Mark Edward Fischbach (born June 28, 1989),^[1] known online as Markiplier, is an American YouTuber. Originally from Honolulu, Hawaii,^[2] he began his career in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is currently based in Los Angeles, California.^[3]

As of June 2019, his channel has over 11 billion total video views and 24 million subscribers.^[4][5][6] Fischbach specializes in Let's Play videos, commonly of survival horror video games.^[7]

Fischbach was born at the Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.^[2] His father, who is of German descent, served in the U.S. military, where he met Fischbach's mother, who is of Korean descent.^[3] After his birth, his family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio.^[3] He attended Milford High School where he was a member of the school's marching band, playing the trumpet.^[8] He has an older brother, Thomas Jason "Tom" Fischbach, who is an artist and author of the webcomic Twokinds.^[2][3][9] While Tom Fischbach is featured in some videos and streams he mostly stays away from allowing his face to be filmed.^[10] After a visit to Korea in 2018, he revealed more about the Korean side of his family.^[11] His grandfather was born and raised in what is now North Korea, fleeing to Seoul before the breakout of the Korean War, and had seven daughters. One of his cousins, Hyung-bae, is an actor in Korea.

Originally, Fischbach studied to become a biomedical engineer at the University of Cincinnati,^[12] but dropped out of college to pursue his YouTube career. Currently he lives and films in Los Angeles, California.

While not endorsing a specific political party, Fischbach has espoused left-leaning political views, describing himself as a "liberal".^[13] On the issue of healthcare, Fischbach has expressed support for universal healthcare, stating that he believes healthcare is a "right, not a business".^[14] He also expressed support for stricter gun control laws in a video^[15] on his channel following the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. In the video, Fischbach elaborated on his extensive personal background with firearms, revealing that his father was a member of the National Rifle Association and a proud gun owner, collector, and enthusiast who taught Fischbach about firearms from a very young age and how to handle them, shoot them, and respect them. He stated that while he believes in the Second Amendment and supports the right of people to keep and bear arms, he doesn't believe that people should be allowed to access semi-automatic assault rifles, and thus believes they should be banned from civilian ownership. He further advocated for stringent licensing and registration requirements for firearm ownership in general as well as mental health reform. Fischbach is also an ally of the LGBT rights movement, having raised money for the Human Rights Campaign in one of his charity livestreams.^[16]

Markiplier has been known for his sensationalized video game commentary, involving yelling, screaming, cursing, and even crying during his Let's Play videos. He does not censor the profanity in his videos, although he often subtitles his curses as "duck" (sometimes "luck") for "fuck" and "itch" for "bitch". He is known for branding his channel with a pink mustache (a reference to his alter ego, Wilford Warfstache) and has since dyed his hair pink, blue, and red.^[17][18][19]

Fischbach is primarily known for his playthroughs of indie and horror games, including the Five Nights at Freddy's series, Amnesia: The Dark Descent and its sequel, Garry's Mod, Happy Wheels, Surgeon Simulator 2013, Minecraft, and Slender: The Eight Pages, among others.

Fischbach has collaborated on sketch comedy and gaming videos with a number of fellow YouTubers, including Jacksepticeye, LordMinion777, Muyskerm, PewDiePie, Matthias, Game Grumps, Cyndago, Yamimash, Jacksfilms, CaptainSparklez, Egoraptor and LixianTV. He has also collaborated with celebrities such as Jack Black^[20] and Jimmy Kimmel. He has had acting appearances in TomSka's asdfmovie series, Smosh: The Movie,^[21] Disney XD's Gamer's Guide to Pretty Much Everything,^[22] YouTube Rewinds 2015 and 2016 and Five Nights at Freddy's: The Musical.

A recurring staple of Fischbach's channel are charity livestreams, during which he plays games while campaigning for and collecting donations for various charities, including Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, and Best Friends Animal Society.^[23][24] According to Fischbach, he and his viewers have raised a total of $3,000,000+ as of April 2018.^[5]

Fischbach first joined YouTube on March 6, 2012,^[25] creating a channel under the username "Markiplier", and uploaded his first video on April 4, 2012.^[26] Fischbach's first series was a playthrough of the video game Amnesia: The Dark Descent. After playing several other game series, including Penumbra and Dead Space, YouTube banned Fischbach's AdSense account. Though he appealed to YouTube as a last effort, the appeal was ultimately lost.^[27] Because of this, a new and current channel was created on May 26, 2012^[28] and dubbed MarkiplierGAME.

