About

Billy Herrington is a bisexual American actor affectionately called “Big Brother” (兄貴 aniki) among the Nico Nico Douga community. He’s the center figure of many MAD movies based on various clips of “Workout Muscular Men 3” and other works where he is featured wrestling in panties as a comical relief for “Gayroll-ing” the original content of a video or theme.

Such videos are often deliberately mistagged “Wrestling Series (レスリングシリーズ resuringu shirīzu))”, “Forest Fairy” (森の妖精 mori no yōsei) and “Philosophy” (哲学 tetsugaku).

Origin

Interest in Billy sparkled when 2chan users started to post some of his videos on YouTube and Nico Nico Douga in 2007.

It was a common bait and switch tactic to trap other people, like RickRolling, which displayed a video of Billy practicing what they call “Gachimuchi Pantsu Wrestling” in which the loser has his pants taken off. A few months after that, the first MAD movies were produced using the footage in various ways such as spanking sounds for rhythms in music based MADs or videos featuring a 3D model of Billy himself. Some of the videos are also known as “Gachimuchi”.

Sources :
On Nicodouga (japanese / free registration required) :
- ordered by recent comments : http://www.nicovideo.jp/tag/レスリングシリーズ
- ordered by view count : http://www.nicovideo.jp/tag/レスリングシリーズ?sort=r
- ordered by upload date : http://www.nicovideo.jp/tag/レスリングシリーズ?sort=f
レスリングシリーズ, in Nicodouga encyclopedia (japanese) : http://dic.nicovideo.jp/a/レスリングシリーズ

Popularity on Nico Nico Douga

Billy Herrington was nicknamed “Fairy of Forest” (森の妖精 or “Mori no Yousei”) because in one of his works he appears coming from the forest and fairy (妖精) can be utilized as a jargon term for a homosexual. He is known as the “first fairy” of Nico Nico Douga, and one of four other great fairies.

Billy would eventually be asked to visit Japan to participate in a live Nico Nico Douga online event. At the event, model kit makers Good Smile Company announced they would manufacture a limited-edition Herrington figure to be released February 2009.

Derivatives

Kirby MAD

Touhou

Hentai Game Opening Parody

Caramelldansen

Eureka Seven

Toradora!

Naruto

Bleach

“Toxic” 3D Model

Vocaloid x Billy Herrington x Initial D

K-On!

Bayonetta

Reaction to Internet Fame

The Nico Nico Douga event that Billy attended become the subject of many blog posts, including a YouTube video of an interview prior to the show:

Here is a translated version of the original Japanese article about it.

A transcript of the event divided in 3 parts, can be found on YouTube as well as Nico Nico Douga. More than 10,000 fans gathered to see their idol:

Billy Herrington at Akihabara, part 1

We can also have a glimpse at the official Aniki action figures in it.

There was also a night talk show from the same day, divided in 4 video parts on Youtube:

Part 1