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Addams Family Values is a 1993 American supernatural Black Comedy film directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and written by Paul Rudnick, a sequel to 1991's The Addams Family based on the characters created on The Addams Family cartoons by Charles Addams. All of the family's actors reprise their roles from the first film, with the exception of Judith Malina as Grandmama, who was replaced by Carol Kane.

The plot involves the family having a new baby called Pubert, Wednesday and Pugsley getting sent to summer camp, and Uncle Fester meeting Debbie Jellinsky (Joan Cusack), a love interest who steals him away from the family... and secretly plans to murder all of them in an attempt to gain their fortune.

A made-for-video movie, Addams Family Reunion, was released by Warner Home Video in 1998; despite taking many of its stylistic cues from this and the previous film, it is not in the same continuity, only existing to serve as the Pilot Movie/"proof of concept" for the then-upcoming TV series The New Addams Family. See this page for more information.

Tropes Applying to Addams Family Values:

• Added Alliterative Appeal:
  • Near the beginning of Gomez's speech to the family and partygoers at the film's end, he toasts, "To mirth. To merriment. To manslaughter."
  • Gary and Becky begin their announcement of Camp Chippewa's upcoming Thanksgiving play thusly:
  Gary: Heads up, campers! Jamboree's only a few weeks away, and you know what that means! Clean cabins...
  Becky: ...creating with clay...
  Gary and Becky: ...and canoes, canoes, canoes!
• Adults Are Useless: The actors in the Thanksgiving play are being attacked or are attacking while the adults in the audience either just sit there and do nothing to save their children or just leave. Averted with Mr. and Mrs. Buckman who actually try to do something, but get splattered in the face with pies.
• Alliterative Name: Camp Chippewa; its Maximum Fun Chamber, the Harmony Hut; and one of its head counselors, Gary Granger.
• All Part of the Show: When Wednesday goes Off the Rails during the Thanksgiving play, the audience doesn't get that she's off-script until well after the set is on fire. The fact that they clearly do intend to burn Amanda alive at least gets her parents moving.
• All There in the Manual: The novelization by Todd Strasser gives the name of the girl reading the baby story to Wednesday and Pugsley as Rebecca Sloane. When she replies to Wednesday’s “They had sex” comment, Wednesday is about to give her talk when the adults accompanying Rebecca take her away.
• Alpha Bitch: Though she starts out as more of a vapid, spoiled airhead, Amanda Buckman morphs into one of these over the course of the movie, complete with her own posse. Unsurprisingly, every single one of them is cast as a pilgrim in Gary's play. She's also definitely classist; note how she derogatorily refers to Debbie as "the help".
• And Call Him "George": What nets Debbie the nanny job is when she holds Pubert and says she loves babies so much she sometimes wants to hug and squeeze them until there’s not a drop of air left inside. Gomez and Morticia hire her immediately.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: When Fester escapes from Debbie's mansion with Thing, we have this gem:
  Debbie: I'll get you! And your little hand too!!
• Arrows on Fire: Used by the kids dressed as Native Americans when they turn the Thanksgiving play into a rampage.
• Arson, Murder, and Admiration: We get the following exchanges between Morticia and Debbie:
  Morticia: You have enslaved him. You have placed Fester under some strange sexual spell. I respect that.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: When the family comes to Debbie's house to visit Fester:
  Morticia: You have gone too far. You have married Fester. You have destroyed his spirit. You have taken him from us. All that I could forgive. But Debbie?
  Debbie: What?
  Morticia: [reproachfully, eyeing the getup she's put Fester in] Pastels?
• Artistic License – History: Parodied with the camp counselor's Thanksgiving pageant. Wednesday decides to make it... a little more accurate (not only in spirit, but in fact. Pocahontas was a Powhatan, not a Chippewa, and was not present at the first Thanksgiving. The Chippewa are native to the Midwest, and would not have been present either. The Native Americans who were present were the Wampanoag. Also, by the first Thanksgiving, Pocahontas was dead. She died three years before the Plymouth Colony was founded, and even if she had survived she wouldn't have been anywhere nearby, because she was married to Englishman John Rolfe and living in England at the time).
• Ascended Extra: Mercedes McNab, who played the girl scout from the first movie, plays Amanda in the sequel. It's entirely possible that they're the same character, which would make it a retroactive Early-Bird Cameo.
• Badass Adorable: Baby Pubert. See Bare-Handed Blade Block and Big Damn Heroes to see why.
• Bad "Bad Acting": When playing a drowning victim during swimming lessons, Amanda puts on an absurdly melodramatic and childish display of Hollywood Drowning.
• Bad Taste Call-Out: Morticia's confrontation with Fashion-Victim Villain Debbie in her "The Reason You Suck" Speech, in a subversion, boils down to this. Morticia could live with Debbie marrying Fester for his money, driving a wedge between him and the family, and trying to kill him. "But, Debbie... Pastels?"
