Isabelle and Doom Guy.
Or, Doom Slayer, if you prefer.
The stars of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Doom Eternal have been spending a lot
of time with each other – or so the memes suggest.
This fan pairing has gained so much attention that even the creators of Animal Crossing
have spoken publicly about it.
Spoiler alert for the end of this video: they’re completely, 100% on board.
Your fanart is canon, as far as they’re concerned.
So, how did Isabelle and Doom Guy get to be such good friends?
Believe it or not, this is more than just the result of two games sharing a release
date.
Many fan artists have been contributing to this particular ship long before it officially
set sail.
We spoke with one of the earliest proponents of the Isabelle/Doom Guy meme to get a sense
of how this meme first started.
Fans have been pairing Isabelle and Doom Guy together for years, but this current trend
first started to evolve in July of 2019.
Artists and art fans began what became known as the “Doomdad” meme, creating or commissioning
artwork in which Doomguy lovingly teaches cute characters how to fire weapons.
For example, one artist, IZRA, tweeted out on the 3rd of July:
“Dear Diary: today I got payed to draw Doomguy teaching Rapunzel, from Disney's Tangled,
how to shoot the Heavy Assault Rifle.
Today was a good day.”
Rapunzel was only the start of this trend, thanks in part to Agent Strange.
When asked about the trend, Strange told us: “Well there was piece that I saw where Doomguy
and Rapunzel were together that I really liked and I wanted there to be [more] of it.
I enjoyed the contrast of a [nigh] invincible demon slayer hanging out with cute characters
and showing them the ropes.”
So, Agent Strange collated the Doomdad meme, and commissioned several different artists
to draw Doomguy with various cute characters.
One of these, drawn by Artsheops, showed Doomguy with Isabelle.
While other artists drew Doomguy teaching a variety of different characters, something
about Isabelle seemed to fit particularly well.
In October, Agent Strange asked a friend, Oscar, also known as dat one starfox2, to
create a video.
This showed a fake podcast hosted by Doomguy and Isabelle, using the sounds from their
respective games.
Later, in December, artist Matthieu Cousin, posted a picture of the pair together alongside
the Super Smash Bros logo, with the caption, “I mean, Sakurai wouldn't...would he?”
As eager as Matthieu might be to see Doom Guy come to Smash Bros, the meme didn’t
properly kick off until January, when people really started thinking about the fact that
Doom Eternal and Animal Crossing: New Horizons shared a release date.
At this point, the wave of Doomguy Isabelle fanart began in earnest, as the internet decided
that they were best friends.
In February, the official DOOM Twitter account even joined in on the fun.
When Nintendo of America tweeted out the details for the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Direct,
DOOM responded, “Will Isabelle be there?”
Meanwhile, the creators of Animal Crossing: New Horizons were also taking a good look
at the fanart, and they were loving it.
Director Aya Kyogoku said: “I definitely do notice and have noticed
that there’s a lot of Doom and Animal Crossing collaboration art and illustrations that are
being posted, and as I look through them I’m in awe of how much creativity our fans have.
“I think because there is a common denominator of this type of communication happening between
Doom and Animal Crossing fans, and also the fact that Animal Crossing is a communication
game, we’re very thankful and very thrilled to see all this.
We’re so excited at the same time to see how the two [fandoms] are coming together
to celebrate this day.”
Producer Hisashi Nogami agrees: “So Animal Crossing and Doom — obviously
the game genres are completely different.
We definitely do have something in common, and that is that they’re both video games,
and come from that same subculture so to speak.
It’s so great to see that these two different [fandoms] are coming together and hyping up
the gaming [community] and gaming culture itself.
It really is a great thing to see.”
When we asked Agent Strange why this meme has proven so popular, we received the response:
“i love this meme because it brought two communities from two very different franchises
together to celebrate gaming.
more often than not people like to pit things against each other so it's really nice seeing
the opposite happen for once.”
The moral of the story, is that it’s fun to share things with people who are different
to us.
Life is a lot more vibrant and interesting when we all appreciate the things that make
us unique.