While Jack Black’s fictionalized take on R.L. Stine played a big part in the first Goosebumps movie, his role was pared down significantly in the sequel, Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween. Goosebumps proved a surprising success when the family-friendly horror-comedy was released in 2015. Loosely based on the children’s horror novel series of the same name from the ‘90s, Goosebumps didn’t adapt any of these specific bestselling kid’s books to the big screen. Instead, it gave the novel series a clever meta-spin as Jack Black portrayed a fictionalized version of R.L. Stine, the real-life writer who authored hundreds of books in the Goosebumps series and its many spinoffs.
In 2015’s Goosebumps, Stine is a recluse whose original manuscripts hold captive the many monsters of his novels. Naturally, a pair of well-meaning local kids end up unleashing chaos when they open all of these manuscripts and release these villains in their town. While Disney’s Goosebumps reboot takes a darker approach to the material, 2015’s Goosebumps kept things light and silly as Stine and the movie’s young heroes attempted to recapture the fictional monsters wreaking havoc in their town. However, the movie’s 2018 sequel, Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween didn’t bring back Stine for long, and the movie never explained why.
R.L. Stine’s Role In Goosebumps 2 Explained
R.L. Stine does appear in Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween, but the character plays a much smaller role than he did in the original movie. In Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween, Stine is once again a recluse who can’t be easily contacted. However, while he is forced to work with the original movie’s young heroes early on in that first film, in the sequel, he spends most of the time making his way to Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween’s small-town setting. While Black’s character arrives in time to deliver the funniest of Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween’s horror Easter eggs, he is only present for the sequel’s big finale and doesn’t save the day.
Instead, it is the main characters of Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween who manage to defeat Slappy the Dummy’s malign machinations themselves. The kids outsmart Slappy and get all of Stine’s imagined monsters back into the writer’s manuscripts in the process, only for Stine to appear and congratulate them on their efforts after the fact. While he gets to the scene of the catastrophe as fast as possible, Stine doesn’t arrive in time to play a role in the climax. However, since Black also voices Slappy the Dummy, the actor does play a major role in the sequel even if his part as Stine only has a few minutes onscreen.
Where To Find The Real R.L. Stine In Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween
While Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween pays homage to the many classic monster movies that inspired the Goosebumps books, this is not the only way that the sequel acknowledges R.L. Stine’s work. As he did in the original 2015 movie, the real Stine appears onscreen briefly in a cameo role. He plays Principal Harrison in the sequel, while he plays a teacher named Mr. Black in the original movie. In both franchise outings, Stine’s small roles are blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearances for eagle-eyed fans. Thus, Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween does feature the real R.L. Stine, even if the Goosebumps sequel didn’t give Jack Black’s version of him much to do.
