Our Halloween costumes are just Google's autocomplete in a wig

Is Halloween still the night we become someone else, or just the night we cosplay our own feed? Google's 2026 costume data points to the second option, and it's hard to be shocked about it.

The list is a recap of the year, not a leap of imagination

Google's Frightgeist tracked costume searches from September 2025 to September 2026. As Fox reports, "traditional" costumes were underrepresented, and comic book characters took a big share of the top spots. Spider-Man came out as the most popular overall, which the outlet ties to a new Spider-Man movie this year. Dolly Parton came next. She is the country music icon who died in August at age 80.

Regionally, New York leaned Marvel: Wolverine, Black Widow and Doctor Doom, with a "Ringmaster" and Dolly rounding out the top five. In the D.C. area, the top search was a generic police officer, followed by Dolly, a jester, Strawberry Shortcake and Mickey Mouse. Other coverage says the national list also features characters from this year's films, such as Buddy the Unicorn, Nikki from Obsession and Agamemnon from The Odyssey.

Search data measures what we were shown, not what we dream up

Here is our argument, and it is an opinion: a costume ranking built on searches is a ranking of familiarity. You type in a name you already know. Nobody searches for an idea they haven't had yet. So a list like this will always reward whatever studios, streaming platforms and the news cycle pushed in front of us over the past twelve months.

That isn't a moral failing. It's practical. A recognizable costume gets recognized at the party, gets the photo and is easy to buy or assemble. A Spider-Man suit needs no explanation. The reality is that Halloween is a social performance, and the safest way to perform is to pick a character everyone already knows.

The Dolly Parton entry is the most interesting data point. We read it as a tribute more than a trend: a way of mourning in public by putting on the wig and the rhinestones. That's sweet, and it's also how the algorithm turns grief into a seasonal search term. Both things can be true.

The real outliers are the people who ignore the trend

Compare all of that with Heidi Klum. NBC New York reports that for her 25th annual party she became a giant, gruesome severed version of her own left hand, which took five to six hours to put on. Her own explanation was, "I looked at my hand and I thought, 'Hey, I think I could fit my body in this somehow.'" It's hard to imagine anyone was typing that into a search bar.

We aren't suggesting everyone hire a team of prosthetic artists. Klum's budget and crew are not a model for a living-room party. The point is the contrast: the most memorable costume of the weekend, in our view, came from a weird private thought, not from a trending-searches panel. Her words, as the Daily Star relays them from a New York Times report, make a similar point: "Sometimes the most random things that you see every day, all the time, can be the most interesting thing, if you twist it a little bit."

Our verdict: use the list as a map of what to avoid

Frightgeist is useful. If you want to guess what the party will look like, it's a decent forecast, and it's fun to see that Strawberry Shortcake and a generic police officer coexist in the same data. But if you want to be remembered, treat it as a map of what other guests will probably arrive wearing.

Our recommendation is simple. Pick something from the list if you want the easy laugh and the easy photo. If you want the good story, start from something odd and personal, even if it's only a twist on something you see every day. The algorithm already knows what we like. It can't tell what we would invent, unless we give it a reason to be surprised.