Mr. Wood is the main antagonist of the Goosebumps book Night of the Living Dummy. He is an evil ventriloquist dummy carved out of the same coffin as his brother Slappy and brought to life by the same magic words.
What makes him a Hate Sink[]
- He is a cruel, mean-spirited bully who insults the Miller couple and Mrs. Berman. The insults he uses are also incredibly harsh by Scholastic Publishing book standards. He insults Mr. Miller's mustache by saying it looks like he's eating a rat, and calls Mrs. Miller a dummy. When the Miller couple try to play it off as playful roasting and force nervous chuckles, he tells them not to laugh so hard or they will drop their false teeth and proceeds to insult them by calling them old, stupid, and ugly, and saying they have disgusting yellow teeth and bad breath. At the school talent show, he insults the overweight Mrs. Berman by weight shaming her and insinuating that she's old ("If we count your chins will that tell us your age?"), as well as by saying that her face reminds him of a wart he once had. He gets Kris in trouble with these insults and gets her grounded and suspended from school just to be a jerk.
- He magically projectile vomits on Mrs. Berman and the audience at the school talent show, multiplying Kris's humiliation and punishment, ensuring everyone will be angry with her for a long time.
- He tries to force Kris and Lindy to be his slaves, threatening to kill their parents, friends, and dog Barkey if they continue to resist him. He also tries to make both Kris and Lindy be his slaves, even though only Kris officially owned him and read the words that brought him to life and dictated that she was to be his slave. While Lindy was fairly mean to Kris for the first half of the book, Mr. Wood's treatment of her is still quite cruel. What's more, Lindy becomes much nicer and more likable in the second half of the book.
- He is very overconfident, believing that he can kill Kris and Lindy's parents despite them being grown adults while he is a mere dummy. This highlights his ego and shows him to believe himself to be a bigger threat than he is. He repeatedly boasts that he is a threat due to his magic powers, but the only one he ever bothers to use is his magic vomit. His one advantage, pretending to be a normal dummy, is hampered by the fact that the parents are insistent on taking him back to the store to punish Kris for the very things Mr. Wood framed her for. So, not only is he an awful character personality wise, he's also overconfident and makes poor decisions, in contrast to his more successful brother, Slappy, who knows when he's at a disadvantage and is smarter about things.
- He tries to strangle Barkey to death.
- He lacks Slappy's charisma and comedic personality, being a more serious and unpleasant villain.
- Bonus material reveals that when he was destroyed, his evil magic fused with Slappy, making Slappy twice as evil as he originally was and a thousand times ruder. This means that Slappy, while still just as evil as Mr. Wood. was nowhere near as much of a bully as he was and only became the bully he is in later books as a result of Mr. Woods' evil magic.
- In a brief cameo in the prologue of I am Slappy's Evil Twin, Mr. Wood was shown to have been violent even toward his own creator, Franz Maher, attacking him and trying to take over their act after being brought to life by Kanduu.
- In contrast to Slappy, Mr. Wood ultimately failed to become an icon. While Slappy ultimately became the icon and central overarching character of the Goosebumps franchise, Mr. Wood ended up being a forgettable one-shot villain. In essence, he's Slappy without his cool traits.
External Links[]
- Mr. Wood on the Villains Wiki
- Mr. Wood on the Goosebumps Wiki
[]
![]() | ||
Goosebumps (original series) Goosebumps Series 2000 Goosebumps Slappyworld |