Charlie the Unicorn

Charlie the Unicorn is a four-minute animated short by Jason Steele. Charlie, a grumpy, sleepy unicorn, is pestered by a blue unicorn and a pink unicorn into a trip to the magical Candy Mountain. They consult a Magical Liopleurodon, cross a bridge while the blue unicorn keeps repeating Charlie's name, and a singing letter Y urges him into the Candy Mountain Cave. He wakes up back in his meadow, missing a kidney.

Steele made it in 2005 as a birthday present for their mother, after losing their job and most of their possessions to Hurricane Katrina. It went up on Newgrounds on November 26, 2005, and Geoff Swanson posted a copy on YouTube in 2006, where it took off.

Its surreal, dark humor won a cultlike following, four sequels and a cameo in Weezer's "Pork and Beans" video.

The embedded copy is FilmCow's official upload from 2008. The series ended with Charlie the Unicorn: The Grand Finale in 2021, and Steele has said their mother still points out that her birthday present launched their career.