Sprunked grew out of Sprunki, the browser music-making game where players mix beats by assigning sounds to colourful characters, and its horror version turns that playful format into something much darker. Black, the shadowy figure at the centre of many of those edits, became a shorthand for dread, and short clips tied to him spread through fan videos, edits and short-form posts. Because the clip is so brief, it travels easily between videos, and creators keep returning to it whenever they want a quick, recognisable jolt of Sprunki horror without slowing a scene down.