Markiplier

Lore & Background

Mark Edward Fischbach was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to a German American military officer father and a South Korean mother. After his parents divorced, he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, graduated from Milford High School in 2007, and enrolled at the University of Cincinnati in biomedical engineering. His father died in 2008. In 2012, facing a breakup, job loss, an emergency appendectomy, and debt, he was hospitalized for an adrenal tumor and decided to change his path. He registered his first YouTube channel on March 6, 2012, originally intending to upload comedy sketches, but soon turned to gaming videos. He dropped out of college two semesters short of graduating to focus on his online career, and moved to Los Angeles in early 2014.

Reader's Guide

Markiplier's significance lies in his rise as one of YouTube's most influential creators, particularly through his Let's Play videos of indie horror games, which helped popularize the genre on the platform. He created interactive YouTube Originals (A Heist with Markiplier and In Space with Markiplier), hosted top-charting podcasts (Distractible and Go! His legacy includes expanding the possibilities for YouTubers to cross into film, television, and podcasting.

Did You Know?

• Markiplier's channel name is a portmanteau of Mark and multiplier, as he originally planned to portray all characters in comedy sketches.
• He co-hosted the 2015 South by Southwest Gaming Awards with Janet Varney.
• His interactive special A Heist with Markiplier contains 31 possible endings.
• He and Ethan Nestor created the channel Unus Annus, which uploaded daily for one year and was then deleted, peaking at over 1.5 million concurrent viewers during its final livestream.