Monster Clown

"Will you give me your eyes?"

"Now you may think you see a grease-painted performer sitting before you, who would usually elicit an amused response from an audience, but trust me, you do not. I'm not here to make you happy. I'm not here to brighten your dismal day. And I am certainly not here to elicit an amused response. I am here to end your miserable fucking life."

— Doom-Head, 31

Clowns are supposed to be funny, whimsical and silly. They're supposed to make everyone laugh, especially children. This is the entire point of their existence. A truly good clown is supposed to be a Friend to All Children. Sometimes they succeed. But for some people, clowns awaken some primal fear. There are children who won't go near a clown without shaking, freezing up or even screaming.

Their face is... fake, corpse-like, most often the makeup they use does NOT help, the emotions aren't real, the smile is just painted on. The outfit and big shoes are downright grotesque. There's something seriously wrong with a clown to some people, and this resonates deep within the part of us that still believes that there is a monster in the closet, that will get out if you don't keep the door closed.

Cue the Creepy Circus Music...

It's startlingly uncommon to find clown characters who are genuinely good. More commonly, writers tap into the fear: the Monster Clown is a classic villain. Expect the Monster Clown to parody humor, with classic jokes becoming deadly; acid in the plastic flowers pinned to their lapels and joy buzzers with fatal amounts of voltage, among other things. If they work in a circus, it'll be a Circus of Fear. Likewise, also expect them to crack dark jokes while killing them and laughing maniacally. Sometimes, a Monster Clown just looks like a clown, and doesn't do what clowns normally do, like tell jokes or work in a circus or go to kids' parties. If there is a clown in a work that just looks like one, it's almost guaranteed that it is a Monster Clown. Because, you know, you just don't go about dressing like a clown without doing anything clowny.

Sooner or later, our heroes will have to put these clowns to the sword. And sometimes not even that stops them. Also take note that many of these clowns may or may not be completely insane and also commit their horrific crimes laughing crazily and frequently, and often with a very high-pitched voice while acting in a very similar manner to an overgrown child.

Sympathetic clowns are generally a little more muted in appearance and behavior, whether or not this is faithful to the job (in which case, see Sad Clown). Generally, audiences are more receptive to clowns who act more like ordinary people, and have less extravagant makeup. Surly clowns who tiredly work with ungrateful children are more common, probably because they speak to the average overworked audience; they may be an example of Hates the Job, Loves the Limelight.

Enemy Mime is a sub-trope of Monster Clown. A villainous clown that is Played for Laughs instead of fear is a Villainous Harlequin. The Depraved Kids' Show Host and Creepy Mascot Suit seems to be related. May be combined with Scary Jack-in-the-Box, Creepy Doll, Perverse Puppet, or Evil Puppeteer. Clowns' ghastly white makeup puts them into White Mask of Doom territory. The Monster Clown is often Affably Evil or (far more likely) Faux Affably Evil. The Monster Clown is often seen with a Balloon of Doom. Compare Repulsive Ringmaster. For examples based on the Joker from Batman, see Practically Joker.

The opposite of this trope is the (perhaps sadly) rarely seen any more Non-Ironic Clown. Of course, someone who's Afraid of Clowns wouldn't care either way; they're just creeped out by them no matter what.

Despite the page name, Jesters can also apply to this trope as well, as Monster Jesters are also fairly common in media and often maintain similar traits that Monster Clowns posses, albeit sometimes combined with Villainous Harlequin at the same time.

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Example subpages:

• Anime & Manga
• Films — Live-Action
• Literature
• Live-Action TV
• Tabletop Games
• Video Games
• Western Animation

Other examples:

Advertising

• In an E -Trade commercial with a talking baby, the baby says he rented a clown named Bobo, who we see standing in the background making balloon animals, before getting a scared look on his face and saying "And I really underestimated the creepiness." Subverted in that the clown doesn't actually do anything creepy other than just be there. Which may or may not be enough to be freaky for a clown.
• The KGB commercial with two moms looking for clowns for their kids' birthday parties. The one using KGB finds Benny the clown, a professional clown who cheerfully and successfully entertains the children. The second finds Biffo, a fat, hostile clown who scares all the children into running away and then randomly destroys the drink table.
• A Little Caesar's ad has two girls wandering in the woods. One of them mentions rumors that a deranged clown haunts the forest. As it turns out, they're right, but thankfully he has a liking for cheap pizza.
• So you're watching a McDonald's ad in Japan and... OH MY GOD RONALD MCDONALD IS STALKING YOU!!!^note Okay, it wasn't a real ad, but dayum.
• A Motel 6 commercial features a guy not being able to sleep because of all the disturbing clown paraphernalia decorating the guest room he's staying in.
• Krinkles the Clown, of Post's Sugar Rice Krinkles. Good Lord, where to begin? For one, the technology for filming and broadcasting in color was well established by then, but they made the decision to not just shoot everything in black and white, but paint up the set—including Krinkles himself—in black and white. And, to put it in perspective, this ad campaign was chosen after discarding the prior Asian stereotypes they were using.◊
• Taco Bell's "Routine Republic" commercial has clowns as Gestapo officers.
• The US Postal Service used this in an ad: "Because we have to get that out of this house." "Come on it's not that ba-eeeaaah! Oh, yeah, that has to go."
• And then, there's this Wal-Mart advertisement. Those with coulrophobia, do not watch. (Though it's not entirely the poor bastard's fault.)
• These kung fu clowns from an ad for Bell South phonebooks veer into Comedic Sociopathy levels, though most of these are Played for Laughs.

Asian Animation

• Flower Angel: In Season 5 episode 24, Xiaoai and Eric end up in a candy world with a clown who lets them explore it and ride the carnival rides that are also there. The clown tricks them into thinking he's friendly, but lets Eric fall asleep from exhaustion before using the opportunity to forcibly control Xiaoai like a string puppet.
• Happy Heroes: Season 7 episode 13 features a clown villain whose name is, in fact, Monster Clown (or Clown Monster^note both English names are official translations; "Monster Clown" is used by Miao Mi for its official English description of the episode while "Clown Monster" is used in the actual episode itself for their English dub). In the episode, Big M. releases him from a high-security prison for especially dangerously criminals to have him help in a evil plan of his, only to be Taken for Granite by the clown along with many others - Clown Monster's special power is to absorb energy from people's laughing and using it to turn the laughing person or people into stone.

