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alt title(s): Evil Clown
Clowns are supposed to be funny, indeed. They're supposed to make everyone laugh, especially children. This is the entire point of their existence. Sometimes they succeed. But for some people, clowns awaken some primal fear . There are children who won't go near a clown without screaming.
Their face is... fake, corpse-like, most often the makeup being Uncanny Valley Makeup, the emotions aren't real, the smile is just painted on. The outfit and big shoes are downright grotesque. They live on the the horizon of the Uncanny Valley. There's something seriously wrong with a clown to some people, and this resonates deep within the part of us that still believes that there is a monster in the closet, that will get out if you don't keep the door closed.
It's uncommon to find clown characters who are genuinely good. More commonly, writers tap into the fear: the Monster Clown is a classic villain. Expect the Monster Clown to parody humor, with classic jokes becoming deadly; acid in the plastic flowers pinned to their lapels and joy buzzers with fatal amounts of voltage, among other things. If they work in a circus, it'll be a Circus Of Fear.
Sooner or later, our heroes will have to put these clowns to the sword.
Note there are specific kinds of clowns in the real world. People may fear the auguste, the stereotypical clown who acts and dress the most wildly. Whiteface clowns are unsettling because they are unexpectedly intelligent, even scheming. Character clowns - like Emmett Kelly's "Weary Willie" - by contrast have very muted designs, and can be difficult to identify by the TV audience. You rarely see them anymore.
Real world clowns clown: while clowning is intended to be funny, it can be received as ritualised (self) humiliation, and make modern audiences quite sick to the stomach.
That John Wayne Gacy, one of the most famous serial killers in the United States, worked part-time as a clown doesn't really help their case. You don't want your kids around the Monster Clown, but the character's parents seem oblivious to their kid's fears. The AP once used a stock photo of Gacy for National Clown day.
Recently (2007) a University of Sheffield study found that both young and older children universally fear or dislike clown images. Now a lot of hospital wings for child patients will have to be repainted.
(Quote from the BBC article: Researcher Dr Penny Curtis said: "As adults we make assumptions about what works for children. We found that clowns are universally disliked by children. Some found them quite frightening and unknowable.")
Sympathetic clowns are generally a little more muted, whether or not this is faithful to the job. Surly clowns who tiredly work with ungrateful children are more common, probably because they speak to the average overworked audience; they may be an example of The Krusty.
Enemy Mime is a sub-trope of Monster Clown. A villainous clown that is Played For Laughs instead of fear is a Villainous Harlequin. The Depraved Kids Show Host seems to be related. Clowns' ghastly white makeup puts them into White Mask Of Doom territory.
The opposite of this trope is the (perhaps sadly) rarely seen any more Non Ironic Clown.
Examples
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Anime
- Hisoka from Hunter X Hunter.
- In Akira there are two rival biker gangs. One gang, called the Clowns, dresses in clown-like outfits and acts very much like evil clowns.
- One appears in the circus scene in the beginning half of the animated movie Paprika.
- Piemon/Piedmon from Digimon Adventure.
- Tongpu, alias Mad Pierrot from Cowboy Bebop.
- Mayuri Kurotsuchi, 12th division Captain from Bleach.
- Although he's not actually a clown, the Millennium Earl from D.Gray-Man is a Monster Clown. He even refers to himself as the Auguste clown once.
- Also, the lvl 2 akuma that could imitate shapes, Pierrot.
- Inverted with Allen himself, who uses the Innocence Crowned Clown. But his adoptive father, Mana, may have been a straight example...
- Alan Gabriel from The Big O has a clownish appearance to go along with his...less than sane personality.
- The Clown in the Soul Eater manga claims to be the Anthropomorphic Personification of Insanity itself.
- In the Yu Gi Oh manga, Ryuji Otogi/Duke Devlin's father is a Monster Clown - apparently he was considered too scary for the anime.
- There is also Saggi the Dark Clown, a monster card, as well as one of the Player Killers in the manga-who was apparently too creepy for the anime and 'toned down' to, as the Abridged Series put it, "a gay clown".
- Specifically, he was a different kind of clown; a ventriloquist with a Perverse Puppet in the shape of Kaiba, who claimed that he had put Kaiba's soul into the doll.
- In G Gundam, Chibodee Crocket developed a pathological fear of clowns after an incident in his childhood when he was kidnapped by a monster clown, which lead to the loss of his mother.
- The manga Remote has a clown that sings an old folk song whenever someone sees him. In his wake he always leaves a corpse. Or a bomb.
- In Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, the 3rd season treats us to three matches at the same time — three of the newest heroes against three emotionally-themed Monster Clowns. The Masked Knight of Impassivity used cards with doll-themed cards to push Jesse Anderson to the edge, the Masked Knight of Anger uses an anchor-themed knight to push around fossil-slinging Jim Cook, . . . and the Masked Knight of Laughter hams it up with one-liners against military man Axel Brodie with an appropriate Monster Clown deck featuring Fool Clown and Laugh Exploder.
