The Living Dead Dolls Deathday Calendar

Who likes data analysis and extremely niche fixations??? Because I just assembled a blank year calendar to track which day each Living Dead Doll met their end on.

This all started with a question: Is there a Living Dead Doll that died on my birthday??? (I think) every non-licensed LDD has a death certificate, and most have been assigned death dates, so I was really curious to see if there was a deathday doll for me...and if I agreed with the alignment in that case. I need no more reasons to add another LDD to my growing wishlist to plan for, but I was grabbed by this inquiry.

And unfortunately, there aren't any good resources to search for this information. So I had to make that resource myself. I created some blank calendar templates in my graphics program, and began checking the LDD site (and the fan wiki in cases where questions arose) to plot the dates out. I knew there weren't 365 dolls already, and not every doll had a unique death date, or a date at all, so not every person will have a deathday doll, and some will have multiple to choose. Here's the findings I charted.

Living Dead Dolls operate on varied levels of horror extremity and aesthetics, so, as always, look up the dolls listed with caution because some may be distressing or frightening to you.

Now, for analysis.

A few of these dates, marked with pink asterisks, may be misinformed because the wiki and LDD site have had discrepancies I can't verify without looking at the dolls' death certificates. The months with characters in doubt did not affect the ranking of most/least populous months, though. The Halloween exclusive doll Vesper was, I believe, the last debuting LDD-original character in the classic era of LDD before the line slowed down and rebooted, and during that time, the website was not updated and the wiki also fell off, so I found zero documentation regarding her death date whatsoever. While October 31 is a very safe guess for her death date with an over-90% chance of being a correct guess, out of caution, I placed her uncertainly in the "no death date" category. Sweet Tooth the year before might also very likely be a Halloween death, but the website has an N/A so until I see her certificate, she's in the no-deathdate box. Someday that's not immediate, I'd love to get Vesper's incredible black-and-white variant, so maybe eventually that doll's information can be verified by me personally.

By Series 9, two months had not yet included any characters: May and September. Series 10 finally added the first May doll in the series, Demonique, while it took until series 19 for the first series doll to die in September, which was Orchid. However, this is a narrow view of chronology, as exclusive dolls were released outside of series and their deathdates could have filled in the calendar representation earlier if I was working with a list of chronological LDD releases encompassing the whole brand--which does not exist. Maybe another project to compile. September remains the least represented month after checking everything. 

October 31 was pretty unsurprisingly the most common death date in the brand by far, since three series (16, 18, and 32) and a few exclusive dolls are based on Halloween iconography, and several, but not all, of the characters in those releases died on Halloween. One character even died on Oct. 31 for non-Halloween reasons: Vincent Vaude the failed escape artist, whose death date matches that of Harry Houdini. With the deaths I could confirm, there are 14 on Halloween. The October 31 death frequency easily handed October the rank of the most populous death month in the brand, at a record 34 deaths. If Sweet Tooth and Vesper are Halloween deaths like I suspect they are, then it'd be 36 deaths in October, and 16 deaths on Halloween!

The second-most common date, with five deaths, was Valentine's Day, February 14. Not every character died then for Valentine reasons. The Bride of Valentine herself, and Rose and Violet the Twisted Love dolls, did die with a link to the holiday. Coalette and Soot of Series 34 died on the day just because that was the week of the year during which the mining disaster that killed everyone in the series took place.

Surprisingly, one of two third most common dates (four deaths) was March 17, though this doesn't appear to be motivated by any meaningful purpose. Four characters died on this day, and it was, especially oddly, an in-series duplicate twice--shared by Ezekiel and Cuddles in Series 12, and Onyx and Hayze in Series 28. None of the four March 17 deaths were the only one in their series!

The only two-pack of exclusive dolls I saw with two separate death dates was The Great Zombini and Viv, with Zombini dying and reanimating a few days before the magic show that killed Viv with an unsimulated "saw-the-lady-in-half" spectacle. The only two-pack who didn't feel plausible to me sharing a death date like they do was Abigail Crane and Mr. Graves, since Graves was a grave robber who got killed by Abigail Crane, an undead ghoul whose grave he opened. The concept implies she would have been dead on a date before him, so they're a case where the use of a shared death date doesn't feel justifiable.

Other death dates are used multiple times for a clear reason. 

One is June 6, invoked on multiple characters for a 666 "number of the beast" reference completed by the digits of the given death year. One of these characters, Revenant (6/6/60), was within Series 6 itself, which leaned into the same theme with six dolls and six beast companions as pets. Revenant was also the first character I found chronologically to repeat a previous LDD calendar death date, though it's possible an exclusive doll repeated another death date before her. 6/6 was first used for Series 1's devil-themed Sin.  After Revenant, it was used for Series 10's Mildread, a doll who often gets overlooked and forgotten for entirely understandable reasons, and I don't think she entirely deserved the 6/6 date. Non-series doll Penny's death date evokes this pattern in a mirror image, with a 9/9/9 death date of September 9, 1969.

