Podcast / Are You Afraid of the Dark Universe?

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Are You Afraid of the Dark Universe? is a podcast that takes the concept of the Dark Universe — an abandoned attempt at a modern Universal Horror Shared Universe — and fleshes out the movies that might have come from it, presenting them as pitches and partial scripts intended to be approved by the Universal board of directors. The overall structure is inspired by the Marvel Cinematic Universe: each phase of the podcast includes several stand-alone stories, which then come together in a major crossover that ends the phase. Found here.

Starting after the first crossover episode, House of Dracula, Phase Two adds guest episodes in between each of the main episodes. These have a wider variety of content, such as pitching a 'monsters versus wrestlers' event, or discussing how the fandom might develop along with the films.

In the first part of their Phase 4 finale, Hell On Earth, the creators announced that the format would remain the same for future seasons, but would no longer be in-continuity with the first four phases. They had previously indicated that their existing main cast's story would be over, but had not made it clear if this would simply be a Passing the Torch moment. In September 2025, they rebranded their channel as The Pod Universe and revealed their plan for a new, original sci-fi cinematic universe in the same podcast format.

Are You Afraid of the Dark Universe? contains examples of:

• Action Girl: Most of the principal women are formidable fighters. In particular:
  • Gwen is a werewolf, and even when not transformed, that gives her a major boost to her strength and endurance, letting her trade blows with characters like Frankenstein's Monster.
  • Jenny Halsey is an experienced monster hunter with Prodigium, and the self-declared "queen of mummy murder-sprees".
  • Evelyn O'Connell retains her abilities from The Mummy Trilogy, showcased when she fights her way out of the Prodigium base in The Mummy's Hand.
• Actor Allusion:
  • A major plot point in The Invisible Man is that Nick Morton needs to pretend to be a club pianist, despite the fact that Nick can neither sing or play the piano, with Jack Griffin (played by John C. Reilly) deciding to help out by playing the keys and pretending to be Nick's singing voice. As such, the song Jack decides to play? "Mister Cellophane".
  • The Dark Legion: House of Dracula opens with Dracula (played by Mads Mikkelsen) and an entranced Van Helsing (played by Hugh Dancy) sharing a passionate kiss, much to the delight of many a Hannigram shipper.
  • The mere fact that The Dark Universe Holiday Special is a Krampus-themed version of The Santa Clause is this given the twist that in the world of the Dark Universe, the Krampus is actually David Krumholtz.
  • It cannot be a coincidence that a character played by Tom Cruise ends up a vampire.
• Adaptational Badass: Gwen Conliffe, who was essentially nothing more than a love interest and later Distressed Damsel in the original Wolf Man movie, becomes a werewolf alongside this universe's Larry. Thanks to the physical boosts her condition provides even in human form, she becomes an Action Girl capable of trading blows with Frankenstein's Monster.
• Adaptational Sexuality:
  • In The Mummy (2017), Jenny Halsey is never presented as anything other than straight. In the podcast’s continuity, she’s bisexual.
  • This universe’s Larry Talbot and Gwen Conliffe are both bisexual.
• Adaptational Villainy: In The Raven (1935), Edmond Bateman, the titular Raven, is a Sympathetic Murderer who eventually has a Heroic Sacrifice. In Love Never Dies, he’s an unrepentant serial killer.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: A lot of the drama in The Phantom of the Opera comes from the fact that Carol is a ghost-hunter, but Jenny (who is familiar with vampires, werewolves, and mummies among other creatures) has never seen a ghost, and doesn't believe they exist. In the context of the movie, she's completely right.
• The Ageless: Thanks to Imhotep, both Rick and Evelyn are immortals — at least until Imhotep is out of the picture.
• Arc Words: Variations on the phrase “death is a door” reoccur in Dark Universe films, going back to a line in The Mummy.
• An Arm and a Leg: In Dracula Lives, Ahool takes off Dracula’s right arm.
• Back for the Dead: Rick O’Connell returns in The Mummy Returns, only to be killed by Imhotep at the very end.
• Badass Boast: In Love Never Dies, Jenny threatens Carmilla with "Give me Ahmanet's soul, and I'll kill you quickly."
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • In the very first episode, where they try to see what could be salvaged from The Mummy (2017), Dylan and Dalton come up with two potential avenues for Nick Morton's character going forward (given how there would have been a five year gap since this movie): Either he has decided to use his mummy powers to throw himself into a life of excess and debauchery, and needs to be convinced to rejoin the fight, or he's been trying to cure himself of Set. When it comes time for his return in The Invisible Man, we find out that Dalton had decided to pick Door #3: he's been spending the time trying to hunt down Dracula.
