The origins of jacksepticeye's ALTRVERSE

Online creator Sean McLoughlin, aka jacksepticeye, has slowly been building a multiverse of stories across various mediums, from gaming playthroughs and skits to short films, interactive livestreams, and ongoing comic series, with a narrative podcast and video game on the horizon. This ALTRVERSE, launched afresh in 2019 with creative director Sophie Jackson, has just begun. But today we're going back to its origins.

Sean will soon have been uploading content to his channel jacksepticeye for twelve years. As his online presence grew, and his content branched out from pure gaming, six distinct characters were introduced in 2016-2017. Some of these were Sean's own creation, some were parodies of others and one was originally a fanmade character, adapted. These egos, as they became known, are mainstays on the channel, involved in a growing tapestry of lore. For years fan enjoyed countless Easter eggs, teases and longer appearances within Sean's videos.

Jackie-Boy Man

The first of the egos appeared on the channel on July 10, 2016. Sean had been floating around the name Jackie-boy Man as a jokey take on a superhero, but this was the first time the name was associated with his iconic hooded red bodysuit and blue domino mask. The costume had already been given to Sean for his part in a friend's comedic music video, NSP's "Cool Patrol". The character continued to be called upon into 2017, but wasn't explored beyond his generic superhero nature, and never really became his own entity in this canon.

Marvin the Magnificent

2016 also saw the beginning of Power Hours, more like 10 minute videos, that served to add variety to the channel. The first of these videos released on August 11, in which Sean bought a magic kit (from Marvin's Magic), and decorated a cat mask with playing card symbols. The character of Marvin the Magnificent was born in retrospect, as in this iteration he still referred to himself as Jack, had no real ability, and evolved throughout the video. Marvin didn't move beyond the odd cryptic appearance of his mask until the beginning of proper canon that we'll explore next time.

Doctor Henrik von Schneeplestein

Dr Schneeplestein also began as a Power Hour character, appearing on September 15, 2016. A German accent (that Sean has since apologised for) and doctors outfit, combined with some improv, enhanced Sean playing a game of Operation for a video. The character would go on to be arguably the second most popular of the egos, with repeat appearances whenever a doctor was called for.

A major moment for the development for these characters came on August 3, 2017, where multiple egos interacted with and mentioned each other for the first time, letting fans know that the narrative they've all been creating together is in fact one shared universe where all the egos exist. Jack, a character in himself, the YouTube persona of Sean, was featured as a playable patient in Bio Inc. Redemption. In the narrative of the video, Jack becomes ill, so Schneeplestein operates on him, mentioning one of our next egos, Chase Brody, before being taken over by an entity only know as Antisepticeye. This was perhaps the turning point, when Sean fully realised what he could do with these creations.

Antisepticeye

Antisepticeye is, as he sounds, an evil version of jacksepticeye, a dark persona and play on words created by Sean's growing community. Sean decided to do something special for Halloween 2016, starting the build-up on October 10. A growing amount of glitches were included in over a dozen videos that October, featuring the earliest iteration of the character based on varying fan art. The character (denoted by his use of the Zalgo text) slowly took over Sean's social media profiles too, leaving cryptic message in YouTube descriptions, changing bios or even hiding clues in the keywords of videos. This culminated on Halloween when, during a pumpkin carving video, Anti - as he came to be known - fully took over and brought a knife to Jack's neck.

The second video that day revealed of course that it was just acting and Sean wasn't dead. But something wasn't right. The character continued to posses the revived Jack, watching, waiting, and making the occasional appearance where he'd talk to the fans directly, taunting them now as his own entity with the appearance of Jack with his neck cut. Beyond glitches in horror gameplay videos, Anti even appeared in the pre-recorded intro to Sean's 2016 PAX East panel. When he took over Schneeplestein, it proved the entity was not only able to possess Jack, but others too. Anti must've appeared in one form or another in about forty videos before the canon relaunch in 2019, including many in May 2018, a period dubbed as Mayhem by fans, featuring Anti and our next ego quite heavily.

Chase Brody

Bro Average, released April 11, 2017, was another Power Hour of sorts, renamed as one now with Chase's name, but, at the time, an obvious parody of Dude Perfect. Chase Brody was the most stereotypical name Sean could think of, a host performing trick shots. What really made the video, though, were the improvised skit sections between, the quirks and failures of his character. These made Chase really resonate with fans, and things alluded to in phone conversations continued as established lore, including his wife leaving him and taking their children.

Chase became a protagonist of sorts in the ego content, his role fleshed out in 2018's Mayhem when it was revealed that Jack's actually been in a coma since Schneeplestein failed to save him, playing out fantasies in his head in the form of the horror games Sean was playing for videos. What was alluded to becomes clear when Chase direclty tells Jack to wake up, and we follow Chase as he fills in for his friend on the channel. But with Jack out of action and Schneeplestein on 'vacation', Anti was free to terrorise Chase. In a cruel twist of fate, when Chase finally leaves his Bro Average hat, and old habits, behind, and tries to make amends with his family, Anti has already visited, as seen in the end of this video of the game Dark Silence, now retitled with Chase's heart-breaking quote from the reveal at the end. The video also marked a full change in Anti's colour scheme from green to red.

Jameson Jackson

The last of the egos is perhaps the one we know the least about, having only appeared twice - and only once in the old continuity that we're talking about today. Jameson Jackson, or JJ for short, was the fourth ego to originate in a Power Hour, though this was only named as one after the fact. By Halloween of 2017, Sean already knew the power these characters had, and so introduced a final player into the mix. Jameson Jackson was a name meant to appear old-timey but also comic book-esque with its alliteration. In the video, Jack once again attempts a pumpkin carving, but this time is instead launched back in time where we meet what could be construed as an old-fashioned dapper version of himself in a silent film ascetic, later confirmed to be his own mute character. This time, it's when the host accidently cuts himself that Anti takes over, perhaps an earlier iteration of him - though one of the character's favourite phrases was "time is broken". JJ becomes another one of the malicious entity's puppets before Anti releases control, but not before reminding the audience that he's still around with a twisted version of silent movie intertitles.

There we have it. To directly support Sean on his storytelling venture, check out his ALTRVERSE comics with Bad Egg Publishing (available in digital and print formats), or consider watching and liking the videos above and subscribing to his channel. Next time we'll look at the relaunch of jacksepticeye's canon, following Sean's 2019 short film CHASE and our on-screen introduction to the ALTRVERSE.