Laughing Jack is a creepypasta featuring the murderous, black and white clown-like abomination of the same name. There are two stories featuring him made by his original author, Snuffbomb:
Laughing Jack
is told from the perspective of the mother of James, a 5-year-old boy claiming to have made a new friend called Laughing Jack, which his mother assumes to be an Imaginary Friend. However, a series of disturbing events hint at the truth of Laughing Jack's existence and malicious intentions.
The Origin of Laughing Jack tells of how the killer clown came to be. He was once a colorful cosmic entity sent as a gift to the poor and lonely Isaac Grossman to be his friend for life. However, after Isaac is sent to boarding school, Laughing Jack's color completely fades from being abandoned for 13 years. Isaac returns as an adult Serial Killer, and unknowingly inspires his clown friend's sadistic streak. He had passed off Laughing Jack as a childhood fantasy, which severely instigates his own doom.
Laughing Jack provides examples of:
- Amusement Park of Doom: The mother's Nightmare Sequence occurs in a rundown amusement park where everything is black and white, including the prize dolls which hang by nooses and have stitched grins. She walks into a tent playing "Pop Goes The Weasel" and is mauled by a horde of disfigured children before waking up.
- Antagonist Title: The story is named after the "imaginary" Monster Clown that causes the violence and madness that plagues his victims.
- Attack the Mouth: Laughing Jack has a habit of disfiguring his kills, such as at their faces, including the mouth. James'. mother sees the aftermath of what Laughing Jack did to her son, and amongst the gruesome mutilation is the removal of his tongue and teeth.
- Cassandra Truth: Laughing Jack's tendency to not show himself to adults makes it hard for his kid playmates to convince their parents of his existence. James' mother is incredulous each time James attributes something happening to Laughing Jack, since she's convinced that the clown her son has been describing is an Imaginary Friend, but her son isn't a liar. She only realises that he truly exists when Jack finally reveals himself to her, and by then it's too late.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Laughing Jack has a liking towards torturing and murdering children, which was inspired by his former playmate, Isaac. James is nailed to the wall by the hands and feet, his teeth shattered, eyes missing and guts spilling from his torso, yet he's still alive. It's such a gruesome sight that his mother can't help but puke.
- Creepily Long Arms: Laughing Jack's striped arms dangle past his waist and appear to have no bones, complementing his ragdoll-like design. The origin story shows that his arms can elongate and constrict living beings to death.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Considering the titular entity is a sadistic slaughterer of children, several deaths in these stories come in cruel, violent and bloody fashions. James' limbs are nailed to the wall, his face is mangled with shattered teeth and removed eyes while his guts spill on the floor, but he's still kept alive. His misery is put to an end by his own mother, although it's Murder by Mistake, which makes the death cruel to the mother as well.
- Devoured by the Horde: In the mother's Nightmare Sequence, her legs walk her into a seemingly empty circus tent, then the lights suddenly reveal silhouettes of disfigured children approaching and surrounding her. She's unable to move, and the kids proceed to claw at her flesh and tear into her before she wakes up.
- Eye Scream: Some of the disfigured children that appear in James' mother's nightmare are missing eyes and other limbs. Later, she finds her son nailed to the bedroom wall with several of his organs displaced, including missing eyeballs.
- False Friend: Laughing Jack poses as a friend to the young James, who says the clown has been playing with him and giving him sweets. But it's all in Jack's sick game to eventually maim him gruesomely.
- Frame-Up: After brutalising James yet still keeping him alive while pinned to the wall, Laughing Jack disappears from the way of his mother's knife towards the clown, and it lands on James' heart instead. The police find her with the bloody knife and the gory mess left of her child and she's convicted to an insane asylum.
- Friendless Background: James is said to be a quiet boy who never had many friends, often playing by himself and tending to his wild imagination. The summer morning when his mother hears him talking to someone in the backyard has her wondering if James had finally made a friend.
- Grayscale of Evil: The titular clown is all black and white, and ultimately proves to be a lethal False Friend to James. The mother finds herself in an eerie black and white Amusement Park of Doom inhabited by disfigured children in her nightmare, which is implied to be Laughing Jack's realm. In the origin story, Laughing Jack was once a colorful clown, but years of abandonment caused his colors to fade away, and being exposed to violence made him a murderous Monster Clown.