- Gao Gai Gar had the demonic and sleep-disturbing Penchinon. THIS is the clown that eats you. Or turns you into a rampaging monster. BREEEEEE! *shudders*
- Penchinon is a pirate. Pagliaccio, the robo speaking Zonder doll that can fold herself into a sphere, is probably a better example.
- Pagliaccio actualy means "clown" in Italian
Comic Books
- The Joker from Batman. The Trope Codifier.
- The Joker, incidentally, was originally based on Conrad Veidt's role in The Man Who Laughs. While the titular clown of this picture wasn't evil, he certainly was unbelievably disturbing-looking.◊
- With the introduction of Heath Ledger's violently, anarchically insane version of the Joker, complete with a Glasgow smile, small children will no doubt be quietly wetting themselves in theatres around the world.
- The movie's rated PG-13 in the US. Parents who bring small children to a "superhero" movie without paying attention to the ratings deserve the resultant therapy bills.
- Sadly, parents are idiots.
- Interestingly, on the Riff Trax for The Dark Knight, after the Joker flips the semi over and startsmaking goofy noises with his lips, the riffers say this:
Mike: Daffy Duck and John Wayne Gacy's bastard son. Bill: I thought that was Jim Carrey...
- Tim Burton's second Batman movie gives the Penguin a bunch of clowns as henchmen, despite the fact that clowns are more the territory of the Joker. One of them is a young Doug Jones (A.K.A. Abe Sapiens A.K.A. The Faun and The Pale Man).
- According to the production notes, Burton's vision of the Penguin was inspired by (of all things) The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari, so a Circus Of Fear is a necessity.
- And in the briefly-mentioned backstory, the Penguin in that version also was a sideshow freak in his childhood, implying that's where his gang comes from.
- Violator from Spawn.
- The Comedian from Watchmen arguably qualifies. In his original costume as one of the Minutemen anyway. When he gets his second costume and becomes one of the Crimebusters, not so much.
- It must be said though, similar to the Joker's Glasgow smile in The Dark Knight trilogy, the scar the Comedian gets in Vietnam is eerily reminiscent of a clown's painted smile.
- Protoclown from The Tick
- Whiteface, a Serial Killer from the Supreme Power offshoot Nighthawk.
- As Nighthawk is an Expy of Batman, Whiteface is an Expy of The Joker.
- Deadpool sees all clowns as Monster Clowns.
- Blade once fought vampire clowns. Really.
- Even The Creeper has shown dislike of clowns.
Film
- Beetlejuice
- B-Movie example: Killer Klowns From Outer Space suggests that the very presence of clowns and circuses in Earth culture is a warped memory of an ancient visitation by inimical aliens.
- Pennywise the Dancing Clown from the 1990 adaptation of Stephen King's book IT, portrayed by Tim Curry.
- In Poltergeist, towards the end a toy clown is possessed by evil spirits and ends up attacking the older brother. This was foreshadowed earlier in the movie when the boy covered up the clown with his jacket, because it was staring at him when he went to bed.
- The Greatest Show On Earth features a gentle, altruistic, medically-inclined clown who never removes his makeup, even off-duty... because he's on the run for the murder of his wife.
- Subverted in The Chase: Charlie Sheen's character Jack Hammond is pegged for a felony because he works part-time as a clown, despite the fact that he was innocent. (He's convicted, however, because a crucial piece of evidence was deemed inadmissible, which led to the events of the titular car chase.)
- John Candy starred in a drama/horror film in the '70s titled The Clown Murders which was about a Halloween prank gone wrong. The main enemy was a guy in a clown mask but he only appears for a few seconds in the movie.
- The Brave Little Toaster had a nightmare scene with one of these.
- A startling jack-in-the-box (that weeps, apparently) turns up in the very first shot of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
- In Diary of the Dead (the Romero Zombie movie) there's a Zombie-Clown at a birthday party and he bites the birthday child's dad's ear off. It's hilarious and absolutely terrifying.
- It's telling that the child is shown to be instinctively afraid of the clown.
- One also pops up in Land Of The Dead to eat one of the side characters.
- And in Day Of The Dead, too. It makes you wonder just how quickly the Zombie Apocalypse struck that the poor bastards didn't even have time to change into something more dignified for their trip to the hereafter.
- Quick Change. Bill Murray's character dresses up as a clown to rob a bank. He's not really evil, though he did endanger the customers and bank personnel (who could have been wounded or killed during the robbery if someone had gotten heroic or the police had charged in guns a' blazing).
- Gacy; the film about the mass serial killer .
- An original plan for Halloween was to have The Shape wear a Weary Willie mask instead of the tweaked William Shatner one they ended up using. He does wear the clown mask for the film's opening scene.
- "The master and I are going to have words. He knows I hate clowns. God, I hate them. I hate them all. I hate Bozo, Ronald, Chuckles with their freakin' dumb noses and their lousy party hats!" - Violator from the movie, Spawn.
- Near the end of Zombieland, a monster clown appears at Pacific Playland. Even though Columbus is afraid of clowns, he kills it in two hits.
- Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig) in House Of 1000 Corpses. Especially the first scene. He's more of a monster in The Devil's Rejects but ditches the clown makeup early in the film.
- The first segment of Amusement features a room filled with scary clown dolls and toys. Except one of them isn't...
