Billy Chapman (Silent Night, Deadly Night)

Billy Chapman
Silent Night, Deadly Night character
Billy Chapman (portrayed by Robert Brian Wilson)
Created by	Paul Caimi Michael Hickey
Portrayed by	Robert Brian Wilson Danny Wagner (age 8) Jonathan Best (age 5)
Information
Full name	William Chapman
Gender	Male
Occupation	Toy store employee
Family	Jim Chapman (father, deceased) Ellie Chapman (mother, deceased) Ricky Caldwell (brother)
Nationality	American

Billy Chapman is a fictional character in the Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise. Created by writers Paul Caimi and Michael Hickey, the character serves as the protagonist and antihero of the first film, Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984), and is featured in flashbacks in the sequel, Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987).

In the first film, Billy is first introduced at age five, when he witnesses his parents' murder on a country road on Christmas Eve by a hitchhiker in a Santa Claus costume. Billy is placed in an orphanage under Mother Superior, and experiences abuse there throughout his childhood that leaves him disturbed. At age eighteen, Billy acquires a job working at Ira's Toy Store; however, as Christmas arrives, he finds himself under increasing psychological duress, and eventually murders his co-workers at an employee Christmas party. Billy then embarks on a murder spree on Christmas Eve, killing numerous people he encounters. On Christmas Day he arrives at the orphanage where he was raised to enact revenge on Mother Superior, but is stopped by police who shoot him to death.

The character was largely received by critics as offensive due to the violent acts he commits on Christmas, and the film was widely protested upon its theatrical release in 1984.

In Silent Night, Deadly Night, Billy first appears at age five in 1971, driving with his parents and infant brother, Ricky, to visit his grandfather in a psychiatric care facility on Christmas Eve. On their way home, his parents stop on a desolate country road where a man in a Santa Claus suit has experienced a car breakdown. The man murders Billy's parents in front of him and rapes his mother; Billy manages to hide in a ditch, and the killer flees the scene.

Billy is placed in an orphanage run by the abusive Mother Superior. Shunned by his peers, Billy finds companionship in the sympathetic Sister Margaret. At age eight, Billy witnesses two of the teenagers in the orphanage having sex; they are caught by Mother Superior, who punishes them severely. In 1984 at age eighteen, Billy leaves the orphanage and acquires a job at Ira's Toy Store. As the Christmas season arrives, however, Billy is troubled by hallucinations and posttraumatic stress related to his parents' murders. At the store's Christmas Eve party, he witnesses a male employee attempting to rape a female employee in the stock room; Billy snaps, and murders them both, then kills his boss and other coworker.