What is Potter Puppet Pals?

A Harry Potter parody puppet webseries created by Neil Cicierega, best known for the 2007 short 'The Mysterious Ticking Noise'.

Where did Potter Puppet Pals come from?

It started as a 2003 Flash animation called 'Bothering Snape' on Albino Black Sheep and moved to live-action YouTube puppets in September 2006.

What does Potter Puppet Pals mean?

It refers to a puppet-based sendup of the Harry Potter cast built around absurdist gags and the sing-song chant 'Snape, Snape, Severus Snape'.

How do you use Potter Puppet Pals?

People typically quote it by chanting the character-name melody from 'The Mysterious Ticking Noise' whenever Snape or Harry Potter comes up in conversation.

Is Potter Puppet Pals still popular?

The series is treated as a classic of early YouTube; 'The Mysterious Ticking Noise' had crossed 150 million views by April 2014 and is still cited in retrospectives on 2000s web video.

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 viral earworm memes flash animation memes late 2000s memes fandom 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.

Gallery

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.

Timeline

2003

Neil Cicierega releases the first Potter Puppet Pals Flash animation, 'Bothering Snape,' on Albino Black Sheep.

2006-09

Cicierega posts the first live-action puppet episodes to his YouTube channel.

2007-03

'The Mysterious Ticking Noise' is uploaded and quickly becomes one of YouTube's most-viewed videos.

2009

The Mysterious Ticking Noise passes 72 million views, ranking among YouTube's top all-time videos to that point.

2014-04

The video crosses 150 million lifetime views on YouTube.

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.