- In Night Of The Demon (1957), Crowley-esque cult leader Julian Karswell, who will blithely send critics to a horrible doom, holds childrens' parties at his estate, playing a magician/clown...pretty benign for this trope, but capable of bad stuff (and in the original story, quick to scare the daylights out of the kids).
- The second dream sequence in Pee Wee's Big Adventure is loaded with them. The scariest one (in my opinion) being the surgeon, who is only revealed to be a monster clown after he pulls down his surgical mask showing his eerily painted mouth. Definitely a case of less is more.
Literature
- Pennywise from IT by Stephen King.
- In the TV miniseries based on the same, Tim Curry's portrayal of the role was so creepy, the other actors avoided him even off-camera. He is responsible for a hell of a lot of people's coulrophobia.
- The Ankh-Morpork Fool's Guild in the Discworld series realizes that clowns scare and disgust some people. Thus, they prepare their charges through exceedingly harsh conditions to endure a lot of abuse. Terry Pratchett, creator of the series, has described the guild as "the stricter sort of medieval monastery without [the monastery's] non-stop boffo laughs." He also introduces the idea that whiteface clowns are scary even to other clowns because their humor often comes from bullying others.
- In Making Money, Lord Vetinari proposes that some people hate clowns because clowns aren't really funny, but instead tragic:
- In Life Expectancy, by Dean Koontz, we meet a man with the unfortunate name of Konrad Beezo. He is a clown, he has a pistol and apparent mental problems, and he insists on telling everyone he meets that he hates aerialists.
- In Douglas Coupland's jPod, a group of video game company employees are forced by their boss to make a really inane kids' game with a skateboarding turtle, so as a way of getting back at him, they put in an Easter Egg which unlocks a gameplay mode where Ronald McDonald goes on a bloody killing spree.
- Speaking of Ronald McDonald crossed with monstrousness, John Dies At The End features a deliberately inflicted hallucination of said clown prince of lard being helplessly compelled to eat his own entrails.
- Horrabin from The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers.
- In Use Of Weapons, Cheradenineactually Elethiomel Zakalwe wears a clown disguise when assassinating Ethnarch Kerian.
- Australian novel The Pilo Family Circus is all about this: the extradimensional Pilo Family Circus' clown division is populated by some of the most depraved and insane individuals in existence, acting as the management's henchmen in Our World. Worse still, it's very clear that none of them started this way: the magical facepaint they wear creates a split personality that takes over every time they "paint up" until the original is reduced to nothing. Since it also grants superhuman abilities, most recruits have no choice but to wear it just to survive the first few months in the Circus, and by then, it's already too late.
- While technically a jester rather than a clown, the murdering rapist mercenary Shagwell from A Song Of Ice And Fire probably qualifies.
- In John Connolly's short story Some Children Wander By Mistake, the clowns of the Circus Caliban are revealed to be monstrous creatures that remove their makeup for a performance. They despise children, particularly the ones that still find them funny, and go out of their way to kill and eat them whenever they can do so without being caught- except of course for the unlucky few that are selected to become Clowns themselves. These are culled from children that were still unborn at the time of the Circus Caliban's last performance in a particular town, but were conscious enough at the time to kick when the Clowns appeared. Once the circus returns, the child is kidnapped and slowly transformed into a Clown. This is the sad fate of the story's protagonist, William:
His teeth fell out and were replaced by sharp, white hooks that were kept hidden behind shields of plastic; and his nails decayed to hard yellow stumps at the end of soft, pale fingers. He grew tall and strong, until at last he forgot his name, and became only "Clown", and a great clown he was. His tongue grew like a snake's, and he tasted children with it as they laughed, for clowns are hungry and sad and envious of humanity. They travel from town to town, looking for those that they can steal away, always marking the child that kicks in the womb, and always finding him upon their return.
For clowns are not made.
Clowns are born.
- In the Star Wars New Jedi Order novels, Onimi is the disfigured jester of Supreme Overlord Shimmra of the Vong. He's a creepy little guy who always has an annoying comment for the situation on hand. He's also The Man Behind The Man, using Mind Control on Shimmra. Onimi's the only Force user among the Vong, thanks to the event that crippled him. The Final Battle of the series is against him; he puts up a hell of a fight, and would have won if Jacen Solo hadn't taken another level of God Mode Sue at the last minute. Onimi's Wookiepedia entry actually compares him to Kefka.
- Subverted in Captain Krokus by F. Knorre, where Clown Co Co is The Hero, and his scarecrow becomes the Big Bad.
- The Dreamclown, a short story by Nancy A. Collins. The titular clown, rather than being a garish and grotesque creature, is portrayed as a graceful mime-acrobat, in the style of the French Pierrot. It spends evenings on the street outside the house of two boys (the narrator and his brother), entertaining them with its enchanting, almost seductive performance. The narrator's brother is drawn in by the Clown's act, and loses his soul.
- "Scary Clowns" is the name of the psychological warfare division of the Organization in Bad Monkeys and indeed all its agents dress as clowns.
- The Harlequin is the covert enforcement division of the Vampire Council in Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake books. Even to say their name brings a death sentence.
