, Gene, Louise: Snail
Random Guy: Beekeeper
Notable Guest Voice:
The great Andy Daly
End Credits Song:
It feels like a very real alternative to “Monster Mash”. 10 out of 10.
The Pumpkening (2021, Season 12/Episode 3)
Most Halloween episodes keep the focus firmly on the kids, but this one is all about Linda and Gail.
Look, I like Gail. I know a lot of people don’t because they seem to think she’s a real person and not just a silly archetype, and that’s ok! But your enjoyment of this episode is going to hinge on how much you enjoy Gail being Gail—because everything about this episode relies on it.
Gail receives a mysterious note about a minor pumpkin crime she and Linda committed years before, and the two must embark on an adventure to figure out how and why. While it is a little unusual to use Linda and Gail for the framework, the episode deals with a fundamentally Bob’s kind of compassion. Gail drives Linda absolutely bonkers. But.. Linda can be annoyed by her sister and love her simultaneously.
I think that is part of the genius of Bob’s—something, a lot of live-action sitcoms can’t manage. It suggests a character can be both frustrating and worthy of love, without needing grand gestures. Gail will always be Gail. It will always annoy Linda. But Linda’s always going to love her insane sister.
In returning to the notion of allusion, this episode very much hearkens back to the well-established tradition of slashers, where the heroine has a terrible secret in their past that they must reconcile with. It’s just a much stupider secret.
Back home, in the b-plot, Bob gets good candy after years of getting bitter drops that children hate, and while he initially enjoys the prestige he gets from being a sour patch babies house, the foot traffic becomes overwhelming. Again, the B-plot is so very silly. And so very fun.
The show really knows how to bring low-stakes, inconsequential plot lines to a point of less than emergency in the most fun of ways.
Costume Count
Louise: Peter Pan’s Labyrinth
Tina: Sherlock Ness Monster
Gene: a Gradiator
The Principal’s Dog: James Spader from “The Black List”
Notable Guest Voices:
Sarah Baker, Megan Mullally, Joe Lo Truglio. Tim Meadows
End Credits Song:
Something cute, Linda and Gail sing together. Not essential but sweet enough; let’s give it a 6 out of 10.
Apple-Gore-Chard (But Not Gory) (2022, Season 13/Episode 6)
This one is a grower, not a shower, if such a term here applies. The first time I watched it, I thought it was ok, but as a Bob’s superfan, I’ve revisited every episode (especially the Halloween ones) at least once. Every time I’ve rewatched this one, I’ve liked it more and been more impressed by the way it manages to make an entire mini folk horror movie in less than half an hour (each episode is less than half an hour, and then there’s the B-plot).
Bob and Louise go to an apple orchard on a field trip. Louise is battling with her class’s obsession with the ever-annoying Chloe Barbash, and Louise begins to taste the intoxicating elixir of popularity. Unfortunately, popularity also leads to some attention Louise doesn’t particularly want. There’s no way not to be vague about this one, ain’t that the way with folk horror?
In the meantime, Gene and Tina are very much supporting players in this. They are the twister and Bill Paxton in the siblings’ “Twister” costume (Louise is, of course, Helen Hunt), and their costumes keep falling apart, requiring Linda to come to the school to fix them.
This is a rare bit of very Linda-specific characterization in a Halloween episode. While it doesn’t significantly change our perspective of her, it is so grounded in our understanding of her as someone who will obsess over a costume—an aspect of her personality very akin to both Tina and Louise.
It’s very fun. It’s very silly. It’s perfect, actually.
Costume Count
Louise: Helen Hunt
Tina: The Twister
Gene: Bill Paxton
Jessica: Billy Idolish
Zeke: Panda
Jimmy Jr.: John Travolta in “Saturday Night Fever”
Regular-Sized Rudy: A mummy
Andy and Ollie: Salt and Pepper
Notable Guest Voices:
Stephanie Beatriz, Kathryn Hahn, Chelsea Peretti, Damon Wayans, Jr., Brian Huskey, The Silverman Sisters
End Credits Song:
The harvest song sung by the actual, stone-cold, real-world in-the-flesh BILLY GODDAMN IDOL. 10000 out of 10. It’s Billy Idol!!!
Fraud of the Dead (2022, Season 14/Episode 9)
In my long and historied time telling people why exactly they should love Bob’s Burgers (so many reasons), I’ve often suggested that it’s akin to the golden era of The Simpsons (YOU know…) in that it emphasizes the family and the sweetness that exists between them. But in reality, it probably most closely resembles King of the Hill, because Bob’s never breaks the reality of the Belchers’ world.
“Fraud of the Dead” might fool viewers for a second, though it announces itself quickly through the progress bar, suggesting it’s a video on YouTube. This is found footage, though, so who knows?
Alright, well, we know.
The premise here is simple enough; Tina is a documentary filmmaker covering Louise, a master archer, as she tries to protect her family through a zombie apocalypse. I can’t pretend the stakes feel high. It’s very immediately obvious that the risk isn’t actually physical (bonus points, though, for the use of an oddly time-signatured, synth-heavy track VERY reminiscent of John Carpenter’s work…). But this is representative of Louise’s insecurities, which is actually pretty sweet.
