 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 fan art 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 sale. 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 Doom Dad meme, creating or commissioning artwork in which Doom Guy lovingly teaches cute characters how to fire weapons. For example, one artist, Isra, tweeted out on the 3rd of July, Dear Diary, today I got paid to draw Doom Guy 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 a piece that I saw where Doom Guy 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 Doom Dad meme and commissioned several different artists to draw Doom Guy with various cute characters. One of these, drawn by art shops, showed Doom Guy with Isabelle. While other artists drew Doom Guy 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 Dat1StarFox2, to create a video. This showed a fake podcast hosted by Doom Guy and Isabelle, using the sounds from their respective games. Later in December, artist Matthew 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 Matthew 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 Doom Guy-Isabel fan art began in earnest, as the internet decided that they were best friends. In February, even the official Doom Twitter account joined in on the fun. When Nintendo of America tweeted out the details for 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 fan art, and they were loving it. Director Aya Kyugoku 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 are very thankful and very thrilled to see all this. We are 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 both 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 to see 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.