Clownification

Are you down to clown?

"Some clown gave me a cold! Now every time I sneeze... AT-CHOO! Someone turns into a clown!"

— Sabrina Spellman, Sabrina the Teenage Witch

Clowns, whether they're friendly or monstrous, have an inexplicable tendency in fiction to be the product of something that transformed them into clowns from normal people, often by force. The transformation will most commonly be viral, technological, or magical in origin, though more mundane methods may be used, and may affect the victim mentally as well as physically. If Played for Laughs, they might simply be a Villainous Harlequin. If Played for Horror, then it will likely overlap with Transformation Horror. Clownification frequently shows up as the recruitment method of a Circus of Fear.

The connection between clowns and disease may have to do with the traditional clown's white makeup and red nose resembling symptoms of some diseases, so there is some real-world basis in this. In some works, this will be a Clown Species' method of reproduction.

Expect there to be a character in this scenario with a fear of clowns, regardless of whether they're one of the afflicted, and who just might have to face that fear in question.

Transformations into mimes may also appear. If this happens, the mime-ified person will virtually always be rendered mute since they wouldn't be much of a mime otherwise, though they may or may not gain mime powers to compensate. Enemy Mime or Everyone Hates Mimes will likely come into play, but are not required.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• In The Awesome Slapstick, Steve Harmon's origin has him transformed from an ordinary teenager into an indestructible cartoon clown.
• Batman: The Joker was by all accounts an ordinary man before he had one bad day: falling into a chemical vat during a tussle with Batman and emerging with his skin bleached chalk white and hair burned green. He ultimately rolls with the insanity and becomes the Clown Prince of Crime.
  • Many stories feature "Joker Venom" as part of the clown's arsenal, a chemical weapon that either causes his victims to adopt a version of his exaggerated grin as they Die Laughing or corrupt them into a Joker copy, Depending on the Writer.
    • In the 2001 miniseries Joker's Last Laugh, Joker, believing he is dying, infects supervillains with a modified Joker Venom strain that turns them into "jokerized" versions of themselves to establish a legacy.
  • In the event comic Dark Nights: Metal, an alternate universe version of Bruce Wayne finally kills the Joker, only to be infected by chemicals that warp him, body and mind, into a new Joker, one with all of Batman's skills and knowledge. The Batman Who Laughs then proceeds to kill off the rest of the Bat Family, save Damian, who he has infected and turned like him, and goes on to basically destroy his universe before being recruited by Barbatos for an assault on the main DC universe.
• Crossed Badlands: In the "Yellow Belly" arc, the main antagonists are a group of Crossed (comprised mostly of former circus workers) who dress as clowns, and seek to force anyone who's been recently infected into joining them by giving them clown outfits, as seen with an unnamed classmate of Edmund.
• An uplifting version occurs in Giraffes On Horseback Salad. When protagonist Jimmy finally rejects his mundane entrepreneurial past and fully embraces Surrealism, he turns into Harpo Marx so he can devote himself to a life of love with the Woman Surreal.
• In one issue of New Mutants, Rahne "Wolfsbane" Sinclair is briefly turned into a clown by Nightcrawler, though it's only an illusion, and not an actual transformation. Rahne is startled at first by the sudden costume change, but quickly warms up to it when Nightcrawler, disguised as a clown himself, approaches her and invites her to dance with him. He then lifts the illusion, revealing that he did this to teach her not to be so quick to judge people by their appearances. Unfortunately, due to his demonic appearance and her own religious background, Rahne still refuses to trust him.
• One Sabrina the Teenage Witch story has Sabrina catch a cold from a clown that sneezed on her at the carnival. Due to a combination of "clown germs" and Sabrina's magic, anyone close to her would turn into a clown whenever she sneezed.
• A mundane example occurs in Sink. Those caught by the gang of Monster Clowns are given Glasgow Grins, have red noses attached to their faces via spikes on the inside, and are sprayed with some sort of insanity-inducing gas, after which they are inducted into the group.

Fan Works

• Gaz and the Curse of the Clown: When Gaz accidentally kills a clown while beating him senseless for publicly humiliating her, she's cursed to become a clown and take his place in the circus.
• In The Loud House fanfic The Girl Who Laughs, Luan falls into some Applied Phlebotinum, which then turns her into a Laughing Mad, unhinged Monster Clown known as "the Jester".
• Before it was removed from fanfiction.net and thus the whole internet, Rainbow Toes was a fanfiction of The Outsiders that was based around this trope. Because of some Magic Genetics passed down by his circus magician father, Ponyboy Curtis undergoes a gradual Clownification upon reaching adolescence, including, in this order, rainbow-colored fingernails and toenails, a spontaneous afro of many colors, an involuntary wardrobe change, and chalk white skin and ruby red lips. After some initial hilarity and angst, Ponyboy takes the whole thing as a Literal Transformative Experience and makes the best of it.

