Bendy

**Bendy** is a cartoon character created by the animation company Joey Drew Studios as their mascot, and the titular character of the *Bendy* franchise. The studio's flagship character, Bendy starred in a series of cartoons thirty years prior to the events of the first game, often alongside the studio's other characters such as Boris and Alice Angel. Bendy is also hired in Briar Label Bacon Soup products as an endorsing spokestoon.

## Physical description

### Height

Male

From the entire first game, first appearing in *Chapter 1* and onward to *Chapter 5*, Bendy primarily appears as a destructible cardboard cutout that pops up frequently wherever Henry travels. The cutouts themselves appear to sometimes move on their own. Other than just cutouts, Bendy appears in multiple environmental parts, like small clips of Bendy's cartoons, posters, kit-cat klock-styled clocks, costumes, trash bins, concept sketches, plush toys, statues, etc. Ink Bendy is the monstrous incarnation meant to bring cartoons to life by the Ink Machine. After his defeat in Chapter 5, he joined Whitney's Squad in Summer 2018.

## Appearance

Bendy is a cartoon demon-like imp character that, like other characters of the period, is black and white and has a cheerful-looking expression. He has large pie eyes. He is entirely colored black apart from his face, which is white in color. He wears shiny black shoes, a white bowtie, and a pair of gloves which closely resemble those of other cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse, each possessing two black buttons. The shape of his head resembles cartoonish horns that always remain facing the viewer no matter which way Bendy is facing. Because he lacks a neck, his head floats a few inches away from his body.

Bendy has a notable wide, toothy grin. His alleged "invisible eyebrows" from above his eyes can even move when expressing his emotions.

In terms of his height, Bendy appears to be short, being easily towered over by Boris. Bendy's cutout height in-game comes in many different sizes; half of them were about the same height as every person while others miniature in size like paper dolls.

## Personality

In the known animated shorts, Bendy is shown to be a borderline troublemaker, but rather impatient and easily startled or timid, yet justifiably cheerful, fun-loving, and mischievous as his devilish nature would imply.

The Bendy cutouts as inanimate objects seem to lack any emotions and personality. However, multiple times in the game, they are shown to be able to move off-screen. It's show we that Sammy Laurence is moving them to add more to his shrine to bendy.

## Trivia

* Bendy's name comes from a typo file named "bendy.blend" while theMeatly modeled the character using the engine Blender, during the time where the game was under development.[2]
* Bendy's month is October, according to *Bendy and the Ink Machine*'s Twitter.[3]
* Bendy's appearance is most likely based on an amalgamation of cartoon characters such as Felix the Cat and Mickey Mouse from the 1920s. He also appears to have some influences from Max Fleischer's characters, such as Bimbo.
* His name appeared in the 2004 show, Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends.
	+ The bowtie the Bendy cutout wears is strikingly similar to Krazy Kat's, a character from the cartoons animated by Bray Productions.
	+ His name and personality likely were inspired by the one-time character of the same name from the American animated television series *Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends*. Like the Bendy from this game, the Bendy from the aforementioned television series was a troublemaker.
* Seen from all known cartoon shorts, Bendy's horns are drawn to always appear in the same style no matter which way he is facing, the same way as the position of Mickey Mouse's ears.
	+ His horns also resemble Mandy's hairstyle from the American animated television series *The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy*.
	+ The head of the *Don't Starve* character Webber in his "Elegant" Gladiator costume bears the exact shape to Bendy's own head.
* Before *Chapter 4* was released, Bendy's animation in the theater location shows that his horns can move like ears. Later, the animation was remade and Bendy's horns no longer move. According to the animator TimetheHobo, the horns were not supposed to be animated.[4]
* The bats seen in one of the earlier screenshots for *Cuphead* during the said game's development far before *Bendy and the Ink Machine* was made seems to bear some uncanny resemblance to Bendy's actual face; with black colors and white face, puffy cheeks for cheerful expressions, similar-looking horns, and grinning mouths with merged teeth (while not counting some with two pointy fangs).
* The head of the final boss Grimm / Nightmare King from the game *Hollow Knight*'s DLC bears a general resemblance to Bendy's.
* Bendy's whistle that was initially played in *Chapter 1* and *2* appears to have similarities to Mickey Mouse's own whistling tune from the 1928 Disney cartoon, *Steamboat Willie*.
	+ Sammy Lawrence, during the Hot Topic Q&A, references the whistle, saying that the whistling is his clearest memory of the studio. He also says that the whistling is a vague melody with a sinister purpose.[5]
* Butch Hartman, the creator behind the animated Nickelodeon shows such as *The Fairly OddParents* and *Danny Phantom*, drew few artworks of Bendy and posted them on his Twitter account.[6][7][8]
* In both "See You Soon on Twitter" and "See You at HOT TOPIC" video, Bendy's cutout is seen briefly where Sammy announces the Hot Topic merchandise products along with Q&A from Hot Topic's Twitter.
* Though Bendy is a demon, it was revealed by theMeatly in his Q&A video that Bendy does not actually feature a tail. Mike Mood on Twitter also confirms that Bendy does not possess a tail in the official design, but said that fanart of Bendy possessing a tail is totally fine.[9]
* On July 3, 2017 from Twitter, theMeatly made a joke about Bendy using a direct quote from Joe Dante's comedy/horror film *Gremlins*.[10]
* Bendy's cutout has a duplicated texture on the back.
* Bendy's cutout is simply referred to as "BendyCutout" in the game files.[11]
* Similar to himself from the cartoons, Bendy's cutout keeps his feature of having no neck, the head floating above his body without any connection.
* From the start of October 5 to 31 of the year 2017, the official website promotes a downloadable paper Bendy mask for Halloween.
	+ theMeatly confirms that he originally planned to make real official masks but does not have any time to make them for this Halloween. Although the official masks are still planned to be made someday in the future.