- Ironic Nursery Tune: "Pop Goes The Weasel" is Laughing Jack's signature tune, often used in sinister atmospheres. The song plays inside the mother's nightmare, where she finds herself in an Amusement Park of Doom before she walks into the tent where the music is coming from. It halts before the climax, and she is torn apart by a group of disfigured children. The mother can also hear "Pop Goes The Weasel" playing outside her cell at the end of the story.
- Kick the Dog:
- Or kill the dog and stuff it with candy. Laughing Jack hangs the corpse of Fido, the family's dog, from the kitchen's light fixture, for seemingly no other reason than just to horrify James' mother even more, since the candy in the dog's open stomach matches the candy that was given to her son earlier.
- Mutilating James is already horrible enough, but Jack twists the knife even further by tricking the boy's own mother into finishing him off, which frames her for the murder and drives her insane and gets her institutionalized.
- Laughing Mad: Befitting to his name, Laughing Jack is known for having plenty of maddening laughter to go around. Laughter tends to indicates Laughing Jack's presence, at times of the Evil Laugh variety. James' mother can hear a distinct wicked cackle in her nightmare, which she later recognises when it comes from James' room. After seeing her mutilated child, the titular clown finally reveals himself as he announces his presence with sickening laughter, as if he is proud of the "work" he made of the son.
- Looks Like Cesare: After his corruption, Laughing Jack's colors disappear, including his red hair which turns into mangled black locks, and his tan complexion turns white as dark circles develop around his eyes.
- Magical Clown: Laughing Jack can conjure candy for his child companions (both before and after he became a Monster Clown) and he can make himself invisible or disappear into smoke at will. His origin story shows that the tall clown can fit in a jack-in-the-box and he can make Isaac's toys dance around his room.
- Monster Clown: Laughing Jack is a black and white ragdoll-like clown with striped baggy clothes, shoulder feathers and a swirly cone nose. As well as Creepily Long Arms and razor sharp teeth. While originally a benevolent clown, being exposed to violence after years of abandonment corrupted him into a malicious entity who enjoys slaughtering children.
- Murder by Mistake: When the mother charges towards Laughing Jack with a knife for gutting James, he vanishes into black smoke, and the knife lands on her son's still-beating heart, killing James. This lands with the mother getting institutionalised in a mental asylum for the criminally insane.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Upon realising that her knife hit her son's heart instead of the merciless clown who bloodied him, James' mother is devastated beyond belief.No… what have I done? My baby, I killed my baby! I immediately fell to my knees, and I could hear sirens in the distance growing louder… My boy, my sweet baby boy… I promised mommy would protect you… But I failed… I’m sorry James… I’m so sorry…
- Nightmare Sequence: The mother has a nightmare occurring in an Amusement Park of Doom, presumably Laughing Jack's, where she's led into a circus tent and torn apart by disfigured children before she wakes in a cold sweat.
- Not-So-Imaginary Friend: James' mother assumes her son's new friend, Laughing Jack, to be imaginary, since she can't see him and has quite an outlandish description. After a series of disturbing events, the titular Monster Clown reveals himself to the mother once she sees her severely mangled son, proving that he was a False Friend all along.
- Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: Implied. Just before his mother steps into James' room and finds her son pinned to the wall with his guts spilling out, she can feel warm thick liquid at her feet, which is implied to be James' blood.
- Slasher Smile: Befitting his reputation as a hysterical killer clown, Laughing Jack's constant smile is a demented sharp-toothed grin. When he first catches sight of bloody violence in his origin story, he develops a small smile before it grows along with his escalating laughter, and he keenly watches the rest of Isaac's murderous activities with eager eyes and a big unfading grin.
- Sweets of Temptation: The titular clown carries candy that he offers to kids, and after his corruption, he maintains the practice to build trust with children and kill them. James' mother is unsettled to find her son outside with candy, who she assumes to be from a stranger, and not the so-called Laughing Jack like he claims. Later, James gets mutilated and nailed to the wall by the very clown who posed as his friend and playmate.
