Stranger Things: Tales from ’85: Plot, new monster, story arcs explained

Stranger Things won over audiences by blending childhood nostalgia with eerie horror, and its upcoming animated spinoff, Stranger Things: Tales from '85, aims to recreate that same appeal. Showrunner Eric Robles told Polygon that he took inspiration from beloved ’80s films like The Goonies and The Lost Boys to shape the show’s adventurous tone. He also cited the 1986 animated series The Real Ghostbusters as a major influence.

The Stranger Things animated spinoff turns up the horror with an Alien-style threat

“You have some really scary episodes within that series, whether it was the Boogieman or the Sandman episodes, and I just remember as a kid feeling that there was a difference in that kind of storytelling,” Robles said. “If I can tap into that feeling again with a series like this – where the stakes felt real, where the danger felt real, and these kids are genuinely trying their best to figure out a mystery – that’s the show I want to make.”

The sequel to Ghostbusters turned the mischievous ghost Slimer into a recognizable mascot for the team. Similarly, Eric Robles said he thought about giving a comparable role to Dart—the Demodog taken in by Dustin in Stranger Things Season 2.

“There were some development drawings done by one of the artists,” Robles said. “Then we just started realizing that it started leaning a bit too young and started taking away the stakes and the reality of what we were trying to aim for. Because we’re animation, we can be dismissed as just being young.”

“I wanted the adventure to feel like it was going somewhere. The mystery was something that we all had to solve together,” he said. “I think some of the best stories are the ones where I feel I’m a participant.”

Set in the winter of ’85, a shape-shifting creature endangering Hawkins opens the door for multiple storylines, each layered with its own cultural references. Its intricate life cycle draws clear parallels to Alien. In the opening episodes, the kids are forced into a dangerous twist on “the floor is lava,” scrambling to stay out of reach of an unseen threat.

“These kids are looking at a sea of white snow, but what is underneath that snow,” Robles said. “We created our own version of Jaws for this series based on the Upside Down. We do a lot of the things that the Duffer Brothers do and say What are the things that really spoke to you when you were younger in some of these films that we would watch? and we just try to implement that in our own unique way in the storytelling that we do.”

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