Isabelle

About

Isabelle is a character from the Animal Crossing series of life-simulation games published by Nintendo. Since her first appearance in the 2012 installment of the franchise, Animal Crossing: New Leaf, Isabelle has gained popularity among Animal Crossing fans. She was notably added to the roster for the 2018 video game Super Smash Brothers Ultimate.

Origin

Isabelle was first introduced in Animal Crossing: New Leaf, released November 8th, 2012 in Japan.^[1] In the game, she is the assistant to the town's mayor, the player character. She is portrayed as friendly and dutiful, albeit clumsy.^[1][2]

Spread

In April of 2013, a Twitter account for Isabelle launched.^[3] In 2014, she appeared as an Assist Trophy in Super Smash Bros. for 3DS & Wii U. She later appeared in 2015's Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer, and was released as a playable downloadable racer in Mario Kart 8 earlier in the same year.^[4]

Isabelle has proven to be very popular among fans. On the Japanese art website Pixiv, a search for Isabelle's Japanese name returns over 3,000 results.^[5] Similarly, a search on DeviantArt returns over 3,800 results (examples shown below).^[6]

In 2016, animator HotDiggedyDemon released the parody cartoon Isabelle Ruins Everything, which has been viewed over 1 million times.

Isabelle Cannot Be Harmed!

Isabelle Cannot Be Harmed is a meme relating to the character's appearance in Mario Kart 8. The meme is usually used in relation to moments in races where she narrowly avoids some form of unfortunate event.

Smash Ultimate Announcement

On Septmeber 13th, 2018, Isabelle was announced to be joining the roster of the upcoming Super Smash Brothers game, Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, during a Nintendo Direct presentation (shown below).

The news led to a surge in jokes and fan art of Isabelle in the game. For example, a Tumblr user shadeykris posted art of the character as Aggrestuko (shown below, left), gaining over 430 notes. Tumblr user zambiie also posted fan art of the character (shown below, right).

Isabelle Facts

On February 11th, 2019, @isabellefacts^[7] Twitter account was launched by user @isabelIeduh, posting made-up facts about Isabelle, mostly of humorous nature. The first tweet^[8] posted by the account gained over 12,000 retweets and 35,000 likes in four days.^[9]

According to The Daily Dot^[10], tweets posted by the account were "blatantly queer", and the account "touched on both Isabelle’s wholesome friendliness and the various parody memes that depict her as radically left-leaning, ridiculously powerful, and, in some cases, horny".

On February 15th, @isabellefacts Twitter account was suspended,^[10] while @isabelleduh later revealed that they received death threats over the nature of @isabellefacts posts. The owner of the account later deleted the account after briefly reactivating it.

I took Isabelle Facts down after so many death threats I got regarding my one post about TERFs--then eventually any post I previously made, like the trans and gay rights ones. […] I reactivated to clear rumors and decided I’m going to completely delete because I got way more hate after reactivating than I thought would appear.

On February 23rd, 2019, The Daily Dot^[9] covered the account's rapid climb to popularity and following deletion.

Example Images

Search Interest

External References