Comic Books

• Sneero◊, the villain clown in Achille Talon.
• Annihilators: The plot of the backup story is kicked off when a gun-toting wooden clown attacks Rocket Raccoon at his workplace. Later, a whole hit squad of similar clowns comes after him on Planet X.
• While the weird-but-superheroic Jack-In-The-Box from Astro City is a Non-Ironic Clown, Jack's two Bad Future Knight Templar descendants definitely fit this trope.
• The Joker from Batman. The Trope Codifier. His shtick frequently involves jacket flowers that spray acid, hand buzzers that electrocute people, wind-up teeth that actually bite people, and a "Joker toxin" that kills people while leaving them with a Glasgow Grin. He serves as a major contrast with Batman himself, a brooding, stoic Dark Is Not Evil hero. The Joker, incidentally, was originally based on Conrad Veidt's role in The Man Who Laughs. While the titular clown of this picture wasn't evil, he certainly was unbelievably disturbing-looking◊.
  • Tim Burton's Batman Returns gives the Penguin a bunch of clowns as henchmen, despite the fact that clowns are more the territory of the Joker. According to the production notes, Burton's vision of the Penguin was inspired by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, so a Circus of Fear is a necessity. And in the briefly-mentioned backstory, the Penguin in that version also was a sideshow freak in his childhood, implying that's where his gang comes from.
  • Death of the Family: The Joker once again acts as this trope. But he seems to be emphasizing the "Monster" part of the trope this time around. Although he denies it, saying he's not really a clown; despite his appearance and gag-themed weapons, he's not able to make someone laugh without his signature chemicals.
  • Batman: Endgame looks to be taking the Joker's escalating bloodlust and refusal to die to their logical conclusion by depicting the Joker as an Ambiguously Human scourge who has seemingly been menacing Gotham since it was founded. On top of that, the backup stories for the arc contribute several more options to the Joker's Multiple-Choice Past. It's telling that the most "normal" of them is that the Joker has a Healing Factor.
  • Even the Creeper has shown dislike of clowns.
• Blade once fought vampire clowns. Really.
• Burlap has Chuckles, a member of a four-person Serial Killer gang who dresses himself in clown make-up.
• An issue of the revamped Creepy Magazine features a murderous clown who kills "demons" wherever he sees them. He sees them everywhere.
• Eric Draven, the protagonist of The Crow, is one of the few non-villainous examples of the Monster Clown, given that he wears facial makeup directly based on an old Pierrot mask of his, but is a tragic undead Villain Killer who goes after the criminals that murdered him and his Lost Lenore.
• Deadpool sees all clowns as Monster Clowns. He's never actually encountered a real Monster Clown in the comics, but his solo mission in Marvel Ultimate Alliance has him fighting an army of clowns in a circus.
• Frenchy from the National Lampoon's Evil Clown Comics feature which ran intermittently in the magazine in the late 80's and early 90's. He was the brainchild of Nick Bakay and Alan Kupperberg, and was not only bitter and diabolical but had... ahem, a way with the ladies as well. Sometimes he was too much even for the proudly non-PC Lampoon, which refused to publish one panel of a particular story.
• Subverted by a short-lived superhero called Funnyman (1948) whose schtick was... you guessed it...
• The Clown Cenobite (a.k.a. "Winky Dink") from the Hellraiser comic story "Dead Things Rot".
• Lady Death: Pagan is a demon dressed like a court jester and is one of Lucifer's servants. He is known to have a rather twisted sense of humor.
• Eliot Franklin, from the Marvel Universe, worked as a clown and wore his clown costume to commit crimes. He eventually became a professional hitman.
• The Painted Doll, a mass-murdering Joker-Expy supervillain from Promethea. It's eventually revealed that his Joker Immunity is because he's actually a succession of identical robots created by an evil engineering genius, with a new one being activated automatically whenever the previous one is damaged beyond repair.
• In Punchline and the Vaude-Villains, the titular Punchline is an enormous ex-boxer who dresses like a particularly thuggish clown. There's also Uzi Clown, who is more or less Exactly What It Says on the Tin - a clown who's usually packing.
• R. Crumb wrote a comic showing the marvels of the City of the Future. He depicted a squad of clowns who went around inflicting chaos to keep people on their toes - and they regulated population growth, finding people aged 65 and throwing cyanide pies in their faces. What a way to go!
• In Robyn Hood: I Love NY #4, Robyn fights a gang of monster clowns who are abducting children.
• Secret Six: DC also has the Ragdoll dynasty. The father was a Golden Age villain with contortionist abilities, who would eventually become a Mansonesque cult leader and eventually regained his youth via a Deal with the Devil. The son lacked his father's natural flexibility, so he remedied it with a series of operations that's left him severely deformed, but with greater flexibility than even his father. And don't ask about the sister.
• In Sink, a blue van filled with psychotic clowns drives around at night. Those unfortunate enough to be caught by them are mutilated, driven insane and turned into clowns as well.
• Violator from Spawn. At first, he's just a Fat Bastard Depraved Dwarf clown who delights in murder and mayhem. Then it turns out that the grotesque human is just a skin-suit over a Lean and Mean demon from hell.
• Clown, who was featured in Super Mystery Comics and Four Favorites, was so evil he worked for Adolf Hitler.
• Whiteface from Supreme Power: Nighthawk is an absolutely psychopathic serial-poisoner with a body count in the thousands who dresses up as a clown.
• Protoclown from The Tick. And then the subversion: Protoclown was genetically engineered to be the perfect Non-Ironic Clown, and deep down he's not such a bad guy. He just really hates being laughed at.
• The Comedian from Watchmen arguably qualifies. In his original costume as one of the Minutemen anyway. When he gets his second costume and becomes one of the Crimebusters, not so much.
  • Like the Joker's Glasgow smile in The Dark Knight, the scar the Comedian gets in Vietnam is eerily reminiscent of a clown's painted smile.

Comic Strips

• The Far Side:
  • One cartoon features a giant clown marching through a city; a squad of soldiers are behind a building ready to ambush him with a rocket launcher armed with a giant pie.
  • Another cartoon features a group of angry clowns arguing with each other at a negotiation table; the caption reads, "At the strategic pie limitation talks".
  • Implied with another strip that shows a clown being escorted to the electric chair.
• If: In it the then UK prime Minister Theresa May is portrayed as, in Steve Bells own words, an "evil,scary clown".