- The Tooth Hurts: In both the first story and the prequel, Laughing Jack damages his victims' teeth. In the former, James' teeth are missing when his mother finds his mutilated body. In the origins prequel, he shatters Isaac's teeth with a hammer.
- Undead Child: Implied, James' mother is horrified at how defiled and mutilated the children that appear in her nightmare are. The children slowly approach and surround her to tear her apart, to the sound of sickening laughter before she wakes up, unsettled.
- Would Hurt a Child: Torturing children is Laughing Jack's specialty; he mauls the 5-year-old James without granting him the mercy of death, and it's implied that the disfigured children in his Amusement Park of Doom are also Jack's victims. In his origin story, Jack's final words to Isaac suggest that he sees torture as a twisted game to share with all lonely children in the world.
The Origin of Laughing Jack provides examples of:
- 13 Is Unlucky: Laughing Jack was abandoned for 13 years and lost his color and emotion as a result. Then Isaac's dad is hung for beating his wife to death, and Isaac inherits the house. Laughing Jack is exposed to Isaac's newfound penchant for violence and becomes a Monster Clown.
- Abusive Parents: Isaac's mother is abusively strict to her son, while the father wastes his day's earnings on alcohol and drunkenly abuses his wife, which likely contributes to her abuse of her son.
- Accidental Murder: In a playtime of pirate gone too far, Laughing Jack takes hold of a cat that young Isaac calls an enemy spy, but his arms constrict the cat too hard that a loud "snap" is heard and it falls limply on the ground when dropped. To Jack's surprise though, Isaac laughs hysterically, only showing concern upon realising that his mother would notice the dead cat and disposes it over the fence. His mom finds out anyway and has Isaac sent to boarding school.
- Addiction Displacement: After Isaac offs a woman he brought over in a booze-filled rage and configures to use her remains to craft a chair, it is said that "after that night, Isaac never touched another drop of alcohol again, for he now possessed a much more macabre thirst."
- Alas, Poor Villain: For all the serial killing, torture and other crimes Isaac has committed, he's implied to die with a smile as he lastly recalls the time he met his first (and likely only ever) friend, Laughing Jack, who also happens to be the one brutalising Isaac to death.
- Alcoholic Parent: Isaac's father uses most of his earned money on lots of alcohol. He often returns home and shouts at his wife in a drunken rage during their arguments, sometimes escalating to beating or worse. At one point, she doesn't get back up from his beating, and the father is executed.
- Ambiguous Innocence: Young Isaac's reaction to accidentally causing the death of his neighbour's cat (although it was through Laughing Jack, which was accidental) is... laughter, and tearing up over his own joke that cats don't have 9 lives after all. However, he knows that he'll get into trouble with his mother if she finds out when Laughing Jack reminds him so. This likely foreshadows that Isaac would grow to be a cruel Serial Killer.
- Attack on the Heart: After saying his final goodbyes to Isaac, Laughing Jack yanks his heart out of his chest as a last act of violence on Isaac's heavily mutilated body.
- Attack the Mouth: Ater cutting off his tongue, Laughing Jack slices off Isaac's lips with a knife and shatters his teeth with a hammer.
- Attempted Rape: An adult Isaac brings home a woman he picked up from the bar. They talk casually before a passionate kiss, but as he gets too intimate, the lady moves his hand away before pushing him off and slapping his face. He punches her in the nose and tries to assault her again, but she fights back, responding to his Forceful Kiss by biting his tongue. She doesn't escape, however, as Isaac angrily bashes her head open.
- Balloon of Doom: A variant. Laughing Jack cuts off a bit of Isaac's intestines to make a balloon animal, inflating the foul organ and twisting it into a poodle shape.Laughing Jack: I can make giraffes too!
- Barred from Every Bar: A lot of Isaac's father's earnings are spent on copious amounts of alcohol after his long shifts, and sometimes he returns home after having been thrown out of every bar in London to drunkenly abuse his wife.
