ChainmailChasers is a Digital Horror Alternate Reality Game made by EbolaGranola. It is a channel dedicated to finding the origins behind internet horror images - particularly, of Creepypasta stories. Then, things take a serious turn when one of these turns out to not only have the origin of its image be much more complicated than it appears to be, but also be real.
The channel can be found here
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ChainmailChasers - TVTropes Page Origins
- Adaptation Origin Connection: Its gradually shown through the series (and elaborated in "Smile Dog Origins - Working Timeline") that, along with many other images, one of the Smile Dog images, the classic Jeff the Killer image, and the "Victim #1" image of MARIO by M A R I O all go back to a trio of images. All of them implied to be the real images of the Animalistic Abomination of the first story.
- Breather Episode: The pretty normal and, by comparison, lighthearted "Update" video is sandwiched right between "MARIO - Creepypasta Image Origins" and "Smile Dog Origins - Interrogation" - both being quite eerie, with the former opening a brand new can of worms when it comes to the recurring ongoing mystery.
- Creepypasta: Finding the sources for the most popular ones' iconic images is the channel's goal.
- Decoy Protagonist: Downplayed. Grace does not stop being important and still uploads videos occasionally, but as Smile's manipulations toil away her mental state further and further, David continues the work on the videos about the channel's original goal.
- False Friend: Smile attempts to convince Grace that her friend that helped locate him, and suggested she take the exact steps that unleashed him onto Grace's computer while claiming ignorance of what would actually happen, might not have the best intentions.
- Knight of Cerebus: The channel's In-Universe initial format of finding the sources behind internet horror images strays off when not only the hunt for Smile Dog's image's origins turns out to be a much deeper rabbit hole than it seems, but once the image is downloaded, Smile Dog himself starts haunting the computer of the channel's owner.
- No-Sell: Grace's attempt to contain Smile inside a virtual machine in the "Interrogation" video turns out to be for naught. At one point, he even stretches the window with both hands so it covers the entire screen.
- Ominous Visual Glitch: These gradually become more and more frequent in the videos, signifying Smile's tighter grasp on the channel.
- Stylistic Suck: Invoked Trope. According to the very first video and the channel's description, the videos' style is meant to emulate a "faux-Movie Maker" style.
