At the end of 2025, fans said goodbye to Mike, Eleven, Dustin, and all the other characters they’d fallen in love with over the near decade since Stranger Things dropped. Now, with the new animated version, Stranger Things: Tales From ‘85, those characters are back. Not only that, but they’re the age they were right after Season 2 of the live-action show. “It’s like I get to hang out with my friends again,” says Showrunner and Executive Producer Eric Robles.
This feeling of being reunited with the Stranger Things kids was a touchstone for Robles and the rest of the team as they developed the look, feel, and story for Tales From ‘85. But they also had to make it feel different and special—a tricky task for a production coming out less than five months after the original had ended.
Season 3 of the live-action show saw a huge time jump from where the story left off in the Season 2 finale. Robles and his Co-Executive Producer, Ian Graham, decided to set the new series in the gap between those seasons, which presented a fun narrative challenge for the writers: create a unique and compelling story that fit in with what Stranger Things had established without introducing anything that fans would expect to have been addressed later on in the original.
With the main characters, this meant that the writers had to take them from where they stopped at the end of Season 2 to where they began in Season 3 without overshadowing the character development of future seasons. “There were definitely times where we would get excited about emotional arcs or physical things that could happen to the characters, and then we’d remember, well, at the beginning of Season 3, that hasn’t happened [yet],” says Script Coordinator Elise Bradley.
Matter of Course
While the core of Stranger Things’ horror plotline involves monsters coming from the terrifying alternate dimension known as the Upside Down, Tales From ‘85 couldn’t reopen the gate to that realm after Eleven closed it at the end of Season 2. They had to come up with a different high-stakes paranormal threat to keep audiences hooked while ensuring that whatever happened was tied up enough so it wouldn’t have affected later seasons.
Inspiration struck, and Robles found the answer in a film from the same year that the new version of the show is set in. He remembered Re-Animator, a 1985 horror B-movie he’d loved as a kid, and he pitched the concept of the Hawkins lab experimenting on tissue left from the Upside Down that could possess plant life in the Tales From ‘85 world. The Duffer Brothers—Matt and Ross, the show’s creators and Executive Producers—loved the idea.
“It’s like a Pandora’s Box that’s been opened,” explains Graham. “If any little bit of this [tissue] is left behind, not destroyed, it allows for more storylines.” But once the matter is destroyed, the storyline is resolved and it’s okay that it wasn’t addressed in the live-action show.
The leftover matter also created a unique opportunity for the design team. The new monsters needed to cohere with the look of the live-action show but still feel distinct to the world of Tales From ‘85.
Character Design Lead Andrew Chesworth says that walking this line came down to designing the creatures first, then adding the key signatures of the Upside Down monsters, like a flower petal face with a teeth-filled mouth hole or a skeletal, humanoid look, to connect them visually with the original show. “We didn’t want to just make a Demogorgon that’s a pumpkin,” laughs Chesworth, referring to the look of the new show’s monsters.
Staying in Character
Keeping designs familiar but fresh wasn’t just about the monsters. The kids, the town, and all of the side characters had to feel like a new spin on the flagship, as well. With the kids, the artists designed to the live-action actors’ likenesses, spending weeks getting details right. But with supporting characters from the original show, some of the actors hadn’t given their likeness rights to this new project, so the design team was faced with the challenge of conveying the essence of their characters without making the designs look exactly like them. “We had to look at each character through the lens of an archetype, then design that archetype from scratch,” says Chesworth. “There were certain cues that felt non-likeness infringing, like he’s got a fancy suit because he’s a politician, or he’s got a mustache and glasses because he’s a science teacher.”
They also needed to design a new character, Nikki, that felt like an outsider. They looked to punk scenes across urban America to create a look that was recognizably ‘80s and way too cool for Hawkins, Indiana. “The dyed hair, the patches, the scribbling on clothes, the torn fabric, all these things are timeless signatures of punk,” Chesworth explains. “So that was how we approached Nikki.”
As well, the CG team had their work cut out for them when it came time to make the characters feel familiar, according to Jason Meier, the CG Supervising Producer. “We would always try to imagine what the actors would do,” he says. The team rewatched the series multiple times, zeroing in on minute mannerisms and movements of physical characteristics like eyebrows. “We wanted to make sure that everybody felt real and tactile, like you could reach out and hang out with them.”
The layout team took particular care to capture the frenetic motion of the core friend group’s scenes together. “Whenever they’re riding bikes, they’re swaying in and out of each other’s shots,” Meier says. “And when they’re in Mike’s basement, plotting their next move, we’re always orbiting around them, making the audience feel like they’re part of it.” This dynamic energy was a signature of the live-action show, and it was important to translate it into the animation.
There was also the issue of how modern they could go with the overall look. As a franchise, Stranger Things is known for its ‘80s vibe, but the team didn’t want the animation and art style to look dated. The shape language of the character designs that they landed on is very modern: angular and geometric. But they found ways to pull the ‘80s influence into the color design and lighting.
They used earthy colors in the environment and background art, a nod to E.T. and Poltergeist. But whenever a monster appears on the scene, the color design shifts into a palette filled with greens, reds, and magentas (inspired by the posters from the original show).
“It’s like when low budget ‘80s horror films just blast a red light at the actors to make it feel threatening,” says Chesworth, noting how this serves the period aesthetic. The dramatic shadows and high-contrast lighting heightened this effect.
Blending ‘80s nostalgia with nods to the live-action show, all while creating their own fresh and special production, was no small achievement, but the team felt it was the key to building a new part of the franchise.
And even though Robles had been working on the animated show for a few years when he watched the live-action Stranger Things finale, “I still got sad,” he says. “I was like, no, I don’t want it to be over!” Now, with Tales From ‘85, it doesn’t have to be.
