Markiplier

Early life

Fischbach was born at the Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father served in the military, where he met Fischbach's mother, who is of Korean descent. After his birth, his family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. Originally, Fischbach studied to become a biomedical engineer at the University of Cincinnati, but dropped out of college to pursue his YouTube career. He has one older brother, Jason Thomas Fischbach, who is an artist and author of the webcomic Twokinds.

Style

Markiplier has been known for his sensationalized video game commentary, involving yelling, screaming, cursing, and even crying during his Let's Play videos. He does not censor the profanity in his videos, although he often subtitles his curses as "duck" (sometimes "luck") for "fuck" and "itch" for "bitch". He is known for branding his channel with a pink mustache (a reference to his alter ego, Wilford Warfstache) and has since dyed his hair pink, blue, and red. He often makes vlogs to talk one-on-one with the community about various topics, many inspirational, but usually regarding himself and his channel. He regularly attends conventions including PAX, VidCon, and Comic-Con, where he engages in signings, meet and greets, and panels. He has also been involved in Make-A-Wish Foundation to meet fans.

Channel format

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 2013, Minecraft, and Slender: The Eight Pages, among others.

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

A recurring staple of Fischbach's channel are charity livestreams, during which he plays games while campaigning for and collecting donations for various charities, including Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, and Best Friends Animal Society. According to Fischbach, he and his viewers have raised a total of $1,118,645.14 as of July 2016.

Early years and switch to MarkiplierGAME (2012–2013)

Fischbach first joined YouTube on March 6, 2012, creating a channel under the username "Markiplier", and uploaded his first video on April 4, 2012. 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. Though he appealed to YouTube as a last effort, the appeal was ultimately lost. Because of this, a new and current channel was created on May 26, 2012 and dubbed MarkiplierGAME.

Channel growth and move to Los Angeles (2014)

In 2014, the MarkiplierGAME channel was listed on NewMediaRockstars Top 100 Channels, ranked at number 61. That year, Fischbach announced he was planning to move to Los Angeles, California, to be able to be closer to other resources for his channel, such as the YouTube Space and other content creators. Fischbach and fellow YouTuber Jenna Mae appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in September 2014 following backlash that Kimmel received regarding jokes he had made about YouTube and Let's Play videos. In 2015, he was rated sixth in a list of the twenty most influential celebrities among teenagers in the United States.

Hiatus and breaking 10 million subscribers (2015)

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 Maker Studios later joined Cyndago after they moved to Los Angeles. Their work was noted for having unexpected endings and dark, often disturbing, humor. Cyndago was disbanded following the death of Daniel Kyre. At the time of their disbandment, the group had done forty sketches and fourteen original songs, many of them featuring Fischbach. After the death of Daniel Kyre and disbandment of Cyndago, Fischbach temporarily halted uploads and went on hiatus from September 17, 2015 to October 5, 2015. His return was shortly followed by the channel reaching 10 million subscribers on October 15, 2015. Watson and Magee moved on to create a gaming channel called SuperMega.

Quitting alcohol and continued growth (2015-present)

In late 2015, Fischbach announced in a video that he had chosen to abstain from alcohol because of a deficient enzyme important to the process of breaking down alcohol. The decision came after an incident where he suffered a transient ischemic attack and had to be taken to the hospital, and was advised by the doctors to do so. He said that because of this a popular series of his, Drunk Minecraft, would no longer be produced.

Fischbach co-hosted the 2015 South by Southwest (SXSW) Gaming Awards with The Legend of Korra voice actor Janet Varney, and was featured prominently in YouTube's year-end special YouTube Rewind.

In January 2016, Fischbach signed to Revelmode, a subnetwork to Maker Studios, along with other YouTubers such as Jacksepticeye and PewDiePie.

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. The YouTuber also surpassed 15 million subscribers that year.

In late 2016, Fischbach formed a team, nicknamed "Teamiplier", to assist in the creation of his videos and more high-quality sketches, including his girlfriend Amy, and his friends Ethan, Tyler and Kathryn.

Other ventures

Fischbach joined the board of comic book publisher Red Giant Entertainment in November 2014. In June of that year at the San Diego Comic-Con, he had cohosted a panel with figures from the company including CEO Benny R. Powell, and writers David Campiti, Mort Castle, David Lawrence, and Brian Augustyn. In 2016, it was announced that he would appear in his own line of comics.

Fischbach signed with William Morris Endeavor in late 2016, having expressed interest in branching out from YouTube content.