Mascot Horror refers to a subgenre of indie horror games that subverts the innocence of childhood icons—such as animatronics, toys, or educational characters—into terrifying entities. The genre gained massive mainstream popularity with the release of Five Nights at Freddy's in 2014 and has since expanded through viral titles like Poppy Playtime and Garten of Banban. These memes typically play on the unsettling juxtaposition of bright, colorful childhood aesthetics and dark, jumpscare-heavy gameplay. Creators use this format to poke fun at the 'innocence corrupted' trope, the complex lore of these games, or simply to highlight the bizarre designs of modern digital monsters.