Why and how did you come up with the design of The Beard?
Gather round, children, for a tale of Mystery, Wonder, and The Weird Stuff One Does At 2AM! Though I’m suspicious a number of you are already authorities on that last one… 🤨
Before “The Beard” became an RE staple, “The Beard” was a short horror film concocted one autumn at Ithaca College. A student-run horror film festival was fast approaching and, two days from its submission deadline, Nate and I decided we wanted to enter a film of our own.
There were traditionally only two types of horror films screened: blood-and-guts slasher extravaganzas, and arthouse shorts where capitalism and existential dread comprised the bulk of the scares. We wanted to try for a third option: something fun and shlocky, a nonlethal monster movie with a sense of humor. And so, at 2am that night, we dug through our meager costume supplies, looking for the most absurd monster mask we could find.
All we managed to summon was a familiar, shabby yellow wig.
Not only did the short perform well at the film festival (and it even got a rerelease years later on RE with a new soundtrack!), it led us to develop new concepts further exploring The Beard, such as a web game and a recurring cameo on another series. A longer sequel was even tossed around, which depicted The Beard’s origins as an escaped lab specimen, as well as his chaotic war against other destructive abominations a la ‘Freddy vs. Jason’ and ‘Alien vs. Predator.’ Though we ultimately abandoned the sequel, the character persisted.
Eventually, Singachu came along, and with it the opportunity to smuggle in some self-absorbed in-jokes and easter eggs for our newly-developed video game musical series, RANDOM ENCOUNTERS. Hiding The Beard amongst some Pokemon could easily have been a one-off oddity, but fans found this quirky creature intriguing. By his third or fourth cameo, Encounterers had become invested in The Beard and his inexplicable presence in each musical.
Aside from The Beard’s alleged obsession with watching reruns of House, concrete lore remains slim. A short featurette (“Glimpse Into The Beard”) was our sole answer to the growing questions surrounding him, providing only the barest of insight into our enigmatic mascot. After all, a timeline-hopping, multiversal entity is better suited to a flexible existence (one free of pesky concepts like “continuity” and “canon.”)
Despite having little to no apparent connection to either video games or musical numbers, The Beard has become an iconic representative of the harmless nonsense and wholesome antics RE’s videos (and community) embody. We can’t say for sure what will come next for him; only that it will most assuredly be a very random encounter. ❤️
