What If Horror Mascots Were Period Accurate?

Horror games these days are all about revisiting the past, but historical accuracy is obviously. . .

not exactly top priority. FNAF has ChatGPT-powered ghoulies running around the 70s and 80s, and Dandy's World is rocking that modern bean mouth aesthetic at least 30 years ahead of schedule! So, let's take a look at a few modern horror series that took some liberties while recapturing the feel of yesteryear.

. . and find out what they SHOULD look like if they were truly accurate to the good old days!

Please join this 97-year-old YouTuber as he still serves horror mascots the old-fashioned way! [Intro Music Plays] Coming to you from beautiful downtown Fortitude Valley. .

. It's The Harry Gold Show! With your host, Harry Gold!

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the program! Now, Mascot Horror is a genre just undulating with nostalgia, but the people making these games often range from not remembering the past that well to never even having lived through it in the first place. Dandy's World, for instance, centers on a fictional cartoon series that ran from the late '80s to the early oughts!

Just like the Simpsons did in the better timeline we were cheated out of. Curse your unbridled avarice, Julie Kavner! But despite being spawn of the HW Bush administration, Dandy and his knick-knack-noggined compadres bought the sort of concussed pupil dilation and cannellini grin you could only really find in a post-Steven-Universe universe.

In fact, I received a number of comments asking me to take a look at old petal-head and his orbiters for this reason. So don't say I never did nothing for you! Rainbows were a popular motif at the time, so Dandy does have that going for him.

But style-wise, a more authentic look to his Genesis/Genesis era Genesis would punt this breathing bevy of bric-a-brac squarely into Smurf and Care Bear territory. All the vehemently merchandisable Saturday morning cartoons of the period favored a squishy, insincerely adorable aesthetic whose apple-cheeked smile never quite reaches their glassy eyes, and whose hand is eternally reaching for your wallet. For this hoarder-house-made- animate specifically, it means carb-loading the spindliness out of their limbs and hammering more three- dimensionality into their faces.

I do, however, have to pull up Vee the TV. She has a television antenna and remote, but also bluescreens and buffers, and has black and green graphics for a face, like a computer. So, which is it?

Talk about giving mixed signals! [Rimshot] [Windows XP Error Sound] And just so we're clear, for all my boundless reserves of hubris. .

. I'm not actually here to claim my designs are better than the originals! I'm just saying they're more accurate to this one VERY specific metric by which I happen to be ever so slightly obsessed.

But before we continue, this episode of The Harry Gold Show was brought to you by today's sponsor, ZocDoc. [Phone rings] ZACK DUCK: Hello, this is Zack Duck speaking. ZACK DUCK: How may I be of service?

CALLER: Hi, uh, I would like to search and compare high quality in-network doctors, please! CALLER: Uh, also I'd like to view detailed profiles for doctors near me CALLER: with verified patient reviews and appointment openings. CALLER: Then choose the right doctor and time for me instantly!

ZACK DUCK: Well, you very well might, but I'm afraid you have the wrong bird. ZACK DUCK: ZocDoc provides those services and more for free! ZACK DUCK: But I do not - as I'm a duck, not a doc. 

Good day! [Phone rings] ZACK DUCK: You've reached Zack Duck. CALLER #2: Howdy, I'm looking to make a doctor's appointment within the next 24 to 72 hours, CALLER #2: preferably among the 100,000 providers across nearly every specialty CALLER #2: from eye care to skin care, dental to dental, and beyond.

ZACK DUCK: For the love of soggy bread, my name is ZACK! ZACK DUCK: You want Z - O - C, ZOCdoc! ZACK DUCK: And the best thing about ZocDoc is there's no guesswork, no stress, ZACK DUCK: and.

. . NO PHONE CALLS REQUIRED!

[Phone rings] ZACK DUCK: Hello? CALLER #3: Eh, what's up, Doc? ZACK DUCK: Oh, don't you start.

Stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to zocdoc. com/harrygold or click the link in the description to find and instantly book a top rated doctor today! Five Nights at Freddy's has always been swimming in a moldy soup of dilapidated 80s reminiscences.

From its two-bit attempts at 8-bit graphics to the pizzeria setting that Chuck-E-Cheese's lawyers have been side-eyeing for the last 11 years. But now that Freddy's latest games have boldly expanded operations into the 1970s, the franchise's addiction to filling every location with as many illustrated posters and standees as possible has started to cause some issues. By which I mean it gets under my skin, and probably mine alone, but let me show you what I'm talking about!

Take a look at these supposedly '70s Freddy posters from Security Breach. They're clearly digital illustrations using all sorts of whizz-bang Photoshop effects in a time when your Apple II was having a coronary just trying to get Oregon Trail running! Plus, no attempt to resemble the important art trends of this era has been made whatsoever.

