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12th Feb: A new policy is being put in place for TRS threads: If there is no evidence provided in the Opening Post that the page is broken, the thread will be nuked immediately. See Everything You Wanted To Know About Changing Names for what constitutes evidence.
5th Feb: Echo Chamber Season 1 blooper reel on Youtube here
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A character, creature, etc which is heavily associated with a fictional universe, to the point of being the (official or unofficial) mascot. This can be despite the presence of other creatures, characters, etc. In Video Games, this tends to be a popular enemy (or unit) and can overlap with Mascot Mook. In other works the role can often fall to the Team Pet or another Ridiculously Cute Critter or Small Annoying Creature.
See Mascot for when this is used to advertise a product.
"Cute" Series Mascots:
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Anime and Manga
- Fullmetal Alchemist: Here (scroll down, or search for "Hayate").
- Kon in Bleach. He even points this out.
- Yu Yu Hakusho: Puu!!!
- Magic Knight Rayearth: Pu pu-puuu! Mokona! (Also a mascot of sorts for Xxx Holic and Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle)
- Kodomo no Omocha has a ubiquitous bat/rabbit hybrid, appropriately named Babbit. It probably exists only for this trope.
- For Full Metal Panic!, there's Bonta-kun, with the entire second season being named after the sounds he makes, "Fumoffu".
- For Heroic Age it's B-Navi. Be careful though, because it actually transforms into a gun used to fire the CoolShip's main weapon.
- In Welcome to the NHK! Sato lampshades this trope by saying "Every RPG needs a wimpy mascot character!" while beating up a lookalike for Dragon Quest's slimes.
- The series itself actually contains a de-facto mascot in the form of that creepy-adorable dancing purple alien that is used as a personification for 'conspiracy'.
- Rika from Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
- Moyashimon has an unusual example: a cutesy, anthropomorphic Aspergillus oryzae spore.
- Sadaharu and Elizabeth from Gintama. The series also parodies the whole mascot concept with Makoto-chan, the ill-advised, short-lived mascot of the Shinsengumi.
- Chibi-san from Chibisan Date.
- Haro from the Gundam franchise, despite not appearing in four of the seven Alternate Universes.
- Kyubey from Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Its face and Catch Phrase appears everywhere in the fandom because of how cute and innocent the fandom thinks it is. /人◕ ‿‿ ◕人
- Pokémon: features Pikachu as the de facto mascot for the animated series and (slightly less so) for the games.
- Agumon is something of an unofficial mascot for the Digimon franchise, being featured as the partner of The Hero in two different anime series and a manga, and a prominent presence in most - if not all - video games and virtual pets.
- Suzuri from Ride Back. Unusual in that she's one of those rare cute sidekick-type characters who not only dies during the series, but dies rather brutally (we don't see her head getting crushed; that happens off-screen. But we do see the blood on the asphalt).
Comic Books
Literature
- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Oddly enough, the promotional mascot for the Hitchhiker's universe is a little green guy that never appears in the books (or TV show, or movie, or radio show, or computer game...) themselves — though most fans consider Marvin to be the series' real mascot.
Live-Action TV
Puppet Shows
- Kermit the Frog for The Muppets. He was also the mascot of the Jim Henson Company before Disney bought him out.
- Sesame Street has Elmo, also the mascot for the show's parent company Sesame Workshop. Big Bird used to fill this role before Elmo proved to be a massive merchandising success.
Tabletop Games
Toys
Video Games
- Prinnies from Disgaea and other Nippon Ichi games.
- A lesser example: the fairies from Legend of Zelda, Navi in particular.
- Pokémon's Pikachu, particularly in the anime. Each new generation of Mons also has a lesser, ambiguously official mascot: Pichu for Pokémon Gold and Silver (and their remake), Absol (unofficially) for Pokemon Ruby And Sapphire, Lucario for Pokemon Diamond And Pearl and Zoroark for Pokemon Black And White.
- There's Mario for Nintendo's mascot, and obviously for the Super Mario Bros. series.
- Custom Robo has the Ray series of Shining Fighter class robos, one of which represented the franchise in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
- Final Fantasy: Chocobos and Moogles, and to a lesser extent, Cactaurs, Cait Sith, and Tonberries.