- Black Comedy: When Laughing Jack accidentally kills a cat, young Isaac says, "Wow! I guess cats really DON’T have nine lives!", tearing up from laughter over his own dark joke.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Implied, since Laughing Jack is engineered to take after Isaac's changes in personality, the clown might not have had a say against becoming a Psychopathic Manchild after Isaac becomes a sadistic Serial Killer. He doesn't contest to young Isaac laughing at the corpse of the cat that the clown accidentally killed either.
- Boarding School: When his mother finds out about the dead cat (which he was partially responsible for killing), Isaac is sent to boarding school that very evening, which separates him from Laughing Jack. No description is given of the boarding school, but it proves to be incredibly counter-productive in changing his bad behaviour, as he returns as a sadistic adult.
- Book Ends: The origin story starts and ends around Christmas. Isaac finds the Laughing Jack-In-A-Box by his bed on Christmas morning. In the ending, the police find Isaac's dead body, weeks after he was murdered, on Christmas Eve.
- Bound and Gagged: A 5 or 6 year old boy that Isaac kidnaps in a burlap sack is tied up and gagged upon falling out of the bag, and stays that way throughout the whole torture process.
- Cassandra Truth: Twice does young Isaac tell his mother about Laughing Jack, and she doesn't believe him. The first is when he leads her to his room to see him but earns a slap and no dinner since no one is present. Laughing Jack explains that he must hide himself from his parents so that they could still play together. Ironically, when Isaac fails to convince his mother that Jack killed the neighbor's cat, Isaac is sent away to boarding school soon after.
- Creepy Long Fingers: Laughing Jack has grotesquely long black fingers which come close to scraping the floor as they dangle from his Creepily Long Arms. Besides grabbing people with the help of his extendable arms, they make quick work of puncturing holes in people's organs. note
- Cold-Blooded Torture: The origin story describes the torture as it happens. Firstly, there's Isaac's victims, most of whom are brutally tortured before they are killed. Finally, there's Laughing Jack's torturous mutilation of Isaac, which involves nailing him to his own torture bed, heavy damage to his eyelids (with hooks) and retina (with a needle) and cutting open his abdomen to disturb his intestines, amongst other nasty things.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Isaac subjects several people to Cold-Blooded Torture before ending them cruelly, such as bashing a boy's head to a pulp and punching a girl in the stomach after force-feeding her with glass. Laughing Jack in turn subjects a gory demise on Isaac by mutilating his face and abdomen before summoning cockroaches to bloat his exposed insides. Finally, he yanks his heart out of his chest.
- Evil Costume Switch: Laughing Jack starts as a colourful clown man, but years of abandonment have caused all his colors to fade away, leaving him as an emotionless husk of his former self, completely black and white. When he leaves his box after being influenced by Isaac's violence, Jack appears much more demonic as well, having also developed razor sharp teeth and Creepy Long Fingers.
- Eye Scream:
- Isaac kills an old blind woman with an ice pick to the eye socket.
- Laughing Jack forces Isaac's eyelids to stay open with fish hooks so that he "wouldn't miss the show", he injects an adrenaline needle into Isaac's retina and fiddles it around to keep him from drifting off, and finally he pulls the needle out along with the eyeball.
- Fingore: Isaac rips off a young boy's fingernails individually with rusty pliers as part of his Cold-Blooded Torture.
- Force Feeding: One of Isaac's murder victims is a a girl who he force-feeds with glass before punching her stomach a lot.
- Friendless Background: Isaac Grossman is homeschooled by his mother as the family is very poor, and he wonders if he too could be happy like other children if he had friends to play and laugh with. Laughing Jack's arrival excites him, as he's overjoyed to finally have a friend.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Isaac Grossman was a poor child with very few belongings and a Friendless Background, but when he returns 13 years after being sent to boarding school, he's grown to be a cruel man (not unlike his father, but) with a growing interest in Cold-Blooded Torture and murder. This behaviour could have been influenced by his Abusive Parents or the boarding school, but even as a child, he laughs hysterically when his friend gets a cat killed, likely hinting at an early personality sign.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: Isaac has to leave Laughing Jack behind when he goes to boarding school, so Jack must stay in his box until Isaac returns. Years pass as he waits to reunite with his friend and be free again, and Jack loses his color and joy in the process.Still Jack’s life became one of solitude, loneliness, and disappointment. As years went by, Jack’s once bright vibrant colors began to fade into a monochrome blur of pitch-black void and stark white emptiness. Trapped all alone… eternal and hopeless.