• Bare-Handed Blade Block:
  • Baby Pubert does this to a guillotine blade one-handed... with just his thumb and forefinger. It must be reiterated that he's a baby. It must also be reiterated that he's an Addams.
  • Gomez also manages to catch a thrown butter knife in his teeth.
• Bearded Baby: Pubert was born with a Dapper Pencil Mustache like his father.
• Berserk Button:
  • A very subtle one with Pugsley. Pugsley almost never gets angry, but he clearly takes offense when Amanda refers to the Addams' as circus people (keep in mind, she's probably thinking "freak show", he's probably thinking "harmless happy clown").
  • MALIBU BAR-BIE.
    Gomez: The nightmare.
    Morticia: The nerve.
• Big Damn Heroes: Baby Pubert. He makes his way through the house via a chain reaction of events and manipulates the wires just as Debbie throws the switch, causing her to be incinerated.
• Big Electric Switch: Debbie has the entire clan (minus baby Pubert) wired up to electric chairs with an enormously-handled electric switch. Gomez and Morticia have a marital-torture nostalgia-fest whilst Pubert does some handy re-wiring.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
  • Debbie, Uncle Fester's love interest, who is a serial killer known as "the Black Widow". She murdered her parents and her three rich husbands and plans to do the same to Fester. But since he's an Addams, he can withstand most things that would kill a normal human, which frustrates her to no end.
  • Amanda Buckman and the Camp Chippewa counselors, who are also Politically Incorrect Villains to boot.
• Bizarre Human Biology: Pubert is born with a pencil-thin, yet full mustache, And when he's later "cursed", he is now clean-shaven with a mop of blonde hair.
• Black Widow: Debbie Jellinsky is one of these. She gets her claws into Fester and marries him, but, Fester being one of the Addams clan, she doesn't quite succeed at the killing part.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Played for (ironic) horror when Fester's absence gives Pubert a condition that turns him from pale-skinned and mustachioed into a stereotypically cute baby with a healthy complexion and curly blond hair. Granny tells Gomez and Morticia that the condition might be incurable:
  Granny: He could stay this way for years, perhaps forever. He could become… a lawyer...
  Gomez: I won't listen!
  Granny: ...an orthodontist...
  Morticia: Mama, stop!
  Granny: ...PRESIDENT.
  [Lurch cringes in sorrow.]
  Gomez: (crying out to God) Please! I beg you! Take me!
• A Boy, a Girl, and a Baby Family: Once Pubert is born.
  Wednesday: Well, they only need one boy...
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Gomez giving a toast at the end of the movie:

  Gomez: To mirth, to merriment, to manslaughter.

• Brick Joke:
  • In the first movie we see the family motto, "We Gladly Feast on Those Who Would Subdue Us". Here, the camp counselors try to subdue Wednesday and Pugsley, and are last seen being roasted on a spit by Wednesday's accomplices.
  • In Values, when Debbie finally tells Fester she doesn't love him, she launches into a "The Reason You Suck" Speech and concludes with, "No woman in her right mind would love you!" At the end, Fester meets his perfect match in the form of Dementia. "It means insanity."
• Brutal Honesty:
  • Wednesday and Pugsley are waiting at the hospital while Morticia gives birth. Another child with them tells an exaggerated Delivery Stork story, so Wednesday responds, complete with dramatic zoom:
  Pugsley: Our parents are having a baby, too!
  Wednesday: They had sex.
  • Near the end, Fester wonders what he was thinking when he chose Debbie over the family. Wednesday knows:
  Wednesday: Physical pleasure.
• Buried Alive: The film opening includes Wednesday and Grandmama burying a cat. When it meows, Wednesday shakes the box and shushes it.
• Character Filibuster: Wednesday goes off-script during the summer camp pageant to on an extended rant about the play's inaccuracy. She gives a "Break Them by Talking" lecture about how the colonizers talk about how they are civilized, but they will put the actual natives on reservations, making them sell bracelets by the road and live in mobile homes. Also, Pocahontas wasn't even Chippewa or at the first Thanksgiving so this is a stupid play based on glorifying history. Everyone is in Stunned Silence, except for Amanda complaining that Wednesday is improvising and failing to see the danger.
• The Chessmaster: Wednesday, even when sent to Camp Chippewa. Debbie knows she's on to her, so she sends them to the worst place she can think of for kids like them. But Wednesday gets one up on her, the counselors, and their Crapsaccharine World of a summer camp.
• Cold Ham: Anjelica Huston as Morticia — she's serene, calm, and the only thing that gets her to alter the pitch of her voice at all is Gomez. This does not stop her from being a tour de force that complements Raúl Juliá's significantly more exuberant performance perfectly. Witness in the opening, where a simple "Oui" from her wrings out enough characterization to show her Too Kinky to Torture, Happily Married, and The Stoic all while keeping up with Gomez's frantic attention.