  • The Mummy Returns spends a small portion of its runtime setting up a cameo from Jack, who's gone silent since House of Dracula. When Nick is stuck in the cave, someone does come to save him... only it's Rick O'Connell.
  • The pitch for The Phantom of the Opera is quickly revealed as actually being for The Phantom of The Phantom of the Opera, and taking place against the final performances of the Broadway production of the Phantom musical.
  • In a similar twist, the episode titled The Bride of Frankenstein actually pitches a story called The Bride AND Frankenstein, and features Frankenstein teaming up with a bride-to-be to fight off her slasher-movie-style assailants. This is then given a further twist when, in the post-credits scene, one of the villains is resurrected by lightning in a way that makes her a visual match for the classic Bride.
  • Branson Reese's guest pitch based on Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is two-fold: The pitch has nothing to do with the movie, but is more so about pitching the Dark Universe version of Abbott and Costello... and that winds up being the Blumhouse-produced, Peacock-exclusive series David and Davidson, where Larry David and Pete Davidson encounter Blumhouse-related shenanigans.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: According to The Dark Universe Holiday Special, The Krampus is actually David Krumholtz.
• Best Served Cold: Adelaide Van Helsing. In Dracula Lives Adelaide attacks a human Dracula on a train, nearly derailing it to kill him while Caught Monologuing about all the members of her family he's killed and how she wanted to blow his castle up and in Van Helsing we see she her room was broken into when she was a small child by Carmilla also fueling her rage and need for vengeance.
• Big Badass Battle Sequence: After Gwen inspires the denizens of Hell to fight back, a mass outbreak leads to a huge battle between demons and the denizens of Hell. Crosses over with Continuity Cavalcade as, similar to Avengers: Endgame, a huge amount of characters from previous films work together to take on demons.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Dark Legion beat Ahmanet, the Death Gods and Dracula, but due to the massive amount of casualties and the general destruction wreaked by the opening of Hell, turn back time to 2017 to ensure that the events that led to Hell opening never happen. Carol, Jenny, Gwen and Hunter take over as gods of death, with the rest of the Dark Legion reset. They are, however, able to make changes to ensure Victor still meets Cassie, Larry gets put on a positive path, Dr. Jekyll is free of Hyde and Jack and Maria meet. In addition, Nick is still a vampire, but one on the side of humanity, and he turns Vail too.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Among other things Hades is actually surprised the Dark Legion consider non-existence preferable to eternal suffering.
• Body Horror: Victor Frankenstein is the most prominent example, with his patchwork body and perpetually-infected wounds, but the werewolf transformations and Nick's mummy powers also get quite horrific.
• Bookends: Love Never Dies opens with the title song, as Jenny and Carol watch the musical of the same name. In one of the final scenes, Carol sings it to Jenny as she dies due to Jenny's spell.
• Breaking the Fellowship: By the end of Phase One, at the conclusion of House of Dracula, the heroes of the Dark Legion have defeated Dracula and stopped his plot — but due to the things they suffered along the way, the heroes decide to go their own ways instead of solidifying the team. And Gwen and Larry's relationship also breaks up. Throughout Phase Two the various members spend time Walking the Earth before all choosing (with one imposter) to reunite at Jen and Carol's wedding.
• Came Back Wrong: After briefly dying on the operating table, Dr. Jekyll starts experiencing bouts of overwhelming rage, eventually revealed to be due to Demonic Possession (AKA Eddie Hyde).
• Canon Character All Along:
  • In The Invisible Man's Revenge, Walton Goggins’ character Dudley Hall is revealed to be this continuity’s version of King Kong.
• Canon Discontinuity: A Patreon Reward was "The Sophie Cut" of Mystery Men which featured a return of Sophie from Village of the Damned. This cut made it explicitly clear that the Midwich children's powers do not work on demons. Dark Legion: Hell on Earth overrode this.
• Canon Immigrant:
  • Various characters are created in guest pitches, only to pop up in mainline installments. These include Adelaide Van Helsing from The Dark Universe Omnibus, Maria from Dracula's Daughter, and Sharesse from The Black Cat. The hosts were also so impressed by the pitches for Village of the Damned and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir that they declared both Canon on the spot, also putting Sophie and the Captain in this category.
  • In Phase 4 the Hosts have actually implied that they want this to be the norm, with Guest Pitches being allowed to make major changes to the status quo of the setting, to discourage listeners from skipping those episodes. In the first Guest Pitch, a movie based on Rob Zombie's Firefly Family called Hell's Angel, it was eventually decided that the Firefly Family would succeed at killing Satan, a plot-point referenced in Mystery Men.
• Canon Welding:
  • The Mummy Returns features the return of Rick and Evelyn from The Mummy Trilogy, confirming that those movies are canon to the Dark Universe.