- Go Out with a Smile: Implied. Isaac's last memory that flashes before his eyes is when he first met Laughing Jack, his very first friend. When the police find his body months later, despite his mangled face and rotten body, he almost looks happy.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Before Isaac becomes a Serial Killer, he re-fashions the workshop in his home into a murder nest, loading it with a torture bed, murder tools and weapons. After weeks of claiming victims, Laughing Jack is unleashed from his box on Isaac's shelf, and having been influenced by Isaac's violence, he nails Isaac to the torture bed and mutilates him with his own weapons.
- Human Resources: Isaac deals with the body of his first victim by crafting her remains into a chair. Besides the wooden frame, its structure consists of bones (which were separated from the flesh in a bin of bleach), with flayed skin sewn into the seat and backing of the chair. Her hair is braided to make the base's lining while her skull decorates the head of the chair.
- I Didn't Mean to Kill Him: At one point during Isaac's absence, his father drunkenly beats his wife as usual, but she doesn't get back up. He is later hanged for killing his wife.
- Improvised Weapon: Isaac grabs a lead candlestick from his nightstand to bash the back of a lady's head, and it bursts open like a bloody watermelon.
- Karmic Death: Lots of Isaac's actions would later spell his own doom. By telling Laughing Jack to not let go of the cat, it dies, which gets Isaac sent to boarding school. Despite his promise to return and set Jack free, he forgets he was even real, abandoning him and causing Jack to lose his color and emotion. Isaac becoming a Serial Killer influences Jack (since his personality adapts to Isaac's), and finally, Isaac's former friend brutalises him with his own murder weapons.
- The Killer Becomes the Killed: Years away from home turned Isaac into a cruel man, and after he returns, he turns his workshop into a murder nest to torture his victims in before killing them. Isaac's magical friend that he dismissed as childhood fantasy, that being Laughing Jack, degraded from the abandonment and adapted to Isaac's cruel personality as he watches Isaac's kills from his shelf. After Jack breaks free from his box, he tortures Isaac to death.
- Laughing Mad: When he is first exposed to violence, Laughing Jack laughs for the first time in 13 years since he was abandoned. It starts as a chuckle escaping his lips before escalating into howls of laughter at Isaac's "fascinating new game".
- Ludicrous Gibs: Isaac swings a lead candlestick at the back of a woman's skull with enough force to break her head open. It bursts like a watermelon and blood spreads all across the room, a few drops even get on Laughing Jack's box.
- Malevolent Masked Man: Isaac Grossman crafts himself a white wooden mask, alike to one from a Venetian masquerade ball, with a long troll-like nose and eyeholes, to strike fear into his torture victims.
- My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: As Isaac bleeds out from the torturous mutilation wrought onto him, memories of his life flash before his eyes.As his life bled out on that cold wooden bed, Isaac’s life flashed before his eyes. He saw his mother, his father, the boarding school, his victims, and the last thought that fluttered through his mind, was of that very special Christmas where he woke up to find the beautifully hand carved wooden box that contained his very first friend…
- Non-Ironic Clown: Initially, Laughing Jack was a cheerful vibrantly colored clown whose sole purpose was to be Isaac's friend, and he entertained him with candies, games and making his toys dance around in his room. This non-malicious clown would change into a Monster Clown after being abandoned for years and exposed to Isaac's violent activities.
- Not-So-Imaginary Friend: In Laughing Jack's origin story, besides outright referring to himself as a "not-so-imaginary friend" to Isaac, the clown says he can't let anyone else see him or they wouldn't be allowed to play anymore, which leads Isaac's mother to think that he's lying about Laughing Jack's existence. When Isaac returns 13 years after being sent to boarding school, seeing Laughing Jack again is a severe shock to him, because Isaac had dismissed him as childhood imagination.