• Comically Missing the Point: When Debbie's trying to seduce Fester, she talks about always wanting to meet a man who's "untouched, pure" like him. He replies "You'll meet him!"
• The Comically Serious: Both Morticia and Wednesday work this way, though in different ways:
  • Morticia's humor comes from her taking all the insanity around her as perfectly normal.
  • While Wednesday's lines tend to be funny, a big aspect of the humor comes from her delivery of them with the same deadpan inflection. This makes her OOC Is Serious Business period even more disturbing.
• Coming of Age Story: For Wednesday.
• Condescending Compassion: The Thanksgiving play is dripping with this until Wednesday goes off-script. The pilgrims' lines are almost entirely about how they must be good and gracious hosts towards the "primitive savages" with "strange customs", and while noting that said "savages" are civilized, the pilgrims still constantly praise and extol their own civilization as being much better because they have shoes, shampoo, and last names.
• Cooked to Death: Played for pitch-Black Comedy. At Fester's bachelor party, Gomez surprises him with a huge cake and shouts "Ta-da!", clearly expecting a stripper to pop out of it. When nothing happens, Gomez opens the top of the cake and smoke wafts out, revealing Lurch had baked the cake with her inside. Being the Addamses, they all have a hearty laugh about it.
  Gomez: That poor girl. Lurch, was she in there before you baked?
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: The "Harmony Hut" at the summer camp. It's a hut filled with posters of kittens, in which Joel & the Addams' kids are forced to sit and watch upbeat Disney movies. And when they're caught trying to sneak out of the camp, Becky states that they won't be punished — Gary agrees, deciding that they should all sing "Kumbaya" for them instead, to Wednesday's obvious dismay.
• Crazy-Prepared: When Debbie gets back to the Addams mansion once her murderous intent is revealed.
  Debbie: I don't want to hurt anybody. I don't enjoy hurting anybody. I don't like guns, or bombs, or electric chairs, but sometimes people just don't listen, and so I have to use persuasion... and slides.
• Creator Cameo: Director Barry Sonnenfeld plays Joel Glicker's Henpecked Husband father.
• Dapper Pencil Mustache: Pubert Addams was born with a duplicate of Gomez's mustache, and is dressed in suits that are tailored for a baby.
• Darker and Edgier: Family Values in general is rather direct about sex, such as Wednesday bluntly telling a young girl who believes in the Delivery Stork where babies really come from, the fact that Fester watches Gomez and Morticia having sex through keyholes, and being offered Thing as a way to stave off loneliness. Not to mention the centerfold gag of their mother.
• Deadpan Snarker: For his bit part as the desk sergeant, Nathan Lane drips with this:
  Gomez: They have moved into a large, expensive house where they make love constantly!
  Desk Sergeant: I hate when that happens.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Debbie provides a slide show of her life to the Addams before she attempts to electrocute them all. She explains how when she was 9 she wanted a Ballerina Barbie. When her parents gave her a Malibu Barbie instead, she burned down the house with them in it. She also explains that she killed one of her husbands because he refused to give her a new car that year.
  Debbie: I was a ballerina! Graceful! Delicate! They had to go.
  Debbie: “Sorry, Debbie. No Mercedes this year; we have to set an example.” Oh yeah? SET THIS!
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Camp Chippewa is run with very narrow ideals of what children should be and believe in, the kids are fenced in, and dissenters are allegorically "re-educated" by being forced to watch happy movies. It's shown through the division of the disfavored kids and the favored kids that the favored kids form an eerie pack exclusively of light-skinned blond children, evoking a certain historical ideology. All of the outcasts are unconventional, non-white, fat, or disabled, and to drive the point home, the deuteragonist of the camp subplot, Joel, is all but outright stated to be Jewish.
• Dramatic Gun Cock: After Fester successfully returns home and reunite with his family, Debbie suddenly shows up bringing a shotgun and cocks it before strapping the Addams family to the electric chairs, intending to murder them.
• Dull Surprise: When Wednesday breaks out The Un-Smile, it's absolutely horrifying (but not to the head counselors). Even the girls at camp know something's wrong.
• Enfant Terrible: Pubert breathes fire, can catch blades with his tiny baby hands and killed Debbie.
• Everyone Has Standards / Even Evil Has Standards:
  • The Addamses are not bigots or racists, if Wednesday's speech during the incredibly racist Thanksgiving play in Values is to be taken further than face value and is her expressing disgust over how white people have spent centuries dehumanizing Native Americans. Especially considering she's a white girl being forced to play Pocahontas.
  • Debbie of all people is the one who saves Pubert from one of his older siblings' murder attempts — though it's implied she's unaware it even happened, and just happened to pick him up and walk away at the right time.
