When did clowns become scary? Was it at your 8-year-old birthday party when your dad decided to skimp out and hire the cheap performer? With the smell of lunch sausages on their breath and cakey white makeup dripping through their forehead sweat, they weren’t the only ones wishing they weren’t at this child’s birthday party. Once the nightmares started coming, your cheapskate of a daddy-o realized that the budget clown probably wasn’t such a great idea after all! 

As adults, we’ve buried all that childhood drama in the past and enjoy our fair share of Bozo horror movies, however, there’s always the lingering spookiness of what drives a man to become a clown in the first place. Were they born to clown around? Or did the circus surprise them… 

Either way, scroll onward for a collection of unsinister clowns that’ll have you LOLing instead of having nightmares of a big red balloon.