There's not even the slightest hint that this artist was off his gourd on acid! The same goes for this blatantly contemporary and computerific portrait of everyone's third-favorite animatronic bear. I'm guessing no one making this game was alive in this decade, and it shows!

They didn't even try to evoke the kind of post Scooby-Doo cartoon art styles you might have seen at the time, nor the physical mediums it would have been made with. See, that's much better. I can practically smell the hippie that drew it already!

Though, can you spot the other thing that's funky about these posters? This one asks you to come to a diner, but how would you find it? There's no address, or even a phone number!

The other one HAS a phone number, but no indication of what kind of food you'd even be ordering. And who would assume either of these are trying to imply there's a big honking robot bear on the premises! ?

If it's not a drawing, back then, Fred here would have been painted. But either way, if you're making something that's supposed to be an advertisement. .

. for crying out loud, include some advertising! But this whole series has an epidemic of posters that just exist to fill space.

Like Nurse Dolly here! Is this a promo that refuses to tell you what it's promoting? Or perhaps an informational poster written on a particularly strict need-to-know basis?

'Cause currently its only actual function is keeping the local lumberjacks in business! On top of paintings and drawings, airbrushing was another mode of illustration which was pretty hot stuff back then! So that's another way to look more authentic than the Adobe Illustrator job they actually went with.

Now, forget the box. Forget Burntrap and faz-goo! The REAL most baffling thing in FNAF is this poster.

Swing Bee is the mascot for some honey brand in-universe. Why would a company completely seriously manufacture and hang up grade- school-level motivational posters with someone else's hideous corporate mascot in it? Walk into any random business and I guarantee you will not see one instance of the Geico Gecko hanging in there.

Let alone dozens of copies all over the office! Now, time-traveling ball pits, I can believe. But this is just implausible!

The Bendy series features a spate of 1930s cartoon characters brought to life, and the only thing more garbled than the lore explaining why is the state of this franchise's art direction! We've got a protag from the '70s who's dressed like the '50s but draws like the '30s, and a bad guy that's supposed to be this big twist reveal, even though they gave him the character design of a bootleg Bond villain. Plus, the central conceit itself is wildly inconsistent.

Some cartoons become distorted demons when they come to life, while others are re-spliced and zombified. But they can also just be completely normal, or even. .

. turned human somehow? Just.

. . because!

So, it should come as no surprise that Bendy himself ain't perfect. According to the plot, he's a cartoon devil created in 1929 by Joey Drw Studios. .

. . But this is very much a post-modern mishmash of vague, old-timey cartoon stereotypes and misunderstandings.

For example, these huge, vacuous Pac-Man eyes and widow's peak hairline are clearly hearkening back to the likes of Steamboat Willie and Felix the Cat, but they didn't actually have dots for eyes. The negative space was eyeball, not skin! Plus, on top of the Rayman neck and apparently inescapable CalArts smile, I can't find a single example from this period of human-adjacent cartoon characters with an AWOL nose.

So, even that is too hip and cutting edge a design trend. A truly authentic look for this croissant-headed ink goblin would take all that into account, but we're just getting started. The games imply his design didn't change at all in half a century, but every real cartoon character from this period had their face rearranged more often than Mr Potato Head doing a Michael Jackson impression.

Grim Adventures of Billy and Bendy here should find himself morphing quite a bit, making the jump to colour as he wades through the 30s and into the 40s, before the studio finally goes under in '48, as per the story. 1933 also saw the introduction of Alice Angel at Joey Drw Studios, another important figure in the Bendy games. Though it did not introduce a reason for having devil horns, but no wings.

That's not even an angel in cartoon rules. This broad just croaked! I'm already not buying the eyes or the hairstyle for '33, but this shapely human torso combined with flaccid noodle arms and bloated cartoon gloves is just not how it was done.

The actual chic way to draw a cartoon girl in the age of Herbert Hoover is most famously exemplified by Betty Boop, but this aesthetic was popping off throughout the decade. Large, cherubic head with big, wideset eyes, as little chin as can be gotten away with, and absolutely no neck to speak of. Boop's career did not survive the '30s, however - her last cartoon premiering in '39 - and neither did her fashion sense.

Come the 1940s, a new way to draw pretty cartoon girls was in vogue! So, our girl Alice is due for some light refurbishment. And that's what Bendy the Devil and Alice Angel should really look like!

. . .

Is what I would have said if there wasn't one teensy little issue that destines everything I just made for the dump! Which is: do we really think that having cartoon Satan as your hero with an angel of God as his maybe love interest is going to fly in 1929? There were Christians lobbying against Pokémon and Harry Potter for being too demonic 70 years later.

Heck, one school banned Kpop Demon Hunters for  the same reason this year! Now, if you think a cartoon series starring lovable Lucifer is going to go by without causing a moral panic a whole century ago, brother, I've got some bridge-themed  NFTs you might like to invest in! But Joey Drw Studios aren't about to give up on their most popular character (and primary cash cow) So, to stifle this public outcry, he is retooled.

