Magic: The Gathering’s new plane, Duskmourn, is lurking right around the corner, and we’re pretty excited for the arrival of this set to kick off the spookiest month of the year.
As well as some truly terrifying card and creature designs, MTG Duskmourn has loads of references to horror movies (and other media) released in the past 40 years.
While it’s the concept of a haunted house apocalypse that excites us about this set rather than the tropes and references, it is quite fun to go through and pick them all out – so we’ve made this guide as a comprehensive guide to every horror reference in Duskmourn.
Almost every card in this MTG set could be linked, with a bit of squinting and stretching, to some past horror property. So for this list we’ve tried to avoid ambiguous cases, and only include cards that we’re 90% sure are deliberate references or pastiches.
For instance, we could say Unidentified Hovership is a reference to Nope, because it’s a popular horror movie that has a spaceship. But nope, we’ve left that, and cards like it, off the list.
- Exorcise, Untimely Malfunction, Ghost Vacuum- Ghostbusters
- Friendly Ghost – Casper
- Orphans of the Wheat – the name is obviously a reference to Children of the Corn but the art is more like the Midwich Cuckoos or Children of the Damned
- Unsettling Twins – the dead twins from The Shining
- Possessed Goat – Possibly a reference to Black Philip from The Witch
- Toy Phone – Skinamarink
- Trapped in the Screen – Carol Anne is trapped in another dimension in the TV static in Poltergeist
- Get Out – The name of a popular horror movie (even if the card has nothing to do with the concept)
- Piranha Fly – A reference to the flying piranha in James Cameron’s Piranha II: The Spawning
- Scrabbling Skullcrab – Head crabs from Half Life, themselves inspired by Alien’s Facehuggers
- Unable to Scream – Probably a reference to Dead Silence – a movie involving a killer doll that attacks you if you scream
- Came Back Wrong – Evil Dead
- Dashing Bloodsucker – Holy crap, it’s Blade!
- Killer’s Mask – Friday the 13th
- Let’s Play a Game, Grab the Prize, Trial of Agony – SAW
- Osseous Stickwalker – a living Wickerman
- Unstoppable Slasher – Halloween’s Michael Myers
- Clockwork Percussionist – Stephen King’s The Monkey
- Haunted Screen and Cursed Recording – The Ring
- Ragged Plaything and Arabella, Abandoned Doll – Anabelle
- Vicious Clown – Child’s Play
- Anthropede – A literal Human Centipede
- Altanak, the Thrice-Called and Say Its Name – Beetlejuice, Bloody Mary, or Candyman
- Break Down the Door – The Shining
- Omnivorous Flytrap – Little Shop of Horrors
- Disturbing Mirth – All the Razorkin are part SAW, part Hellraiser, but this one gives off particularly Cenobitey vibes.
- The Jolly Balloon Man – IT and Junji Ito’s Hanging Balloons
- Murder – The composition of this art with the knife + scream makes us think it’s a deliberate Psycho reference
- Midnight Mayhem – Gremlins
- Shroudstomper – Fresno Nightcrawler cryptid
- The Swarmweaver – Wicker Man (not the bees!)
- Spineseeker Centipede – The Tingler
Aside from a few edge cases which we decided to leave off, this is every single reference we spotted. For more Magic: The Gathering content, check out our guide to the best MTG Arena decks, and our list of all MTG Arena codes that still work.
Source: Wargamer