• Evil Laugh:
  • Gary Granger puts his on display after yanking Joel Glicker's copy of A Brief History Of Time from him as part of his punishment.
  • Debbie Jellinsky, of course, gives us a few of her own, most notably after Fester asks her "But don't you love me?" after she's tried to blow their house up with him in it.
• Faint in Shock: Gomez immediately faints when Pubert turns "normal".
• Faux Horrific:
  • After Debbie freezes the family out, Gomez files a complaint to the police, describing Fester's unholy torment in being married to her. He doesn't exactly sell them on the gravity of the situation:
  Gomez: (loudly) I demand... JUSTICE! SOMEONE has married my brother!
  Desk Sergeant: (faux shock) No.
  Gomez: She took him to Hawaii!
  Desk Sergeant: (sarcastic) Get outta here!
  Gomez: They have moved into a large, expensive home, where they make love, CONSTANTLY!
  Desk Sergeant: I hate when that happens.
  Gomez: Arrest her at once, without delay!
  Desk Sergeant: ...Who?!
  Gomez: DEBBIE! My brother's WIFE! The TEMPTRESS of WAI-KIKI!
  Desk Sergeant: (helpless; begging) Who are you? WHAT are you? Who moved the rock?!
  Gomez: Officer, you MUST issue a subpoena. I believe they own...
  Morticia: (gasping) Gomez, NO!
  Gomez: (bellowing) A BUICK!!
  • After Pubert becomes blonde and rosy cheeked, Grandmama explains that not only will he get worse, but the change could become permanent. Of course, this IS the Addams family we're talking about, so they consider it a genuine threat:
  Grandmama: We're talkin' dimples!
  Gomez: NOT in this house!

  • Also, he could become a lawyer^note Which, ironically, is what Gomez originally was, an orthodontist, or even... President.
  • Wednesday's contribution to the horror story at camp:
  Wednesday: And so, the next night, the ghost returned to the haunted cabin, and he said to the campers — "None of you really believe in me, so I'll have to prove my power." And the next morning, when the campers woke up... all of their old noses had grown back.
  [Cue screams and a smirking Wednesday]

  • Amanda is particularly horrified.
  • Debbie's parents bought her... Malibu Barbie instead of Ballerina Barbie. They had to go.
  • Wednesday's fellow camp outcast Joel Glicker is sentenced to the "Harmony Hut" (along with Wednesday and Pugsley), which is adorned from wall to wall with the most Sickeningly Sweet images imaginable, all designed to break non-conformists. Joel instantly bursts into a screaming fit upon seeing Michael Jackson's "Heal the World" poster.
• Flanderization: Before Fester gets his memory back at the end of the first film, he's a street-smart tough guy. But in Values he's regressed into a childlike oddball with No Social Skills. Although the thing is his personality in the second film is probably closer to the original character from the TV series and comic strip, at the beginning of the first film he doesn't know he's Fester and is effectively a different person, as he spends more time with the family he gradually starts to feel more like an Addams. And lets face it even as an amnesiac he was a Psychopathic Manchild just more conniving thanks to Craven's influence. But if you compare the two films it is slightly odd how much he regresses in the sequel.
• Fluffy Fashion Feathers: Debbie greets the Addams in one scene wearing a nightgown trimmed with white feathers.
• Foreshadowing: Values begins with Fester howling at the moon, showing the audience that he's lonely (in a romantic sense).
• Freudian Excuse: Played for laughs and satirised as it is revealed that the reason that turned Debbie into a psychopath was that her parents... gifted her a Malibu Barbie instead of a Ballerina Barbie that she wanted for her tenth birthday.
• Funny Background Event:
  • When Wednesday and Joel have their "love at first sight" moment, Pugsley is trying to hang himself in the background to get out of staying at the camp. Doubles as pretty literal Gallows Humor.
  • Wednesday delivers her "The Reason You Suck" Speech just before she and the Natives destroy the Thanksgiving play. Meanwhile, Joel, dressed as Running Bear, stands right behind her looking the giddiest we've ever seen him as he anticipates what's about to come next.
  • When Gomez talks of the tortures he'd endure if Fester only asked, Morticia sits up straighter with each one, clearly getting turned on.
• Geeky Turn-On: Well, homicidal one, as Wednesday scooched closer to Joel after a revelation regarding his allergies:
  Joel: You know what happens if my mom uses fabric softener?
  Wednesday: What?
  Joel: I die.
• Genre Blindness:
  • Debbie has this in spades. After failing to kill Fester through electrocution, she wraps up a bomb as a "present"... and he actually guesses what it is before brushing it off with "I know. Wait for my birthday!"
  • On top of that, she legitimately doesn't realize that the Addams clan would gleefully accept her as a member of the family, homicidal mania, greed, and all, as long as she didn't keep them from seeing Fester.