  • Dracula Lives features Dracula summoning none other than Pazuzu.
  • The post-credits scene of Return of the Black Lagoon introduces The Collector, who Dalton notes is slowly becoming the Dark Universe's version of the Cryptkeeper.
  • During Death's Door, Hades refers to The Creature as "Charon," a Psychopomp from Greek mythology, a connection it's never had across its history.
  • House of 1000 Corpses has Abe Goldfarb pitch a House of 1000 Corpses sequel set in The Dark Universe. As Dylan & Dalton point out, the characters' aging gets weird, since the first movie is set in 1977 and this hypothetical fourth film is set in the 2020s...
• Changing of the Guard: The ending of Death’s Door hints at this, showing Alexis Rogan preparing to recruit various minor, one-off, and guest pitch characters to set-up Mystery Men. In the discussion of the same film, the writers also hint at this, saying that Hell on Earth will be the end of the story for "these characters", but will not be the end of the podcast. It isn't currently clear whether they mean only the Dark Legion's story will end, or if they're also including the Mystery Men, in which case another new cast will need to be established. During the first episode of the "Hell on Earth" reading, it was revealed that the movie would be the Grand Finale of the Dark Universe.
• Christmas Episode: The Dark Universe Holiday Special.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: This applies to basically every episode. The only major exceptions are the various characters already introduced inThe Mummy (2017), Javier Bardem as Frankenstein’s Monster (because Universal had already picked him, though he never filmed anything), and the characters already introduced in The Mummy Trilogy. Some of these include, but are not limited to:
  • John C. Reilly as Jack Griffin/The Invisible Man
  • Amber Midthunder as Gwen Conleth/The Wolfman
  • Mason Gooding as Larry Talbot/The Wofman
  • D'Arcy Carden as Carol Laemmle
  • Mads Mikkelsen as Dracula
  • Walton Goggins as Dudley Hall
  • Cillian Murphy as Indrid Cold
• Composite Character: In Frankenstein, the Monster is actually Victor Frankenstein reanimated.
• Continuity Snarl: invoked
  • Downplayed: Upon coming up with the idea for the House of Frankenstein duology, Dalton and Dylan decided to write for each other's characters: Dalton writing Gwen's half, Dylan writing Victor's. This, of course, ran into some quibbles due to the unfamiliarity at play:
    • During House of Frankenstein: A Native American Werewolf in Paris, Gwen's family comes to visit her in Paris, including her mom Joy Conliffe (played by Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers)... except Dylan had established in Werewolves of London that her mom was Joe Conliffe (played by Cree Summers). When it comes time for House of Frankenstein: The Hunchback of Notre Dame^note since both movies take place at the same time but from different perspectives, Dylan opts to revert to his depiction, with him deciding this means that the in-universe narrative now is that the two of them flew out different actresses to film different versions of the same scenes "in a big, weird, public tug-of-war for creative control".
    • In a lesser sense, while Gwen and her family are hanging out with Victor and Cassie, it's established that they live in California. However, in The Wolf Man, Dylan had established they lived in New Mexico, and Gwen was only in California to attend college (hence why her family couldn't come bail her out when she got arrested).
  • In "Hell on Earth," it turns out both Dylan and Dalton had forgotten Jack was Jewish, which was awkward considering the totem given to him by Hunter was a cross. Thus, their best option was Lampshade Hanging a joke about it and have Jack himself address it.
• Cosmic Keystone: In Heaven's Gate, the obelisks help to secure Earth against invasion by Hell. Raphael plans to demolish them and collapse a city into the mouth of Hell, blocking it away from Earth and letting souls get into Heaven again.
• Crisis Crossover: The Dark Legion movies.
• Crossover Relatives: Halfway through House of Frankenstein: The Hunchback of Notre Dame, it comes to light that Quasimodo is actually a reanimated William Frankenstein.
• Darkest Hour: Things get so bad in Death's Door that Gwen, one of the most heroic characters in the series, unironically declares that they should have either let Dracula ascend to godhood or killed everyone in Cairo as a human sacrifice to plug the gateway to Hell in the earlier films, since either option would have prevented the current situation. And this is before Hell is fully unleashed on Earth.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The Creature From the Black Lagoon is certainly sinister, and goes on a rampage in its debut movie, but in its role as a Psychopomp, it's only doing its job. When its watchers die, it treats them with dignity and respect, and even turns against its master Hades to protect Hunter in Death's Door, giving them the tools to help the Dark Legion control their hells and break free through the use of totems.
• Death by Adaptation: In House of Dracula, Abraham van Helsing and Mina Harker both die in the very first scene, despite living through the original book.