Christmas, December 25, was also used for a few releases, and is tied with March 17 as the third most common death date. Claret Winter, the Series 19 variant-exclusive vampire with a snowy motif, died on this day, as did holiday-themed Nohell. Sinister Minister and Bad Habit died on this day, likely as an ironic note of such a holy Christian day taking such unholy clergy. December was the second most represented death month, though Christmas didn't do an outsized amount of lifting like Halloween did for October.

A few series feature multiple characters who died on the same calendar date. Series 7 features a record two pairs of deathdate buddies (Sloth and Wrath, and Envy and Lust) with each character referencing a separate event on the shared day. As mentioned above, Series 12 features Ezekiel and Cuddles who both died on March 17, and Series 28 features Hayze and Onyx who also both died on March 17. In the case of the Series 12 dolls, both characters relate thematically to the day in different ways. Hayze definitely has a thematic connection to the date in Series 28 (it's the day Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" released), but Onyx might not. All three Halloween series feature multiple characters who died on Halloween. None of these listed instances of repeated dates in a series share a death year. 

Dia de Muertos-themed series 20 features a shared death date (Savannah and Catrina), which is also reported to be a shared death year. This could imply a relation between the two characters or that they died at the same place at the same time, but the date was when the cartoonist who illustrated La Catrina died, so two dolls might just both be referencing that for lack of inspiration for a fifth unique death date in the series?

Series 32 features both Ye Ole Wraith and Nicholas dying on October 31, 1926, but no relation seems implied beyond the fact that both are Halloween deaths in a Halloween series and share a year.

Series 32 is also the closest any series has come to having every character die on the same calendar date (not year), and is the only series where more than two characters in a series share a calendar death date. In that series, only Ernest Lee Rotten, who lacks a given death date, is not listed as dying on a Halloween. (The other S32 dolls, Salem and Butcher Boop, have separate death years from both each other and Nicholas and Ye Ole Wraith.)

Series 34 is the only series where all of the characters died during the same month and year, and explictly knew each other and died together. All of the S34 cast died during the same week (but not all on one day), fitting the narrative concept of the series being the ghosts of the victims of a single mining disaster. The first to die, Ash Lee and Tommy Knocker, went on February 13th, 1817, while Coalette (stated to be the third death in her poems) and Soot followed on the 14th. (I've seen a photo of Coalette's certificate that makes me think the wiki-supplied dates for the others are all correct.) Then, very ironically, the information I found states that Canary would be the very last to die, passing on the 15th despite being named for the mining-based idiom regarding the first and weakest to go in a dangerous situation. 

Sadie is the only recurring character in the main series, but she is also the only character with multiple death dates. Series 1 Sadie, Schooltime Sadie, and Sloth (Bedtime Sadie) have three separate death dates, and Sweet 16 Sadie has no given death date. I don't know why this variety is the case--are the Sadies separate people? Is there an LDD multiverse?

A proximity of deaths occurred in December in such a way that it makes it look as if I got confused and made a typo or something, but no, Agana and Agatha are two separate names and are two totally unrelated characters. The way they're right next to each other on the calendar makes it look like I got a few wires crossed in the typing and layout!

Several dolls have no way to be plotted on a generic calendar because they have no death dates provided at all. A few whole series follow this pattern as well. In these cases, this is usually due to being based on folkloric archetypes, lost stories, or inhuman creatures who never lived. Series 17 is all urban legends who can't be pinned as real people with real stories. Series 25 is all demons who were never alive. Series 27 is world folkloric monsters who aren't human, and Series 31 is all inhuman boogeymen. Scary Tales is a collection of folklore. A few characters lack death dates for unknown reasons. In Series 29, which is original fiction done in the tone of long-lost stories and half-remembered history and urban legend, only The After and The Silent One have complete, concrete death dates. The others either have vague death times or, in the case of The Girl in Black, none at all.

Other death dates can't be plotted because their month or date is left out, leaving only a vague time period or a year, which isn't being tracked here.

Only one character was able to be plotted while having an incomplete date-- Grace of the Grave, confirmed as an October 1347 death but without a specific day of the month. She is plotted within the October page's header banner as a result. 

The historical characters Lizzie Borden, Edgar Allan Poe, and Countess Bathory have the same death dates as the real people. There are two historical dolls who are exceptions. First is Captain Bonney--the real pirate Anne Bonny disappeared, leaving no confirmable date of death. LDD Bonney's death date is merely a plausible time for Anne Bonny to have died, coming shortly after her disappearance in 1720. The other exception is Jack the Ripper, since the Whitechapel killings were never actually pinned to a single identified person, leaving Jack himself to potentially be just a myth. Even if there was one killer, they were never caught or identified and no date of death could be established.

And after all my work, I was ultimately disappointed to find that I do not have a deathday doll as the LDD cast currently stands. That's a little annoying, because I was able to pick out people in my life who have multiple. Hmph. All the more reason to hope new characters are still on the table. Still, cliché as it sounds, the research really was its own reward!

So that's the LDD calendar of deaths mostly figured out. This was fun to put together, and I'm happy to have a solid list to cross-reference as a resource!