- Arguably, the jester from Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra can be seen as a Trope Maker (with Rigoletto, or possibly some Victor Hugo work, as an Ur Example).
Live Action TV
- Are You Afraid Of The Dark had two: Zeebo the Clown, the ghost of a criminal who haunted a haunted house (go figure); and the Crimson Clown, something of a cross between a Monster Clown and a Demonic Dummy.
- The Clown in the Star Trek Voyager episode "The Thaw" was created as virtual-reality entertainment for a race in suspended animation. The Clown became self-aware and sadistically scared to death anyone who opposed it. This editor found that episode one of the scariest Star Trek episodes in quite some time. It was especially odd, because the ending almost made you feel sorry for the Clown, despite his sinister nature.
- The Avengers episode "Look (Stop Me if You've Heard This One) But There Were These Two Fellas..." has a pair of killer clowns whose boss is a Punch and Judy puppet.
- The robot clowns in the Doctor Who episode "The Greatest Show In The Galaxy".
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer: In the episode "Nightmares", everyone was menaced by their worst dreams, including public nudity, death, and of course...
Xander: (runs into Willow while fleeing, panicked) Remember my sixth birthday party?
Willow: Oh yeah! When the clown chased you, and you got so scared you went... oh.
- Supernatural had a demon that took the shape of a clown so children would trust it. (Yeah, 'cause nothing inspires trust like... oh, never mind.)
- Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: In an episode called "No Clowning Around," the Yellow Ranger's cousin is harassed by an evil clown that turns out to be Rita's Pineoctopus monster.
- Power Rangers generally has at least one clown-based monster per season.
- The David Bowie-esque Pierrot in Ashes To Ashes which evokes the one from the song of the same name's Music Video. Which turns out to be representative of Alex's father, who killed himself and his wife.
- Mentioned half-jokingly by Colonel Sheppard in Stargate Atlantis, when one of the natives asks him if he's afraid of the Wraith. He says no, what he's really afraid of is clowns, eventually adding he's at war with them too. They try to fight them off, he says, but there's hundreds of them, pouring out of Volkswagens.
- And brought out for real when Rodney McKay and Sheppard are being attacked their worst nightmares: rowing a boat through a stormy whale-infested sea... with a clown sitting behind them.
- And in a later episode, an encounter with a nightmare inducing presence includes a clown.
- As the title suggests, The Sarah Jane Adventures episode "Day of the Clown". "Odd Bob" is really the Pied Piper and some sort of Anthropomorphic Personification of childhood fear.
- Hysterically funny subversion from 80s Sit Com The Hogan Family: David is dragooned into playing a clown at a birthday party, and the girl he's been chasing walks in on him, stares and says "David?" He stares at her in shock, then pulls the clown suit up to cover his head and says in a squeaky voice "No, it's just me, Bobo the headless clown!" Cue the children screaming in fear and the audience howling with laughter for about a solid minute.
- Subverted with Flabber in Beetleborgs. He's clownish but he's more friendly than monstrous.
- Agent Seeley Booth has a problem with clowns. He shot one once. It was on top of an ice cream truck. He had to be psychoanalyzed.
- In a later Halloween episode Booth and Bones investigate a serial killer who terrifies victims to death. When Booth confronts the killer, said killer is dressed as a clown. Presumably because clowns terrify everyone.
- The League Of Gentlemen's Papa Lazarou, a demonic, polygamist blackface minstrel who runs a Circus Of Fear. Season 3 reveals that he doesn't actually wear any makeup. That's his actual skin.
- For a more clownish but less monstrous example, look no further than Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's new show Psychoville, and Mr. Jelly, a one-handed clown who makes balloon animals with his hook, who performs at kids parties and gives us "Mr. Jelly's Hundred Hands" act (although there's only 16, really.) Jelly is a grouchy, dysfunctional weirdo with a bad temper and the tendency to accidentally scare children, but he's really not that bad a guy.
- Jack Handey had the right idea: "To me, clowns aren't funny. In fact, they're kind of scary. I've wondered where this started and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus and a clown killed my Dad."
- Seinfeld had a character at one point who was rather unstable, and was shown playing the role of Canio in Pagliaci (see below). At one point, he approaches Kramer who mentions his fear of clowns, and terrorizes him with a Slasher Smile.
- Specifically he was a schizophrenic who went off his meds, was obsessed with (and almost killed) Elaine, was dangerously paranoid and to make things worse was a Badass Normal, due to his wicked karate skills (which he aptly demonstrates on a gang of would be attackers).
- An episode of Charmed had the girls being terrorized by their worst nightmares. Paige's was a scary clown.
- The guys at MST 3 K had the clowns' number, riffing on the short "Here Comes The Circus" (aka "Here Comes The DEVIL!")
- One Step Beyond had an episode where a clown haunted a man, appearing in reflections reaching for his throat - trope averted as the clown was the good guy, avenging the man's murdered wife.
- Carrie Bradshaw from Sex And The City was scared of the clown Brady's grandmother hired for his 1st birthday: "Nothing is scarier than a clown."
Music
- The appropriately titled song "Clown" by the band Korn.