Fan Works

• Calvin & Hobbes: The Series: A fake one of these pops out of a door as an In-Universe Jump Scare. Later, a living mannequin clown with a Slasher Smile appears.
• Cinderjuice: Scuzzo the Clown assists the primary villains in the first installment of the Contractually Obligated Chaos series.
• Equestria Divided: The Cult of Laughter is an entire army of these run by a Monster from Beyond the Veil Pinkie Pie.
• Flashback (MHA): In a conversation with Midnight, All Might notes that the most infamous American supervillain to this day was a clown-themed villain called "Mister Smiles", who was so terrifying that even now, American supervillains hate to be compared to clowns. All Might openly describes him as worse than his own Arch-Enemy, All For One, and summarizes him as a supervillain whose starting point was looking at the Joker and going "hold my beer".
• A Game of Cat and Cat: One of the monster souls that Soma has is Killer Clown.
• Ice And Fire: Kallen's Zero mask, unlike the one Lelouch wears in canon, makes her look like this. More specifically, it's an ornate clown mask that's happy on one side and sad on the other. Subverted in that, despite being ruthless at times, she's not actually evil.
• Lincoln's Memories: In "A Very Loud Halloween", Luan dresses as a psycho clown by taking her normal clown suit and putting fake blood on it.
• The New Adventures of Invader Zim:
  • In Season 2 Episode 5, Zim creates a Cyborg Death Clown and sends it after Dib and his friends as they investigate an allegedly haunted house.
  • In Season 2 Episode 8, Nyx and Gaz's road trip to Arcadikon is sidetracked by doing a favor for Grissom in the form of eliminating a rival gang for him. Said gang for some reason all dress up like clowns, apparently on the basis that clowns are disturbing.
• "NiGHTS into Dreams in a Nutshell", a parody video of NiGHTS into Dreams… by YouTuber McSchmoodle, plays this for laughs. In the game, NiGHTS is a beautiful and benevolent jester/acrobat-like creature. In this video, NiGHTS is depicted as a raving, feral lunatic in a cage. A Nightopian tries to convince Elliot to touch NiGHTS (because that's how the player gains control of NiGHTS in the game), and Elliot is too scared of NiGHTS to do it. The Nightopian forces him to mesh with NiGHTS. At the end, both Elliot and Claris have become giggling, grinning lunatics locked in a padded room. One of the guards watching over them mentions that they keep saying the same sentence: "I am the jester."
  NiGHTS: (inhuman growling and breathing sounds)
  Nightopian: See the jester? You're gonna touch it!
  NiGHTS: (demonic voice) TOUCH.
  Nightopian: And it will absorb you into its body!
  Elliot: Uhh, I don't- I don't think I wanna do th- (The Nightopian grabs Elliot's hand and makes him fuse with NiGHTS) Wha- NO!
• Not the intended use (Zantetsuken Reverse): One of the monster souls that Soma has is Killer Clown.
• Pagliacci features Pinkie Pie as a Jokeresque character. You'll never look at that little pink pony the same way again.
• Pony POV Series: An Alternate Universe glimpsed in the Truth (as well as in Dark World) gives us Nightmare Granfalloon, Pinkie Pie's potential Superpowered Evil Side.
• Realistic Pokémon: A tongue-in-cheek invocation — Mime Jr. is depicted as a tadpole that makes itself look "as grotesque as possible" to scare off predators. Its evolution, Mr. Mime, is depicted as a pretty normal looking (if pretty huge) frog.
• Rotting Camellias has four of them, portrayed by Teto, Tei, Ruko, and Ritsu.
• Sognic: Mall-tiverse of Madness: Deconstructed in episode 3. During Airo's nightmare, he is suddenly faced with a huge, hulking, scary clown. Roter.exe claims that since clowns are scary, he should automatically "win" at scaring Airo just by summoning a clown. However, Airo points out that he has no reason to be afraid of clowns because he has already beaten up so many enemy clowns in his home game. He then knocks out the clown in one hit.
• Stand Dust (A JoJo's Bizarre Adventure X RWBY Crossover) : Freak is a clown sent by The Door to kill Team RWBY and Josuke Higashikata. Their Stand is even named after the Insane Clown Posse. Unlike most examples of this trope, Freak are utterly sympathetic : Freak were originally three siblings who merged in body, mind, and soul at their birth, with the brother merging with the sister first then the subsequent fusion merging with the younger twin. Abandoned at birth, Freak were subsequently forcibly recruited by a circus, and were paraded in front of the crowd, who either mocked their physical appearance or took pity on them. They were also physically and psychologically abused, leading to them snapping, killing their bodyguard and escaping the circus. They were subsequently recruited by the Door. Despite the Door warning them of the possibility of dying if they were pierced by the Stand Arrow, Freak were so grateful to the Door for helping them out and giving them a greater purpose that they stabbed themselves with it, subsequently gaining their Stand Insane Clown Posse. Even after she fatally wounded them, Ruby feels nothing but sympathy for them as they die.
• Star Wars: Galactic Folklore and Mythology: The ancient Gungans worshiped a mad laughing god called Har Har, whose priests also served as court jesters and performed sacrifices "as hilarious as they were brutal".

Folklore

• Urban legend: A teenage girl is babysitting, and the parents call home to check in. "Everything's fine," she says, "oh, but I covered up that clown statue in the back hall with my jacket, it was creeping me out." "Clown statue? We don't own a clown statue..."
• The tale of the clown in the coconut tree from Brazilian Folklore: Once upon a time, there was a clown named Coco (meaning 'coconut' in Portuguese). In the circus, he was unable to make anyone smile, so he went crazy and ran away. During days of waning moon, he climbs a coconut tree to see the moon "smiling" for him. But when the moon is covered by clouds, the clown gets down to the ground to see other smiles: those of people. So when he meets a person he will try to make them laugh, and, should the person not give him at least a smile, he will punish them, sometimes with death. And he continues doing so until the moon is no longer hidden.
• Abandoned clown train remembers you!◊
• A new Urban Legend going around is that of an extremely sinister/dangerous Monster Clown in Bradford, which has been rumored to be doing everything from peering in windows to robbing people to stabbing them. The police department consider it a hoax, and a news story about it can be seen here

Films — Animation

• The Brave Little Toaster had a nightmare about a fireman-clown trying to chase her into a filled bathtub. His only line was "Run!". Sound advice! Considering it was a toaster's nightmare, and the clown was armed with a fire hose and a fork... Heck, the way his hair is shaped, he looks like the Devil!
• Dumbo is an early, downplayed example — the clowns genuinely like making their audience laugh, but they're a bunch of Jerkasses behind the scenes, humiliating Dumbo (and having a clown play his mother is pretty cruel, considering what happened to her) and not worrying about hurting him, or worse. One of the clowns does get a Pet the Dog moment, but that's about it. (When he insists "You'll hurt the little guy", the other clowns just laugh him off and say that elephants can't get hurt because "they're made of rubber.")
• Fantasia 2000 has the Jack-In-The-Box from the Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major segment. He's a Scary Jack-in-the-Box with the outfit of a jester, and he develops a Villainous Crush on the Ballerina. He's quite frightening and cruel in his attempts to kill the Tin Soldier.
• One of Riley's deep, subconscious fears in Inside Out is the enormous and horrifyingly manic Jangles the Clown. "Whooo's the birthday girl?!" In the Creative Closing Credits, he's revealed to be a Non-Ironic Clown who is not pleased with his job.
• In Minions, one of the supervillains who chases Kevin across the city is a bomb-juggling, Laughing Mad, unicycle-riding clown.
• The Clown With The Tearaway Face from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Subverted in that he isn't that scary once you get to know him, just like the other denizens of Halloween Town.

Jokes

• There's a joke that's gone around about a boy and a clown walking through the woods at night. The boy says to the clown, "Man, this forest sure is scary..." to which the clown replies, "You're telling me. I have to go back through it by myself."

