History Main / ObscurePopularity

* ''WebVideo/SuperMarioLogan'' has a huge and dedicated fanbase, and yet it's only known in the mainstream either for the episode "Jeffy's Tantrum!" causing a young boy to try and hang himself like Jeffy did, or for the [[FanWorkBan Cease and Desist letter]] it got from Creator/{{Nintendo}}, which caused the ''[[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Mario]]'' to be permanently removed from the series and replaced with human puppets, removing all references to their franchises, as well as deleting the entire [=YouTube=] channel and start a new one from scratch.

* ''VideoGame/{{Ninjala}}'' has, as of February 2023, reached 10 million players, a rather high number for a new IP by a third-party company on the Platform/NintendoSwitch and no other platform. However, despite the presence of very advanced players and a thriving {{metagame}}, information on this game is very hard to come by that can't be found in the in-game tutorial. It has been argued that, whereas fans of most other games [[InformationWantsToBeFree are eager to share what they know]], ''Ninjala'' fans instead tend to guard their strategies and tricks closely, leading to only a handful of players willing to make that information available online. The result is ''Ninjala'' not having a coherent fandom as much as many isolated cliques online who keep to themselves who try not to be noticed.

* ''VideoGame/{{Ninjala}}'' has, as of February 2023, reached 10 million players, a rather high number for a new IP by a third-party company on the Platform/NintendoSwitch and no other platform. However, despite the presence of very advanced players and a thriving {{metagame}}, information on this game is very hard to come by that can't be found in the in-game tutorial. It has been argued that, whereas fans of most other games [[InformationWantsToBeFree are eager to share what they know]], ''Ninjala'' fans tend to guard their strategies and tricks closely, leading to only a handful of players willing to make that information available online.

* ''WebVideo/SuperMarioLogan'' has a huge and dedicated fanbase, and yet it's only known in the mainstream for the episode "Jeffy's Tantrum!" causing a young boy to try and hang himself like Jeffy did.

* ''Animation/MashaAndTheBear'' is the biggest worldwide hit of Russian animation ever made and the most watched PreschoolShow in the world ahead of genre juggernaut ''WesternAnimation/PeppaPig'', and yet it's not talked about as much as the latter and countless examples of pre-schooler WesternAnimation that draw considerably less viewing. It's especially a genuine killer on Website/YouTube, the episode "Recipe for Disaster" has '''4.5 billion views''' as of this writing, putting it well ahead of ''[[Music/{{PSY}} Gangnam Style]]'' despite the latter being far more culturally acknowledged (it also ended up the most watched non-music video ''ever'' on the website).

* {{Nightcore}} remixes and music get millions of views on Website/YouTube and other websites, yet the genre is all but unknown outside of anyone older than their mid-20s.

* Due to the Website/YouTube Kids program, there are many videos on the site that have view counts well into the hundreds of millions (or in some cases, ''billions''), and nearly all their viewers are very small children.
* It seems that after 2013, ''WebAnimation/TheAnnoyingOrange'' has faded into obscurity as one of those "Website/{{YouTube}} channels from back in the day" like ''WebVideo/{{Fred}}'', or so it seems. Many people are surprised to find that the character's [=YouTube=] channel is not only still active after a decade, but at the same time, it is still getting a lot of views and subscribers (mainly from children).

* ''Roleplay/NoPixel'' has a pretty sizable fanbase, its characters are well-known and beloved among fans, it has its own [[https://pixify.online internal pop culture]], and it even has its own wiki. However, there is little-to-no awareness of it outside of Website/{{Twitch}}.

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]

* Believe it or not, the most subbed to VirtualYoutuber is not [[WebAnimation/{{Hololive}} Gawr Gura]], but Cookieswirlc, to the point where Gura doesn't even come close. However, due to the fact that she wasn't always a Vtuber and her target audience is children rather than vtuber fans, she is rarely acknowledged by the broader Vtuber fandom.

* ''WebAnimation/BattleForDreamIsland'': The show garners millions of views per episode (with the first episode having over 59 million views after it exploded in popularity around 2014), [[TropeMaker has spawned]] [[ObjectShows countless other series in a similar vein to it]], created a wiki popular enough for Wikia to make an official app for it, and led Yoylecake to win Wikia's 2016 Battle of The Fantasy Foods competition. Despite the numerous feats accomplished by the fandom, you'd be hard-pressed to find it mentioned anywhere outside its corner of the Internet, and Website/{{Wikipedia}} doesn't consider it notable enough to warrant a page.

* ''VideoGame/{{Brawlhalla}}'' has a very active and massive player base (easily getting over 15,000 players per month according to Steam Charts) and has its own esports league with prize pools up to ''$100,000.'' That said, ''Brawlhalla'' barely gets talked about among the UsefulNotes/FightingGameCommunity or gaming community as a whole.

* ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'' won the UsefulNotes/HugoAward for Best Graphic Story ''three years in a row'', and has been in the top 10 of most popular webcomics for well over a decade. Yet it's not very well-known on many parts of the internet not geared towards ScienceFantasy, let alone in the outside world. It's practically a hidden gem.

