Cuddles is one of the main characters in Happy Tree Friends, the animated web series created by Kenn Navarro, Aubrey Ankrum and Rhode Montijo that debuted online in 1999. The show became famous for pairing cute forest animals with extreme cartoon violence, and Cuddles, an excitable yellow rabbit, is often the first to suffer. Clips of his voice, including his crying, were later shared across Flash sites, YouTube edits and meme soundboards, where fans reuse them as standalone reaction sounds far from the original episodes.