- The band "Insane Clown Posse" obviously takes their image from this. Ironically, in the band's mythology, they're the good guys (good in relation to the bigots and greedy rich folk they and the Dark Carnival are opposed to - ie hunt. In essence, they portray themselves as anti-heroes very much skirting the heroic sociopath borderline). A more standard evil clown is Jack Jeckell of the Amazing Jeckell Brothers; he throws juggling balls to his good brother Jake as the recently deceased watch, and if Jake drops one, the dead person in question goes straight to Hell.
- The Mythology goes like this. There are two jugglers, twin brothers, both clowns, Jake Jeckel and Jack Jeckel. When you go to your final judgement upon death, you stand before the jugglers, and they begin their act. Jack throws blood soaked balls (blood is slippery) at Jake, intentionally trying to get him to slip up and drop one. Jake is diving all over the place trying to catch everything, and then tossing the balls back to Jack. Every sinful act you've committed in your life gets transmuted into a ball, so the more of a fucked up asshole you were in life, the more objects Jake has to catch. IF Jake misses a ball, a trapdoor opens beneath you, and you fall straight into Hell's Pit.
- Blind Guardian's music video for "Mr. Sandman" includes three monster clowns made of Nightmare Fuel Unleaded. Seriously, don't go to sleep after watching that.
- Shawn "Clown" Crahan of Slipknot, and his mask.
- From "Mr. E's Beautiful Blues" by the Eels: "The clown with the frown driving down to the sidewalk fair / Finger on the trigger and I tell you it's quite a scare"
- German Power Metal band Edguy's album Mandrake has a monster clown with a Slasher Smile on the cover. Some of the lyrics in the album also mention them.
- Mr Bungle's self-titled album has a monster clown on the cover. And "Carousel", a song comparing life to a Circus Of Fear, contains a few references to a monster clown ("You know there's something lurking underneath the shape, with a mask over it's head and makeup on his face").
- In the video for Pink's song Please Don't Leave Me, the boyfriend tries to leave and the girl character goes Stephen King on him, starting with Misery and ending with an Axe Crazy bit from The Shining. The more psycho the girl goes, the more her make-up goes Monster Clown, until she looks horribly like Pennywise from It. *brrr*
- There's also a quick shot of one at :04.
- More Pink: from the same album, the song Funhouse:
This used to be a funhouse
But now it's full of evil clowns
It's time to start the countdown
We're gonna burn it down, down, we're gonna burn it down.
- And seriously, what more can you do with evil clowns, except Kill It With Fire? The video's pretty freaky too.
- While the clowns in the video for the Arctic Monkeys' "Fluorescent Adolescent" aren't demonic monsters, given that the video is centered around a fight between two gangs of those wacky circus comedians, they're not exactly nice, either.
- Alice Cooper's Can't Sleep, the Clowns Will Eat Me.
- Ogden Edsl's Kinko the Clown is equal parts novelty song and Nightmare Fuel.
Opera
- One word: Canio, from Il Pagliacci. Seriously, people. Brush up on your classics.
- Rigoletto, kinda. Although he's portrayed in a sympathetic light at parts, he's still a crazy, bitter, grotesque jester who indirectly kills his daughter and Morality Pet, Gilda.
Professional Wrestling
- Doink the Clown in the WWE, until his face turn. Then it went downhill fast.
- Doink also gets point for the coolest entrance theme ever, which started with the first few bars of "Entrance of the Gladiators" (aka the Standard Snippet for clowns) before turning into a very bass-heavy, very evil piece dotted with Evil Laughter. Have a listen.
Tabletop Games
- The Dungeons And Dragons supplement Heroes Of Horror is about infusing your games with anything from a touch to an overdose of the macabre, the frightening, and the unnerving. One of the monsters introduced? The "gray jester". One of the scenarios provided? A gray jester and a hag enslaving and eating children.
- The Dungeons And Dragons third party world 'Scarred Lands'(by Sword & Sorcery Studios) features the 'Carnival Krewes' - an entire society of Monster Clowns. Literally in some cases.
- Also on the Dungeons And Dragons front is House Phiarlan of Eberron, an espionage-based clan/organization. One of their fronts is the Carnival of Shadows. The description claims they've enthralled Khorvaire for decades, but looking at the picture provided (Everyone has angry faces and the animal act includes an always Neutral Evil monster), I'm going to have to assume the description is literal and there's some Mass Charm Person going on there.
- The Dilisnyas, one of the most treacherous and murderous of Ravenloft's great noble houses, trace their bloodline back to a fellow by the unlikely name of Pidlwik. In the original adventure module I6: Ravenloft, which inspired the campaign setting, Pidlwik's crypt identifies him as the court jester.
- The Skurra, of the Travelling Carnival, are one part this, one part Enemy Mime, and all subversion; while extremely creepy (even the mutated Carnies are somewhat afraid of them, and there is a belief amongst them that some or even all of the Skurra are actually ghosts), they are not malevolent in the slightest.
