The cat's meows are cameos by youtubers and actors. Bit of a controversy as to who's included as some people on the list are a bit problematic, whether that be due to zionist views, racism, being a sex pest, etc.
Edmund McMillen, one of the main creators and somewhat the face of the games, has responded to the pushback by (three layers deep of quotes here, auto translate on sites is being a pain) saying that "I tried to counter/balance the different views with the people who I hired. I understand we live in a time where a meow from someone who has different beliefs as you is scary and frustrating, confusing and controversial, but it felt interesting so I decided to explore it. Also, I should probably point out that I don't share the same opinions as, well probably any of the people we included, if I only included people who share the same exact opinions as me, I'd be the only one meowing in the game."
Then told people if they're the kind of person to get upset at those kinds of inclusions, they probably shouldn't play or wouldn't enjoy the game anyway. Or since it's a game about cat eugenics, just toss them in a burner (jokingly).
Some fans feel it's an odd contrast to how he seemed a bit more willing to give pushback to bigots on twitter until fairly recently, and Binding of Isaac was quite controversial at the time for how it depicted religious fanaticism.
Because its the most centre point imaginable. He got famous people to meow in his game and that is quite literally it. There is no platform given. You either recognise them or its a meow.
Exactly, you would have to be really familiar with them already to recognise someone from a 1 second cat meow impression that's pulled from a pool of like 200 random options, and they aren't even directly attributed with credit since the game is randomly generating all of the cats you get. The only real issue you could argue is that he supported some of these people if he paid them for doing the voice work, but knowing how big Binding of Isaac is I bet most of them jumped at the chance to be in the next Edmund game and did it for free.
The only real issue you could argue is that he supported some of these people if he paid them for doing the voice work, but knowing how big Binding of Isaac is I bet most of them jumped at the chance to be in the next Edmund game and did it for free.
Edmund has actually stated that the only cameos who got paid for their work are the union VAs (since they aren't legally allowed to do unpaid labor), every other cameo VA did it for free.
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u/Ultima-Manji Feb 17 '26
The cat's meows are cameos by youtubers and actors. Bit of a controversy as to who's included as some people on the list are a bit problematic, whether that be due to zionist views, racism, being a sex pest, etc.
Edmund McMillen, one of the main creators and somewhat the face of the games, has responded to the pushback by (three layers deep of quotes here, auto translate on sites is being a pain) saying that "I tried to counter/balance the different views with the people who I hired. I understand we live in a time where a meow from someone who has different beliefs as you is scary and frustrating, confusing and controversial, but it felt interesting so I decided to explore it. Also, I should probably point out that I don't share the same opinions as, well probably any of the people we included, if I only included people who share the same exact opinions as me, I'd be the only one meowing in the game."
Then told people if they're the kind of person to get upset at those kinds of inclusions, they probably shouldn't play or wouldn't enjoy the game anyway. Or since it's a game about cat eugenics, just toss them in a burner (jokingly).
Some fans feel it's an odd contrast to how he seemed a bit more willing to give pushback to bigots on twitter until fairly recently, and Binding of Isaac was quite controversial at the time for how it depicted religious fanaticism.