As it so often happens when a new game is released, the launch ofCapcom’s survival horror adventureResident Evil 4 Remakehas been met with an outpouring of creativity both illustrative and memetic from the online community. Within days of Resident Evil 4 Remake’s release, fans were proliferating a bounty ofmods for the PC versionof the game - a week later, and the attention has shifted from mods to mice. The internet’s newest obsession is with fan art depicting Resident Evil 4 Remake heroine Ashley Graham as, well, a mouse.The concept was first whisked up by the artist @Agrimmorain a piece of fan art paired with the caption, “What if you booted up Resident Evil 4 Remake and Ashley was just a tiny mouse, what would you do?”. Shared as a tweet, the fan art presented Ashley Graham in the form of a small cartoon mouse, exclaiming such mouse-typical exclamations as, “I CRAVE CHEESE,” and such Ashley-typical statements as “HELP ME LEON”.
This initial, seemingly innocuous tweet (which has since racked up 77.3K likes and counting; at the time of writing it has climbed to a staggering 15.2 million views) has gone on to inspire a boom of Mouse Ashley Graham fan art. Simply clicking into the original tweet’s 1.2K Quotes instantly reveals over a thousand unique takes on @Agrimmora’s Mouse Ashley concept, to say nothing of the sheer quantity of Mouse Ashley fan art rapidly filling the Resident Evil 4 hashtag even as we speak.
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Notable examples include @StarfeyComet’s colorful snapshot of Mouse Ashley Graham engaging in various day-to-day activities such as seeking out cheese and running in a hamster wheel, and fellow Twitter user @DrawingBlood’s illustration of Mouse Ashley snatching up a hunk of cheese from a mousetrap. Holding it up in the air, she squeaks, somewhat naively, “Can you believe this cheese was just SITTING THERE, Leon?”
While there seems to be no consensus on the name for the trend — with many having taken to calling it Moushley, Mously, tiny Ashley, or Mouse Ashley — the trend itself has nonetheless grown to such a degree of ubiquity as to be acknowledged by the officialResident Evil Twitter account. As a gesture of recognition, a figurative tipping of the hat, if you will, the official accountsuccinctly yet powerfully tweetedtwo emoji: one of a mouse, the other, of cheese. No more was written, and indeed, no more needed to be.
On the inspiration behind Mouse Ashley Graham, @Agrimmorasays, “I saw a joke drawing that depicted Ashley with big ears and this game to my mind.” The joke drawing, which has since been identified as the work of @salomoncallee, depicts Ashley’s ears as oversized in reference to the somewhat extrusive ears seen in Ashley’s 2005 character model. Ashley’s ears long been a contentious point among the Resident Evil community, but perhaps with the outbreak of Mouse Ashley Graham fever, fans old and new just might end up developing a new appreciation for the heroine’s original design.
NEXT:Resident Evil 4 Remake Director Explains Reasons For Changes To Ashley’s Character And Co-Operative Mechanics