- The Eldar Harlequins of Warhammer 40000 are space elf ninja killer clowns, taking the scary clown to the kind of demented levels only 40k can. They wear holographic multicoloured harlequin costumes which can scatter their images into thousands of confusing fragments, and death masks which psychically amplify the fears of their victims, form nightmare faces and project the death-screams of previous victims into the current victim's mind. Their weapons are horrifyingly nasty even by 40k standards; as an example, their usual squad support weapon fires molecule-edged crystal discs covered in toxins that make the target's blood explode and they often use a weapon that shoots a monomolecular fiber through the target and spins it around, reducing the victim's innards into mush. They worship the "Laughing God", and are the Eldar equivalent of a roving carnival, visiting the various Craftworlds and acting out tales from Eldar mythology with holographic, psychically-enhanced interpretive dance. When they're not killing people in unspeakably horrible ways, of course.
- Which makes it all the more surprising that the Harlequins are, if probably not exactly good, at least firmly opposed to Chaos and will join forces (temporarily) with anyone fighting it they come across. They also protect the Black Library from violators who would almost certainly use its powers for evil.
- Of course, added scary can be brought in by, if not the certainty, then at least the very possible implication that the "Laughing God" may in fact be the C'tan entity "The Deceiver", a being so much of a Magnificent Bastard that he first persuaded his original worshippers to convert themselves into a soulless mechanical army, and then persuaded his own race of godlike beings to turn on and in some cases eat one another until only four were left. Suffice it to say that if this is true, really horrible things lie not just in the Harlequin's future, but probably the whole Eldar race's.
- Word Of God says that Cegorach the Laughing God, and the C'tan Deceiver are not the same being; although there's a certain amount of "professional respect" between the two.
- For an idea of what their performances are like, they would basically make Cirque du Soleil look like a bunch of overweight drunken fools who don't know how to work the stage lights.
- When acting out a particular one, The Fall (the story of how the original Eldar empire came crashing down when they accidentally created a new Chaos God), the roll of Slaanesh (the aforementioned Chaos God) can only be played by the strongest willed of the Harlequins, as even playing the part causes any lesser being attempting it to go completely insane. These Harlequins, called "Solitaires" and shunned for their fanatical (even by Harlequin standards) devotion to their art, are doomed to eternal torment upon death, as being so close in spirit to Slaanesh means he/she/it gets their souls as playthings when they die.
- For bonus points said monomolecular wire weapon is called the Harlequin's Kiss.
- Their training also also means they're the only Eldar who don't need a soulstone to keep them out of the hands of Slaneesh when they die. Yep, even the god of Squick is scared of clowns.
- Let it not be said that Magic The Gathering doesn't know the monster potential in clowns. Say hello to the Chaos Harlequin.
- And then there's the Cult of Rakdos, from the Ravnica block. If the land Rakdos Carnarium doesn't make your blood freeze, you need to get your head examined. A cult of slash-happy killers who consider their parties a "flop" if someone survives to tell about it - and they have a circus component to them, too?(And with a circus comes...) Thanks, Wizards, I may never sleep again.
- Naturally, there's at least one Call Of Cthulhu scenario (set in 1920s Germany) featuring a carnival jester who's really an Eldritch Abomination that's been traveling with the show incognito for years and causing various tragedies and disasters wherever they went.
- Yu Gi Oh LOVES this Trope. There's . . .
Theatre
- Essentially averted by Cirque du Soleil in their specific clown acts. Traditional whitefaces and augustes are less intimidating than the popular conception, and some character-based clown acts largely eschew garish makeup and costuming. Indeed some clowns are downright ordinary-looking compared to the other characters. But there are villainous/mysterious characters who, intentionally or not, have appearances akin to this trope: Boum-Boum in Quidam, Le Titan in La Nouba, etc. Closest to the trope is the bizarre emcee Fleur in Alegria: According to the All There In The Manual material, he was the court jester to the now-gone ruler of the kingdom, and now he wants to be king.
Video Games
Web Animation
- One of the primary bad guys in the Madness Combat Flash series is Tricky the Clown. Originally appearing in Madness Redeemer as a minor villain, he was pinned to a giant marshmallow (don't ask) by Hank in Avenger with a stop sign and turned into a zombie before being taken down by Hank again. He donned a Jason-style hockey mask for Apotheosis, but did not take part in the fighting. But in Depredation, Antipathy and Consternation, the Clown took on the power to warp reality itself, making him virtually unstoppable even after getting the top of his head sliced off and being blown full of holes at point blank range by Hank. However, we've probably seen the last of Tricky as at the end of Consternation, Jebus destroyed Tricky's portable Improbability Drive and killed him. (Spoilered not because his death is a surprise but the way it comes about is.)
- Xombie, a flash animation series which takes place After The End in a Zombie Apocalypse world at one point goes trough a circus. Guess what the protagonist has to face there.
Web Original
Web Comics
Western Animation
- Can't forget Joker from The Batman. Especially "Vampire Joker" in the movie.
- And the Joker from Batman: The Animated Series. As if being a monster clown every day isn't bad enough, the episode "Be A Clown" has him disguising as a slightly less creepy party clown to deliver a cake with an explosive as a candle to a party full of kids.
- Frankly, there are countless times (not including that stint in Treehouse of Horrors) that Krusty the Klown of The Simpsons fits neatly into the oversized shoes of this trope. Point in fact he is scary enough to provoke heart-attacks in patients with heart conditions (namely Homer).