They maintain that famous and bankable silhouette by now introducing Bendy. . .

. . .

the Cat! And look, even if somehow Devil Bendy survived the protests and boycotts at first, it'd all be over by 1936. That's the year the Hays Code came in, which was a set of rules all the studios in Hollywood agreed to stick to in order to enforce morality in motion pictures.

And if your film didn't follow the rules, cinemas wouldn't play it! The Hays Code explicitly prohibits anything resembling blasphemy. So there's not a snowball's chance in a George Foreman grill that Bendy gets the okay as he was.

Better feline than bread line, right? Alice isn't Charlestoning her way out of this one, either. The Hays Code already slapped Betty Boop around for having an anthropomorphic dog for a boyfriend.

They thought it endorsed real people having, shall we say, man's best friend with benefits. As a result, their animal husbandry came to an abrupt end, and Bimbo - yes, that was his name - was booted right out of the series, even though he was created first! Mix all that with the blasphemy issue, and Alice definitely gets the moggy makeover as well.

Though, whether they'd take a more radical Minnie-Mouse-style approach, or merely slop on a thin veneer of cat- flavuored paint could really go either way. Oh, yeah. There's also Boris, Bendy's sidekick, who's definitely not just a reskin of Goofy.

His original design gets a pass from me, that's basically close enough as is. And he'd roll pretty comfortably into the following decades as well. And now we return to the most popular place in mascot horror, the last three years of the 80s.

The third chapter in the Poppy Playtime series introduced the Smiling Friends - uh, Smiling Critters - a line of animal plush toys from 1989, who - and you'll never believe this from an indie horror game - come to life. . .

and try to kill you. The game also contains this in-universe Saturday morning cartoon featuring these toys, which aired in the same year. [Clock Ticking.

Wind whistling eerily. ] BOBBY BEARHUG: The wind's really scary. [Tree breaks loudly] CRAFTYCORN: Eek!

CRAFTYCORN: I can't sleep. DOG DAY: Hey, we'll be okay, guys.  I promise!

DOG DAY: All winds blow away! DOG DAY: Eventually. .

. [Wind whistling loudly] [Door knocks] While the devs certainly did give it a proper go, even more than these beasties glowing like nightlights, my biggest issue is actually the Mario-enemy-style inverted eyes. Light pupils in black sockets were already rare enough in western design around that time, but when you did see them, it was on monsters and villains, not lovable mascots trying to move merchandise.

And the root of this issue is the clumsily creepy plushies they're based on! Other toy characters in this series look innocuous until they attack. Smiling Critters, however, have oversized, soulless black eyes and a disproportionately large, gaping mouth that feel more like horror game jumpscare material than any believable children's toy!

A convincing plush needs smaller eyes and a more proportionate mouth, preferably with something like a tongue to break up the negative space and stave off any unnecessary childhood trauma. Now, once I've cleaned up the backgrounds and made them look physical rather than digital, I can rework our new cel-style animal chums with era-accurate beady eyes as per our revised toy. My pal TestMacaroni even did me the service of recording it onto a real VHS tape!

So, here's my best attempt at making something properly period accurate. [Clock Ticking. Wind whistling eerily.

] BOBBY BEARHUG: The wind's really scary. [Tree Breaks Loudly] CRAFTYCORN: Eek! CRAFTYCORN: I can't sleep.

DOGDAY: Hey, we'll be okay, guys.  I promise! DOGDAY: All winds blow away!

DOGDAY: Eventually. . .

[Wind blowing loudly] [Door Knocks] Well gang, that's all the art style hairsplitting I have time for today. Let me know if you'd like to see more! Or if there are any other indie horror games that you think deserve a closer look.

Maybe we can even find one that doesn't end in D next time! Not Fred-D! Not Dan-D!

Not Bend-D! Not Pop. .

. D. [Music] Let's play a game!

I'll draw someone famous and three people that guess who it is in the comments get a shout out in the next episode. If your guess last time was actor Hugh Laurie, then you were absolutely correct! Hugh's rule from the wheel of winners is.

. . the first three correct guesses with an anime profile picture.

It was all over when Alleichech turned up and seized first place! UltimateFunBilly was the PenultimateFunBilly, easily taking second. and TeddVerres had the competition Tedd to rights, landing the bronze.

Well done, everyone. Thanks for playing! Today's subject has a mouth so permanently prone to downturn, it is often momentarily mistaken for the economy of Greece.

Their cheeks are quite hollow, just as all the conspiracy theories claimed. And this person has the kind of ocular heft that would turn an owl's head! .

. . even more than usual.

Now, who could this be? If you know who that was, let us  know in the comments. And remember, it's never the wrong time period to subscribe!

But this has been The Harry Gold Show. So until next time, stay safe. .

. . .

. and God bless!