• Death by Irony: Jenny's whole plot (and her "I Want" Song) in Love Never Dies revolve around her desire to keep her wife Carol safe, to the point of learning Black Magic to keep her out of hell. At the end of the film, Carmilla has Jenny cast a spell which, unbeknownst to Jenny, costs the soul of one the caster loves. Moments later, Carol dies.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Shortly after Maria shows up in The Invisible Man's Revenge, she reveals that she plans to betray Jack, believing him to be no better than any of the other men she's been victimised by over the centuries. But as she comes to know him, she realises that he's a better person than most. What really cements her Heel–Face Turn is when she goes through with the betrayal, and Jack still comes back to rescue her.
• Dwindling Party: In Death's Door, the Dark Legion are picked off, one by one, by various death gods. By the end of the movie, Nick is the sole surviving member.
• Enemy Mine:
  • The Mummy Returns has Rick and Imhotep briefly team up so that Imhotep can cut Set out of Nick's body, which ends with Imhotep killing Rick after all's said and done.
  • Done twice in "Hell on Earth," and neither end particularly well. Nick and Dracula team up to try and reset the world, but as soon as they find a back door into Hell, Dracula kills Nick to get his powers back. Then, Evelyn goes to find The Master to help stop Dracula, who then turns Nick into a more powerful vampire and makes it explicitly clear even if the clock is turned back and the universe is reset, it's still permanent.
• Enemy Rising Behind: Twice in a row in The Bride and Frankenstein: a masked figure rises and attacks Cassie, and then Victor appears behind the villain.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: invoked At the start of the guest episode concerning Sssssss, Dalton mentions how they are taking a guest pitch meeting^note Mattie Lubchansky and Jaya Saxena pitching a "rebootquel" despite the fact the 2023 Writer's Strike literally just happened. And no sooner does Mattie Lubchansky mention this means they're technically scabbing by doing this:
  Dalton: ...this canonically takes place two weeks ago, uh, I'm deciding.
• Everybody Hates Hades: One of the elements inherited from The Mummy (2017) is the treatment of Set as an evil god of death. The Trope Namer also shows up in Death's Door, though he's easily the least cruel of the death gods, even giving his servant The Creature a chance to turn away when it defends Hunter.
• Evil Is Petty: the Ironic Hell each of the Dark Legion is placed in also has minor grievances along with the larger torments. Gwen can't find any sexual satisfaction to the point of her vibrator breaking, the only thing on the TV Hunter has in the psych ward is PAW Patrol and every single piano Jack finds has one key sharply out of tune, with all the books on piano tuning gone.
• Evil Power Vacuum: In addition to other vampires trying to take advantage of Dracula's de-powering, this happens twice with the Death Gods. Set is replaced by Amanet, and after the death of Satan, Osiris also tries to gain acceptance among the Death Gods, although he's eventually revealed to have relatively little power. It's also implied that the Firefly Family are attempting to claim some power in Hell after they killed Satan, although how successful they are is never shown, as they seem to have little interest in returning to Earth.
• Fake Shemp: invoked Justified: Rather than have Tom Cruise return to play Nick Morton in the flashback scene where Set!Nick turns Dracula back into a human at the end of The Dark Legion: House of Dracula, as it would distract from the scene (and be too expensive), Dracula Lives has the flashback be from Dracula's perspective, meaning Nick is completely obscured by light, and speaks in a deep, booming voice.
• Famous Last Words:
  • Frankenstein:
    • "My God! Sir, are you hurt?" The newlywed
    • "Whoa! Watch out, mister!" The ten-year-old
  • The Dark Legion: House of Dracula:
    • "Don't you dare, Henry! I'm not finished with you yet!" Eddie Hyde
    • "I think we've both overstayed our welcome, Edward." Henry Jekyll
  • The Mummy Returns:
    • "Yeah? And why's that?" Rick O'Connell
  • Dark Legion: The Mummy's Hand:
    • ''You don't have to say anything. Let's just be here for as long as we can." Larry Talbot
• Foreshadowing: The Raven declares that, although he has used a variety of tortures to kill his victims, he avoided the Pit and Pendulum as it "felt a bit cliche." In the final act of the movie, Jenny kills him with a spell that slashes back and forth across his torso, in an explicit reference to Poe.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Chris Vail, a friend of Nick's from The Mummy, is killed by Frankenstein partway through House of Dracula to show the limits of Nick's power to raise the dead. After that, he's barely mentioned ...until the stinger of The Invisible Man's Revenge, which shows his Hell is just knowing how forgotten he is. This changes come "Hell on Earth," as Nick mentions him as someone who he's fighting for, and when freed from Hell, explicitly frees him.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: Downplayed: Cat People doesn't have a Cold Open: Instead, it dumps straight into the saga sell as Dylan and Dalton start singing the opening to "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)".
