About

Dolphin Man refers to a series of cursed and uncanny photographs of a man wearing a realistic dolphin mask. A video of the Dolphin Man also exists in which he's opening his mouth and moving around in an empty room. The images and video are from the Canadian latex prosthetics manufacturer NorthFur FX. The product is called the "Dolphin Muzzle." The photos were originally taken in 2006. A creepy video of the Dolphin Man was shared to YouTube in 2022, following the Full Stop Punctuation trend. The video propelled the Dolphin Man images into creepypasta status heading into the 2020s.

Origin

The NorthFur FX website was created in October 2006 per the ICANN Lookup.^[1] The company is a latex prosthetic company catering to performers and furries. One of the company's prosthetics is called a "Dolphin Muzzle" on the website.^[2] The product images show a man wearing the muzzle (shown below). The "Dolphin Muzzle" page was first added to the Internet Archive^[3] on October 8th, 2022.

NorthFur FX initially shared the images of the "Dolphin Muzzle" to the company's Flickr^[4] account on July 24th, 2008. Each photo states in the description that they were originally taken on August 30th, 2006.

On December 30th, 2007, NorthFur FX posted a video to YouTube^[13] which showed a male model wearing the Dolphin Muzzle. He opens his mouth and moves around in an empty room. Over 18 years, the video amassed roughly 2.1 million views (shown below).

Spread

The photos of the Dolphin Man started to circulate on Reddit in the early 2010s. Currently, the earliest discovered instance was a post to /r/pics by Redditor^[5] reposts_ruin_reddit on June 22nd, 2011.

On March 7th, 2012, Redditor^[6] theneonbible shared a GIF to /r/WTF that combined two of the Dolphin Man photos that cycled through at a high framerate, gaining 30 upvotes in 13 years (shown below).

The Dolphin Man photos continued to spread on Reddit^[7] in 2019.

On March 11th, 2022, YouTuber^[8] ihateyou posted a video called "full stop punctuation" which added to the trend of searching "." on YouTube and finding creepy results. The video showed the Dolphin Man moving around and opening his mouth with a robotic voice issuing a warning. The video received over 136,300 views in three months. It has since been deleted but was archived on the Internet Archive.^[8][9]

A reupload of the video titled "Dolphin Man!" was shared by YouTuber^[10] Autismoooo666 on February 12th, 2023, gaining over 457,500 views in two years (shown below).

On September 11th, 2023, TikToker ^[12] @creepman_usa shared a video about the Dolphin Man, claiming that it caused "800 faintings." Over two years, the video received roughly 248,100 views (shown below).

On September 1st, 2024, TikToker^[11] @marioshairyballsack31 shared a video with text reading, "Proof that scary videos are scary because of the sound," which included a Dolphin Man clip, gaining over 195,100 likes in six months (shown below).

More videos featuring the Dolphin Man surfaced on TikTok^[14] in 2024.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References