#Beetlejuice movieverse vs Toonverse

[herefortheships]

Similarities between the sequel and the Beetlejuice cartoon (Beetlejuice TAS, season 1)

I finished watching the first season of Beetlejuice: The animated show, and I noticed a lot of little details that seem to blend the toonverse with the sequel, and I thought I'd share them with you all.

Let me preface this by saying, I know that the toonverse is its own thing and is not supposed to be considered canon (at least not to the movieverse), but, as a fan, and totally ignoring that 😆, I just thought it'd be interesting and fun to compare the sequel and the toonverse. You can take this one seriously or not seriously at all. It might have been coincidences, but I don't think so. I personally think the writers either watched a few episodes, or had people watch a few episodes for them, and they derived some details from the animated show to include in the sequel.

We have to keep in mind that the animated show ran for years, and while of course many fans originated from the '88 movie, there are probably many more who became fans of the Beetlejuice universe by growing up with the cartoon, and only later discovered the movie. So, keeping this in mind, it would be natural if Tim Burton wanted to give a little nod or include some little details from the cartoon in the sequel, starting with Betelgeuse himself being considerably more like a PG-13 version of his cartoon iteration than his original movie self (now that I've been watching the cartoon, I can definitely see that his personality is a blend of the two).

I'm sure Tim recognizes that a huge section of the fandom comes from the animated show, plus Burton himself had his hand on the animated show as well, so it wouldn't be a crazy thing to consider he might have wanted to blend in elements of the toonverse with the movieverse.

So. Without further ado, here are some little details I noticed! I wish I would have watched the first season with this post in mind. If you want me to point out more similarities between toonverse and movieverse, while I'm watching the entire animated show for the first time now, let me know. I will pay more attention this time (just started season two tonight).

Here are some similarities between the cartoon's first season and BJBJ, in no particular order because I didn't take notes and this is at the top of my head:

Let's start with the most obvious one, and this starts from the very first episode: Dancing in the air. It definitely must be part of Tim Burton's vision for Lydia and Betelgeuse that they love to dance together (well, in the movieverse they aren't there yet lol, but they do have a lovely dance in midair in the movie, which is reminiscent of them dancing in the show all the time). It's even the first thing Beej does when he joins Lydia in the first episode. They danced in the air in several episodes this first season alone, and I'm sure I will see more dancing as the seasons go by.

They open a door to the sandworm world by pulling a lever, which totally reminded me of Betelgeuse pulling a lever in BJBJ to send Jeremy to hell. lol

Talking about that door, it also appears on the floor, which made me think about the moment Astrid draws the door to the Titan moon on the floor of the church in BJBJ. Not sure if this one is worth mentioning, because the shape of the door I think is round in the cartoon while in the movie it's a square door, but the fact that it's on the floor and the sandworm erupts through it is definitely a similarity I want to point out.

Talking about Astrid!! There are parallels between Astrid and Lydia: there was one episode (the Spooky Tree episode) in which Lydia is concerned about the environment and even does a form of activism to protect the tree. Astrid is also concerned about the environment.

This one might not be important, but I think it's worth mentioning since we're in the topic of Astrid and cartoon Lydia parallels: in one episode Lydia has a bag of piranhas she had bought for her dad's aquarium. (I just looked for the episode and this was on episode five "Laugh of the Party"). It's funny because... Astrid's dad was being eaten by piranhas when he drowned. This gives me a vibe that cartoon Lydia may have been part of the inspo for Astrid. Funny coincidence that both Lydia and Astrid's dads had a piranha moment?

Beetlejuice has a photo of Lydia. And it's almost exactly like the one he has in BJBJ. It also has cobwebs stuck behind it, just like his photo of her in the sequel. This was in one of my favorite episodes so far, "Out of my mind". Worth mentioning here as well that Beetlejuice literally has a giant photo of Lydia in his head, showing that she's pretty much the most important thing he thinks about. One could say in BJBJ she's also constantly in his head as well, considering the man waited over 30 years just for her.

Another detail, and I totally sent a screenshot of this one to my sisters: there's a man sitting in the afterlife waiting room with his body half-eaten by a shark. The shark is still attached to him, but the fact that there is a man half-eaten by a shark immediately made me go "huh!" when I saw it in the cartoon because that is how Charles Deetz died in the sequel. Another funny coincidence? Nah, I think not!

Edit: I forgot to add this one! In one episode, Beetlejuice and the gang become performers (armpit music lol). There's a scene Beetlejuice says he has a romantic number to dedicate and he takes his heart in his hand. Maybe not that significant, since he's not aiming this at Lydia (he isn't dedicating it to anyone in particular but the audience), BUT he did take out his heart to dedicate a romantic number, just like he did in BJBJ, so I'm including this.

