Monstrum

This is not great.

(host) There's something deeply unsettling about seeing a smiling mascot turned violent.

These characters are meant to entertain us, to sell happiness and safety, but in mascot horror, they break those rules.

Ahhh!

[bells tolling] [sighs] Didn't make it.

The genre first took off in 2014 with this game: "Five Nights at Freddy's," a video game in which players fight off murderous animatronic mascots in a corporate pizza chain.

Since then, mascot horror has exploded in popularity.

It went from indie video games to a larger sub-genre that takes comforting, cheerful symbols of childhood, like cartoon characters, stuffed animals, or theme-park mascots and twist them into something terrifying.

A common hallmark of mascot horror is the presence of an evil corporation lurking in the background, an entity that must be defeated.

But in an unexpected twist, the mascot horror sub-genre itself has crafted multiple IPs that became multimillion-dollar corporate entities, spawning video games, merchandising, and franchising deals.

It went from an independent passion project to a financial juggernaut.

Has mascot horror become the very corporate monster that it satirized from the start?

-[static buzzing] -[intriguing eerie music] Mascot horror sort of traces back to a failure.

Before game designer Scott Cawthon created "Five Nights at Freddy's," he released the kid-friendly game, "Chipper & Sons Lumber Company," a seemingly lighthearted, cheerful game where players control a young beaver named Tyke.

Critics had mostly negative reviews, with many pointing out how robotic and unintentionally creepy the characters looked.

For his next game, Cawthon took that creepy note, doubled down, and "Five Nights at Freddy's" was born.

The game takes place in Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria.

You play in first-person as a character trying to survive the night, stalked by goofy-looking, haunted, angry, but familiar animatronics.

[Freddy snarling] The game mechanics are simple, so it helped bring in a lot of new gamers, and it's the strange animatronic characters that shaped a new genre.

Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie the Bunny, Chica the Chicken, and Foxy the Pirate are all modeled after mascots designed to appeal to kids-- friendly, colorful, goofy.

But in "Five Nights," they are disturbingly creepy.

Freddy's mascots' oversized eyes never blink, their grins stretch past sincerity, their bodies move in stiff, jerky motions-- when you actually see them move, at least-- forever frozen in a creepy state.

The game had some early modest success, but then came the video-game streamers.

How scary can this game really be?

-[shrieking] -[Freddy growling] (Emily) Live reaction videos of gameplay posted to YouTube turned the numerous and intense jump scares of the game into viral comedy and alleviated tension for viewers watching the playthrough.

Playing "Five Nights at Freddy's" by yourself with the lights off can be a nightmarish experience.

[Emily shrieking] But watching popular online gamers react to jump scares, that's entertainment.

A new community was born.

A simple indie game exploded into a massive fandom.

"Five Nights at Freddy's" tapped into something unique and wildly popular.

The term "mascot horror" caught fire.

Cawthon followed up with ten main sequels and several other official spinoffs, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Game Jolt, a social hub for gamers and fan creators lists over 10,000 fan-made inspired games.

"Five Nights" inspired more mascot horror video games.

"Poppy Playtime" takes place in a once successful toy factory called Playtime Company, but the warehouse is left abandoned, much to the dissatisfaction of the toys left inside, byproducts of some pretty horrible corporate greed and human experimentation, which ultimately turned them evil.

Another popular mascot horror title, "Bendy and the Ink Machine" takes place in an animation studio.

Fun, right?

But the familiar-looking cartoons come to life, and seemingly friendly-faces try to kill you.

This is a common theme in the mascot horror genre, friendly-faces that turn evil.

Is that what makes mascot horror so frightening and fun?

The familiar world that can no longer be trusted?

"Five Nights at Freddy's" relies on a cultural touchstone of childhood to make the game scarier.

It gives context to the presence of the evil antagonists, the nostalgic familiarity shown in unfamiliar way is unsettling.

The large-eyed characters, to a degree, appeal to children and sentimentality, but suddenly becoming antagonists makes them threatening.

It's nostalgia gone wrong, tainted by time, corporate greed, -and sometimes the occult.

-[child screaming] Mascot horror isn't the only realm for distorted childhood nostalgia.

Killer clowns and haunted dolls became a familiar '80s trope.