- What's wrong? Oh right...My grotesque apperance!
- Also: Well I got news for you buddy: This aint make up!
- Not to mention the haunted Krusty doll.
"Hi, I'm Krusty the Clown and I don't like you." "Hi, I'm Krusty the Clown and I'm going to kill you."
- Bart's clown bed in "Lisa's First Word".
- In the supplement book Flanders Book of Faith, on of Neds Humble figurines has a little girl being frigntened by a clown. The title, First visit to the Circus
- Sideshow Bob. Okay, he's more like a Monster Ex Clown, but still, he tries to murder multiple characters and gets involved in semi elaborate revenge schemes after Bart and such foiled his framing of Krusty for armed robbery.
- Zombozo the Clown from Ben 10.
- Darph Bobo, and the entire Clown Empire, from Tripping The Rift
- In Animaniacs, Wakko Warner had an irrational fear of clowns, which often caused him to apply his Hyperspace Mallet before he ran screaming.
- Studio boss Seymour Plotz doesn't know this, so he sends a Jerry Lewis-style clown to the water tower to entertain Wakko on his birthday. Plotz doesn't like clowns, either, so when he finds out — he does nothing. True Hilarity Ensues.
Dr. Scratchnsniff: Wakko, repeat after me: "A clown is my friend. A clown will not bite me and throw me in the basement... A clown is not a big spider."
- In the Legion Of Super Heroes animated series, episode "Fear Factory", Lightning Lad is terrified of a clownlike doll from his childhood.
- Mighty Max had an episode (and a micro playset) involving Freako the Clown.
- In one episode of The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy, Billy displays a fear of clowns, thinking they're out to conquer the world and "Destroy us all! Destroy us all! Destroy us all!" After much prodding from Grim and Mandy and a trip to his Happy Place, he eventually gets over his fear... by becoming homicidally angry with clowns instead of afraid. This doesn't save him from the giant clown monster Grim made earlier, which proceeded to eat them all.
- "So it's agreed? We all hate clowns."
- Freakshow from Danny Phantom.
- Dr. Rockzo, the rock n' roll clown (he does cocaine) seriously, dude; a lot of cocaine from Metalocalypse. He's a clown that's designed to be scary (in more ways than one). Ironically, Toki loves him despite being the most childlike of Dethklok's members.
- Toki was shown to have a long-time love of clowns - there was a shot of him as a child sitting on Gacy the Clown's lap (shudder). Besides, it's metal to like clowns!
- An episode of Dexters Lab had Dexter become this in the episode "The Laughing" after being bitten by a pair of dentures belonging to a clown performing at Deedee's birthday party.
- Also partially subverted in this episode, in that Deedee stops Dexter by learning the ways of an order of benign mimes. Not to be confused with a Heroic Mime.
- Binky The Clown from Garfield And Friends isn't really evil, but he is incredibly obnoxious and somewhat creepy, and provides a recurring source of irritation for Garfield.
- Chuckie fom Rugrats is extremely coulrophobic, and in one episode he kept having nightmares about clowns, in which he would approach Tommy (who was facing away from the camera) and tap him on the shoulder, only to have Tommy turn around to reveal the most Nightmare Fuel-rific clown face and declare in the most disturbing voice ever, "I'm not Tommy!" *giggles*
- Not to mention the end of the episode had Mr. Finster walk out of Chuckie's room after tucking him in and noticing Stu turned away from him. He says, "Stu, I didn't know you were coming over," only to have clown faced Stu turn around and do the exact same thing that the clown faced Tommy did except he says, "I'm not Stu..." *laughs*
- Another episode called "The Trial" featured a creepy clown lamp with a giant perpetual grin and a evil countenance.
- Or the episode "The Mysterious Mr. Fiend" which had a talking clown doll depicted here◊.
- The episode "Clown Around" had plenty of Monster Clown's for all.
- To keep this list from getting longer, lets just say that Rugrats was very fond of Monster Clown's.
- The Beast Which Dares Not Speak Its Name, from the Earthworm Jim episode "Evil in love". Far too powerful and evil for the titular hero to hope to defeat, but fortunately thwarted by bureaucracy.
- Mad Kat from Swat Kats. The spirit of an evil jester from medieval times that merged with a failed comedian whose hardships mirrored Mad Kat's own. For a one shot villain, he's pretty effective, and came damn close to winning.
- The Clown With The Tearaway Face from Nightmare Before Christmas.
- Subverted in that he isn't that scary once you get to know him, just like the other denizens of Halloween Town.
- The Brave Little Toaster had a nightmare about a fireman-clown trying to chase it into filled bathtub.
- Scooby Doo has featured various such examples, among others including Zombo the "clown ghost" (from A Pup Named Scooby-Doo). What's New, Scooby-Doo? even retconned Velma into having had a fear of clowns.
- Clownfoot, a villainous clown from a Captain Caveman episode of The Flintstone Comedy Show probably qualifies here, complete with a Circus Of Fear (which he uses as a hideout for his robberies and to lure Wilma and Betty into a saber-toothed-tiger filled trap).