- Sora, Donald, and Goofy from Kingdom Hearts
- Portal has the very friendly Companion Cube, which will not threaten to stab you. It's so popular that Valve's made plushies and fuzzy dice in its image.
- Pikmin has, obviously, the Pikmin.
- The Dragon Quest series has Slimes.
- Animal Crossing: Tom Nook.
- Rabites from the World Of Mana series.
- Rappies from the Phantasy Star series.
- Tran from Beatmania IIDX.
- Twilly for Adventure Quest in particular and all the other Artix Entertainment games to a degree.
- Kero the frog and Grey the alien in Tokimeki Memorial 2.
- Carbuncle in the Puyo Puyo series.
- The priring from Latale, which was so cute it was made into a pet.
- Vault-Boy from Fallout.
- Jack Frosts from the Shin Megami Tensei and Persona series got so popular Atlus chose them as their official mascot.
- Ragnarok Online had Porings, in a very forcing way.
- Chickens in Fable. Hell, Fable III starts with a chicken running around the city as an allegory for the rest of the game
- Mr. Saturn for the MOTHER series
Web Comics
Web Original
Western Animation
"Non Cute" Series Mascots:
Film
- Darth Vader for Star Wars, though mascot duty's also been passed around to Yoda, the Stormtroopers and (especially in the franchise's early days) the two robot buddies.
- Possibly Gollum for the Lord of the Rings movies.
- The Ugly Cute Slimer and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters. In universe, it's explained that Stay Puft is the mascot for a brand of marshmallows and the star of his own cartoon TV series. The "NO-GHOST" company logo also serves as a mascot.
- For the Terminator series, Arnold's iconic face has been etched into our collective memories. Also, Cameron is the iconic character for The Sarah Connor Chronicles spin-off.
Tabletop Games
Video Games
Web Original
- SCP Foundation: SCP-682, a unkillable giant reptile that wants to kill all humans and adapts any new form of attack. A typical mascot for the SCP Foundation, then.
Western Animation
Company Mascots:
Anime and Manga
Comic Books
Video Games
- Jack Frost (from the Shin Megami Tensei franchise) is the mascot of Atlus Corpora
- While the monsters you meet in Shin Megami Tensei are based on mythologies, possibly because of Jack Frost status as a mascot, you will meet original Jack Frosts like King Frost, Black Frost, Ichigo Frost, B Hawaii Frost, Lemon Frost, Melon Frost, Mirukin Frost, Frost Five and Lucifrost.
- Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army has the dapperest Frost of them all.
- Until he was displaced by Mega Man and Ryu, Captain Commando was the face of Capcom.
- As Captain Commando, Ryu and Mega Man are to Capcom, Alex Kidd and Sonic the Hedgehog (respectively) are to Sega.
- Pac-Man, one of Namco's oldest characters, is essentially the face of his franchise.
- Mario is essentially the face of Nintendo.
- Mr. Pants for Rare.
- Hudson Soft's mascot is a tiny bee. The bee has shown up in several of Hudson's video games, including Adventure Island and Milon's Secret Castle.
- Neko-Arc (a comedic miniature catgirl form of Tsukihime's main heroine) is the official mascot of Type-Moon and the Nasuverse.
- Asagi serves as one for Nippon Ichi (along with the Prinnies mentioned above), as she makes a cameo in all of their games.
- Unofficially, Max for Lucasarts' adventure games.
- Compile's cute mascot, Randar (or Lander), appeared in several of their games.
- Toaplan had a similar but more purple and less round mascot named Pipiru, who appeared at the end of Zero Wing and was hidden in Out Zone and Truxton II. Even after Toaplan went defunct, Pipiru briefly appeared in a cutscene in Donpachi.
- Terry Bogard for SNK, originally, it was Athena.
Western Animation
- Disney:
- M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E!
- To a (much) lesser extent, Tinkerbell; Walt used her has the mascot for some of the series he hosted as well as the original ad campaigns for Disneyland (This was at ABC's insistence - they didn't want the project to take Mickey down with it if it tanked).
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