• Gender Flip:
  • Gabriel Utterson, the original protagonist of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, is turned into Gabby Utterson in Jekyll X Hyde.
  • The show’s version of the Phantom of the Opera is female.
• Genre Shift: The Invisible Man starts out as a slapstick comedy heist movie in which the invisibility is the only supernatural element. Partway through the casino heist, Dracula's forces show up, and the story shifts into supernatural horror. Then Nick Morton shows up and it shifts again into a supernatural horror-comedy.
• Gone Horribly Right: This factors into Victor's backstory: In order to punish her father for his efforts to suppress her interests in medical science, up to and including outright disowning her, once Caroline Frankenstein is informed of the deaths of her parents, she teams up with her brother, William, to reanimate the corpse of their father (mainly as a proof-of-concept before they attempted it on their mother), with Caroline specifically doing this as a form of revenge. The end result? The moment Victor awakens, he lashes out in a mindless fury, and beats William to death.
• Hate Sink: The main villain of Love Never Dies, Carmilla, manipulates the heroes, no-sells everything thrown at them, and gets everything they were after. Fortunately for the audience, the secondary villain is a torture-loving Serial Killer who dies horribly.
• Healing Factor: All werewolves possess one, even in human form, as does Frankenstein, but it can be negated with Quicksilver.
• Heel–Face Turn: Frankenstein spends much of House of Dracula serving the villains, having been promised that Dracula will resurrect his bride. Gwen manages to persuade him both that he's on the wrong side, and that Dracula probably doesn't plan to live up to his end of the bargain.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In Heaven's Gate, when the obelisk island starts sinking into the ocean, Mahmoud, a scientist, makes it to the lifeboats, but goes back to help others escape. They make it; he doesn't.
• Hell Invades Heaven: In the final scene of Heaven's Gate, the long anticipated invasion finally arrives, and from the glimpse we get of it, Heaven is losing.
• Hostility on the Set: Invoked as part of Branson Reese's Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein reboot; as he rationalizes, since the original Bud and Lou had a strained off-screen relationship and most of their chemistry was in how their opposite personas would clash, the best modern equivalent would be two very different comedians who could annoy and play off each other well, but who would have no reason to be friends even in real life. His solution is Larry David and Pete Davidson as a new comedy duo, "David & Davidson".
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Both 'The Black Lagoon and The Bride and Frankenstein posit this, with the antagonists being an alt-right militia and a pair of very-human slasher villains.
• Human Sacrifice: Revealed to be the villains' plot in Heaven's Gate — destroy a city and kill everyone living there, using the wreckage to block the entrance to Hell.
• Hugh Mann: Indrid Cold appears superficially human, but there are a lot of cracks in that disguise: his clothes are always somehow strange or wrong, he is almost always smiling, and he doesn't seem to age. Also, he can survive Hyde breaking all of his bones and folding him up in a desk drawer.
• I Am Not Shazam: Averted. In Frankenstein, the Monster is Victor Frankenstein reanimated, meaning that he’s just Frankenstein, as Dylan & Dalton note.
• Instant Death Stab: Evelyn has been established as a strong fighter, and even defeats Nick in the final battle in Heaven's Gate, only for scientist Masika to take her down with a single unexpected stab in the back.
• Ironic Hell: While previous visions of the afterlife have mostly been a typical Fire and Brimstone Hell, Dracula's experiences there are more targeted, mostly involving being tormented by victims or enemies from before he died. When he eventually escapes his own hell and starts visiting other peoples' hells, we see that theirs are in the same style — Ahmanet's appears to involve being mummified.
• Jesus Was Crazy: The reveal that there is no benevolent God, and almost everyone goes to Hell already mostly confirmed this, but The Exorcist finally elaborates. Jesus is actually the "demon" possessing Father Karas, and he's dead-set on destroying the Church. He says he was a "delusional carpenter" to think he was the savior of mankind, and believed it only because his mother told him he was. He's spent two millenia in Hell being tortured by demons who made him experience the pain of his flesh and blood being consumed every Sunday.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: At the end of House of Dracula, Dracula is no longer a vampire and his minions are dead, but is otherwise unharmed despite all the villainy he's perpetrated throughout the series. Then comes Dracula Lives, which becomes one long Humiliation Conga as his former victims find him to be much more vulnerable.
• Kayfabe: The premise, as described in each episode's opening, is that Universal have hired Dylan and Dalton to revive the failed Dark Universe. This was eventually disregarded when they asked a real-world lawyer about the possible ramifications.
• Killer Gorilla: Dudley Hall in The Invisible Man’s Revenge, especially since he’s a vampire and grows to Kaiju proportions.