Music

• While the clowns in the video for the Arctic Monkeys' "Fluorescent Adolescent" aren't demonic monsters, given that the video is centered around a fight between two gangs of those wacky circus comedians, they're not exactly nice, either.
• Blind Guardian's music video for "Mr. Sandman" includes four monster clowns.'' Seriously, don't go to sleep after watching that.
• The cover and promotional campaign for David Bowie's album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), and the video for its lead-off single "Ashes to Ashes", featured Bowie as a mysterious Pierrot. Look at the Live Action TV page for what Ashes to Ashes (2008) did with this one...
• The label of some of Capitol and Wonderland Records' children's albums had two very odd looking jester heads blowing horns on top.
• Alice Cooper's Can't Sleep, the Clowns Will Eat Me.
• The music video to "Salvation" by The Cranberries features a creepy clown with a face full of needles and a glove with a syringe on each finger - since the song has a pretty blatant Drugs Are Bad message, he's apparently meant to be the Anthropomorphic Personification of addiction.
• Dadaroma's song "リズリーサーカス" which translates to Risley Circus features the singer dressed as Pierrot, a sinister clown reminiscent of The Joker. Dressed in a nice suit with clown make-up, he plays around with a prop knife while enticing a young girl to enter his den of freaks.
• Deadbolt have several songs that feature not only Patches, the murderous clown, but also a clown mafia and Mike Dugan, the Sociopathic Hero who dresses as a clown to battle them.
• Dog Fashion Disco has a song called "Pogo the Clown", which is about John Wayne Gacy.
• German Power Metal band Edguy's album Mandrake has a monster clown with a Slasher Smile on the cover. Some of the lyrics in the album also mention them.
• Ogden Edsl's Kinko the Clown is equal parts novelty song and Nightmare Fuel.
  But that was in Indianapolis, and thanks to the liberal reciprocity laws, Kinko can be with you boys and girls today or anytime.
• From "Mr. E's Beautiful Blues" by the Eels: "The clown with the frown driving down to the sidewalk fair / Finger on the trigger and I tell you it's quite a scare"
• Esham, as "Homey The Clown" on Homey Don't Play and I Ain't Cha Homey.
• Insane Clown Posse obviously takes their image from this and have built a mythology around themselves called "The Dark Carnival." In the band's mythology, they're actually AntiHeroes or Sociopathic Heroes hunting their various villainous enemies. The afterlife story features an evil clown, Jack Jeckel and his good twin Jake Jeckel. Jack throws slippery, blood-soaked balls at Jake, each representing a sin. If Jake fails to juggle the balls and drops one, you're condemned to "Hell's Pit." Other Psychopathic Records artists that are examples of this trope include Anybody Killa, Blaze Ya Dead Homie, Boondox, and Twiztid. They started this persona on 1992's Carnival of Carnage.
  • Boondox' status as this is questionable. From his songs (and upbringing) it's pretty evident that he's supposed to be a scarecrow.
• The lenticular cover for the KISS album Psycho Circus features the face of one.
• The appropriately titled song "Clown" by the band Korn. The lyrics aren't literally about a clown, they just compare the subject of the song to one... but there's some deliberate monster clown imagery in there, and the verse riff sounds like Creepy Circus Music.
• "The Abortion Song" by Kunt and the Gang is about a man trying to find ways to make his girlfriend miscarry. The video shows the man to be Ronald McDonald and shows him enacting most of the things in the song including pushing his girlfriend down the stairs, microwaving the baby and finally cooking it in his fastfood restaurant.
• Lordi on their album 'Scare Force One' have a song dedicated to this trope appropriately called 'Hell Sent In The Clowns', accompanied by Creepy Circus Music throughout the song.
• Mr. Bungle's self-titled album has a monster clown on the cover. And "Carousel", a song comparing life to a Circus of Fear, contains a few references to a monster clown ("You know there's something lurking underneath the shape, with a mask over it's head and makeup on his face").
  • There's also some really creepy clowns in the video for Travolta; pretty par for the course considering the rest of the clip's visuals.
• The video for Storytime by Nightwish has a group of these harassing a small boy.
• Oingo Boingo recorded a song called "Clowns of Death" and performed under that name on a few occasions. Auxiliary band members would sometimes dress in clown costumes, billed as the Sad Klown Orkestra.
• In the video for P!nk's song Please Don't Leave Me, the boyfriend tries to leave and the girl character goes Stephen King on him, starting with Misery and ending with an Ax-Crazy bit from The Shining. The more psycho the girl goes, the more her make-up goes Monster Clown, until she looks horribly like Pennywise from It. * brrr*
  • There's also a quick shot of one at :04.
  • More Pink: from the same album, the song Funhouse:
  This used to be a funhouse
  But now it's full of evil clowns
  It's time to start the countdown
  We're gonna burn it down, down, we're gonna burn it down.
  • And seriously, what more can you do with evil clowns, except Kill It with Fire? The video's pretty freaky too.
• Poets of the Fall revisits the imagery over several albums.
  • Downplayed in "Carnival of Rust," as the singer Zoltar, an automaton performer in a Circus of Fear carnival, serves as an unusually eerie and foreboding Pierrot-figure. Though a Sad Clown, his obvious decrepitude and increasing desperation make the air of menace that much thicker.
  • The album art◊ for Twilight Theater introduces Hamartia, the Slasher Smile-sporting jester with a Happy Harlequin Hat that terminates not in jingle bells, but a coiled serpent's head.
  • The video for Jealous Gods' "Daze" sees Hamartia reappear to sing it, this time as an even creepier Jester-King, with bells hanging from his hair, presiding moodily over a decadent Masquerade Ball until an attendee elects to leave without his say-so. He responds by setting everything on fire.
• Shawn "Clown" Crahan of Slipknot. All of his masks are clown-themed and take the concept to unique and disturbing extremes, from a relatively simple but ugly clown to one with a pentagram carved into its face to a BDSM mask.
• Somewhat inevitably crops up in Sufjan Stevens song "John Wayne Gacy Jr.", though not played entirely straight as it centers on the communities Fridge Horror over the Values Dissonance in his two identities. Somehow made even creepier by making it sound kind of erotic though.
  "He dressed up like a clown for them, with his face paint white and red. And on his best behaviour in a dark room on the bed, he kissed them all"
• The music video for Sublime's "Wrong Way" depicts Annie's abusive father as a clown.
• Evillious Chronicles In "Five the Pierrot/Gobanme no Piero", Lemy/Remy Abelard is a very unique example of this. First, he's just an assassin who has the nickname "Pierrot" and wears a clown outfit. Second, he's not really a monster. He's just been raised wrong by Santa/Julia Abelard, his adoptive mother and leader of the organization he belongs to, Pere Noel.
• Check out Blotto the Clown from the cover of White Courtesy Telephone's (one and only) CD, "Everything is Fun".

