About
Potion Seller is a viral video in which a man playing with his computer’s photo booth function performs a dialogue between a knight about to head into battle and a potion seller who refuses to sell him potions because they’re “too strong.” After the video was posted, it inspired animations and tributes.
Origin
On September 22nd, 2011, YouTube user Justin Kuritzkes posted a video in which he utilizes the distortion created by his camera’s photo booth program to create a dialogue between a knight and a potion seller who refuses to sell the knight any potions. The video gained over 3.9 million views (shown below).
Spread
The video began attracting a wide fandom in 2014. That year, a subreddit for the video was created, and currently has over 9,000 readers. Fan art for the video also began appearing on DeviantArt that year (examples shown below). A Wiki page for the video was also created.
On YouTube, some parodies and tributes appeared in the years immediately following the original upload, though none grew very popular. The first tribute to gain a significant amount of views was posted by Karl the Deranged on March 30th, 2015, who recut the original to make it appear more like a traditional dialogue and gained over 170,000 views (shown below, left). Another recut by user Mysteroo movies posted October 27th, 2015 gained over 80,000 views (shown below, right).
Various Examples