• Gift Shake: Fester does this to the present Debbie gives him, correctly deducing it's a bomb:
  Debbie: What?!
  Fester: I know, I know... wait for my birthday!
• Held Gaze: How Wednesday meets her love interest.
• Heroic BSoD: Gomez gets one (complete with "Take me! Take me!") when informed that his possessed baby might one day grow up to be president.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Debbie plans on electrocuting all the Addamses and, due to accidental interference from Pubert, ends up electrocuting herself to death.
• Hollywood Genetics: Blonde and blue-eyed Amanda somehow came from two dark-haired parents.
• Hollywood Healing: Amanda Buckman is tied to a stake and is implied to have been burned alive by Wednesday. However, she is seen with her parents on a plane towards the end of the film and she hasn't even the slightest scorch.
• Humiliation Conga: The Thanksgiving play, and doubles as a Moment of Awesome for Wednesday.
• I Have Boobs, You Must Obey!: When the family (sans Wednesday and Pugsley) visits Fester and Debbie at their house in Hawaii, Debbie asks Fester if he wants to speak to them, then gets him to turn them away by flaunting her breasts a bit in his direction.
• Incredibly Lame Fun: When Fester is trying to guess the gift that Debbie got him for their three-week anniversary (it's a bomb), his initial two guesses give off vibes of this:
  Fester: Oh, please, pleeeeeeease! What is it?! Is it... string?
  Debbie: You never know!
  Fester: Haaaaa! Is it... is it... a dog toy?
  Debbie: Just you wait!
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Shortly after meeting Amanda and her family, Wednesday takes a quick drink of poison.
• Inexplicably Awesome: Baby Pubert. Well, he IS an Addams... that explains most things.
• Jewish and Nerdy: Joel Glicker, and how:
  Wednesday: What are you in for?
  Joel: I wouldn't go horseback riding.
  Wednesday: That's all?
  Joel: And I wouldn't make a birdhouse.
  Wednesday: Why not?
  Joel: I just wanted to read.
  Gary: [Popping his head back in to swipe Joel's copy of A Brief History Of Time and laugh in true villain fashion] Not on my time, four-eyes!
• Jewish Mother: Joel's mother, and how:
  Joel's Mother: [watching him as Running Bear in the Thanksgiving play] 20 grand for summer camp, he's Mister Woo-Woo?
• Jump Scare: Thing bursting out of Debbie's grave and grabbing Joel's arm at the end of the second could count as one.
• Jumping Out of a Cake: Gruesome example from the second film. Gomez tries to have this done at Fester's bachelor party, but the stripper missed her cue to jump out twice:
  Gomez: [peers into cake] ...That poor girl. Lurch, was she in there before you baked?
  Lurch: [growls contritely]
  [Awkward murmuring from the party-goers]
  Gomez: C'est la vie! [everyone laughs]
• Killer Rabbit: In the climax, it is Pubert, the weeks-old toddler, who rescues the family by murdering Debbie.
• Knife Outline: Addams Family Values has Gomez literally throwing Fester against a wall and outlining him with knives after they reminisce about their childhood Sibling Rivalry.
• Let's Meet the Meat: During the awful Thanksgiving play, the kids actually have a song where the edible items sing, dance, and invite the audience to eat them. Later, Pugsley is a turkey brought by the Native Americans to the Pilgrims.
  Pugsley: I am a turkey. Kill me!
• Light Is Not Good:
  • The most flagrant example being the camp counselors, Gary and Becky. Not for the way they treat Wednesday and Pugsley (that is, until they force them to watch saccharine movies and they return — apparently — converted to their upbeat philosophy), but the way they heavily favor the rich, white, blonde kids over the minority campers, even casting the latter group as the "savage" Native Americans in Gary's play. Becky can't even pronounce two of their names, Consuela and Jamal.
  • In introducing the play, Gary refers to the two factions as white meat and dark meat.
  • Debbie's fondness for white outfits and pastel decor doesn't make her any less of an Ax-Crazy Black Widow.
• Look Ma, No Plane!: In the climax, the baby somehow gets catapulted high enough to come eye-to-eye with a commuter plane... specifically, the one that's currently flying the Alpha Bitch and her family home from the disaster that was summer camp.
• Love Martyr: Fester is willing cut off contact with the rest of his family and happily take all of Debbie's verbal and emotional abuse on account of how desperately in love with her he is. Even in the climax when Debbie has him and the rest of the Addamses strapped to electric chairs, he still puts all the blame on himself for their relationship not working. It isn't until several months later that he seems to have finally gotten over her (or at least moved on the point where he can laugh about it).
• Maximum Fun Chamber: Camp Chippewa has one of these in the form of the Harmony Hut, which is wallpapered in motivational posters and home to Disney movies on permanent loop. Wednesday gets put in there when she doesn't want the part of Pocahontas in the absurdly racist play the camp's putting on.