• Lesbian Vampire: The Trope Codifier Carmilla and all of her henchwomen, of course.
• Loophole Abuse: invoked One of the biggest requests the fans have had for the Dark Universe was King Kong, something that Dylan and Dalton had difficulty trying to do due to the legal stuff around trying to bring him into a Universal movie. Another is the addition of kaiju. The closest to date we have to both avenues is The Invisible Man's Revenge, where not only do we have Dudley Hall coming back as a vampire gorilla, but the climax involves a final battle in Dubai between a kaiju-sized invisible Jack Griffin and a kaiju-sized vampire gorilla Goggins.
• Living MacGuffin: As the only person who can sense where The Black Lagoon has gone, Hunter fills this role during the second act of The Mummy's Hand, with the villains and heroes racing to find the lagoon first.
• Male Frontal Nudity: The signature scene of The Invisible Man involves the invisible Jack committing a burglary in the nude, and accidentally spilling a powder on his genitals without noticing it, which the the world appears as if a cock and balls is mysteriously floating around the house. The homeowner becomes freaked out believing he is being haunted by a penile ghost.
• Monster Mash: The whole idea of the Dark Universe is to take classic monsters and throw them into stories together like a horror-themed team of superheroes. By the end of Phase One, the team includes a mummy, the invisible man, Frankenstein's monster, and a couple of werewolves, with stranger monsters being added as the podcast goes on.
• Musical Episode: The Phantom of the Opera turns out to be a musical with several full songs, which is as surprising for Dalton as it is for the audience.
  • Its sequel, Love Never Dies, is also a musical, and takes the songs from being backed by piano demos to having fully-produced backing tracks.
• Mythology Gag: Like attempted in The Mummy (2017), the various films of this podcast have ties to the classic Universal monster movies. To whit:
  • In a rather heartbreaking example, Van Helsing brings things full circle, and has Frankenstein die in a burning windmill.
• Never Trust a Trailer: invoked At the halfway point of the Invisible Man pitch, Dalton makes it clear that the “marketing” for the movie will cover only what was discussed so far, Jack becoming invisible and being forced to take part in heists, and paint the film as strictly comedy. This is so they can properly disguise the fact that the back half of the movie leans into the horror comedy realm, with the introduction of Dracula’s forces, and the return of Nick Morton.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Dudley Hall in The Invisible Man’s Revenge. By the end of the movie, he’s a vampire-ghost possessing a gorilla body, who grows to Kaiju-size.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore:
  • Meta-wise, The Invisible Man. Three episodes into the podcast, and two movies in the can, Dylan and Dalton were adamant in sticking to this being primarily horror-based^note albeit The Wolf Man being more action-horror. With The Invisible Man, however, Dalton has the movie be a slapstick horror movie, thus causing the Dark Universe to become a lot more flexible in its tone.
  • After the end of Phase Two, the whole world becomes aware of the supernatural, and in particular the fact that Hell is real and everyone goes there.
• Not His Sled: Field of Nightmares is a truly strange example of this trope, because it's presented as a sequel to only the first few minutes of Field of Dreams, disregarding everything else that happens in that film. In this timeline Ray built the Field, and then spent the rest of his life waiting fruitlessly for Shoeless Joe Jackson to show up.
• Not So Invincible After All: Of the original six (or seven, depending on how you count) Death Gods introduced, three (or four, counting the Yeomra twins separately) of them are dead (in addition to Osiris who tried to fill the Evil Power Vacuum created by Set's death, and failed miserably) by the start of "Hell on Earth." then the first part of "Hell on Earth" killed off Mictlantecuhtli, leaving only Hades, Owuo, and the Deity of Human Origin Amanet, who replaced Set in "Death's Door."
• Paper Tiger: Mystery Men features Osiris who's eventually revealed to be this, rather than the Orcus on His Throne he pretends to be.
• Polyamory: The Brixton Bloodhounds, and group of English werewolves, are one big pansexual polycule. Larry ends up joining them at one point.
• One-Steve Limit: The hosts note after The Mummy Returns that they're violating this rule with movie titles. Since that episode involves bringing The Mummy Trilogy into the canon of the Dark Universe, the series now technically includes two movies called The Mummy, and two called The Mummy Returns.
• Politically Correct Villain: The writers made the decision to never have any supernatural entity misgender Hunter. Notably, in Death's Door Hades "misgenders Hunter in the right direction," calling them a "boy." As of Hell on Earth he seems to have corrected himself to they/them, despite torturing Hunter for months in a prison in Hell where their identity is not respected.
