Line #72 Main/CreepyMascotSuit


1	%%
2	%%
3	%% The examples on this draft have been alphabetized. Please add your example in the proper place. Thanks!
4	%%
5	%%
6	%% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1642368818064234400
7	%% Please do not replace or remove without starting a new thread.
8	%%
9	[[quoteright:350:[[Franchise/SilentHill https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/robbie_wants_to_fucking_murder_you.png]]]]
10	[[caption-width-right:350:There's something about [[Advertising/EnergizerBunny pink rabbits]] that makes you run really fast.]]
11	%%
12	%% Caption selected per above IP thread. Please do not replace or remove without discussion in the Caption Repair thread:
13	%% https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1404492079030138900
14	%%
15	->''"Cutesy, huggable mascots are a shockingly new corporate strategy. Up until recently, it was perfectly acceptable to toss a wretched byproduct of Satan's sperm bank right in the paying customer's face, watch them scream and cry in a puddle of their own fear-vomit, and then calmly ask, 'Will that be cash or credit?'"''
16	-->-- '''Website/{{Cracked}}''', ''[[https://www.cracked.com/article_23556_7-terrifying-early-versions-famous-mascots.html 7 Famous Mascots (Who Once Looked Scary As Hell)]]''
17
18	A person wearing a mascot suit, especially if it's of an animal/furry, is almost always the MascotVillain, or are just portrayed as being creepy. If they ''are'' antagonistic, they're almost always portrayed as a StalkerWithoutACrush. They're usually supernatural to an extent as well, [[VillainTeleportation appearing in places where they shouldn't be in]] or possessed by a [[OurGhostsAreDifferent spiritual being]] with GhostlyGoals.
19
20	The existence of this trope can largely be explained by the UncannyValley. These mascots can look ''kind'' of like [[FunnyAnimal cartoon animals]], but not enough to appear friendly. There's also the fact that mascots are the size of adult humans, while many cartoon animals are smaller than humans, which can make mascots AccidentalNightmareFuel to kids. The fact that mascot suit heads usually are designed to [[PerpetualSmiler always look happy]] can tie into this, as it invokes DissonantSerenity and the "empty" and "unstable" varieties of the StepfordSmiler trope.
21
22	If the mascot performer is not evil, but kids are scared of them anyway, this can overlap with DreadedKidsPartyEntertainerJob.
23
24	Compare to HostileAnimatronics, MalevolentMaskedMen, MonsterClown and MascotHorror. See also CreepyOldFashionedDivingSuit, for another outfit considered scary due to the way it hides its wearer's face, and UncannyValley. Contrast GoofySuit, LoserTeamMascot, and BadJobWorseUniform, although they could overlap with this trope.
25
26	----
27	!!Examples:
28	[[foldercontrol]]
29
30	[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
31	* ''Manga/FrankenFran'':
32	** One issue had a virus that turned people into zombies, pretty standard, right? Well, what wasn't was that their bodies transformed into mascot costumes.
33	** One pedophile is punished by being turned into a living mascot suit, condemned to be surrounded by children but unable to act on his urges.
34	* ''Manga/{{Gleipnir}}'' plays this to the hilt. The protagonist transforms into a patchwork cartoon dog mascot costume, one which happens to be ''[[BodyHorror organic]]'' and hollow on the inside. Very much a CreepyGood example.
35	[[/folder]]
36
37	[[folder:Comic Books]]
38	* The bread and butter of ''ComicBook/{{Plush}}''. The series is about a CannibalClan of fursuit-wearers, all of whom except one's are modeled after animals. These include a goat, unicorn, and cat, and few of them go more than a single issue without blood splattering over them.
39	[[/folder]]
40
41	[[folder:Fan Works]]
42	* Zipper T. Bunny from the ''VideoGame/AnimalCrossing'' games is pretty clearly someone in a bunny suit. However, many fans find his unmoving face and cheerful behavior unsettling, and as a result, most fanart and other fan works depict him as terrifying. He's often compared to genuinely evil costumed characters like [[VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddysVRHelpWanted Glitchtrap]] as well.