Pinball

• FunHouse: Rudy's Nightmare: Implied with the clown that appears throughout the game, which is consistently treated as a threat. The beginning of "Don't You Want a Balloon?" positions it as Pennywise in a shot directly referencing It, while another mode tasks the player melting it in acid. Both modes use songs that repeatedly play Evil Laughs.
• While Hurricane is filled with harmless Non-Ironic Clowns, the front of the cars of the "Hurricane" rollercoaster have a manically grinning Monster Clown face, complete with razor-sharp teeth.

Podcasts

• Talked about in the Sick Sad World episode "Origins Of Scary Things".
  • Jasmine developed a fear of clowns after a childhood incident where she saw an older child dressed as a scary clown.
  • The hosts mention the then-common clown pranksters, and say people who try jokes like that should be prepared for their victims to know self-defense moves.
• The Magnus Archives gives us a number of servants of The Stranger, the embodiment of the Uncanny Valley. As it represents the fears of things that look human but have something that makes them seem not, of course it has clowns in its retinue. It's said that Joseph Grimaldi, the most famous clown in British history, was one of its servants, and its current avatar, Nikola Orsinov, is usually depicted in fright makeup and ringleader's garb.
• In the Seeso series of My Brother, My Brother and Me, Griffin tries to get some local teens to give up their phones by giving them to the Clown Box: a chained-up box with a picture of a clown on it in the middle of the woods.Inside is apparently a clown, who gives gifts in exchange for phones.When it doesn't receive a phone, it becomes enraged, escapes, and kills Griffin, his brothers, and the teens.
• RiffTrax:
  • Fear of clowns is a Running Gag for Rifftrax, right behind their fear of monkeys. Check out the riffed shorts "The Creeps Machine" and "Story-Telling: Can You Tell It In Order?" for some good examples. This is a natural continuation from a similar fear on MST3K.
  • Invoked in the Rifftrax for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, when a student casts a spell on a boggart to transform it from a giant snake into a giant, horrifying clown.
    Mike Nelson: But she failed! She summoned something far scarier, from the depths of Hell itself!
  • On the Rifftrax for The Dark Knight, after the Joker flips the semi over and starts making goofy noises with his lips, the riffers say this:
    Mike: Daffy Duck and John Wayne Gacy's bastard son.
    Bill: I thought that was Jim Carrey...
• The appropriately-named Nightmares the Clown from the "Beyond Belief" segment of Thrilling Adventure Hour, a parody of Pennywise. He's rather annoyed by the fact that Sadie finds clowns hilarious and giggles constantly whenever she sees him. Frank Doyle has repeatedly battled Nightmares, first encountering him when he was a child and he and his friends investigated several dead and missing children.
  Peter: Looks like we solved the mystery at least.
  Nightmares: That's right boys, you did it! You really did it! You solved the mystery and found me! You young boys went and tracked down the fellow who's been murdering young boys all these years! Do you young boys have a sense of irony yet? Probably not, you're from Maine. But my, how'd you be laughing if you did!

Professional Wrestling

• Coco Blanco, a clown with a fanged mask who later became a part of Los Payasos IWRG with the similar Cocochips, Cocolores, Coco Rojo and Coco Verde. Verde, Blanco and Rojo later wrestled for AAA, CMLL and Toryumon as Los Payasos Tricolor.
• Doink the Clown in the WWF, until his face turn. Then it went downhill fast. Doink also gets point for the coolest entrance theme ever, which started with the first few bars of "Entrance of the Gladiators" (aka the Standard Snippet for clowns) before turning into a very bass-heavy, very evil piece dotted with Evil Laughter. Have a listen.
• Los Payasos Diabolicos, a legacy group that has spread the fear of clown throughout many Mexican feds.
• The ax happy Insane Clown Posse. And as of Juggalo Championship Wrestling's founding, they now run their own promotion, which is humorous, but in a very ironic way. (They basically mock everything that is wrong with it on commentary)
• An episode of SmackDown in April 2000 had the Mean Street Posse posing as a trio of circus clowns during a hardcore title match when they ambushed Crash Holly.
• Dead Clown, Psycho Clown, Murder Clown and Monster Clown of AAA are most definitely not examples of this trope, NOT!. Neither is mini clown!
• Cabal, one half of Gateway Championship Wrestling's version of Nightbreed and a member of the Diabolic Khaos stable, combined this trope with The Giant. Think masked Kane as a clown.
• Devil Pierrot #1 and Devil Pierrot #2 are a monster clown tag team of Fighting Opera HUSTLE fame.
• Subverted by Sting in TNA during his 2011 war against the Immortal faction. Slathering over his trademark black lipstick with a grotesquely smeared red Glasgow Grin, playing pranks, and laughing and carrying on maniacally, he seemed to be a Monster Clown but was actually more of a Lovable Rogue playing mind games with the villains.
• A mass baby face example on the July 14, 2011 addition of TNA Impact when Fortune took up clown gear to take out Immortal for Sting.
• Bray Wyatt could be considered a Monster Clown of a sort. His clothing is much too colorful for such an angsty individual, he has a bone-chilling Evil Laugh, many of his speech patterns seem to have been inspired by Heath Ledger's Joker, and he calls himself "the eater of worlds" - one of the titles Pennywise the Dancing Clown applies to himself in It. Add a dash of Mister Rogers and you get his 2019 gimmick as the Depraved Kids' Show Host of "Firefly Fun House", a run which ultimately culminated in Bray becoming the Fiend, the monstrous, golden-eyed demon.
• In 2014, "The World Famous" Kana started wearing clown makeup and became a "consultant" for joshi fed REINA. Soon enough, she used her new authority, and money, to give herself a title belt and form a stable known as Piero-gun.
• TNA's Menagerie stable was often flanked by two giant clown guards. The clown who actually wrestled, Crazzy Steve is not an example of this trope however. Well, not until he joined the stable Decay many years later.

Theater

• Essentially averted by Cirque du Soleil in their specific clown acts. Traditional whitefaces and augustes are less intimidating than the popular conception, and some character-based clown acts largely eschew garish makeup and costuming. Indeed some clowns are downright ordinary-looking compared to the other characters. But there are villainous/mysterious characters who, intentionally or not, have appearances akin to this trope: Boum-Boum in Quidam, Le Titan in La Nouba, etc. Closest to the trope is the bizarre emcee Fleur in Alegria: According to the All There in the Manual material, he was the court jester to the now-gone ruler of the kingdom, and now he wants to be king.
• Pagliacci: An Unbuilt Trope. The opera involves Canio trying to play a Non-Ironic Clown, when in fact he is a Sad Clown because his wife is cheating on him, but The Show Must Go On. Finally he snaps and stabs his wife and her lover to death on stage in front of a live audience. The whole point is that he's not a monster or a psychopath just because he's a clown; if anything, his clown role is meant for Dramatic Irony. On the other hand, the evil hunchback clown Tonio plays the trope much straighter, being a Manipulative Bastard (and attempted rapist) who spitefully engineers the events that lead to the deaths at the end.
• Rigoletto, kinda. Although he's portrayed in a sympathetic light at parts, he's still a crazy, bitter, grotesque jester who indirectly kills his daughter and Morality Pet, Gilda.

