Ah, Halloween! A time for ghosts. A time for ghouls! A time to take a look at io9’s annual checklist of essentially the most complicated, most doubtful, and most terrible costumes of the season.

What appears to set 2021’s costumes other than the badness of 2019 and 2020’s choices is how little their makers gave a crap about them. What you’ll see listed below are among the laziest-designed, least imaginative, cheapest-looking outfits you may overpay for, and there are such a lot of accessible that we needed to restrict our checklist to solely nerd entertainment-inspired costumes (and I imply “inspired” extremely loosely). I don’t know if low gross sales throughout the pandemic worn out the businesses’ creativity for this yr’s choices however ex-staffer Beth Elderkin, who usually places this checklist collectively (Beth, we miss you!), actually left me with the Halloween dregs.

As at all times, we’re not condemning attractive costumes right here—you need to put on no matter feels good, everytime you need!—we’re condemning very, very dangerous costume creations. Expose as a lot flesh as you need at your pandemic-safe Halloween events this yr! Just put on one thing higher than these nightmares.