Mascot Horror

About

Mascot Horror is a subgenre of horror media that is primarily aimed at children and often features characters that are easily turned into merchandise. The distinct characteristics of the subgenre are toy-like villains, an abundance of jumpscares, children being the primary audience and pandering to YouTubers. The genre was spawned by the viral success of the Five Nights at Freddy's series created by Scott Cawthon. Poppy Playtime and Garten of BanBan video game series are some of the best-known media within the subgenre.

History

In a wider sense, horror media centered around a memorable, easily marketable villain can be considered "mascot horror." In that regard, slasher films like Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th can be considered proto-examples of mascot horror in film. Among video games, Slender: The Eight Pages and other games featuring Slender Man are some of the earliest examples of the subgenre.

On August 8th, 2014, indie video game developer Scott Cawthon released Five Nights at Freddy's,^[1] the first in a series of horror video games about possessed animatronics haunting a chain of pizzeria restaurants. Five Nights at Freddy's was targeted toward a children's audience, and while being a horror game, avoided common elements such as blood, gore and psychological horror, and delivered the sense of fright primarily through suspense and jumpscares. The villains, animatronic bear, bunny, chicken and fox, generally preserved appealing appearance and revealed their monstrous nature only at certain points of the game.

The game series achieved massive success with the children's audience, in large part thanks to their popularity with Let's Play YouTubers, most notably Markiplier, who would later proceed popularize many games belonging to the subgenre. Markiplier's first Let's Play video of Five Nights at Freddy's accumulated over 111 million views in nine years (shown below).^[2]

The game and its sequels (parts 2 to 4 were released in the period between 2014 to 2015, with multiple additional sequels and spin-offs released starting in 2015) are generally recognized to be the parent of the "mascot horror" subgenre (infographic by Twitter^[3] user @POPGOESDev shown below).

Among the series which reimplemented core elements of FNaF (such as a toy-like villain and children being the primary audience) are horror video games and video game franchises Tattletail (2016), Bendy and the Ink Machine (2017), Hello, Neighbor (2017), Poppy Playtime (2021) and Garten of BanBan (2023). Many of these and other mascot horror games were popularized with the assistance of YouTubers popular with younger Gen Z and Gen A audiences, such as Markiplier, JackSepticEye and MatPat.

The phenomenon of some mascot horror video games incorporating popularity with YouTubers as part of their marketing strategy was highlighted with the developers of Hello Neighbor tagging^[4] MatPat in a tweet promoting a Hello, Neighbor animated series, which spawned the Hello, Neighbor @ MatPat meme.

The expression "mascot horror" was first used to describe Five Nights at Freddy's by an anonymous 4chan user in a /v/^[5] thread on December 26th, 2016, but did not gain traction at the time (post shown below, left).

On October 3rd, 2021, a /v/^[6] user used the expression to describe Five Nights at Freddy's, Bendy and the Ink Machine, Hello Neighbor, Baldi's Basics, Tattletail and Choo-Choo Charles.

This is what I call "Mascot Horror", easily digestible horror games that kids gravitate to and eat alive like a swarm of locusts.

On December 3rd, 2021, Twitter^[7] user @_claypost made the earliest notable tweet using the expression, with the post gaining over 590 retweets and 5,100 likes (shown below).

The expression first started gaining traction in discussions pertaining to the 2021 horror game Poppy Playtime, in which characters Huggy Wuggy and Kissy Missy were also sold as plush toys.^[8][9]

The mascot horror discourse went viral on Twitter in mid-2023, which was a combined result of a viral tweet^[10] comparing old and new horror games, mascot horror YouTube series Skibidi Toilet drawing attention^[11] and a clip of Markiplier criticizing the Hello, Neighbor video game series going viral on Twitter.^[12]

Related Memes

Hello Neighbor @ MatPat

Hello Neighbor @ MatPat refers to three tweets in which tinyBuild, the developer of the video game franchise Hello Neighbor, tagged YouTuber MatPat so that he would pay attention to their YouTube series. The tweets were screenshotted by several users and have since been used as a reaction when someone comes off as begging to be noticed, also inspiring memes and references. The catchphrase "I think MatPat will enjoy dissecting this frame by frame" gained particular virality.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References