Whether they’re dressing up for Halloween or a popular fan convention, cosplayers make use of the art of costume to share their passions with the world by embodying their favorite characters from television, anime, comics and, of course, video games.
No matter what fandom you belong to, you can show the world what characters are close to your heart in a number of ways, whether that’s getting a tattoo or becoming the character yourself through cosplay. Keep reading for an overview of the most popular video game cosplays according to research by Hearts Land.
Most popular video game cosplays
To evaluate what the most popular video game cosplays are, this study looked at Instagram hashtags in order to determine the prevalence of and interest in these cosplays online. Specifically, the researchers looked at 150 pop culture characters and searched for Instagram hashtags that included their names plus the word “cosplay” or “costume.”
For example, this study would analyze the popularity of cosplays for Princess Peach from the Super Mario series by adding up the number of hashtags like #peachcosplay and #peachcostume.
Here’s a look at the top 10 most popular video game characters to dress up as, along with the series they come from and the number of associated Instagram hashtags they had:
- D.Va (Overwatch) – 215,971 Instagram hashtags
- 2B (Nier) – 119,787 Instagram hashtags
- Jinx (League of Legends) – 113,413 Instagram hashtags
- Link (The Legend of Zelda) – 91,434 Instagram hashtags
- Lara Croft (Tomb Raider) – 76,839 Instagram hashtags
- Ciri (The Witcher) – 48,305 Instagram hashtags
- Yennefer of Vengerberg (The Witcher) – 43,988 Instagram hashtags
- Pikachu (Pokémon) – 43,366 Instagram hashtags
- Mario (Super Mario) – 40,551 Instagram hashtags
- Tifa Lockhart (Final Fantasy) – 39,169 Instagram hashtags
Most popular cosplay characters overall
When it comes to the most popular characters among cosplayers across all of fiction, D.Va is the only video game character who cracks the top 10. Of course, while some of the most popular characters did not originate from video games, many of them have had their fair share of crossovers with the gaming world.
For example, the No. 1 cosplay character across all genres and media is Harley Quinn. While she originated from the DC Comics, Harley Quinn has also appeared in a number of video games such as the Lego Batman series, the Batman: Arkham series, the Injustice series, MultiVersus and Gotham Knights, sometimes as an enemy or some other kind of NPC and other times as a fully playable character.
As a result, many characters at the top of this list could be considered to be among the most popular video game cosplays. See below for the top 10 cosplay characters across all of fiction, including each character’s series of origin and their Instagram hashtag count:
- Harley Quinn (DC Comics) – 758,449 Instagram hashtags
- Spider-Man (Marvel Comics) – 710,667 Instagram hashtags
- Batman (DC Comics) – 347,639 Instagram hashtags
- The Joker (DC Comics) – 321,166 Instagram hashtags
- Deku (My Hero Academia) – 248,935 Instagram hashtags
- Wonder Woman (DC Comics) – 231,247 Instagram hashtags
- D.Va (Overwatch) – 215,971 Instagram hashtags
- Deadpool (Marvel Comics) – 204,579 Instagram hashtags
- Shoto Todoroki (My Hero Academia) – 189,132 Instagram hashtags
- Poison Ivy (DC Comics) – 171,227 Instagram hashtags
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