- A later-season episode of Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! features villains who are members of a circus possessed by big bad Skeleton King, which features not one, but THREE evil clowns, who end up merging into one really big, really creepy one. This is then subverted at the end when the circus is freed from evil and it turns out all the performers, including the no-longer-evil clowns are actually pretty nice people.
- One Man Circus from Scruff.
- Peter dresses up as "Pee Pants the Inebriated Hobo Clown" in an episode of Family Guy. This being Peter, it goes horribly wrong.
- Is there any way that could have gone right?
- Considering that Peter accidentally killed the man he thought was his father (Francis, not the town drunk from Ireland) while performing as Pee Pants, no, nothing could have gone right from there.
- The short-lived American adaptation of Australia's teacher sitcom 'Sit Down Shut Up has a Monster Clown in the form of the overly cheerful (and possibly mentally unstable) vice principal Stuart Proszakian (voiced by Will Forte from Saturday Night Live''. Quick note: Forte also plays mentally unstable characters [including those who have been convicted of sexual offenses] on "SNL," so his role on "Sit Down, Shut Up" isn't much of a stretch). Before he was vice principal, Stuart was a clown entertaining at a Florida prison. The second episode (where the teachers run a schoolwide fair) even had Stuart dressed in prison stripes and clown make-up (making him look more like Beetlejuice) and singing this song (set to folksy banjo music) with the following lyrics:
Well, you were beaten mercilessly in the shower.
You took an old-fashioned shiv in the crown.
They fired tear gas on your ass from the tower.
And when you got back up
You were feelin' down.
So...
Someone sent you a prison clown
Someone bought you
Or bartered you
A prison clown —
- If anyone buys you or barters you a prison clown, scream as loud as you can and call the proper authorities. For me...
- An episode of Extreme Ghostbusters had the ghostbusters hunting vampire-like monsters who feed on laugh and disguise themselves as clowns, because as this page tells us there's nothing funnier than an ominous clown with an Evil Laugh following you by night.
- How did Paddywack from Darkwing Duck escape inclusion?!? Beady red eyes, long grasping limbs, fangs and a bottom of the well voice. Not to mention that he was an otherworldy evil entity that fed on fear or chaos or some other kind of metaphysical claptrap and had poltergeist powers galore. I was seriously creeped out by him as a kid and that's saying a lot, given the types of horror flicks I would routinely watch. Unfortunately the link I provided is a montage of sorts and doesn't include any of the actual dialogue (except the last 7 seconds' "Will you play with me?") or music from the episode, but it nonetheless demonstrates how eerie he can be.
Real Life
- A charity in the Netherlands is the Clini Clowns, people who dress up like clowns and visit children's hospitals in order to make them feel better. After doing this for years, psychological research shows that this backfires because too many children are afraid of clowns. Oops...
- A Reuters article elaborates: "The study, reported in the Nursing Standard magazine, found all the 250 patients aged between four and 16 they quizzed disliked the use of clowns, with even the older ones finding them scary."
- John Wayne Gacy was an American serial killer who was convicted and later executed for the rape and murder of 33 boys and young men between 1972 and his arrest in 1978, 27 of whom he buried in a crawl space under the floor of his house, while others were found in nearby rivers. He became notorious as the "Killer Clown" because of the many block parties he threw for his friends and neighbors, entertaining children in a clown suit and makeup, under the name of "Pogo the Clown".
- To make matters worse the AP once accidently used a stock photo of Gacy for National Clown Day.
- Gacy also created disturbing paintings of clowns. He sold them while he was in prison, believing that his art would live beyond the grave. The person who bought the paintings burned them all after he died so he wouldn't be remembered.
- At least one of his paintings made it to the Louisiana swamp metal band Acid Bath. They had sent him a demo of their stuff, and he liked it so much he sent them a painting. When the Kite String Pops uses it as album art. It's rather fitting, really- that shit's fucked up, son. Incidentally, their second full-length actually had a painting by Dr. Jack Kevorkian who actually does violins on one of the songs.
- Ouchy the Clown (NSFW!) is "your premier provider of adult clown services." That's right, sex clown for hire with S&M clown porn for sale. Tell me that's not Nightmare Fuel Unleaded.
- His motto is "Popping up where you least expect me!"
- In his book Mysterious America and elsewhere, Fortean Loren Coleman has documented numerous cases, beginning in May of 1981 but intermittently continuing up to the present day, of malevolent activity by persons unknown, dressed in clown attire, toward targets such as elementary school children. However, given that no such perpetrators have ever been apprehended, the "phantom clown" reports continue to remain unexplained.
- Lon Chaney, Sr., "The Man of a Thousand Faces", and perhaps the single most iconic(as well as genuinely frightening) horror actor from the silent film era, once made the observation that "Nobody laughs at a clown at midnight."
- Look! Clowns! (This is supposed to have sold a house?)
Other
- Urban legend: A teenage girl (of course) is babysitting, and the parents call home to check in. "Everything's fine," she says, "oh, but I covered up that clown statue in the back hall with my jacket, it was creeping me out." "Clown statue? We don't own a clown statue..."
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