The internet has decided Doomguy and Animal Crossing's Isabelle are best friends now

(Click for original source.) (Image credit: Image via Redditor Bynine)

You wouldn't think Doom, a game about murdering as many demons from hell as quickly as possible, and Animal Crossing, a game about idyllic village life, would have much in common. But it seems their fates are intertwined: when Bethesda delayed Doom Eternal from late 2019 to March 20, 2020, gamers realized that it would be sharing a release date with Nintendo's new Animal Crossing. The absurdity of that pairing has, for months now, been inspiring some incredible fan art.

I don't know if the combination of Doomguy and Isabelle, Animal Crossing's extremely lovable mayoral secretary, has quite hit meme status yet. But as rounded up in this Resetera thread, there's some great art in circulation. Some of it's from back in October, when Doom was delayed, but the duo seem to be picking up steam now and inspiring more and more art.

Or maybe that's my wishful thinking. I definitely want more art.

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The appeal of the crossover is obvious. Doomguy fishing or relaxing on the beach: Funny. Isabelle holding a shotgun the size of her body: Funny. Why shouldn't Doomguy be cute? And who says Isabelle wouldn't take up arms to protect her town? It is, clearly, meant to be.

How can you not love this piece by Resetera's boris_feinbrand?

(Click for original source.) (Image credit: boris_feinbrand)

Need more? It's out there. A sample via Twitter: 

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If anything good happens in the world between now and March 20, let it be an explosion of Doom-meets-Animal Crossing fan art.

Really, I think the combination of Doom and Animal Crossing was always meant to be. It's obvious that Animal Crossing only exists because of the famous Edge magazine review of Doom, back in 1994, which posited: "lf only you could talk to these creatures, then perhaps you could try and make friends with them, form alliances... Now, that would be interesting." How else could Nintendo have come up with the idea of a videogame all about talking to your neighbors, who are animals? Full circle.

Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.


When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).