Films — Animated

• Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker: A flashback reveals that the Joker turned Tim Drake a.k.a. Robin into "Joker Jr.", a madly grinning, giggling, miniature replica of the Joker, via physical and mental torture. By the "present day" of the film, the changes have apparently been undone, leaving Tim traumatized but sane and normal-looking. However, during his torture, the Joker implanted Tim with a microchip containing the Joker's DNA and consciousness, periodically hijacking Tim's mind and body to transform him into essentially a reborn Joker.
• The short film "Mime Your Manners" stars an angry Frenchman who bumps into a mime and is as rude to her as the guy he was just on the phone with. As it turns out, she was under the effects of some kind of transferable curse, and grabbing her hand causes her to become normal while he turns into a mime in her stead. Despite his best efforts, he's unable to get a grip on his newfound powers but is able to transfer the curse to another guy who treats him the same way he treated the original former mime.

Films — Live-Action

• Clown revolves around a clown costume made from the skin of an ancient demon called the Cloyne, which bonds with and transforms the unsuspecting wearer into a child-devouring Monster Clown (complete with rainbow-colored blood).
• Cool World: When Holli Wood removes the spike from its place atop the Plaza Hotel, the Cool World (Toon Town) spills into the Noid World (our real world), bringing many of its wacky, physics-defying characters with it. A side effect is that normal people are transformed into hideous beasts or cartoonish clowns, such as a pair of grannies playing slot machines.
• Scary or Die: The segment "Clowned" centers on a man slowly turning into a Monster Clown after getting bitten by a demented birthday clown that reveals to be a Humanoid Abomination, and battling his urges to devour people.
• Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D.: Harry Griswald attempts to transform into Kabukiman for the second time, but he got turned into a clown instead.

Literature

• The Bone Chillers book, "Killer Clown of Kings County", where a clown with magic powers crashed the protagonist's birthday and intends to change everyone into clowns permanently.
• The Eschaton Series: The Mimes from Singularity Sky are near-dead white creatures who attack their victims by throwing nanotech pies at them — the nanobots transform the victim into a new Mime, complete with pies of their own. Fortunately for those being pursued by Mimes, the nanobots also induce certain tics in those affected, who occasionally walk against the wind or get stuck in invisible boxes.
• In John Connolly's short story "Some Children Wander by Mistake", the Clowns of the Circus Caliban are monstrous creatures who remove their makeup for a performance, and they reproduce by kidnapping and transforming children who were still unborn at the time of the circus' last performance (but still aware enough to kick when the Clowns appeared) in the child's hometown. However, since the Clowns are "chosen in the mudderwomb", the Arc Words of the story are "Clowns are not made: Clowns are born."
• Trapped in the Circus of Fear has a couple of bad endings where you attempt to escape from Madam Barbara's circus by disguising yourself as a clown, only for her to catch you in the process; at which point she then casts a spell that turns the makeup permanent, making you a clown in her service forever (with implications that many of the clowns you encounter in the circus are failed escapees, too). Though it's probably a better outcome than the other alternative, getting transformed into one of Barbara's circus freaks.

Live-Action TV

• In Doom Patrol (2019), Sachiko from the Sisterhood of Dada can use any power conceivable once. At one point, when the Sisterhood staged a riot, she used the power of clownification to transform an entire roomful of people into clowns.
• The Goodies: In "Clown Virus", a job to dispose of a large container, with the words 'Tomato Soup' on its side for an American military base sees the whole British population turned into clowns and ripe for an invasion by US troops.
• The Haunting Hour: In "Afraid of Clowns", Chris decides to try to get over his fear of clowns by going to the circus, but the evil clowns trap him in a jack-in-the-box. When he escapes, he's dressed in clown getup and he unsuccessfully tries to take it off. His parents reveal to him that clowns are an actual species of humanoids and that they've always been clowns. To Chris's horror, he's stuck as a clown forever.
• Odd Squad: Clown-itosis is a disease where the victim slowly turns into a clown and runs away to join the circus. The episode "Into the Odd Woods" focuses on Omar contracting the disease after hitching a ride from a group of clowns, with Orla keeping an eye on him while Opal and Oswald go to the titular Odd Woods to gather ingredients to make a cure.
• Tales from the Darkside: In the episode "If the Shoe Fits", a politician who always glad-hands voters and avoids all substance in his campaign finds that the suit he plans to wear to a campaign event has been replaced with a clown suit. By the end of the episode he has been transformed into a clown.
• WandaVision: Wanda Maximoff creates a magical field known as "the Hex" that transforms anything inside it to match her idyllic dream of a perfect life, which draws the attention of the government agency SWORD. When her husband Vision nearly dies by attempting to escape the Hex, Wanda expands the field to contain him again, enveloping the nearby SWORD agents in the process and turning them into clowns in a circus.