• Meaningful Name: Amanda Buckman has buck teeth.
• Motive Rant: Parodied with Debbie, who prepares a slide show for hers. Also because her audience is the Addams they respond with compassion and understanding as she explains murdering her parents for getting her the wrong Barbie.
• Murder by Cremation: For his brother's wedding, Gomez orders a huge cake with a stripper inside. However, when the cake is delivered, it turns out that the unwitting butler put the girl inside before he put it into the oven.
• Mythology Gag: This film has its own references to the older Charles Addams cartoons.
  • One "family" cartoon sees the mother discussing evil Biblical names for a male child. Values shows Gomez and Morticia discussing that they considered villainous names, including of dictators, for Pubert.
  • Debbie's character inherits traits from recurring Addams cartoons featuring treacherous and murderous spouses. Gags where Debbie rehearses her grieving speeches and is revealed to have ordered a hearse ahead of time and only one plane ticket back from her honeymoon all parallel Addams gags like a woman happily putting on widow's weeds while her still-living husband watches.
  • A few moments and bits of dialogue refer to Addams' original notes for the characters that he drafted for the 1960s series:
    • At Camp Chippewa, Gomez laments that he and the Family are surrounded by "fresh air" and "the scent of pine". He then proceeds to take a cigar out of his jacket pocket and gives it to Pugsley to smoke. Both the original notes for Gomez and Pugsley note that the boy is "occasionally allowed a cigar".
    • When Morticia shows Debbie to her bedroom, she tells Debbie to "scream if you need anything". The original notes for Morticia note she is a "great hostess" and state "if a guest needs anything, he is advised to scream for it".
• Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!: Amanda goads Wednesday into adding to the ghost story by insinuating she's not up to it. Wednesday's creative spin makes them wish they hadn't.
• No Body Left Behind: Debbie is electrocuted to ashes from Pubert's interference. All that's left are her shoes and credit cards.
• No, Except Yes: When Gomez questions Pugsley and Wednesday if they hate their newest baby sibling after dropping him from the roof.
  Pugsley: We don't hate him. We just wanted to play with him.
  Wednesday: Especially his head.
• Obviously Evil: Debbie's successful crime spree tugs at Willing Suspension of Disbelief when she gets to Fester. She couldn't look more guilty if she tried. Putting aside that the Addams see this as normal, the authorities would have noticed such oddities as ordering a hearse prior to the victim's death. Wednesday even lampshades this towards the end. Not to mention this noticeable line:
  Debbie: Just a single. I'll be a widow.
  Clerk: (stares silently)
• Out-of-Character Alert: Gomez and Mortica recieve a letter from Fester demanding to never see them again. Compared to the previous film, the family's bonds have rekindled enough with Fester for them to instantly know something is wrong and they go to confront Debbie.
• Pretty in Mink: Gomez and Mortica are at a fancy restaurant where several ladies in the background are wearing fur wraps.
• Plastic Bitch: Wednesday is forced by her stuck-up summer camp cabin buddies to participate in a ghost story telling game where each participant adds to the story. She ends it on the punchline that the ghost makes all of their old noses grow back, prompting all of the other girls to scream in sheer horror.
• Pity the Kidnapper: Done in-universe by the Addams when Debbie is doing her Motive Rant. As they're all as equally insane and homicidal as she is, they're perfectly understanding and even celebratory with her many kills.
  Grandmama: What about Debbie?
• Politically Incorrect Villain:
  • The camp counselors in the sequel not so subtly favor the children of wealthy WASPs over the minority campers (and Wednesday & Pugsley).
  Becky: But, of course, not everyone can be a star. Let's not forget our cheery little Chippewas: Mordecai, Yang, Esther, um... Consuela, Irwin, and, um... I'm still not sure just how to pronounce this. [Black camper rolls his eyes while barely suppressing a smirk] Jam-il? Jame-al?
  Gary: Jamal?
  Becky: Whatever.
  • The Thanksgiving play written by Gary is filled with blatant racism, with Native Americans constantly being called savages and primitive and praising the lead Pilgrim girl for having "skin as white as milk".
  • Gleefully subverted by Wednesday during the Thanksgiving play to the applause of a grateful nation. She basically leads the minority campers (being forced to play racist Native American stereotypes) in a full-scale assault on the rich white kids, as both symbolic revenge for the real Native Americans, and literal revenge on the kids and counselors who had been dicks to them the entire time.
  • Getting cast as a native is implied to be a plot to humiliate the less-than-perfect campers, if the reactions of the parents in the audience are anything to go by.
• Prima Donna Director: Gary is a bit over passionate about their Thanksgiving play, striking and dismissing campers during rehearsal. When Wednesday begins breaking from script, he's ready to wring her neck (he proves to be out of his league there however).