Edit to add Another Lydia and Astrid parallel: In the cartoon, this blonde girl, Claire, picks on Lydia for being odd, basically. Lydia stands out because of her strange and unusual personality. We can see in BJBJ Astrid also gets picked on due to her family's connection to ghosts and her mom's show. Astrid also stands out as strange and unusual at her school.

Additional stuff:

Inflatable Beetlejuice. Pretty sure this happened several times in season 1, though not quite like in the movie. It was even part of a song Lydia and Beej sing in the first episode. lol

Beetlejuice turns himself into a pretty wild Babyjuice in the first epiosde. Didn't include this one on the list above because it's Beej who turns himself into a baby, vs him manifesting an "inner child" baby and a nightmare baby in BJBJ.

This is it for this post! Feel free to add more if I missed something from season one! Will probably make a post like this about season two as well if I notice more similarities between the toonverse and the sequel.

[herefortheships]

Somewhat darkish headcanon that ties the Toonverse with the Movieverse, if we didn't have the context of the first Beetlejuice movie. Below the cut, because, as I said, "darkish". (I mean, I don't think it's dark, but 🤷🏻‍♀️ Just in case). Basically, this is how I think people who only had the context of the cartoon interpreted BJBJ:

My mom's best friend watching Beetlejuice Beetlejuice without having ever watched the first movie is what sparked this thought.

There must be people out there who watched the cartoon growing up, but for whatever reason (mainly being casual viewers) didn't ever get around to watch the first movie. And surely there's got to be a few people out there who didn't even know the cartoon was based off a movie (please, there has to be, especially people who had really strict parents. I had a friend who had never held a ken doll in her hands, for example, because her strict mom didn't want her to see Ken naked lol Extremely controlling parents like that exist, is what I mean), and yet, these people went to the theater to watch the sequel.

For some of them, BJBJ would appear to be either a continuation of the cartoon or an adaptation. Of course, as casual viewers, they may not think too deeply about these things as the fans do, but with this idea in mind, here is how I think they interpreted the movie:

With only the context of cartoon to give them an understanding of the Beetlejuice story, it would look like Lydia and Betelgeuse were best friends while Lydia was a kid, but when she got older, at some point, Betelgeuse started having feelings for her and became obsessed with her. At some point it stopped being fun and games, and maybe Lydia even started feeling a little scared of him. Suddenly having a ghost friend wasn't so much fun anymore, when she started feeling that tension between them (here's where she started thinking of him as a demon vs a ghost, in this headcanon).

//She may have started having feelings for him as well around this time, which added to her fears of what could happen between them. After all, he was dead and an all-powerful ghost; there's a chance she feared what could happen, if they went there, if you know what I mean. But I'm kind of diverting from my point. lol//

Anyway, Lydia started growing a little distant, which frustrated Betelgeuse. Eventually he resorted to terrorizing Lydia's family to try to force her to marry him. That would have marked the end of their friendship in the cartoon, with Lydia banishing him and never summoning him back from the Neitherworld again.

Think about this: in BJBJ, Lydia explains that when she was a teenager, a trickster demon terrorized her family and tried to force her to marry him. She never mentioned that for Betelgeuse to be able to have free access to the world of the living he'd have to get married (Betelgeuse didn't either, when Lydia summoned him in BJBJ, now that I think about it, so the casual audience with zero context of the first film don't know that the reason Betelgeuse needs to get married is to be free, they just know he wants to marry Lydia). Edit: Before I posted this one, last night I posted a separate little post about this, even though I wrote this post first. lol

For a person who only watched the cartoon and had no context whatsoever of the first movie, what does this all sound like? Like everything was peachy keen between Lydia and her ghostly friend until she grew up into a teen and Betelgeuse fell for her, which led to the events which she appears to still be traumatized over in BJBJ. Then in BJBJ they reconnected (Lydia does look exasperated with him a few times instead of scared of him, the way she acted with him like she had known him a long time before; we can see this with the way she talks to him in the couples counseling scene and the quid pro quo scene), and by the end it even seemed like they were on their way to being friends again, when he saved her daughter and lent her his power to knock out Rory.

Even though she banished him again, with him sticking around her at the end of BJBJ, if they never make part three, at least we all can assume that eventually they might become friends again at some point in the future, and maybe even end up together down the line. After all, they used to be best friends once upon a time; they can get over all the water under the bridge between them.

As I said above, this is just a speculative kind of post, looking at the way someone with only the context of the cartoon might have interpreted BJBJ.

Now, how would I marry the Toonverse and the Movieverse with the context of the first film in mind? Completely ignoring the fact that the Toonverse is supposed to be non-canon lol. I'm going to leave that for another speculative little post, to avoid making this one into a long ramble. But I'll conclude with saying that I actually really like this headcanon (I hope you don't think I'm weird for that 😂).