• Our Lawyers Advised This Trope: Early in the show Dylan and Dalton roleplayed the premise that they had been secretly hired by Universal to reboot the Dark Universe, and all the movies they were pitching would eventually be made. After speaking to a real-life attorney, they were VERY strongly advised not to do that.
• Out of Continues: Chris Vail, who Nick resurrects several times using the power of Set, is killed by Frankenstein in ''The Dark Legion", who rips his body apart to the point that even Set's magic is not strong enough to heal him. However, this does not destroy his soul.
• Power at a Price: Love Never Dies establishes that all mortal magic has a cost to the caster, which ranges from a few seconds off one's life up to Human Sacrifice.
• Previously on…: Prior to the two-part pitch for Dark Legion: The Mummy's Hand, Dylan and Dalton released an episode where they recapped all the (non-guest) movies they have pitched at that point... at five minutes a pop.
  Dalton: You have to pick your poison! You can get the good version that makes sense, but takes 30 hours, or you can get us breathlessly shouting names at you for 90 minutes. Make your choice.
• Remake Cameo: Charles Dance reprises his role as The Master in Dracula Lives, despite that movie being definitively non-canon to the Dark Universe. Dylan compares this to Judi Dench playing M or J.K. Simmons playing J. Jonah Jameson.
• Resurrection Revenge: Claudia is a double case — she blames the heroes for her death, and is brought back to life by having her soul bound to Mr. Hyde, who feels the same way.
• Self-Deprecation:
  • During the guest pitch concerning Dracula's Daughter, Dalton mentions that listeners would be aware by now that he likes the concept of sequels that are massive departures from the original, something Dylan openly (sarcastically) is surprised to learn about.^note At the time of the recording, Dalton had pitched The Bride and Frankenstein, and was getting shit on in the fan Discord over how it blatantly wasn't based on Bride of Frankenstein, despite the title of the episode.
  • As Dylan is forced to admit, Dalton's stab against him during the guest pitch concerning The Mad Ghoul was made in response to the fact that his Werewolves of London pitch did not include any werewolves in London.
• Sham Supernatural: In The Phantom of the Opera, what appears to be a series of related hauntings on Broadway turns out to actually be Jack, invisibly watching the performances and playing pranks. While the reveal is played for comedy, it also makes it clear that the villain is not what she claims to be.
• Shared Universe: Per the brief, this podcast concerns the creation of a shared universe of monster movies.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Undoubtedly the reason why Jack Griffin is the first to die in Death's Door.
• Shout-Out:
  • The podcast title is a reference to Are You Afraid of the Dark?. The hosts will occasionally open their pitches by saying “submitted for the approval of the Universal board of executives...”, which is a riff on how characters in that series would open their stories.
  • Dominic Griffin openly describes the opening of Dracula's Daughter as basically being the How It Should Have Ended for the original 1931 Dracula film.
  • Egyptian obelisks that prevent demons from invading, you say?
  • Dylan and Dalton deciding to retcon Esmeralda’s death after the pitch for House of Frankenstein: The Hunchback of Notre Dame gets compared by the former to the ending of The Player, where the in-universe movie gets a tacked on happy ending that goes against how the real world works. Dalton then proceeds to claim that the entire podcast is basically a nod to The Player, something Dylan leans into.
• Supernaturally Validated Trans Person: Sort-of. Hunter is AFAB, but uses they/him pronouns. Hades identifies them as male. The writers referred to them as "misgendered in the right direction."
• Spoofy-Doo: The opening sequence of Love Never Dies shows Carol and Jenny running into yet another "Scooby-Doo" Hoax, including a dramatic unmasking, someone in the crowd naming the villain and explaining his motive and special-effects expertise, and the line "and I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling lesbians and your dumb... wait, no, I guess it's just you two."
• Take Our Word for It: invoked A decent portion of the pitch for The Invisible Man sees Dalton mention that comedic scenes are occurring, but due to his own inability to write comedy, he can't actually describe them.
• Take That!: During the guest pitch episode about The Mad Ghoul, and the fact that the movie didn't need a "mad ghoul", Dalton makes a crack that winds up being used for the Cold Open to the episode:
  Dalton: Sorry, I have to make a- I'm sorry, so sorry to interrupt you, but I do need to take a- a shot at you right now, and say "Hey, if it was called The Mad Ghoul, and there wasn't a mad ghoul, what would this be, a Dylan Roth movie?"
  Dylan: (mad) OOH! AH!
  Dalton: Got your ass!
• Terrible Interviewees Montage: In The Invisible Man's Revenge, Jack Griffin attempts to get back into the dating pool at a speed dating event. Much to his frustration, all his dates just want to talk about the Dark Legion.
