Isabel and Doomguy. Or Doom Slayer if you prefer. The stars of animal crossing, new horizons and Doom Eternal have been spending a lot of time with each other. Or so the means suggest. This fan pairing has gained so much attention that even the creators of animal crossing have spoken publicly about it. Spoiler alert for the end of this video. They're completely 100% on board. Your fan art is canon as far as they're concerned. So, how did Isabel and Doomguy get to be such good friends? Believe it or not, this is more than just the result of two games sharing a release date. Many fan artists have been contributing to this particular ship long before it officially set sail. We spoke with one of the earliest proponents of the Isabel Doomguy meme to get a sense of how this meme first started. Fans have been pairing Isabel and Doomguy together for years, but this current trend first started to evolve in July of 2019. Artists and art fans began what became known as the DoomDad meme, creating or commissioning artwork in which Doomguy lovingly teaches cute characters how to fire weapons. For example, one artist, Isra, tweeted out on the 3rd of July, Dear Dairy. Today I got paid to draw Doomguy teaching Rapunzel from Disney's Tangled, how to shoot the heavy assault rifle. Today was a good day. Rapunzel was only the start of this trend. Thanks in part to Agent Strange. When asked about the trend, Strange told us, Well, there was a piece that I saw where Doomguy Rapunzel were together that I really liked, and I wanted there to be more of it. I enjoyed the contrast of a naive, invincible demon slayer hanging out with cute characters and showing them the ropes. So Agent Strange collated the DoomDad meme and commissioned several different artists to draw Doomguy with various cute characters. One of these, drawn by ArtShops, showed Doomguy with Isabel. While other artists drew Doomguy teaching a variety of different characters, something about Isabel seemed to fit particularly well. In October, Agent Strange asked a friend, Oscar, also known as DatwanStarFox2 to create a video. This showed a fake podcast hosted by Doomguy in Isabel using the sounds from their respective games. Later in December, artist Matthew Cousin posted a picture of the pair together alongside the Super Smash Bros logo, with the caption, I mean, Sakura I wouldn't, would he? As eager as Matthew might be to see Doomguy come to Smash Bros, the meme didn't properly kick off until January, when people really started thinking about the fact that Doom Eternal and Animal Crossing New Horizons shared a release date. At this point, the wave of Doomguy Isabel fanart began in earnest, as the internet decided that they were best friends. In February, even the official Doom Twitter account joined in on the fun, when Nintendo of America tweeted out the details for Animal Crossing New Horizons direct, Doom responded, Will Isabel be there? Meanwhile, the creators of Animal Crossing New Horizons were also taking a good look at the fanart, and they were loving it. Director Ia Kugoku said, I definitely do notice and have noticed that there's a lot of Doom and Animal Crossing collaboration art and illustrations that are being posted, and as I look through them, I'm in awe of how much creativity our fans have. I think because there is a common denominator of this type of communication happening between Doom and Animal Crossing fans, and also the fact that Animal Crossing is a communication game, we are very thankful and very thrilled to see all this. We are so excited at the same time to see how the two fandoms are coming together to celebrate this day. Producer Hisashi Nagami agrees, so Animal Crossing and Doom, obviously both game genres are completely different. We definitely do have something in common, and that is that they're both video games, and come from that same subculture, so to speak. It's so great to see that these two different fandoms are coming together and hyping up the gaming community and gaming culture itself. It really is a great thing to see. When we asked Agent Strange why this meme has proven so popular, we received the response, I love this meme because it brought two communities from two very different franchises together to celebrate gaming. More often than not, people like to pit things against each other, so it's really nice to see the opposite happen for once. The moral of the story is that it's fun to share things with people who are different to us. Life is a lot more vibrant and interesting when we all appreciate the things that make us unique.