Santa, Krampus, and Ultraman, Building Characters That Don’t Die

I woke up thinking about Santa Claus. Not because it’s Christmas, but because this jolly bastard has been getting script renewals for centuries. No agents, no notes, no contracts. Just pure mythic staying power.

And then there’s Krampus, Santa’s terrifying wingman, who went from Alpine boogeyman to Hollywood franchise in under a decade. These two have survived more genre shifts than Doctor Who.

So what can we screen-scribblers learn from characters that refuse to die? After twenty-plus years in TV rooms and transmedia trenches, here’s what I’ve figured out. Pour something stronger than eggnog and let’s go.

Marvel Santa Broke My Brain

Back on Heroes, we spent a lot of time talking power levels. Who beats who, who scales, who breaks the story. So discovering Marvel’s official stance that Santa is the most powerful mutant ever registered knocked me sideways.

Not a joke. In an X-Men story, Cerebro detects Santa, and he casually turns the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants into toys. Just… transforms them. No effort. The comics define him as “the physical manifestation of giving,” powered by human belief.

That was my lightbulb moment. Santa works because his core concept is bulletproof. He’s generosity incarnate. Drop him into a superhero crossover, a horror movie, a sitcom, a noir detective story, and we still know exactly what he represents.

During Heroes, we tried to give every character that same symbolic clarity. Hiro was hope. Sylar was hunger. Peter was empathy. When you nail that core, your character survives anything. Even cancellation.

Krampus Goes Hollywood

I grew up on Ray Harryhausen and D&D creatures, but Krampus hit different when he exploded into the American zeitgeist around 2015. This wasn’t just another monster. This was the perfect anti-Santa for a cynical age.

Michael Dougherty’s Krampus understood the assignment. Krampus is Santa’s shadow. He’s the consequence for losing faith, the punishment for forgetting what the season means. Traditional lore gave him a switch and a sack. Modern horror gave him the keys to the kingdom.

That clarity of opposition, generous gift-giver versus vengeful punisher, makes both characters stronger. It’s the same dynamic we leaned on in Lost with Jack and Locke, faith versus science. Oppositions sharpen characters.

Now Krampus shows up everywhere. Grimm did him. American Dad did him. The League tried “mall Krampus,” because of course they did. Each version works because the core stays intact. He’s Christmas karma with horns.

Batman Met Santa, And It Actually Worked

2024’s Batman/Santa Claus: Silent Knight should have been nonsense. Batman teaming up with Santa to fight monsters in Gotham? Come on.

But DC played it straight and in-canon. In their universe, Santa mentored young Bruce Wayne. Naturally. Santa as ultimate good, Batman as complicated justice, that contrast creates instant story energy.

This kind of genre-hopping reminds me of our transmedia work on Heroes. Comics, web series, mobile games, ARG breadcrumbs. Each platform pulled different facets out of the characters. Santa and Krampus have that same elasticity. They don’t break when you shift tone.

Santa has been everything from Ultraman (not exaggerating, in a 1972 episode Santa is revealed to be Father of Ultra in disguise) to UFO folklore. During Apollo 8’s Christmas Eve lunar orbit, Jim Lovell radioed, “Please be advised, there is a Santa Claus,” and conspiracy theorists are still unpacking it.

If you want your characters to last, give them that genre flex.

Slender Man School of Myth-Making

Slender Man is a creepy Photoshop gag from 2009 that mutated into full-blown folklore. No studio. No marketing. Just a community telling stories.

Fans added sightings, videos, ARGs, creepypasta, games. The origin vanished, replaced by a collective myth. Now he’s simply part of the modern monster roster.

That’s participatory myth-making. The same dynamic that keeps Santa alive. We don’t just consume Santa stories. We perform them. Parents take on the role. Kids write letters. NORAD “tracks” his sleigh. The audience isn’t watching a myth, they’re maintaining it.

We saw the same on Heroes. Fans didn’t want to observe, they wanted to engage. They built characters, wrote genealogies, and created lore we never had time to put on screen.

That’s when a character stops being yours and starts being everyone’s. That’s when they become myth.

Characters Need a Holiday

Santa has Christmas. Krampus has Krampusnacht. Built-in boos and cheers every year.

A cyclical structure is gold. Every December, these characters get refreshed. New stories. New memes. New interpretations. It’s an annual resurrection ritual.

On Lost, we didn’t have holidays, but we had the hatch countdown. A ticking cycle that structured everything. On Heroes, “save the cheerleader, save the world” became a recurring prophecy. That rhythm mattered.

In games like VALORANT, seasonal events do the same thing. They bring characters back into focus at predictable intervals. It’s narrative gravity.

Think about how your characters can have recurrence. A return point. A ritual beat. Something the audience anticipates.

Building Perrenial Characters

Everything I’ve learned about myth-durable characters:

Find the one-word core.
Santa = generosity
Krampus = punishment
Sydney Bristow = determination
Will Graham = empathy, turned curse
If you can’t distill it, keep digging.

Leave room for others to play.
The characters that last don’t belong exclusively to their creators. Make a sandbox, not a sealed container.

Build in genre flex.
If your character only works in one tone, they won’t survive long. Make them portable.

Create ritual moments.
Give your story a heartbeat. A recurring beat the audience can expect and crave.

The Real Christmas Miracle

Santa and Krampus aren’t just characters. They’re proof stories can escape their creators. They can hit cultural escape velocity.

That’s the dream. To contribute something to the big collective story vault. Something that outlives you. Something that keeps returning, year after year, in new forms, to new scribblers.

I used to think that wasn’t possible anymore. Too much corporate control. Too many bottlenecks. But look around. Slender Man happened. Krampus got a movie deal. Santa teamed up with Batman, and nobody blinked. Myths are still being made.

Ask yourself:

• Can I sum up this character in one word?

• Would they work in a completely different genre?

• What ritual or cycle could they be tied to?

• How can the audience participate in their story?

And if you’re actually reading this on Christmas Day, you’re either a true scribbler or avoiding family. Either way, I see you.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go figure out why my son thinks switching from film to dramatic scribbling is a good idea. Kid’s following my path, and that should probably terrify both of us.

Happy holidays, my fellow scribblers.