It’s not generally what I look for in a Bob’s Halloween episode; I love how madcap and truly attuned to the season the episodes usually are. But there’s a real sweetness here, and one that goes beyond just seeing Louise vulnerable. There’s also the charm of so many Belcher-adjacent characters—both children and adults—coming together to help Louise with her project.
It’s very sweet. It’s very cute. It’s got Regular-Sized Rudy! And honestly, it continues Bob’s tradition of homage instead of parody, in this case of both zombie movies and found footage films. And that is goddamn wonderful.
Costume Count
Most people become zombies at some point.
Notable Guest Voices:
The Silverman sisters, Brian Huskey
End Credits Song:
A mish-mash, synth song about brains and how yummy they are. 5 out of 10. I’ll forget it pretty quickly, but it’s cute, of course.
For Whom the Doll Toes (2024, Season 15/Episode 4)
In terms of the sibling dynamic, Louise and Tina are usually given priority. However, this season’s episode shifts the lens to Louise and Gene’s relationship. I’ve said quite a bit that the show’s success relies heavily on its fundamental understanding of its characters, and this quiet, sweet episode really draws out just how true that is.
Gene is sad that his friend group hasn’t invited him to a party—and Jesus Christ, how relatable is that to most of us, at literally any age?—and Louise sets out to show him, via a doll murder mystery, that the lack of invitation wasn’t a deficiency on his part, but in fact a reflection on what a good kid he is.
And that’s the genius of the show.
Gene is often used as a comedic character; however, his fundamental decency is always on display, so in this episode, which hinges on him being a nice kid who doesn’t think twice about being nice, it works. Also, Gene is so confident that he never believes there is a reason to NOT be the sweet little boy he is.
It’s very in keeping with Louise that she wouldn’t be able to directly tell Gene how proud she is of him or how ashamed she is of herself. It’s also a GREAT callback to Tina’s fear of dolls that she would be so unnerved by Louise’s display. Again, the show doesn’t explicitly state it, because the Gene and Tina relationship isn’t the focus of the episode. Still, the fact that she would stay in a situation where she is so fundamentally creeped out to support her siblings once again passively demonstrates the depth of the Belcher sibling relationship.
This is a pretty streamlined Halloween episode; Bob and Linda are along for the ride, primarily to drop occasional punchlines and provide some Greek chorus-like commentary. It’s great.
Costume Count
Nada. Except for the dolls, no costumes, though Tina wants to be Barrette-y Krueger
Notable Guest Voices:
Paul Rust, Tina Fey
End Credits Song:
An “Anatomy of a Murder” style instrumental
The song is less interesting than the truly great visuals for this one.
Speculation Corner! “Children of the Carn” (2025, Season 16/TBD)
As must be wildly, abundantly clear by now, I am something of a Bob’s superfan. As such, I follow Bob’s artist and supervising director, Simon Chong, on Instagram (he’s a really delightful follow; I can’t recommend him enough). He recently posted a photo dump of a collection of script covers he illustrated for the upcoming season, and one is called “Children of the Carn.” It features a truly haunting, raggedy teddy bear in the foreground, with a The Strangers-style silhouette in the background.
If this isn’t a Halloween—or at least Halloween-inspired—episode, I’ll eat my hat. Hell, I’ll eat your hat. I’ll eat my editor’s hat. No one’s hat will be safe.
So in the name of nonsense and fun, I’m not going to speculate on what this could conceivably be about. The obvious connection is Children of the Corn; however, the silhouette is of three adults, again, in the style of The Strangers. “Children of the Carn” suggests it takes place at the Wonder Wharf carnie section, which devoted viewers already know about. (In an unexpected twist, The Bob’s Burgers Movie focuses on an actual murder of one of the Wharf’s carnies.)
So I speculate that it will, perhaps, be about carnies looking for revenge for Cotton Candy Dan’s murder.
I admit that this is sort of a self-serving speculation, because Bob’s couldn’t possibly pursue this storyline without bringing in the Fischoder boys, my favorites.
The interesting curveball here is that the illustration doesn’t appear to involve any Belchers. While this doesn’t guarantee that our main characters won’t be involved, it IS a rarity; most covers prominently feature one or more Belchers.
We have seen the show begin to branch out; season 13 had “Radio No You Didn’t”, an all-time episode where Bob and family are just the framing device, and season 14 had “The Amazing Rudy”, an episode dedicated almost entirely to America’s sweetheart, Regular-Sized Rudy. Which is to say, this is a show that’s become confident enough in its stable of supporting players to let the main characters take a back seat.
Based solely on the script illustration, I assume that this will not be a Belcher-centric episode. I think Mickey and the Fischoders will be heavily involved, since they are our strongest connection to the carnie life.
The nod to The Strangers makes me wonder if it might be actually, legitimately a little scary; Bob’s has played around with virtually laugh-free episodes more recently, and while usually that’s been for poignant, emotional reasons, why shouldn’t the next evolution be for frightening ones?
That said, the presence of a ragged teddy bear makes me think that it could also be heartbreaking.
Guys. Let’s all meet back here after it airs and roast my ass.
Follow Us!