Culture
The Most Popular Halloween Costumes of 2021
The Most Popular Halloween Costumes of 2021
Halloween—it’s the time of year when kids and adults alike dress up, eat candy, and show off their spookiest selves. It’s also when the scariest home decorations are the talk of the town, and people are frightened left, right, and center.
With the help of data from Google Trends and their unique Frightgeist series, we visualized the most searched Halloween costumes in the U.S. in 2021.
From spooky to sweet, these are the costumes everyone wants to dress up as this Halloween.
A Brief History of Halloween
Halloween is celebrated each year on October 31, with this year’s Halloween occurring on a Sunday. The tradition originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, where people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts.
The concept of Halloween didn’t gain popularity until it reached the United States. Borrowing from European traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today’s “trick-or-treat” tradition.
Other superstitions also started to form around the holiday. Young women believed they could divine the appearance of their future husbands by doing tricks with apple parings or mirrors.
Over time, Halloween moved away from focusing on witchcraft and ghosts to the festival we know and love today—a day focused on games, foods of the season, and festive costumes.
What Are the Most Popular Halloween Costumes?
With COVID-19 cases down compared to last year and Americans expected to spend over $10 billion on Halloween this year, much of the United States will be partaking in celebrating the spooky holiday.
From classy costumes and last-minute DIYs to pop-culture outfits and even era-inspired costumes, here are the top 25 most popular Halloween costumes in the U.S. in 2021.
Rank | Costume Name | Category |
---|---|---|
1 | Witch | Horror Films |
2 | Rabbit | Animals |
3 | Dinosaur | Animals |
4 | Spider-Man | Comic Book Characters |
5 | Cruella de Vil | Film Characters |
6 | Fairy | Fantasy Characters |
7 | Harley Quinn | Comic Book Characters |
8 | Cowboy | Professions |
9 | Clown | Professions |
10 | Chucky | Horror Films |
11 | Cheerleader | Professions |
12 | Pirate | Professions |
13 | Pumpkin | Foods |
14 | Angel | Characters |
15 | Vampire | Fantasy Characters |
16 | Among Us | TV Charaters |
17 | Zombie | Horror Films |
18 | 1980's | Era |
19 | Superhero | Comic Book Characters |
20 | Devil | Characters |
21 | Joker | Film Characters |
22 | Ninja | Professions |
23 | Squid Game | TV Charaters |
24 | Beetejuice | Horror Films |
25 | Doll | Toys |
Notable Trending Costumes
The Netflix show Squid Game has had a meteoric rise in popularity in recent weeks, becoming one of the most-watched shows on the streaming platform—just in time for Halloween.
Squid Game costumes are the 23rd most popular in Google’s search, and they continue to trend high, being the most searched costume idea in Detroit.
In 2020, the mobile game Among Us was the talk of the gaming world, and this year it is the 16th most popular costume, with its popularity spiking in Jacksonville, Florida.
Other notable costumes in the top 50 include Pokémon at #50, Fortnite at #44, Velma Dinkley (of Scooby-Doo fame) at #42, Poison Ivy (the comic book villain) at #33, Beetlejuice at #24 and the entire 1980s decade at #18.
Most Popular Halloween Costumes by State
When it comes to festivals, every state has its unique perspective and traditions on celebrating them. This extends to popular Halloween costumes too.
Though there might be some overlap, digging deeper into the most popular costumes in every state allows us a unique look into how diverse people’s tastes are across the country.
Here is a breakdown of the most popular costumes in the U.S. in 2020 by state:
State | Most Popular Costume | National Rank in 2020 |
---|---|---|
Alabama | Harley Quinn | 03 |
Alaska | Beetlejuice | 36 |
Arizona | Rabbit | 04 |
Arkansas | Doll | 12 |
California | Witch | 01 |
Colorado | Dinosaur | 02 |
Connecticut | Powerpuff Girls | 32 |
Delaware | Doll | 12 |
District of Columbia | Beyonce | 333 |
Florida | Rabbit | 04 |
Georgia | Witch | 01 |
Hawaii | Monsters Inc | 43 |
Idaho | Witch | 01 |
Illinois | Dinosaur | 02 |
Indiana | Witch | 01 |
Iowa | Chucky | 20 |
Kansas | Mickey Mouse | 57 |
Kentucky | Zombie | 13 |
Louisiana | Witch | 01 |
Maine | Dinosaur | 02 |
Maryland | Ninja | 09 |
Massachusetts | Dinosaur | 02 |
Michigan | Rabbit | 04 |
Minnesota | Witch | 01 |
Mississippi | Angel | 06 |
Missouri | Dinosaur | 02 |
Montana | Purge | 15 |
Nebraska | Joker | 30 |
Nevada | Witch | 01 |
New Hampshire | Ninja | 09 |
New Jersey | Witch | 01 |
New Mexico | Clueless | 74 |
New York | Dinosaur | 02 |
North Carolina | Dinosaur | 02 |
North Dakota | Star Wars | 28 |
Ohio | Witch | 01 |
Oklahoma | Dragon | 35 |
Oregon | Fortnite | 07 |
Pennsylvania | Witch | 01 |
Rhode Island | Hermione Granger | 146 |
South Carolina | Wonder Woman | 31 |
South Dakota | Spider | 38 |
Tennessee | Harley Quinn | 03 |
Texas | Harley Quinn | 03 |
Utah | Witch | 01 |
Vermont | Deer | 125 |
Virginia | Rabbit | 04 |
Washington | Angel | 06 |
West Virginia | Zombie | 13 |
Wisconsin | Witch | 01 |
Wyoming | Physician | 67 |
A look at popular costumes at the state level reveals some interesting quirks. Montana, for example, is uniquely interested in The Purge, and Rhode Island trick-or-treaters are big fans of Hermione Granger of Harry Potter fame.