In 2014, the MarkiplierGAME channel was listed on NewMediaRockstars Top 100 Channels, ranked at number 61.^[29] That year, Fischbach announced he was planning to move to Los Angeles, California, to be able to be closer to other resources for his channel, such as the YouTube Space and other content creators.^[30] Fischbach and fellow YouTuber Jenna Mae appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in September 2014 following backlash that Kimmel received regarding jokes he had made about YouTube and Let's Play videos.^[7] In 2015, he was rated sixth in a list of the twenty most influential celebrities among teenagers in the United States.^[31]

Beginning in 2015, Fischbach lived with fellow YouTubers Daniel Kyre and Ryan Magee, who created and ran the YouTube sketch comedy and music channel Cyndago. Matt Watson from Kids W/ Problems later joined Cyndago after they moved to Los Angeles. Their work was noted for having unexpected endings and dark, often disturbing, humor.^[32][33] Cyndago was disbanded following the death of Daniel Kyre.^[34] At the time of their disbandment, the group had done forty sketches and fourteen original songs, many of them featuring Fischbach.^[32] After the death of Daniel Kyre and disbandment of Cyndago, Fischbach temporarily halted uploads and went on hiatus from September 17, 2015 to October 5, 2015.^[35] His return was shortly followed by the channel reaching 10 million subscribers on October 15, 2015.^[36] Watson and Magee moved on to create a gaming channel called SuperMega.^[37]

In late 2015, Fischbach announced in a video that he had chosen to abstain from alcohol because of a deficient enzyme important to the process of breaking down alcohol. The decision came after an incident where he suffered a transient ischemic attack and had to be taken to the hospital, and was advised by the doctors to do so. He said that because of this a popular series of his, Drunk Minecraft, would no longer be produced.^[38]

In September 2015, Fischbach dyed his hair pink for a charity along with Jacksepticeye.^[39] He later dyed his hair to blue in December 2015 and then red in March 2016^[40] and back to his natural black hair color on December 30, 2016 in time for 2017.^[41]

Fischbach co-hosted the 2015 South by Southwest (SXSW) Gaming Awards with The Legend of Korra voice actor Janet Varney,^[42] and was featured prominently in YouTube's year-end special YouTube Rewind.

In January 2016, Fischbach signed to Revelmode, a subnetwork to Maker Studios, along with other YouTubers such as Jacksepticeye and PewDiePie. Revelmode was disbanded in early 2017 as a result of PewDiePie being cut from Maker Studios. He subsequently signed to another Maker Studios sub-network, Polaris.

Throughout 2016, Fischbach moved some of his focus to comedy sketches, showing his aspiration of improvisational theatre. In 2017, Fischbach posted an interactive Choose Your Own Adventure-style video titled "A Date With Markiplier", which was well received by fans.^[43][44] The YouTuber also surpassed 15 million subscribers that year.

In late 2016, Fischbach formed a team, nicknamed "Teamiplier", to assist in the creation of his videos and more high-quality sketches, including his girlfriend Amy, and his friends Ethan, Tyler and Kathryn.^[45]

On March 29, 2018, Fischbach announced^[46] that his YouTube channel had surpassed 20 million subscribers.

On June 19, 2018, Fischbach's step-niece, Miranda,^[47] was killed in a car accident at the age of 19.^[48] He released a video 5 days later on June 24 titled "update" announcing the news and that he would not be able to make videos for a while.^[49] Two days later on June 26, Fischbach released a video titled "Special Message from Miranda's Dad", where Mark talked more about Miranda and Miranda's dad, Michael, thanking Fischbach's fanbase.^[50] The same day, Mark started a GoFundMe campaign to pay for funeral expenses for Miranda's family, where the expected goal of $15,000 more than doubled within 9 hours.^[48]

Fischbach joined the board of comic book publisher Red Giant Entertainment in November 2014.^[51] In June of that year at the San Diego Comic-Con, he had cohosted a panel with figures from the company including CEO Benny R. Powell, and writers David Campiti, Mort Castle, David Lawrence, and Brian Augustyn.^[52] In 2016, it was announced that he would appear in his own line of comics.^[53]

Fischbach signed with William Morris Endeavor in late 2016, having expressed interest in branching out from YouTube content.^[54]

In 2014, he provided guest vocals in the song "Smash!" by Starbomb, which parodies Super Smash Bros., from their second album Player Select. The song also received an animated video. Since 2017 he has voiced the character 5.0.5 in the Cartoon Network series Villainous.

In 2017, he embarked on his first improv tour, known as the "You're Welcome Tour",^[55] along with Ethan Nestor (CrankGameplays), Wade Barnes (LordMinion777), Tyler Scheid (Apocalypto12) and Bob Muskens (muyskerm), initially on a short four-date trip in mid 2017 before stretching to a full tour across North America, Australia^[56] and Europe in October 2017 through to 2018.

Markiplier has done multiple charity streams and fundraisers with other YouTubers, friends and by himself. With the support of his fans, he has been able to donate to many different charities that benefit many different interests. Forbes reported in 2017 that Fischbach and his fans had helped raise roughly $3 million for charity in past fundraising streams.^[57] On the site Tiltify.com, which he uses for donating to the causes the total amount raised on his current profile as of April 30, 2018 is $1,506,793.81.^[58] Separately he also created a sock bundle of "Markisocks", with all proceeds going to the charity "The Epidermolysis Bullosa Medical Research Foundation" (EBMRF) during a 24-hour sale.^[59] In March 2018, in celebration of surpassing the 20 million subscriber milestone, Fischbach announced that he would donate all proceeds from a 48-hour sale of his newly created "Tasteful Nudes" Charity Calendar to the Cancer Research Institute. Calendar sales raised $492,819 for the charity.^[60]