Mascot horror works because it takes innocuous, bright colors, silly songs, smiling faces, and corrupts them.

Places constructed for joy and celebration are twisted into nightmares; something that should be safe acts in ways it never should.

But mascot horror isn't just about the monsters; there's nearly always an evil corporation lurking behind them.

In "Five Nights at Freddy's," Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria is a direct fictional mashup of real family pizza and play franchises, like Chuck E. Cheese and Showbiz Pizza Place.

Chuck E. Cheese's were more of a destination than a restaurant.

It combined arcade with amusement-park-like attractions, kid-friendly food, a bit of vaudeville, and the ability for parents to buy beer.

Chuck E. Cheese and his friends would perform standup comedy to the adults while they waited for the pizza, and supervised their kids at the arcade machines.

But over time, the show grew into a singing family-friendly spectacle.

Another similar restaurant chain, Showbiz Pizza Place, had its own set of terrifying animatronic-performing mascots.

I don't know about you, but Billy Bob Brockali truly disturbs me.

I vividly remember these animatronics from my childhood, and I hated them.

They were creepy in a way I couldn't quite put my finger on.

I refused to eat in the room or watch their weird little concert.

[tense eerie music] Hard "Nope" for me, but that didn't keep me away from the game tokens and tickets, not to mention that greasy pizza, and prizes that beckoned me.

This family-friendly business model was a gold mine for the restaurant chains.

"Five Nights at Freddy's" took this backdrop and twisted it into a story of an evil corporation.

That trademark pops up in mascot horror over and over-- a corporation that has to be stopped.

It's the unseen hand that's behind making the cheery characters turn into monsters, and the corporation's attempts to cover up their existence.

But while the fictional corporations of mascot horror are exposed and defeated, real corporations are cashing in.

"Five Nights at Freddy's" grew into a multimillion dollar multimedia franchise seemingly overnight.

A good amount of the merchandise stemming from objectively horrific games is aimed at children and young teens.

And with such popular fandoms comes fan art, fan-created lore, and complementary fan-created games.

[character yelling] A lot of this fan inspired-work ends up influencing future games.

This can seem exploitative, even as fans willingly and enthusiastically contribute.

But, regardless, fan-produced content grows the popularity, lore, and value of anything they're fans of.

The mascot horror genre grew from video games and into books, comic books, tabletop RPGs, and movies.

Sinister mascots haven't only gone rogue, they've gone mainstream.

Maybe that's the real joke of mascot horror-- we are entertained by defeating the fictional evil corporations while real-life corporations then sell it right back to us in popular media and merchandise.

There's even a "Five Nights at Freddy's" film adaptation released in 2023 that mashes plots together and gives sympathy to the animatronics who turn out to be possessed by the souls of kidnapped children.

And the upcoming sequel promises to expand that lore.

It seems that as soon as the copyright lapses on a beloved childhood figure, they're starring in a horror movie.

I'm serious, no IP is safe.

When the copyright for the 1928 "Steamboat Willie" version of "Mickey Mouse" expired in 2024, a wave of horror reinterpretations emerged, like movies such "Screamboat" and "The Mouse Trap," and horror video games like "Infestation Origins."

And poor Winnie.

"Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey," a 2023 slasher, takes the friendly, lovable characters, and anthropomorphizes them in terrifying fashion.

-[bones cracking] -[victim screaming] So it seems that nothing is safe from the profit machine of capitalism, not our childhood heroes, spaces, or memories.

And in mascot horror, that's also true for monsters.

Capitalism is a monster that spawns more capitalism.

Another very real thing keeping mascot horror alive is the fans.

Online communities breathe life into these twisted worlds.

It's collective imagination at its best.

Mascot horror isn't just about corrupted childhood icons; it's about who gets to control the story behind the scare.

[Freddy shrieking] Before game designer, Scott Cowton... Ugh, Cawthon.

Coffin, Cawthon.

It's, it's like coffin, "Cawthon."

The game takes place in Freddy Faz-bars's Pizzeria...

"Faz-bars?"

She's not gonna make it.

-(Crew Member) How?

What?

-[exhales] Okay.

(Crew Member) All right, let's do it, quick.

Wow, okay.