• Time Skip: Heaven's Gate takes place two years after the previous movie, The Mummy's Hand. In that time, Cassie Falk has written a book that made the Dark Legion into celebrities, and Evelyn O'Connell in particular (as the only known person to go to heaven). Later stories fill in some of the gaps.
• Token Good Teammate: "Good" is doing some VERY heavy lifting there, but Hades is the only Death God who doesn't seem to enjoy torturing and killing humans. He even gives comfort to a dying Hunter. His view seems to be simply that Predation Is Natural.
• Underworld River: The Black Lagoon is a semi-real place that works as a pathway into the afterlife. It is guarded by a creature that several people refer to as The Ferryman, in an explicit reference to Charon.
• Van Helsing Hate Crimes: Adelaide Van Helsing, in Van Helsing she has multiple moments:
  • She attempts to blow a Nandos up to kill Carmilla and Ahmanet. The Legion has to stop he, and when that plan fails Adelaide goes for plan B blowing everyone up, including herself.
  • Adelaide confronts the others about Carol Laemmle's death in Love Never Dies and not killing Carmilla in Invisible Man's Revenge and tells them they have to kill their friend Nick because they're unable to make the hard choices like she is.
  • This backfires at the end when Ahmanet wants a monster and stabs Adelaide with the Dagger of Set and removes Set from Nick, making Adelaide the host. Even worse is unlike Nick, she's unable to resist and Set takes over leading to Death's Door.
• Villain Song: The Phantom of the Opera and the Raven both get their own Villain Songs in the Phantom movies.
• Wedding Smashers: In The Mummy’s Hand, Jenny and Carol’s wedding reception is interrupted by an attack from Claudia.
• Weirdness Magnet: By The Invisible Man's Revenge, it's acknowledged by Dylan & Dalton that Jack has basically become this. And given how, in this movie, Jack returns to Castle Dracula, where he was captured and tortured during House of Dracula by Dudley Hall, who he had killed, only for him to come back to life by possessing a gorilla, it's an understandable conclusion to reach.
  Dalton: The idea of gorilla vampire Goggins was just too good.
• Wham Line: In Heaven's Gate, when Nick explains the consequences of the villain's plan:
  Nick: It's going to sink this whole city!
  Evelyn: I KNOW!
• Wham Episode:
  • Meta-wise, the second half of The Hunchback of Notre Dame features a legitimate first for the podcast: Dylan and Dalton deciding to institute a Retcon after the pitch is finished. Namely, the decision to undo Esmeralda's death.
  • Conversely, Love Never Dies has the death of Carol... and that sticks. Not only that, but the (non-Dracula) post-credits scene sees Jenny, wanting revenge for the death of her wife, hunting down Adelaide Van Helsing to enlist her help in hunting down Carmilla.
  • Things only get worse with Van Helsing: By the end of the movie, Jenny has been brought back around, Adelaide is the new host of Set, Ahmanet is free, and Victor is dead.
  • Death’s Door culminates with all of the Dark Legion (except for Nick) dead, and Ahmanet unleashing Hell on Earth.
  • Hell's Angels, based on Rob Zombie's Firefly Family, falls into this category for Guest Pitches. In prior phases Guest Pitches sometimes introduced Canon Immigrant characters who would come back later, but rarely if ever made any major shake-ups to the status quo. In Hell's Angels, though, the hosts made the conscious decision to let the Firefly Family kill Satan, reducing the number of surviving Death Gods from five to four.
• Who Would Want to Watch Us?: After going to see Love Never Dies and hating it, Carol declares, "They just shouldn't make sequels to beloved musicals! They never work!" Naturally, the episode is a sequel to the podcast's popular musical episode, The Phantom of the Opera.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: Played with. Victor Frankenstein has a Healing Factor, which is strong enough to repair his neck being sawed 3/4 of the way through, but it cannot heal the wounds from his surgical resurrection. Consequently, web of surgical scars across his body in a constant state of infection, with oozing pus frequently mentioned.
• Writer on Board: The writers are not subtle about their dislike of homophobia, racism, capitalism, and Donald Trump. Notably, Dylan attempted to avert this in his first draft of "Night of the Living Dead," trying to write the characters more as an example of The Horseshoe Effect. However, that draft ended up being scraped for several reasons, including the characters in general being insufferable. The draft that was eventually used made the Conservative a very unlikeable Anti-Hero at best, while the more liberal characters act as more traditional heroes.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: In a nod to The Santa Clause, a major plot point in The Dark Universe Holiday Special is that Carol accidentally kills the Krampus... and in turn becomes the Krampus. Luckily, all this amounts to is that the Dark Legion^note barring Nick and Jack, who missed a flight at the start of the special have to help her go around and scare children, while Nick (when he and Jack do arrive at the end) reverses things by reviving the original Krampus.