- Award Snub: He's never been nominated for an Oscar as a director. The closest he's come to winning any Oscar was for co-directing Corpse Bride, which was one of the 2005 nominees for Best Animated Feature.
- Creator Worship
- Follow the Leader: He is arguably the most imitated fantasy director since Steven Spielberg. This ties into Recycled Trailer Music — some films trying to ape his style use scores first used in his work.
- Worthy of special mention is Brad Silberling, who brought us the movie adaptations of Casper and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.
- Not to mention Henry Selick, whose stop-motion style is very Burton-esque; so much so that Burton produced two of the films he directed (James and the Giant Peach and The Nightmare Before Christmas). (It also caused some people to assume that Tim Burton was involved with Coraline, when in reality, his involvement was probably inspiring the artistic style)
- Hate Dumb: These movies suck merely because of the fans who like them, and because I've seen *Insert movie here*'s products at Hot Topic!
- What's even more bizarre is that a lot of the things the Hate Dumb complain about (lots of marketing and merchandise, Author Appeal, Signature Style, etc.) is common with a lot of directors, but they don't get nearly the amount of hate. One suspects it's something to do with the Sci Fi Ghetto...
- Heterosexual Life Partner: His house is apparently divided down the middle, one half for his wife (Helena Bonham Carter) and his two children, and the other for BFF Johnny Depp.
- Hype Backlash: Few directors are as blatant and consistent with their Signature Style and Author Appeal, so if his aesthetic isn't what you're looking for, you will experience this — especially with the films that are adaptations. The heavy merchandising his films have gained over the years doesn't help, nor does his association with the Goth and Emo Teen subcultures.
- The Hype Backlash is so bad, there are people saying that they won't even see the movies merely because it's being marketed at Hot Topic.
- You just know this is going to double back into that other trope one of these days.
- The Hype Backlash is so bad, there are people saying that they won't even see the movies merely because it's being marketed at Hot Topic.
- Nightmare Fuel: Most of his movies have it in varying degrees (see the Film and Western Animation examples). Batman Returns got in outright trouble for it with parents partly due to Misaimed Marketing (see that trope's entry).
- Scapegoat Creator: Being a director, almost all of the movies he directed were apparently produced, directed, written, created, etc by only one person: Tim Burton. The only thing he apparently didn't do for the movies was act in them. The most recent backlash was about the recent Alice in Wonderland, which was apparently written by him despite that even looking at the credits or its page on The Other Wiki can tell you otherwise.
- Seinfeld Is Unfunny: It's so tough to appreciate his take on Batman in light of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Saga.
- Tear Jerker: Edward Scissorhands, Big Fish, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd.
- For many fans, the most notable example is Ed Wood. More specifically, Bela Lugosi towards the end. Martin Landau's performance got the Oscar it deserved.
- Ugly Cute: Most of his characters, as well as he himself.