Do you know that feeling when you come up with a genius idea and then think "Someone must have done this before me!" Well a few years ago I noticed some striking similarities between two songs from two seemingly unrelated musicals - The Nightmare Before Christmas and Jesus Christ Superstar. At the time I was not writing for the Odyssey and did not have the opportunity to publish my findings on such an awesome [shameless plugin]. Now that I sat down to write this article I decided to look it up and found one article that points out this similarity - here it is.
This article doesn't take into account one piece of evidence that I found, so I went on and wrote this article anyway. Enjoy:)
The songs in question are Oogie Boogie's song and King Herod's song.
In the first one Oogie Boogie meets Santa Claus and says:
Well, well, well, what have we here?
Sandy Claws huh?
Oh, I’m really scared
So you’re the one everybody’s talkin’ about, ha, ha
In the second King Herod says:
Jesus, I am overjoyed
To meet you face to face
You’ve been getting quite a name
All around the place
(In his song from "JCS" Pilate says:
Oh so this is Jesus Christ
I am really quite surprised
You look so small
Not a king at all)
Both songs are comedic villain songs were the villain is mocking a famous figure. Both villains question the figures (Christ and Santa) about there powers. And isn't Santa Claus somehow related to Jesus Christ? Who knows...
Here are the songs and the last piece of evidence that I have.
Oogie Boogie's Song is sung by Ken Page (Here is his performance)
Now, the movie version of that song is not sung by Ken Page but... *drum roll*
Ken Page plays King Herod at The Muny-St. Louis in their production of Jesus Christ Superstar 2005. I don't know what this is for you, but for me this is an obvious Easter egg / reference / whatever you call it.
They do not look too similar but there is something here. Maybe it's the eyes?
Or not.