Pot Boy from the Elden Ring trailer is a hit with the fan community

Publication date of the original Japanese article: 2021-06-12 10:22 (JST)
Translated by. Ari Clark

A new trailer and release date for Elden Ring were revealed at the Summer Game Fest event. The new trailer was packed with loads of content that told a vivid story about the world of the game. Among the super-tense battle scenes and various characters depicted, there was one character that was an instant hit with the fan community. That character was…a pot.

*The Pot scene appears at about 1:08

The trailer features some fascinating characters that seem likely to be enemies, such as giants that drag a cart like slaves and wolf-headed swordsmen. It was packed with details that were bound to whip up a storm of discussion among fans, including a fire-breathing white dragon that resembled the albino dragon Seath, a boss that appeared in Dark Souls.

However, the character that completely won the hearts of one group of fans was a walking pot that appeared for less than one second of the trailer’s running time.

The pot that appeared in the Elden Ring trailer…well, there’s no other way to describe it. It honestly just looks like a pot that has sprouted arms and legs. Its plodding walk has a strange charm about it. If you listen closely over the BGM, it also sounds like it makes a croaking noise, like a frog.

This mysterious character, which doesn’t even have an official name yet, has already conquered a broad swath of the fan community. It’s been affectionately nicknamed “Pot Mimic” or “Pot Boy”, and users on social media have quickly begun publishing fanart of it.

It seems like Pot Boy has already been accepted as a sort of mascot or idol by some fans. A similar character designed as an object that sprouts arms and legs is the Mimic, an enemy character that appears in the Dark Souls series. The character design for the Mimic has a treasure chest for a head, from which it sprouts a torso as well as arms and legs. It bites players who carelessly open the treasure chest, and functions as a sort of trap.

Although this character was also treated like a mascot by some fans, its limbs are long and extremely nimble, and its head has sharp fangs and can stick out a long tongue, giving it a much more grotesque shape than Pot Boy.

In contrast, Pot Boy has short limbs and moves in a way that evokes a toddling child, and its body is rounded, giving it a cute overall shape. Although it’s creepy if you actually stop and think about it, it’s still far less threatening compared to the Mimic.

Twitter has been flooded with posts about the Pot Boy, and people are uploading loads of fanart, as mentioned before. Most of these pictures are drawn in a comical fashion that emphasizes the cuteness of Pot Boy, and almost all of them have gotten a lot of retweets, illustrating the popularity of the character.

Fans also seem to have taken a liking to Pot Boy on /r/Eldenring, the Elden Ring community on Reddit. Amid the general rejoicing over the release of new information, a post that declared “This is now a pot boy themed subreddit” received over 4,000 upvotes.

The thread did contain some negative “anti-Pot Boy” opinions, with one commenter grumbling, “More mimic-like ennemies (sp), it will be so greatly frustrating.” On the other hand, some commenters were excited about the monster’s potential behavior, saying, “Imagine they grab you once you roll into them,” and there were a lot of positive comments posted as well, such as “He cute” and “This screams classic FromSoft I love it so much.”

A lot of other Pot Boy-related posts have been made in the Reddit Elden Ring community, as well. One post took the clip from the trailer and looped it to make a .gif that looked like Pot Boy was dancing, while another post joked that the pots might be planning their revenge for the common practice of pot-smashing in FromSoftware games, saying, “The pots have had enough of our sh-t.”

Absolute silence had been maintained around Elden Ring since it was first announced two years ago. When the fresh topic of the new trailer was dropped on the fan community, it seems to have promptly set off a huge flurry of activity related to the game.

As you might expect from his appearance, Pot Boy’s greatest strength so far seems to be his “cuteness”. It remains unclear whether he’ll actually turn out to be an enemy character at all. We’ll look forward to further information about Elden Ring, including more details about Pot Boy, as we continue to observe the excitement in the fan community with relish.

Elden Ring is planned to release for PC (Steam), PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S on January 21, 2022.