• Redemption Equals Death: Both played with and averted. Fester treated his Ax-Crazy wife with nothing but love and respect, but she's so insane she simply keeps going with her plan to kill him, not realizing she actually has someone who cares. Fester is perfectly willing to die for whatever perceived crimes he's committed. Then, when she actually dies, she's just... a pile of dust. No redemption there. Of course she wanted love... and jewelry which Fester would have gladly provided.
• Reel Torture: Wednesday, Pugsley and another boy refuse to take part in the summer camp play. As punishment, the camp counselors lock them in an isolation cabin and make them watch various films such as The Sound of Music and Annie, which they can't stand.
• Rich Bitch: Debbie and Amanda.
• Robbing the Dead: Fester gives Debbie his late mother's ring when they get engaged. Gomez and Morticia recognise it immediately because Mother Addams was buried with it. Cue Debbie holding up a dirt-covered shovel and grinning, making it clear she and Fester dug up the grave to get the ring.
• Room 101: Played for laughs in the second movie. The camp counselors send Joel, Wednesday, and Pugsley to an isolated cabin apparently used for just this purpose. They're made to endure horrors like The Sound of Music, The Brady Bunch, Annie, and various Disney movies.
• Rube Goldberg Device: Pubert's trip through the house to save his family is an unintentional one (i.e. not set up beforehand, just a lot of random occurrences that fit together in a Goldbergian manner).
• Sarcasm Mode: You could think that the entire Addams family had gone into this hardcore when they're seeming to humor the ranting Debbie. Actually, considering their previous behavior, they're probably sincerely empathizing with her.
  Grandmama: An axe! That takes me back.
• Screaming Birth:
  • Averted during Pubert's birth. All Morticia emits are a few barely audible grunts. Totally justified, however, when you consider their sex life.
    • Gomez asks Morticia if she's in unbearable, inhuman pain. She smiles coyly and says "Oui", bringing on Gomez's usual kissing response. The doctor has to remind them that there's a baby to deliver.
  • Seriously, who didn't burst out laughing at Morticia's first line in that movie?
  Morticia: Marvelous news. I'm going to have a baby. [beat] Right now.
  [cut to Morticia being rushed through the hospital]
• Series Continuity Error: Debbie forces Fester to get hair plugs because she doesn't like his baldness. This is odd because the previous film shows that Fester can grow hair and merely shaves his head by choice (unlike in the TV series, where Fester is naturally bald). Unless the lightning strike to Fester's head in the first film destroyed the hair follicles in his scalp.
• Serious Business: Getting the wrong kind of Barbie doll for her birthday was enough to convince Debbie to murder her parents.
• Shout-Out:
  • At a graveside, a hand lunges up out of the ground.
  • When the three rebellious children are sent to the "Harmony Hut" at the summer camp, excerpts of The Sound of Music, The Brady Bunch, and Annie emanate from it.
• Sinister Tango Music: Gomez and Morticia dance a tango that is equal parts sinister and sexy.
• Skewed Priorities: The Native "outcasts" are running amok on the Thanksgiving play set, chasing after the spoiled pilgrims and shooting flaming arrows at the straw buildings and setpieces, and what does camp co-director Gary Granger think to say? "Children, stop it! You're destroying my text!"
• Spank of Life: At the beginning of the movie, while the doctors are delivering Morticia's baby, Thing hands a nurse a pair of forceps. The nurse freaks and throws Thing into the next room where it smacks a newborn baby on the tushie, just as a nurse was about to do the same thing.
• Spoiled Brat: Most of the kids at Camp Chippewa in Addams Family Values. Especially Amanda.
• Stepford Smiler: Imposed at Camp Chippewa — even if you're not actually perky, you'd damn well better act like you are or suffer a Cool and Unusual Punishment.
  Becky: We are going to make an ex-am-ple. We are going to show that anyone, no matter how odd, or pale, or chubby, can still have a darn good time. Whether they like it or not.
• Strong Family Resemblance:
  • Pubert has a mustache, thus completing the Generation Xerox with Morticia/Wednesday and Fester/Pugsley
  • Also parodied:
  Gomez: He has my father's eyes.
  Morticia: Gomez, take those out of his mouth.
• Sugary Malice: The Camp Chippewa counselors. They treat the kids like they are all five years old, and the real scary thing is only the outcasts (read: those who aren't Jerk Jock or Alpha Bitch material) seem to think something is amiss. The fact that the nerds, non-whites and Jewish kids are all bandaged up after a few weeks at camp implies that the Grangers have minimal concern for safety.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: "I can show you all my references so you know I'm not a homicidal maniac."
• Take That!:
  • At one point, Joel screams in horror at a picture of... Michael Jackson.
  • Writer Paul Rudnick confirmed that title was meant to be a swipe at the Republican Party.