43	* The ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' as re-envisaged by Creator/AAPessimal builds on the idea of the brassica-themed fun park of Cabbage World. In canon, the mascot Billy Brassica is specifically described as a Clown. Given the sinister and frightening world of Discworld clowns, Pessimal theorised that this is a sub-specialty of the Fools' Guild, whose full title is something like ''The Guild of Fools, Jesters, Mime Artists, Minstrels, Troubadors, Stage Conjurors, and People Who Wear Those Bloody Silly Mascot Costumes At Theme Parks And Major Sporting Events''.
44	[[/folder]]
45
46	[[folder:Literature]]
47	* Very briefly invoked in ''{{Literature/Animorphs}}'', when Visser Three decapitates a mascot. The guy in the mascot suit pokes his head out, causing the Visser to be audibly unnerved at the sight.
48	* The ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' has the Sto Plains settlement of Big Cabbage, where the sole and only industry is the agrobusiness of growing cabbages. It has a dedicated theme park, Cabbage World, where the host is Billy Brassica - who wears the theme park costume of a humanoid cauliflower with an unfeasibly massive head. His arch-enemy at Cabbage World is Micky Maggot, another poor soul who has to wear the caterpillar costume. Small children have been known to run away screaming.
49	* The ''Literature/KillRiver'' 80's slasher trilogy features a big, hulking killer who stalks and kills people in a water park, always wearing a rubber mask of the water park's grinning boat captain mascot called Kaptain Smiley. The mascot's drawings around the camp are done in an antiquated style that makes the character look creepy and unnerving rather than cute, with vacant eyes and an overly large grin, and the mask the killer wears captures all that creepiness, especially whenever it gets wet and sags.
50	[[/folder]]
51
52	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
53	* In ''Series/AshVsEvilDead'', Cougie is the high school mascot in Ash's home town. We first see the student wearing the suit, but the suit gets possessed by evil while he's wearing it. The introduction of Cougie possessed by evil is extremely creepy, with ominous music playing as he breathes heavily and stares at Brandy and her friend. Blood starts to pour out of the suit's eyes and more flows from the walls as the music intensifies and the lights dim. Then he disappears and the lights turn back on. Cougie then stalks Brandy in the school, becoming less mascot-like and more terrifying by the minute.
54	* ''Series/OnlyMurdersInTheBuilding'': PlayedForLaughs, and yet also PlayedForDrama. In one episode, Charles is haunted by visions of people in [[WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig]] costumes. He treats them like minor annoyances. However, he later reveals why these visions exist to the audience. [[spoiler:He took his ex-wife (then wife) and daughter on a family cruise, but his wife broke up with him and left, taking the daughter with her, when the ship was docked midway through the cruise. Charles had already hired the costumed performers for a party for his daughter. They held the party anyway, even though Charles was alone. He still remembers the mascots dancing around him.]]
55	* ''Series/TheHauntingHour'': Big Yellow from the episode "Mascot", serves as the mascot of a local school and it's basketball team, even though the mascot, simply a large, yellow, indeterminate... thing, seems to have no connecting theme to the school or anything else, and is simply kept around out of tradition. When Willie and Drake, who hate the mascot, begin pushing to have it replaced, they notice that no one seems to actually know who plays the mascot... [[spoiler: because Big Yellow isn't actually a kid in a costume, it's a real, living creature that happens to look like a mascot costume, and is willing to kill to keep it's position.]]
56	[[/folder]]
57
58	[[folder:Video Games]]
59	* ''VideoGame/DeadRising2'': Brent Ernst, also known as Slappy, is a psychopath working in a children's clothing store as a mascot. He wears a huge bobblehead mask with an eerie smile, has a child-like maturity, wields a pair of flamethrowers, and he attacks Chuck under the belief that he started the zombie outbreak and killed his girlfriend. In battle, he also calls himself the "Toy store mascot from hell".
60	--> '''Slappy''': "The public always underestimates mascots!"
61	* ''VideoGame/DuckSeason'': The Dog is the MascotVillain of the video game, who hunts down the protagonist. His costume, as his name implies, is of an anthropomorphic dog. He's somehow able to transfer himself from the Duck Season video game to the real world- which he uses to murder people.