Theme Parks

• Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights had two houses involving this trope back in 2016.
  • Orlando's "Giggles & Gore Inc.", tells the story of a group of evil clowns who go around kidnapping people and take them to a factory where they are brainwashed and painfully transformed into more evil clowns, or kill them in the process.
  • Hollywood's "Clowns 3D: Music by Slash" tells the story of a family of clowns who lure people into their ice cream factory and turn them into ice cream, or turn them into clown employees via painful surgery and torture.

Video Games

• In Batman: Arkham Knight, it's revealed that receiving a transfusion of the Joker's Titan-contaminated blood resulted in the recipient's brain being infected with a prion disease that gives them bright green eyes, green hair, bleach-white skin, and a propensity for murder, and since Batman was infected in the previous game, there's also a race against time to find a cure.
• Haunted Museum: In Shh...! Welcome to Frightfearland, if you fail to grab the Repulsive Ringmaster with a rope within three seconds, Chris and Akira wonder why the ringmaster has disappeared as he sneaks up on them from behind. He lifts his wand, and it is then shown that he turned them into clowns so they could join his cult.
• NieR: Automata: When 2B and 9S first discover that the machine lifeforms (their usual enemies) occupying the Amusement Park modify their hulls to look like carnival clowns, they assume this to be some kind of virus or ploy. They soon confirm, however, that most of the "clown" machines are true pacifists who have abandoned their war with the androids to pursue spreading fun as their raison d'être. The actual infection comes much later in the plot when a logic virus turns all Amusement Park inhabitants into violent zombie robot clowns.
• Space Station 13 has some game modes where a player is made a Clown and is to convert and/or kill the entire space station crew. Expect to spend the round hoping you don't hear the tell-tale noise of a clown honk because that means a horrific death is nearby. Some communities go further and add special sub-variants of Clown, like the Cluwne of Goonstation, who is described as "cursed by wizards, unholy plagues or vengeful gods (...) trapped in their cursed clown suit, unable to speak in anything but tortured honks".

Visual Novels

• Downplayed in Psycholonials, in which the main character Z. is inspired by a mystic vision to write a clown-themed "Jubilite Manifesto", which goes viral on social media. Z. subsequently adopts a clown persona and becomes the leader of the Jubilites, a cult of Monster Clowns prone to mischief and violence. Jubilite ideology is eventually revealed to be an alien Mind Virus spread throughout the universe by an ancient lineage of species-transcending clown spirits (represented by Z.'s "Ephemeral Muse", Riotus) in a sort of cultural invasion, colonizing entire planets with their society's values. It's a downplayed example because it's not initially clear that Jubilite ideology is supernatural in origin, rather than merely a memetic social movement.

Web Animation

• Supermarioglitchy4's Super Mario 64 Bloopers: The plot of "Clown Fever" involves a contamination in the water supply (later revealed to be the tears caused by a Sad Clown called Depresso) which when combined with the infected making a fool out of themselves leads to them being transformed into a more humorous version of the Monster Clown. The only person immune to this is Mario, who is too stupid to be transformed.

Webcomics

• The Sonic the Hedgehog Sprite Comic InSONICnia had this as part of a story arc where Sonic finds a sentient gemstone that turns people into clowns with its presence and compels them to spread the effects, the only person immune to its effects being Shadow because it transforms people by preying on their senses of humor, and he doesn't have one. The whole thing was mostly copied from the Aqua Teen Hunger Force example below, as the author has admitted to taking things from that show verbatim.

Web Original

• The creator of the gamebook series Lore is fond of this:
  • In Another Princess Story, one path has Roya being accidentally afflicted with a curse that makes her more beautiful. Eliza and Beth grow envious and try to receive the same curse, but one outcome is that they end up turning into clowns instead. In the Continuity Reboot, things are mostly the same, but Beth is now explicitly a mime who is not only mute, she can't produce any sound and is able to enter Eliza's home undetected. She also obtains miming powers but has difficulty figuring out how to use them.
  • In Mechanics of War, Blythe has several paths where she turns the heroes into clowns. The one most commonly seen combines this with Gender Bender when she turns Marcus into a clown girl.

