Potter Puppet Pals

2003viral videoclassic

Published September 23, 2026

Potter Puppet Pals is a Harry Potter parody puppet webseries created by Neil Cicierega, starting as a 2003 Flash animation called 'Bothering Snape' before jumping to YouTube in 20063. Its March 2007 short 'The Mysterious Ticking Noise' pulled over 150 million views and turned a sing-song chant of 'Snape, Snape, Severus Snape' into one of the defining earworms of early YouTube.

youtube viralearworm memesflash animation memeslate 2000s memesfandom discourse memes

Overview

The webseries stars felt hand puppets voiced by Neil Cicierega playing warped versions of Harry, Ron, Hermione, Snape, Dumbledore and Voldemort3. Episodes ignore the actual Harry Potter plotlines in favor of absurdist non sequiturs, deadpan cruelty from Snape and low-budget puppet slapstick, with recurring bits like Dumbledore's naked entrances and Ron demanding food.

'The Mysterious Ticking Noise' is the installment most people know. The short builds a round out of each character chanting their own name in rhythm, 'Snape, Snape, Severus Snape... Dumbledore!', before the noise is revealed to be a bomb strapped to a book1. The tune became instantly quotable and got sung back at fan conventions, in comment sections and in countless copycat videos2.

Beyond that single short, the series built a loose vocabulary of catchphrases that older Potter fans still trade, from 'Bothering Snape' to Neville's rat gag. Cicierega, better known online for his Animutation Flash videos, keeps the humor fast and cheap-looking on purpose, which is a big part of the appeal3.

Origin & Background

Platform
Albino Black Sheep (Flash) / YouTube (viral spread)
Creator
Neil Cicierega
Date
2003

Neil Cicierega, a web animator already known for his Animutation shorts, made the first Potter Puppet Pals video 'Bothering Snape' as a Flash animation in late 2003, hosted on the Flash portal Albino Black Sheep3. He shifted the concept to live-action felt puppets and posted the first YouTube episodes in late September 2006 under his own channel.

The breakout came in March 2007 with 'The Mysterious Ticking Noise,' a short built around the character-name chant and a hidden bomb payoff1. It rode YouTube's early recommendation waves during the site's peak growth period, when the platform was barely two years old and viral hits mostly came from a handful of channels.

How It Spread

'The Mysterious Ticking Noise' pulled over 72 million views in its first two years on YouTube, a huge figure for the site in 2007, and had crossed 150 million by April 20143. It sat among the platform's most-watched uploads during YouTube's early growth stretch, when a video reaching 50 million views was still a rare feat.

Fans made their own puppet parodies riffing on the same chanted-name round structure, including animated versions applying the format to other franchises2. The Potter Puppet Pals YouTube channel kept posting new sketches through the late 2000s, though the release pace slowed after that.

The song lodged the Potter character names into fandom memory, and the 'Snape, Snape, Severus Snape' line still gets quoted whenever the character or Alan Rickman comes up3. The series is a common reference point in retrospectives about early YouTube's viral era.

How to Use This Meme

The 'Mysterious Ticking Noise' bit is typically quoted by chanting a name in the same singsong meter, most often 'Snape, Snape, Severus Snape,' whenever Snape or Alan Rickman comes up. The wider series is used as a shorthand reference to mid-2000s YouTube humor, with fans reposting clips whenever a new Harry Potter project is announced.

Frequently Asked Questions