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Americans are set to spend a record $13.1 billion on Halloween expenses this year—$1.5 billion more than last year. About $2 billion of that is expected to be spent on adult costumes. But while you’ll probably still spot plenty of ghost, vampire, and cat costumes at this year’s Halloween parties, you may also find yourself bobbing for apples alongside some very niche and obscure pop culture references—like “Chicken Jockey” or the “nothing beats a Jet2 holiday” meme.
“With the rise of fan cultures and more direct engagement through social media, costumes have become more character-driven,” pop culture historian and author Roy Shwartz says. According to Google Trend’s Frightgeist analysis, this year’s top costume ideas were inspired by KPop Demon Hunters, with characters from Hamilton, Wicked, and Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax making the top 10. And expect to see plenty of Labubus.
Dressing as a celebrity or a pop culture character is nothing new of course, but when you’re trying to go viral on social media, the stakes are raised. “Today we get to see the best viral videos come to life, or the latest TikTok dances,” says Peter Coyle, owner of Halloween experiential venue Halloween House in New Jersey. “Social media has also influenced how costumes are made, with more emphasis on photo ops,” Schwartz told Inc. “So they’ve become more detailed, with greater realism or with more striking special effects.”
“Creativity is nurtured more in today’s society, and now you can show it to tens of thousands and more due to social media,” Coyle says.
While some costumes go viral for their uncanny resemblance to the original, others go viral for their ingenuity and specificity.
Remember the “Alexander, come back to sleep” and “Let it grow” trends, popular earlier this year on social? Probably not, unless you’re chronically online. But those are both costumes.
For slightly less obscure cultural costume ideas, consider dressing as a New York rat reacting to the city’s Rat Tzar, or a “performative male” sporting a matcha latte and feminist literature in their back pocket.
Despite many Halloween revelers looking to become viral hits, others want to fit in with their community, embracing hyper-niche costumes nodding to specific cultural moments. An internet trend known as “Gay Halloween” takes niche to an extreme. The idea is for only a handful of people to understand your reference.
“Folks in the LGBTQ community, especially those who are Millennials and Gen-Z, use Halloween as an opportunity to put on a costume that reflects a viral meme, TikTok challenge, or an of-the-moment television character,” Robert Conner told Inc.
The Washington, D.C.-based public relations manager is throwing a Gay Halloween party with his boyfriend. There, if you’re lucky to snag an invite, you might run into someone dressed in a trench coat and ballet flats accompanied by a curly-haired girlfriend, a reference to the now infamous “trench coat buttoned to the top” Lilly-Rose Depp meme, or a costume that somehow evokes the viral “nothing beats a Jet2 holiday” meme.
“Halloween gives lots of people an excuse to express a deeper part of themselves that they may not show on an everyday basis,” Coyle says. “On Halloween, you can dare to be different.”
Just make sure that being different doesn’t involve guts and gore. Coyle notes that scary is out: “Killers aren’t cool. Doing the ‘floss’ dance while dressed up like someone from Fortnite is cool. Being clever and lighthearted is much cooler than just doing creepy stuff.”
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María José Gutierrez Chavez
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