* ''Film/{{Avatar}}'' is the highest grossing film of all time worldwide.[[note]]It was displaced by ''Film/AvengersEndgame'' for two years, but regained the title following a rerelease. Even when adjusting for inflation only ''Film/GoneWithTheWind'' beats it.[[/note]] It's also the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_films_in_the_United_States second best selling]] live-action film on home video, behind only Creator/JamesCameron's previous film ''Film/Titanic1997''. It was praised for its ground-breaking visual effects and use of 3D, but despite all this it left little lasting impression on those who watched it. Most people who have watched it can only vaguely describe the plot at best, and even recalling the name of ''one'' character from the film is a challenge. What makes ''Avatar'' such a strange case is that even back when it was relatively new, the actual plot of the film was glossed over by many. Today, while the movie hasn't aged poorly at all, it is still remembered mainly for its achievements, and [[SoOkayItsAverage you won't really find anyone who'd recommend it]]. It probably also doesn't help that during the 13-year SequelGap between it and ''Film/AvatarTheWayOfWater'', there was surprisingly little in the way of an ExpandedUniverse or merchandising compared with other popular sci-fi movie franchises like ''Franchise/StarWars''. This all factored in the doomsaying discourse preceding ''The Way of Water''... only for the sequel to [[AndYouThoughtItWouldFail defy it all]] at the box office, clearing $2 billion in just over one month, and becoming the third highest grossing film ever, behind only the first film and ''Avengers: Endgame''. Reception-wise, history repeated; once again the visuals and box office are all people actually choose to discuss about the film, with the plot and characters being mostly ignored in conversation, [[EvenBetterSequel though certainly not to the same extent as its predecessor]].

* This frequently happens to music genres and artists which are primarily popular on the internet, but are either too weird to make it into the mainstream or have too much isolated cultural context to make sense to someone who doesn't spend a lot of time online. These include the aforementioned Nightcore and Vaporwave, artists who make songs based on modern internet and fandom culture like Creator/DAGames, and more recently the Cloud Rap of Drain Gang and hyperpop from artists like Music/HundredGecs.

* Creator/NeilCicierega, although not quite to the same extent as other examples of this trope, remains relatively obscure despite many of the individual things he's worked on (the old {{Animutation}} memes, ''Music/TheUltimateShowdownOfUltimateDestiny'', ''WebVideo/PotterPuppetPals'', ''Brodyquest'', ''Ariel Needs Legs'', the various remixes on the ''Mouth'' albums) having gone viral to varying degrees. It's something of a joke in his fanbase to go "wait, he did ''that'', too?" Given his fairly long career, about half his work being under the Music/LemonDemon alias, his tendency to mess around with various mediums, and him rarely showing his face, it's rather difficult for casual viewers to track any kind of CreatorThumbprint. This makes it easy to assume that any of the above are the works of random independent weirdos rather than a single prolific one.

* ''Franchise/TheLoudHouse'' has a large and active fanbase that produces lots of fanart and fanfiction, and Creator/{{Nickelodeon}} considers it its second best-performing franchise (behind ''Franchise/SpongeBobSquarePants'') to the point of having a [[WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouseMovie movie]] and [[WesternAnimation/TheCasagrandes two]] [[Series/TheReallyLoudHouse spin-offs]] (one of which is a LiveActionAdaptation). However, it's barely talked about among both mainstream audiences and the Western Animation community as a whole, largely due to a number of controversies surrounding its fans and its creator[[note]]An event that occurred several years ago, but fans and detractors alike still react as if it had just happened.[[/note]]. Most fans are commonly stereotyped as incest-obsessed[[note]]Due to the popularity of Loudcest and its spinoff fandom Webcomic/{{Sin Kids|AU}}, though the fanbase largely rejects Loudcest fans nowadays[[/note]], pedophiles[[note]]With a big fandom and [[MostWritersAreMale a primarily female cast]] comes a big Rule 34 scene[[/note]], or merely immature[[note]]A lot of the show's fans lean younger, and don't have the best reputation among adult fans and the animation community at large[[/note]], despite most fans not belonging to any of these groups. In the rare event that it ''is'' brought up, it is usually done to mock the show or give unfavorable comparisons to the show's contemporaries such as ''WesternAnimation/{{Amphibia}}'', ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'', ''WesternAnimation/TheGhostAndMollyMcGee'', and ''WesternAnimation/CraigOfTheCreek''. The show's poor treatment by popular cartoon Youtubers and the Western Animation community's preference for serialized Dramedy shows doesn't help matters.

* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' currently stands as the ''highest-grossing media franchise'' in the world, with the franchise continuing to gross millions of dollars and every mainline game in the franchise having sold at least 10 million units each. Yet despite this, most Pokémon and Pokémon-related media remains fairly obscure in mainstream media outside of the [[FirstInstallmentWins first generation]] and (to a lesser extent) second generation. Much of this is due to the franchise’s audience having been a FleetingDemographic (though [[PeripheryDemographic this has changed]] start in the early 2010’s) and the franchise’s perception in pop culture having been colored by the "Pokémania" of TheNineties.