Markiplier

Fischbach is primarily known for his playthroughs of indie and horror games, including the Five Nights at Freddy's series, Amnesia: The Dark Descent and its sequel, Garry's Mod, Happy Wheels, Surgeon Simulator, SCP – Containment Breach and Slender: The Eight Pages, among others.

Fischbach has collaborated on sketch comedy and gaming videos with a number of fellow YouTubers, including CrankGameplays, Jacksepticeye, LordMinion777, Muyskerm, PewDiePie, Matthias, Game Grumps, Cyndago, Yamimash, Jacksfilms, CaptainSparklez, Egoraptor and LixianTV, who currently works as his editor. He has also collaborated with celebrities such as Jack Black[9] and Jimmy Kimmel. He has had acting appearances in TomSka's asdfmovie series, Smosh: The Movie,[10] Disney XD's Gamer's Guide to Pretty Much Everything,[11] YouTube Rewinds 2015 and 2016 and Five Nights at Freddy's: The Musical.

A recurring staple of Fischbach's channel are charity live streams, during which he plays games while campaigning and collecting donations for various charities, including Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, and Best Friends Animal Society.[12]

Fischbach first joined YouTube on March 6, 2012, creating a channel under the username "Markiplier", and uploaded his first video on April 4, 2012.[13] Fischbach's original intent for the channel was sketch comedy where he would be portraying all of the characters in the sketches.[14] This led to the creation of the name "Markiplier", a portmanteau of Mark and multiplier.[14] Fischbach's first series was a playthrough of the video game Amnesia: The Dark Descent. After playing several other game series, including Penumbra and Dead Space, YouTube banned Fischbach's AdSense account, and he created a new channel on May 26, 2012, markiplierGAME.[15]

Fischbach in 2014

In 2014, the MarkiplierGAME channel was listed on NewMediaRockstars Top 100 Channels, ranked at number 61.[16] That year, Fischbach announced he was planning to move to Los Angeles, California to be closer to other resources for his channel, such as the YouTube Space and other content creators.[17] In August 2014, Fischbach began his famous Five Nights at Freddy's playthrough, which became his most popular playthrough to date, the first part having over 80 million views as of January 2021. Due to the success of this series, Fischbach played the other games in the FNAF franchise, and also had a cameo in Five Nights at Freddy's AR: Special Delivery.[18][19]

Fischbach and fellow YouTuber Jenna Mae appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in September 2015 following backlash Kimmel received regarding jokes he made about YouTube and Let's Play videos.[8] In 2015, he was rated sixth in a list of the twenty most influential celebrities among teenagers in the United States.[20]

Beginning in 2015, Fischbach lived with fellow YouTubers Daniel Kyre and Ryan Magee, who created and ran the YouTube sketch comedy and music channel Cyndago. Matt Watson from Kids w/ Problems later joined Cyndago after they moved to Los Angeles. Their work was noted for having unexpected endings and dark, often disturbing, humor.[21][22] Cyndago disbanded following the death of Daniel Kyre.[23] At the time of their disbandment, the group made forty sketches and fourteen original songs, many of them featuring Fischbach.[21] After the death of Daniel Kyre and disbandment of Cyndago, Fischbach temporarily went on hiatus from September 17, 2015 to October 5, 2015.[24] He returned and reached 10 million subscribers on October 15, 2015.[25]

Fischbach in 2018

Fischbach co-hosted the 2015 South by Southwest Gaming Awards with The Legend of Korra voice actor Janet Varney,[26] and was featured in YouTube Rewind.[27]

Throughout 2016, Fischbach moved some of his focus to comedy sketches, showing his aspiration of improvisational theatre. In 2017, Fischbach posted an interactive Choose Your Own Adventure-style video titled A Date with Markiplier, which was well-received by fans.[28]

On March 29, 2018, Fischbach announced his YouTube channel had surpassed 20 million subscribers.[29]

On June 19, 2018, Fischbach's step-niece, Miranda Cracraft, was killed in a car accident at the age of 19.[14][30] On June 26, 2018, Fischbach released a video with her father, thanking his fanbase for their support.[30] Through GoFundMe, he raised more than $79,000 for Cracraft's funeral.[30]

In October 2019, Fischbach announced a new Choose Your Own Adventure-style story similar to A Date With Markiplier, a YouTube Originals production titled A Heist with Markiplier. Produced by Fischbach and Rooster Teeth, the series contains 31 possible endings and features other YouTubers such as Rosanna Pansino, Matthew Patrick, and Game Grumps.[31]

On November 15, 2019, Fischbach launched a new channel with fellow YouTuber Ethan Nestor (known online as CrankGameplays) called Unus Annus, a channel which planned to upload a video every day for one year, after which the channel would be deleted along with its videos.[32][33] The channel rose to early success, gaining 1 million subscribers in its first 5 days and over 11.5 million video views in its first week.[34][35] Following a commemorative live stream that peaked at over 1.5 million concurrent viewers, the channel was deleted by Fischbach and Nestor on November 14, 2020 at 12:00 a.m. PST.[36]

In 2018, Markiplier announced the launch of a new fashion brand called Cloak, in a joint venture with Jacksepticeye.[6] The brand was envisioned and launched as a gamer-focused athleisure line distinct from their personal merchandise.[42] The brand has released collaborations with Mojang Studios, Five Nights at Freddy's, and The Oregon Trail.

In 2020, fellow YouTuber and streamer Pokimane joined Cloak as a partner and creative director.[43][44]

While not endorsing a specific political party, Fischbach described himself as a "liberal".[56] Fischbach has expressed support for universal health care[57] and stricter gun control following the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.[58] Fischbach is an ally of the LGBT rights movement, having raised money for the Human Rights Campaign in one of his charity live streams.[59]