Theme Parks

• Universal's Halloween Horror Nights has had too many examples over the years to list them all. There are a few stand-outs however.
  • Jack C. Schmidt, a red-headed, psychotic, and evil clown who gives us both the laughs and the fear.
  • There's also Chance, his harlequin girl sidekick.
  • The evil clowns from the Giggles & Gore Inc. haunted house. They kidnap people and take them to a factory where they torture and brainwash them into becoming evil clowns themselves. And then there's the Discarded, clowns considered too insane and too dangerous even to the evil clowns, so they are tossed into the basement and left to rot.
  • In Hollywood, there are clowns that were once the Non-Ironic Clown trope.
    • In 2014, there was the ice cream clown family Sweet Licks, Cutty and Bubba from the haunted house, Clowns 3D: Music by Slash. Once, they were ordinary clowns working at the Sweet Licks Frozen Clown Pops ice cream factory/roadside attraction, but the negative portrayal of clowns in the media and the USA's demand for treats low in fat and calories drove them out of business...and insane and desperate for money. So, the clowns came up with a wicked plan to save their business: trick people into coming into their ice cream factory with the promise of free ice cream for one day, kill them, turn their bodies into "healthy" ice cream and sell it to the public.
    • Then there was Hollywood Harry aka Harold Kappowitz aka Koodles the Clown from the 2016 Terror Tram by Eli Roth. He was once a circus performer and children's variety show host before becoming the unofficial mascot for Universal Studios Hollywood when it first opened in 1964. But as time went on, people began to fear clowns thanks to their negative portrayal in movies and sensationalized news stories of clowns attacking people and kidnapping children. Kappowitz lost his job and was reduced to being an unpaid street performer outside the park gates. A few years later, he was banned from the property due to his increasingly erratic behavior. He fled into the Hollywood Hills and his character, Koodles, faded into obscurity. For decades, his presence in the backlot remained unnoticed even though the local wildlife surrounding the park and the occasional tour guide started vanishing. But these were brushed aside as the result of the park expanding and the transient nature of volunteer tour guides respectively. Then, in the fall of 2016, during the "Clown Craze", people started to notice him wandering around the backlot and began to take videos and photos of him whenever they got the chance and they called him Hollywood Harry, the phantom clown. Soon, "clown hunters" began to go searching for him, only to discover he was not alone. He had assembled an army of former circus performers and clowns to help him in his revenge against Universal Studios for firing him all those years ago.
• Busch Gardens' Howl-O-Scream had one simply named "Clown" as a member of "The 13", a sinister group of monsters that served as the "icons" of the event in 2013.
• Walibi Holland's Halloween Fright Nights event uses an evil clown called "Eddie the Clown" as one of its main mascots.

Toys

• Played at in one of the Monster High character diaries, where rushing through her makeup (which she can't see in the mirror) nearly leaves the vampire Draculaura "looking like an undead clown... not that there's anything wrong with that." No clowns have appeared in the franchise yet, but they may be out there.

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney has two:
  • Simon Keyes from Gyakuten Kenji 2, who reveals himself as the true Big Bad of the game, and easily manipulates multiple people similar to Matt Engarde, though he only reveals himself as a clown when he's performing.
  • Geiru Toneido, although she's a balloon artist, not a clown, from Spirit of Justice. She certainly seems this way having framed an innocent five-year-old, killed her master out of jealousy, and has a villainous clown look to her.
• Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony: The D.I.C.E. organization consists of ten individuals masked as clowns going around causing mild pranks, vandalism, and petty theft For the Lulz.
• Demonbane: Tiberius wears a clown get-up, and is among the most monstrous characters (given that this game has Lovecraftian horrors in it, that is saying something).
• In Marco & the Galaxy Dragon, two aliens disguised as clowns kidnap a young Marco and seemingly murder her mother during the prologue.
• Trapped with Jester: Downplayed. Jester is a demon with a jester's appearance who isn't above murder, as he may tear apart the drivers of the carriage and invite the protagonist on a path of vengeance or to raze the world together. He's otherwise very amiable (although he may take you as a pet with or without your consent), which leaves his morality up in the air.

Web Animation

• Bugbo: Zig-Zagging Trope. The Hollow Clown in Under the Oak has a disturbing, masklike face that lives up to his name. He also has a creepy voice and mannerisms. However, he doesn't do anything evil that we see. He is actually a Non-Ironic Clown who is depressed because his circus was shut down by the mayor. On the other hand, a Freeze-Frame Bonus reveals that the circus contains a nuclear missile with a clown face on it. Did he put that there, and was he planning to use it?
• Zigzagged and darkly Played for Laughs in the psychicpebbles short "Clown Robbery", where a bank is held up by a clown who, (other than trying to "rob" the place, with a balloon-animal gun) otherwise appears to be basically a normal clown doing normal clown behavior, complete with relying on the same safe, tired old Pie in the Face and squirting flower gags. Everyone else still reacts in absolute horror and panic anyways...until the clown accidentally shoots the teller in the head for real, and then looks down in horror and shock at his "gun". Then everyone starts cheering and applauding him.
• The Cyanide & Happiness Show has Silly the Clown, the connecting Big Bad of a building "saga" centered around his exploits. He's just a quiet, grotesque clown with a Pennywise-esque Lamprey Mouth who has New Job as the Plot Demands throughout the episodes he shows up in and he loves to pull a Hope Spot on his victims before either killing or snatching them. Subverted when it's revealed that he only brought victims to his planet just to have a birthday party, as he was lonely, his family mysteriously died and no one around has come to celebrate his birthday.
• DEATH BATTLE! has pitted two of the worst monster clowns against one another, The Joker vs. Needles Kane a.k.a. Sweet Tooth.
• Gaming All-Stars has the highly-sadistic Needles "Sweet Tooth" Kane, who is also one of the few characters in The Ultimate Crossover and Remastered to outright kill a character for real rather than trophifying them. He's also one of the few villains in Remastered to survive Andross' attack on Earth, only getting Killed Off for Real during the third season of 2.
• Helluva Boss:
  • Blitzo is a former clown-turned-assassin operating a hitman service out of Hell. His crass, impulsive and inappropriate behavior has been the death of both his former career and many of his personal relationships. All of which return back to haunt him.
  • The series also gives us another Imp clown: Fizzarolli. Unlike Blitzo, Fizzarolli is a very successful jester and celebrity in the Lust ring, selling robotic replicas of himself as both animatronics and sexbots with the added distinction of being the consort of King Asmodeus himself. What makes him truly monstrous however, is his willingness to publicly humiliate anyone who crosses him or his master.
  • The Prince of Hell Mammon is the Anthropomorphic Personification of Greed and The Performer King who acts as a cross between this and a Corrupt Corporate Executive. As Hell's most famous clown, he acted as The Svengali to Fizzaroli and was the one who came up with the sexbot idea in order to make as much money off him as possible while emotionally blackmailing him into doing everything he says.
• Strong Man, the Old-Timey version of Strong Mad from Homestar Runner. As his name suggests, he is actually an unintelligent circus strongman who for some reason is always facing the camera and is working for Sir Strong Bad, The Homestar Runner's archnemesis.
• In If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device, Cegorach has milked his canon status as one of these for all it's worth, only stopping when he's trying to be a Scary Librarian instead. He's only been on screen for maybe 10 minutes total, but in that time single-handedly fought off a chaos invasion while trolling them and scarred for life a pair 10,000 year old custodies just for the hell of it.
• Mischief from Interface. Differently from other examples, he seems to be Creepy Good, as he doesn't show desire to harm anyone and is a friendly figure, while other people don't seem to be creeped out by his appearance.
• The titular character of the Lumpy Touch video "Yum Yum" is a self-proclaimed "flavor clown" who is employed by Whoopsie Burger to sample flavors for new burgers, but demonstrates very strange behavior and is heavily implied to be a cannibal.
• One of the primary bad guys in the Madness Combat Flash series is Tricky the Clown. Originally appearing in Madness Redeemer as a minor villain, he was pinned to a giant marshmallow (don't ask) by Hank in Avenger with a stop sign and turned into a zombie before being taken down by Hank again. He donned a Jason-style hockey mask for Apotheosis, but did not take part in the fighting. But in Depredation, Antipathy and Consternation, the Clown took on the power to warp reality itself, making him virtually unstoppable even after getting the top of his head sliced off and being blown full of holes at point blank range by Hank.
• Gop Donsterly from The Pink City is a gelatinous creature vaguely in the shape of a clown that is both a wanted criminal and has a supernatural game show in his gut.
• Xombie, a flash animation series which takes place After the End in a Zombie Apocalypse world at one point goes trough a circus. Guess what the protagonist has to face there.
  "Even undead, clowns are annoying."