Traditions are Here To Stay
At its core, Halloween still remains that same old fright-inducing festival it has always been.
Even though pop culture might influence your Halloween choices, traditional costumes will always have a unique place in everyone’s heart.
History
Visualized: The Daily Routines of Famous Creatives
The daily routines of 16 famous creatives—poets, thinkers, scientists and even politicians—are charted for comparison with each other.

Visualized: The Daily Routines of Famous Creatives
What is the best daily routine to unlock creativity, or is there such a thing?
Many modern suggestions for optimizing creativity—like scheduling time for “deep work,” and building small, sustainable “atomic habits”—can be traced back to famous creatives in many different eras. And though they all found success, they employed different methods as well.
In this unique visualization, RJ Andrews from InfoWeTrust has charted how notable creatives in different fields spent their days. He picked 16 of the 161 “inspired minds” covered by Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, a book by writer and editor Mason Currey published in 2013.
How Much “Creativity Time” in Famous Daily Routines?
Dividing the day into 24 hours, Andrews denoted certain categories for daily activities like working creatively, sleeping, and other miscellaneous endeavors (meals, leisure, exercise, and social time).
For the creatives with a separate day job—Immanuel Kant and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart—their ordinary labor is also counted in miscellaneous activities.
Below is a breakdown of the daily routine of all 16 people featured above:
Name | Occupation | Creative (hrs) | Sleep (hrs) | Miscellaneous (hrs) |
---|---|---|---|---|
Maya Angelou | Writer/Poet | 9 | 7.5 | 7.5 |
W.H. Auden | Poet | 11.5 | 7 | 5.5 |
Honoré de Balzac | Novelist | 13.5 | 8.5 | 2 |
L.V. Beethoven | Composer / Pianist | 8 | 8 | 8 |
Le Corbusier | Architect | 8.5 | 7 | 8.5 |
Charles Darwin | Naturalist / Biologist/ Geologist | 7 | 8 | 9 |
Charles Dickens | Writer | 5 | 7 | 12 |
Gustave Flaubert | Novelist | 10.5 | 7 | 6.5 |
Sigmund Freud | Psychologist | 12.5 | 6 | 5.5 |
Benjamin Franklin | Writer / Inventor / Scientist / Statesman | 8 | 7 | 9 |
Victor Hugo | Writer | 2 | 8 | 14 |
Immanuel Kant | Philosopher | 7 | 7 | 10 |
Thomas Mann | Novelist | 8 | 8 | 8 |
John Milton | Poet | 8 | 7 | 9 |
W.A. Mozart | Composer / Pianist | 8 | 5 | 11 |
P.I. Tchaikovsky | Composer | 4.5 | 8 | 11.5 |
The average and median amount of time spent on creative work for these individuals was just over 8 hours a day. At the extremes were two French novelists, Honoré de Balzac with 13.5 hours daily spent on creative work, and Victor Hugo with only 2 hours.
Interestingly, the allocation of creative work time was different in almost every daily routine. Maya Angelou’s routine resembles the modern work day, with the bulk of her writing between 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Others like Kant and Mozart had creativity blocks when time allowed, such as before and after their teaching jobs.
Then there are outliers like Honoré de Balzac and Sigmund Freud, who worked as much as they could. Balzac wrote from 1:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. with just an hour and a half nap break in between, fueled by up to 50 cups of coffee. Freud split up his creative work into three different blocks: analyzing patients in the morning, consulting in the afternoon, and reading and writing journals into the late evening.
But somewhere in their days, most of these brilliant minds made sure to get a good rest, with an average of 7.25 hours of sleep across the board.
Schedule Yourself to Create Success
Creativity may ebb and flow, but these great minds had one clear thing in common: scheduling time for creative work.
The perfect daily routine was usually what fit in with their lifestyle (and their bodies), not based on an arbitrary amount of work. For example, night owls with later chronotypes worked late, while socialites and politicians found time outside of their commitments.
They also found time to move and enjoy life. Half of the people in the dataset specified exercise in their accounts—either leisurely strolls or fast walks. Many also scheduled social time with partners, friends, or children, often paired with a meal.
Perhaps the greatest insight, however, is that the day-to-day routine doesn’t have to look extraordinary to be able to create extraordinary work.
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