  "I did also want the movie’s name to be a response to the Republican Party’s constant harping on “family values,” as if only conservatives could define a loving family. In Republican terms, “family values” is always code for censorship and exclusion, and Republicans still refuse to respect or even acknowledge, for example, LGBTQ families. I like to believe that the Addams Family is far more loving and accepting than their enemies."
• Tempting Fate: Joel has the horrible idea to tell Wednesday she wouldn't scare her (theoretical) future husband to death. Guess what happens a few moments later?
• Terrible Interviewees Montage: Inverted; it's not the nanny interviewees who are terrible, it's the children. And while the one who gets the job seems perfect, she's really the worst:
  Nanny: (Speaking with a handpuppet) Hello kiddies, I'm Polly the Puppet. What shall we do today? I know! Let's all clean our rooms!
  Wednesday: (Pulling out a Satan puppet) Hello, Polly. I'll clean my room... in exchange for your immortal soul. (Puppet!Satan starts Hand Rubbing)
• That Poor Cat: At the start of the film, the kids and Grandma are burying the family cat in a shoebox. Wednesday has to shush it so that its cries do not ruin the solemnity of the occasion.
• Thanksgiving Turkey: Parodied in the Thanksgiving play at Camp Chippewa, where Pugsley is stuffed into a turkey costume to sing a cheerfully insipid song about eating him. When Wednesday sends the play Off the Rails, Pugsley stuffs an apple into Amanda's mouth while she's on a pyre.
• Toy-Based Characterization: Discussed by Debbie, who felt at age 10 that the Ballerina Barbie fit her personality more than the Malibu Barbie because she aspired to be graceful and delicate. Subverted, since Debbie turns out to be anything but delicate by killing her parents in retaliation.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: There are three separate plots: the Black Widow trying to kill off Uncle Fester, Gomez & Morticia looking after newborn Pubert, and Pugsley & Wednesday trying to cope with summer camp.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Fester and Debbie.
• Unconventional Engagement Ring: When Fester proposes to Debbie, he does it with his and Gomez's mother's wedding ring. While it appears to be traditional, Gomez then remembers that she's dead, after which Debbie holds up a muddy shovel while smiling.
• The Un-Smile:
  • Wednesday. It's horrific primarily due to the source of it, rather than the quality of the smile. Christina Ricci makes the act look downright torturous.
  Amanda: She's scaring me!
  • She gets a genuine one later on, though the context is that of a Psychotic Smirk.
• [Verb] This!: When Debbie shows the family slideshows about her second husband, a senator who loved his state and his country, she quotes his words:
  Debbie: [imitates her second husband] "Sorry, Debbie, no Mercedes this year. We have to set an example." Oh yeah? Set this!
  [next slide shows the car driving toward the senator in panic]
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Debbie is an Ax-Crazy Serial Killer who murdered her parents at the age of 10, and tries to murder the entire Addams family for their wealth, including the children. While it's still played for Black Comedy, especially with how out-of-depth she finds herself trying to murder an Addams, she remains one of the few antagonists in the series actually darker than the family themselves.
• Villainous Breakdown: Debbie's failed attempts to murder Fester has put her over the edge.
• Visual Pun: When Fester announces that he is engaged to Debbie, she shows his mother's ring. When Gomez says that she was buried with it, Debbie shows a shovel, with dirt on it. Yep, she's a gold-digger!
• Vocal Evolution: Wednesday's voice is deeper in this film due to Christina Ricci getting older.
• Wallpaper Camouflage: Wednesday while spying on Debbie.
• White Man's Burden: The Thanksgiving play is this plus singing food. The pilgrims are praised as being accepting and heroic just for coexisting with the natives while on the natives' turf.
• Who Even Needs a Brain?: Gomez and Fester are cheerfully reminiscing about all the (violent) pranks they pulled on each other as kids. Fester casually mentions that one time he waited until Gomez was asleep, then opened his head and removed his brains. Gomez is so surprised and impressed by this revelation that he proceeds to throw Fester on the wall upside down and outline him with daggers.
• William Telling: Wednesday shoots an apple off Pugsley's head with an arrow.
• Why Won't You Die?: Debbie's attempts at killing Fester continuously fail, and she eventually demands to know why he won't die. This comes as a shock to Fester, who assumed all that poison and electrocution was intended flirtatiously.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Parodied with Debbie. C'mon, people, Malibu Barbie!
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • At the very least, the camp counselors have little concern for the safety of the minority children as when the camera pans across them, several of them are sporting casts and/or bandages. While rehearsing Gary's play, he gets frustrated and roughly grabs one of the kids and takes her off-stage. She later shows up in a wheelchair.
  • When they keep being a bother to her, Debbie tries to kill all the Addamses, including Wednesday and Pugsley.
• Yoko Oh No: Debbie epitomizes this, immediately demanding that Fester cut off his family and preventing them from seeing each other as soon as they marry.