Webcomics

• In 8-Bit Theater, Black Mage gains a clownlike outfit after becoming a blue mage.
• Donald McBonald in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja qualifies.
• Awful Hospital: Gooey Pink Eyes is revealed to be suffering from a strange plague of tiny, flea-sized clowns.
• Bug has a page dedicated to this — "It's becoming hard to find old-fashioned clowns".
• Scuzzo the Clown appears in Cobweb and Stripes, which is partially based on the Beetlejuice cartoon. He's only shown up briefly thus far, but it's clear that he and Betelgeuse don't like each other.
• Edmund Finney's Quest to Find the Meaning of Life loves this.
• Subverted in General Protection Fault, where The Gamester is portrayed as a benevolent, and rule-following cosmic being. (His Evil Twin, Pandemonium, on the other hand...)
• Girl Genius has a Jack-in-the-box in Heterodynes nursery combining the charm of Monster Clown with steel-clad brutality of an overengineered murder-bot. "It explains... so much..." We don't know yet who made this toy, though — it may well be local "young masters" themselves.
• Gunnerkrigg Court does a bit of Lampshade Hanging:
  Mort: And how did you know that girl didn't like clowns?
  Antimony: Nobody likes clowns.
• Homestuck: Clowns and harlequins appear as a recurring motif associated with villains, monsters and unsettling themes.
  • As Andrew Hussie points out in the Book 2 commentary, the flash where John walks around his house after it enters the Medium and everything is silent and the place is surrounded by void is made significantly more creepy by all the harlequins scattered around the house.
  • A major mechanic of Sburb is that all items that a player places into their Kernelsprite before entering the Medium give their traits to the enemies spawned by Sburb thereafter. Due to John's giant harlequin doll being the first item used in this manner, all enemies and monsters in the game end up wearing colorful harlequin costumes.
  • Gamzee, who wears clown facepaint and follows a bizarre clown-themed religion, first appears to be a comedic subversion, as he's simply goofy, lighthearted and harmless. However, he eventually undergoes a psychotic break and goes on a murderous rampage, afterwards vacillating between being a destructive killer and a whimsical but ominous free agent.
  • Monster Clowndom appears to be the hat of the Subjugglators, judging by the Grand Highblood's facepaint and colorful paintings. Facepaint and colorful paintings made of the blood of slaughtered trolls. The Highblood's pre-Scratch incarnation, Kurloz, does not look as much like a clown as the rest of the Makara family, but he's in the same cult, uses terms inspired by ICP more frequently, and is just as insane. Notably, not many other examples of this trope act quite as subtly or in as much Machiavellian style as he does.
  • The Insane Clown Posse have a significant influence on the backstory of the Post-Scratch universe. In addition to their entry above, they acted as the last presidents of the US, and were responsible for innumerable deaths before being assassinated by Dave's alternate self. Also, they (along with Dave and Betty Crocker) were indirectly responsible for Gamzee's aforementioned rampage.
• In Wily's Defense does some Lampshade Hanging as well, a comic being devoted to how terrifying clowns can be, in order to further Cut Man's argument that Kefka is a better villain than Sephiroth.
• Part of the seven-strong Big Bad Ensemble of Kill Six Billion Demons is Gog-Agog, a perky Cloud Cuckoo Lander who combines The Worm That Walks with The Virus and nigh-godlike power. Anyone who eats one of her worms becomes a part of her, and in the Crapsack World of Throne there are plenty of people miserable enough to think being parasitized by a bright, chipper Mad God to be worth the downsides. She also has a monopoly on Throne’s news and entertainment industries (she’s a major celebrity), meaning she knows what’s going on everywhere with everyone.
• Pennymon from The Lightningbolts: Red And White, The Entity and The Black Tower is a digimon form of The Enty, resembling a cross between Piedmon and Pennywise, and kills just for the enjoyment of evil and enjoys killing children out of sick amusement.
• In Nobody Scores! the cast is too horribly jaded even for this.
• In Nodwick, after re-lived her fifth birthday several times:
  Piffany: I had to watch the clown they hired for my party. I'm going to need a few more teddy bears to get to sleep tonight!
• One-Punch Man A Dragon - level monster known as the "Pesky Clown" showed up. He carried a bunch of balloons that could pop as a substitute for him taking damage, effectively making him invincible until he ran out of balloons. He was eventually defeated by Amai Mask, although he required revealing his true monster form to do so.
• Red Meat: Apparently dead clowns◊ are kinda◊ funny.◊ Maybe?
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
  • In strip #3573, someone explains the attributes of clowns on the basis that they are creatures that have evolved in dark caves and sewers.
  "You'll note they really only come out when small high-calorie animals are herding."
  • In "Bedtime", an(other?) example of parental trolling claiming this trope:
  "Dad, I don't get clowns. Nobody ever laughs when they do stuff."
  "Well, I dunno. I think it's pretty funny to see a dead guy walking around in big floppy shoes."
  • Adverse takes a look at the trope as a self-perpetuating matter of adverse selection, comparing it to healthy people dropping insurance leading to higher prices for sicker people: If kids started a bit scared of clowns, only people somewhat comfortable with scaring kids become clowns, leading to more frightening clowns in turn, which feeds back into the loop as kids are more frightened than before. Iterate enough, and any thinking kid has to assume anyone willing to be a clown today is objectively terrifying. And going by the clown in the comic, the kid would be right.
• In Sluggy Freelance a paramilitary clown is a Knight Templar planning to take control of Satanic kittens. He's got a maniacal laugh to boot.
  • Riff is apparently afraid of clowns. He can deal with this to some extent, but unresistingly hands over a gun when the clown asks for it, gets all flustered when questioned why, and later, when the clown grins at him, faints. He also has a nightmare about the Kitty-girl Clowney-devil.
• In this Square Root of Minus Garfield strip, Binky the Clown shoots Uncle Roy.
• Wapsi Square demonstrated that there are few things scarier than a dog in a clown mask.
• In The Word Weary, Yorick's elf rogue character is disguised as a jester- and he's just as acerbic and mean as he is the in regular story.