Western Animation

• The Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "The Clowning" is one of the most memorable examples. Carl buys a wig, which starts off normal but later changes colors at random and is revealed to be infested with clown bacteria. He then transforms into a horrific parody of a clown with giant feet, spotted chalk-white skin, a bowtie-like growth on his neck, and red hair that causes him extreme pain and rapidly grows back when cut off, and he begins uncontrollably doing clown things like riding a miniature car, juggling, and ultimately trying to blow his brains out with a balloon shotgun as he's forced to communicate with a bike horn. The other victims were Meatwad, who turns into a clown near-instantaneously from contact with Carl's clipped hair; Steve, who like Carl was frozen alive after transforming when the whole episode was revealed to be a demonstration by Dr. Weird; and Randy in the later episode "The Last One", who was easily convinced into putting on a similar wig.
• In the Ben 10: Omniverse episode "Something Zombozo This Way Comes", Zombozo turns most of Bellwood's population into zombie clowns who can only repeat the words "Come one, come all".
• In the Dexter's Laboratory episode "The Laughing", a birthday clown's dentures accidentally embed themselves in Dexter's funny bone (depicted as an actual bone instead of a nerve), causing him to turn into an Obliviously Evil wereclown who terrorizes people with his madcap antics. Dee Dee has to become a mime in order to subdue him and take him back to his lab to be cured.
• The Extreme Ghostbusters episode "Killjoys" features a group of Monster Clowns who absorb people by making them laugh. When Eduardo successfully captures one of the clowns, the leader ends up biting him. Slowly over the course of the episode, Eduardo becomes more and more like the monsters, even trying to absorb his teammates towards the end. Egon theorized the clowns could do this on a mass scale, but then would have less food to go around. They only did it to Eduardo as revenge for catching their buddy.
• In one Freakazoid! episode, Freakazoid is investigating a strange cloud in the Alps that transforms people into clown zombies. It turns out to be the work of Freakazoid's old nemesis the Lobe, whose plan is to have his clown minions go door-to-door assimilating the populace. Freakazoid criticizes the plan as being poorly thought out and the Lobe tearfully apologizes and goes home. However, this was a bluff on Freakazoid's part, as he thought the plan was utterly brilliant.
• In the Futurama episode "Proposition Infinity", Hermes catches a disease called circusitis, which makes him resemble a clown; his feet grow longer, his nose turns red, his head turns chalky white, and his hair turns orange. He also sneezes handkerchiefs and when he tries to open a container of pills to treat it, they spring out of the jar, much like the classic "snake can" prank.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: The beginning of "Attack of the Clowns", the episode that establishes Billy as having an extreme fear of clowns, takes place in Billy's dream of being Grim's dog until a horde of sinister-looking clowns invades. Right before Billy wakes up, the camera zooms out to show that Grim has turned into a clown offscreen.
• One of the Bad Future scenarios briefly glimpsed in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "The Cutie Re-Mark - Part 2" has Discord having taken over Equestria and turned Celestia and Luna into clowns for his entertainment.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998): The episode "Mime for a Change" puts a spin on this: when he's soaked by a bleach truck, Rainbow the Clown transforms into an Enemy Mime who turns Townsville into a soundless, Deliberately Monochrome wasteland.
• At the end of the Regular Show episode "Silver Dude", the titular street performer is turned into a mime by the God of Street Performing before being banished to "street jail".
• In the Robot and Monster episode "Doctor? No!", Robot becomes sick with a disease that will turn him into a mime, which are considered horrifying creatures in-universe. When Monster takes him to a doctor, they're told that the only cure is a lollipop (much to Robot's dismay, as he has an Absurd Phobia of them).
• Rugrats: Invoked in "Clown Around". Angelica tricks the kids into thinking that Chuckie is turning into a clown after various Contrived Coincidences (his lips getting red from eating a snowcone, wearing clown shoes that Chas gave to him, and getting powder on his face).
• Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!: "Circus of Ooze" features a slimelike substance that turns those who are touched by it into clown slaves. Chiro gets a dosage and slowly starts turning into a clown, desperately working to undo it before he changes completely.
• In the Total DramaRama episode "He Who Wears the Clown", Owen tries on a clown's nose and becomes one himself, only then being told that it's how all clowns are formed and he needs to convince someone else to try on his nose to pass the curse onto them.
• Totally Spies!
  • "Mime Your Own Business" had Jazz Hands, a talkative mime who used an accordion to turn people into voiceless mimes, including two of the girls, who had to find other ways to communicate (Sam used a voice box and Alex used a hand puppet). The accordion ends up used on him in the end.
  • In season 5, Jazz Hands got an entire arc (one of the four in total) about him wanting to turn everyone on the planet into mimes with special machine and bombs.
  • "Clowning Around" features Bozette Slapstick, an evil clown who intends to restore the legacy of clowns forcefully. She successfully clownifies most of Tokyo, Mandy, and Clover, and almost manages to clownify the entire world before being stopped at the last second.

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