Michael Myers

In 1963, little Michael kills his sister Judith. In 1978 he escapes the hospital and returns to his hometown. He watches Laurie Strode, kills her friends and chases her through the neighborhood. Loomis shoots him six times, and Michael vanishes. In the original, the credits call him only The Shape.

That same night, Michael follows Laurie to Haddonfield's hospital. He kills anyone in the way and stalks her down one corridor after another. The explanation arrives midway: Laurie is his sister, and that's why he chose her.

In the classic line, Michael spends ten years in a coma after the explosion. When he hears he has a niece, little Jamie Lloyd, he wakes and escapes to Haddonfield. He cuts the town's power and surrounds the girl's house. Family vengeance becomes an obsession.

In the H20 line, Michael loses track of his sister for twenty years. He finds out where she lives in California and turns up at a nearly empty school. Laurie, now with another name and a life of her own, decides to stop running.

In Rob Zombie's remake, Michael is a ten-year-old in a violent home. He's isolated at school, kills animals and commits his first crimes on Halloween night. Fifteen years later he escapes and goes after his baby sister, whom he hasn't seen since he was a child.

In the 2018 trilogy, Michael spent four decades locked up without speaking. When he's transferred, he escapes and returns to Haddonfield, where Laurie has waited forty years. He's less a monster from nowhere and more the center of a fear the town never got over.

Many actors have worn the mask: Nick Castle in 1978, Dick Warlock in II, George P. Wilbur in 4 and 6, Don Shanks in 5, Chris Durand in H20, Brad Loree in Resurrection, Tyler Mane in Rob Zombie's films and James Jude Courtney in the 2018 trilogy.