62	* ''Videogame/Fallout4'': Bosco is the AxeCrazy leader of a raider gang who wears a unique piece of headgear called the Mascot Head, a damaged head from a bear mascot suit. According to his backstory, he was bitten by a wild dog and infected with rabies, causing him to sometimes have hallucinations of a terrifying beast and go on killing sprees against his own men. They attempted to placate him by presenting him with the mascot head and convinced him the beast was dead, and he took to wearing it as a trophy.
63	* ''Franchise/FiveNightsAtFreddys'': Add to the entire series throughout. Although some of the actual suits themselves aren't creepy (such as the first ones), many of them attempt to play up this trope (although usually unintentionally) as their suits have Withered away, or are just... [[UncannyValley failing to look cute]]. This is intentionally played straight in ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddysVRHelpWanted'' and in ''[[VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys3 Fazbear's Fright]]'', though, in which they were ''made'' scary in order to attract people. As well as in the books, in which [[spoiler: they're given the scary designs in order to instill fear into victims.]]
64	* ''VideoGame/GoingUnder'': The Joblin Promoters wear mascot heads and attack with T-shirts fired from T-shirt Cannons.
65	* ''VideoGame/MaxPayne2TheFallOfMaxPayne'': Vinnie Gognitti is trapped in a Captain Baseball Bat Boy suit (from the game's InUniverse comic strip franchise). While the guy is quite the wimp and an ally of circumstance of Max, the suit is trapped with a bomb inside, which will explode should he remove it.
66	* ''VideoGame/SilentHill3'' introduced Robbie the Rabbit to the [[Franchise/SilentHill franchise]]. He went to make several cameos both inside and outside the series. He's one of the mascots [[note]]the other ones are Cathy the Cat, Dawn the Duck and Huey the Horse. None of them actually appear in the series, though.[[/note]] of the Lakeside Amusement Park and resembles a fairly normal humanoid pink rabbit... except for the little detail that both his face and clothes are bloodstained. Several Robbies can be found slumped in various areas of the park as if "dead" but no one knows if they ''really'' are. A single Robbie can be seen in ''VideoGame/SilentHill4TheRoom'' if you peek through the hole in the wall into Eileen's apartment, sitting innocuously on the bed if she is home and ''staring at you with a bloodied face'' if she isn't, and when you actually go into her apartment in the Otherworld much later [[ParanoiaFuel it is nowhere to be seen...]]
67	* ''VideoGame/ThePark'': Chad the Chipmunk serves as one of the most infamous horror stories surrounding Atlantic Island Park: originally a local drunk by the name of Steve Gardner, after taking the role of park mascot, he grew progressively more obsessed with his job until he refused to remove the costume at all - eventually murdering a group of teenagers with an ice pick. As such, whenever Chad appears in the game - blood-splattered mascot costume and all - it's a sure sign that something's about to go horribly wrong. [[spoiler:Ironically, he's not even the Big Bad despite his prominence in the games advertising; the real villain is [[VideoGame/TheSecretWorld Nathaniel Winter]], the owner of the park and the man responsible for Steve's insanity.]]
68	[[/folder]]
69
70	[[folder:Web Animation]]
71	* ''WebAnimation/HelluvaBoss'': In "Loo Loo Land", it's shown that Moxxie has [[WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes a fear of theme park mascots]]. He even threatens Loo Loo (the mascot of the titular AmusementParkOfDoom) and accuses him of being a pervert under that suit, to which Loo Loo sighs and begrudgingly admits is true.
72	* ''WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation'': In the ''VideoGame/EpicMickey'' episode, Yahtzee states that he used to have a crippling phobia of mascots, which he hadn't gotten over by the time his family went to Disney Land one summer for vacation. Meeting characters was bad enough, but he nearly had a meltdown come the parade (and goes into a post-traumatic flashback to it on-camera).
73	[[/folder]]
74
75	[[folder:Web Original]]
76	* A threatening and possibly living rather than occupied Mickey suit menaces the narrator at the climax of Literature/AbandonedByDisney.
77	* ''Website/{{Cracked}}'': ''[[https://www.cracked.com/article_23556_7-terrifying-early-versions-famous-mascots.html 7 Famous Mascots (Who Once Looked Scary As Hell)]]'' discusses corporate mascots (most of which are costumes, though some are illustrations) that used to have unintentionally terrifying designs. The article takes every opportunity to describe these old mascots as abominations of nature that feed on the fear of children.