Websites

• Hilariously subverted and turned on its head in this◊ 4chan post, where a gang of clown-clad vandals find their match in a buck-naked rifle-wielding not-so-Good Ol' Boy. You almost feel sorry for the poor bastards.
  > I have NEVER seen anything haul ass faster in my entire life
  > no vandalism on the news for a couple weeks
• The Cheezburger Network's newest website, Clown Fails, is nothing but this.
• Cracked: Subject Beef certainly fits. Seanbaby speculates on the cause-effect relationship of wearing clown makeup and killing people. All we can say for sure is that it's there, one way or another.
• The villains from Hector's World are a group of clowns called the Info Gang.
• Mortasheen combines this with Mons and has a classification of creatures (Specifically the Joker class) based on this concept. Some of them are very weird. Like the eye-chicken-ventriloquist Opticaper, the straitjacket-snake-clown Insanititter and whatever Madcap is.
• The RPC Authority actually subverts this with RPC-235, a total of 13 living Matryoshkas with a clownish appearance who are completely harmless. If anything, they're Sad Clowns.
  • Played straight with RPC-239, who is a Demonic Dummy possessed by a Serial Killer known as "Bobo the Clown".
• The SCP Foundation has SCP-993, the "Bobble the Clown" show. Once the program starts, everyone in the room over the age of ten passes out, while children under the age of ten report that an animated clown gives how-tos on cannibalism, arson, and a number of other horrifying things; further, the children who watch a show will regularly perform whatever actions Bobble instructed them in until their memories of the show are removed with Easy Amnesia. Worse, whoever is creating the show (and there's a certain amount of evidence that the show itself is a sapient entity that creates and broadcasts itself) appears to be aware that the SCP Foundation has found a way to intercept and block its transmission, as the two most recent episodes are Bobble Hates You^note Bobble the Clown, sitting in a chair and glaring silently at the viewer for the entire episode. and *EXPLETIVE* YOU *EXPLETIVE* YOU *EXPLETIVE* YOU^note  Bobble the Clown breaches classification on Foundation researchers, administrators, and SCPs, including detailed instructions on how to breach containment of a number of incredibly dangerous SCPs, with a special guest appearance by the animated version of an SCP researcher who happened to be passing by the room where the Foundation keeps the recordings they make of the show at the time shown on a clock in the episode.
  • When Bobble eventually calmed down about the Foundation blocking him he turned out to be Faux Affably Evil, which was infinitely creepier than him being angry.
  • They also have a wooden statue of a clown which giggles when it's in the dark. Or had, actually, since a clown-hating Foundation agent shot it 15 times with his gun, reducing it to nothing but splinters.
• There's a viral comment being spread on YouTube warning, "a clown will kill u at 3:00 A.M. tomorrow morning if u dont pass this 2 10 vids [sic]."
• Here's a particularly scary example of a monster clown jack-in-the-box, just scroll a bit down to see it (but be warned, it is very unnerving). Click if you dare: [1]

Web Videos

• Atop the Fourth Wall: Linkara is fed up with the negative portrayal of clowns in the media, and introduced Boffo the Clown (who is friendly, dignified and polite) as a deliberate subversion of this trope.
• Behold Baby Ronald McDonald. Possibly downplayed, as the baby is more creepy than evil.
• Channel Awesome featured a video with Doug Walker doing a pretty damn good impression of Heath Ledger's Joker practicing his origin story. An attempt to spin this off into a series called "Melvin, Brother of the Joker" was not nearly as well received, and the character became The Scrappy among fans. Walker has engaged in a fair amount of Self-Deprecation about this, and Melvin was killed by other TGWTG contributors during one of the donation drives.
• Diamanda Hagan, who is a female Joker and enjoys slaying her minions when bored.
• JonTron hilariously subverted the trope in his The Howling Halloween episode. Jon enters his creepy, cobwebbed house and starts to read from a haunted book, but is interrupted by the demented laughter of a clown in his room. He reacts by casually murdering it.
  JonTron: (laughs it off) Oh, thank God. It's just a clown. (pulls out a pistol and shoots the clown dead)
• Jay Insano of the New Villain Order. Originally he even spoke in Mark Hamill voice clips.
• Ninja Clown Monster! This may keep you up tonight.
• The Spoony Experiment features Noah playing "Chuckles the Fucking Jester", a character from the Ultima series. Spoony finds him creepy, screaming when he enters the room. He is also relentlessly obnoxious, making bad jokes and beating Noah with a rubber chicken for not playing "The Game" correctly. After Spoony's robot blasts him with a laser beam, Chuckles flees, and a mysterious figure points out his ability to cause great fear, giving him a Yellow Lantern ring.
• Unwanted Houseguest features one riding a bike in Episode 29 of "TRUE Scary Stories." The "Monster" part, however, may just be the narrator's paranoia.
• Wonders Of The World Wide Web: Parodied. In the GrubHub video, one of the restaurants featured is "Odium Burger." Its mascot is a clown with many sharp teeth and blood running down his chin. Kinna describes him as "adorable." It's unclear whether she's a Nightmare Fetishist or just cheerfully oblivious. Also, if you order from Odium Burger, you get a free knife!

Other

• "Clowns: Satan's idea of what's funny" poster

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Statler: Gee, Waldorf, look at all these examples! Who knew clowns could be so awful?
Waldorf: Eh, don't worry about those guys. They're nowhere near as bad as the clowns who write these things!
Both: Do-ho-ho-ho-hoh!

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