Talk:The Merryman/@comment-9289481-20141202030139/@comment-8677542-20141203005129

Some clarification from the co-creator here, for anyone curious:

1. The Merryman is intended to be its own seperate thing. Aspects of him were based slightly on Slenderman, and slightly on the Joker from Batman. The rest of the details were 100% me, Aidan, and another friend of ours named Tony's doing.

2. The Merryman came about out of my own personal fear of losing myself to mental illness. It was Aidan who realized Merryman filled this niche in the Fear Mythos and asked Wally to add him to the Mythos proper.

3. On Doc0's question, I suppose The Grotesque and The Smiling Man have some similarities, but nope, they have no bearing on this creature's creation. The Toybox (Merryman's domain) is not the same thing as the Grotesque's dream carnival, because it actually appears in real life for its victims as opposed to in the victim's dreams, and the Toybox does not represent the same things that the Grotesque's carnival does. As for Smiling Man, Merryman does have the ceaseless grin and does represent insanity, but does not represent stalkers/stalking or serial killers. The Merryman represents exactly what is mentioned in the description, and nothing else. Any similarities between it and other Fears is coincidental, probably due to there being overlap between themes the Fears might share with others in general.