- Origins Episode: As the title suggests, this is an origin story for Laughing Jack, taking place in the 1800s, likely 2 centuries before the events of his first story. It provides the details of how Laughing Jack became a murderous Monster Clown.
- Pest Controller: In the middle of his mutilation of Isaac, many hordes of filthy roaches crawl out of Laughing Jack's mouth to infest Isaac's exposed abdomen.
- Psychopathic Manchild: When Laughing Jack first witnesses Isaac's violence, he thinks of it as an entertaining game. He's very playful when he tortures Isaac, considering it alike to a show; he makes a balloon animal out of his intestine, he says "If you can’t say something nice, then don’t say anything at all!" before lobbing his tongue off, and he slices off Isaac's lips just to say that he "hasn't been flossing regularly". Justified since Jack is designed to be Isaac's playmate for life and adapts to Isaac's likes, so as Isaac gets more sadistic, so does Laughing Jack.
- Scary Jack-in-the-Box: Laughing Jack first came from a colorful "Laughing Jack-in-a-box", which aged from the time the clown was abandoned and trapped in his box. When Isaac uses the discolored, dusty box again as an adult, it plays a distorted, off-key tune of "Pop Goes The Weasel" before releasing the corrupted Laughing Jack.
- Serial Killer: After smashing the head of the woman who refused his advances, Isaac spends weeks crafting her body into a chair and repurposing his workshop into a murder nest. Then he kidnaps a boy to torture him before killing him. His next "guests" are a blind old woman and a young girl. He's had several victims over the span of several weeks before he meets his own bloody end at Laughing Jack's hands.
- Single Tear: After Isaac tells him that he's leaving for boarding school, Laughing Jack reassures the crying boy that he'd be waiting for his return, smiling as a single tear runs down his cheek.
- Tongue Trauma: Isaac's mouth bleeds from injuries to the tongue twice.
- Isaac attempts a Forceful Kiss on the woman he picked up from the bar, but as she wants nothing to do with his sexual advances, she bites his tongue with all her might before trying to escape.
- Isaac yells insultingly at Laughing Jack for nailing him to the torture bed, to which the clown replies, "If you can’t say something nice, then don’t say anything at all!" before stretching out Isaac's tongue and slicing it off with a knife.
- Toxic Friend Influence: Played with. When Laughing Jack introduces himself to Isaac as his new friend for life, he says that he adapts to Isaac's changing personality. After Isaac is whisked off to boarding school and returns as a bitter adult, Jack's joy has faded too. However, it's when Isaac becomes a Serial Killer that Jack develops a similar interest in his sadistic activities as they all occurred in his view, although Isaac had no idea he was there.
- Troubled Abuser: Isaac's mother verbally abuses her son, calling him a "useless worm" among other things. She's also a frequent victim of Isaac's father's alcohol-induced violence, so she's likely taking out her frustration on Isaac. At one point, she succumbs to the injuries of his beatings.
- Vengeful Abandoned Toy: Laughing Jack was once Isaac's playmate who came in a jack-in-the-box, but he was trapped alone in it for years, waiting for his friend to return from boarding school. While at first emotionless when he returns but doesn't reopen his box, Jack gets jealous when Isaac has a new "friend" , but then Jack comes to enjoy Isaac's murderous activities since he likes whatever Isaac likes. In a mix of adapting to Isaac's new love for violence and resentment towards being abandoned, Jack tortures Isaac with his own murder weapons before killing him.Laughing Jack: Oh I’m quite real kiddo… In fact, I’ve been waiting such a long time for this day to finally come… When I can play with my best friend for life… One. Last. Time!
- Would Hurt a Child: Some of Isaac Grossman's victims are children. He kidnaps a boy in a burlap sack, Bound and Gagged throughout the whole torture process, which includes removing his fingernails with pliers, smashing his kneecap and carving an insult that Isaac's mother called him into the boy's chest. He's filled with so much hate at the boy still clinging to life that he bashes his head until it's nothing but chunks. There is also a girl that Isaac force-feeds with glass before using her stomach as a punching bag.