78	[[/folder]]
79
80	[[folder:Western Animation]]
81	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'': PlayedForLaughs with Baloney the Dinosaur. He's really just a childish and stupid parody of [[Series/BarneyAndFriends Barney the Dinosaur]] (a popular children's character portrayed by a man in a costume), but the Warners are terrified of him partially because they find his saccharine nature annoying, and partially because Baloney is an ImplacableMan to the AmusingInjuries that the Warners give him. Strangely, it's hard to tell whether Baloney is an actual dinosaur or a person in a costume. He does have seams indicating that he's a costume, but [[ExpressiveMask his face and mouth move like that of a living thing]], and there's no indication of a human actor inside the costume. Also, at the beginning of Baloney's show, he magically transforms from a stuffed animal, but there's no indication that this is just an in-universe special effect. So, for all we know, Baloney could be a living, empty mascot costume.
82	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'': In the episode "Muffy's House Guests," Muffy has peregrine falcons nesting near her house and has to get rid of them. She reveals that she is afraid of the birds because she once had a birthday party at a goose-themed restaurant and was scared by the creepy bird mascot suits.
83	* ''WesternAnimation/BobsBurgers'': The episode "Bed & Breakfast" reveals that Teddy is [[ThePollyanna unperturbed by everything around him]], except for mascots with their unblinking, staring eyes. This stems from Teddy [[{{Cuckold}} watching his wife engage in sex with a guy in a seal mascot costume]] and being disturbed by the fact the seal was looking at ''him'' throughout.
84	* ''WesternAnimation/CloneHigh'': Invoked by the Heebie Jeebie in "Anxious Times at Clone High," a deliberately creepy and monstrous "mental health mascot" who actually drives up the students' stress and eventually starts attacking and abducting them as part of Candide’s plan.
85	* ''WesternAnimation/DeadEndParanormalPark'': In the second episode, Pugsley accidentally uses his newfound powers to bring some old mascot costumes to life, who all lurch after people while saying "Meat", scaring the park's staff and visitors. This is then subverted when it turns out the living costumes meant no harm; they simply wanted to ''[[FunWithHomophones meet]]'' and greet people, and happily allow themselves to be returned to normal and washed once that has been fulfilled.
86	* ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'':
87	** In the episode ''A Nightmare on Killmotor Hill'', the Dewey Mascot looks creepily at Lena. It later starts acting weird in a distorted hallway where it opens its mouth to reveal Magica De Spell.
88	** In the episode "Daytrip of Doom", the Beagle Boys [[MuggedForDisguise steal a mascot costume]] so they can sneak into Funzo's Fun Zone and kidnap the triplets and Webby. The real owner of the suit is later revealed to be [[NebulousEvilOrganization evil in his own right.]]
89	* ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'': Less suit and more a mascot attraction. In "The Love God", Stan tries to attract customers with a hot air balloon of his face with a sign reading "I Heart Kids". However, it ends up shoddily made, looking like something that wouldn't be out of place from Frankenstein's lab. Not helped that it gets set on fire during the episode [[SignsOfDisrepair with the "h" and "r" on the sign burned off, now reading "I Eat Kids"]].
90	* ''WesternAnimation/TheMask'': The Mask has a wooden mask that contains Loki, the Trickster God's spirit. When Pretorius, the main BigBad wears The Mask, he turns into a Giant Spider that looks like a mascot suit, but isn't - it's just Pretorius' cyborg head with the mask on.
91	* In the episode "Frybo" from ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'' Steven uses a gem shard to give sentience to Frybo, the mascot from Beach Citywalk Fries. This backfires when the suit takes a command from Peedee to "make people eat fries" [[LiteralMinded in a literal and violent way.]]
92	* ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBros'': Scare Bear wears a very creepy-looking bear mascot outfit. Given that he also is constantly holding a big knife, is covered in dried blood, and only communicates in husky breathes, this is arguably the ''least'' unsettling thing about him.
93	[[/folder]]
94

Context Main / CreepyMascotSuit