Salma Hayek and Puss in Boots character attend Allure of the Seas premiere of PUSS IN BOOTS at Port Everglades on October 16, 2011 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. (Photo by Gustavo Caballero/Getty Images for Dreamworks)

Festive characters perform during Harrods 26th Annual Christmas Parade on November 5, in London, England. (Photo by Steve Finn/Harrods via Getty Images)

The eighth annual Nipponbashi Street Festa stamped Osaka March 20, 2012 (Nipponbashi is Osaka’s geek district – much like Akihabara is for Tokyo). Cosplayers turned up in colourful outfits, dressing as characters from their favourite manga, anime, and video games. The street was closed to cars, and otaku flooded the streets, snapping pics, cosplaying, and hanging out.

Artist Paolo Curcio craves tiny bas-relief sculptures into coins – a traditional art form known as the hobo nickel. Curcio’s coins feature intricately detailed hobos, skulls and a variety of pop culture characters. Plastic castings of his works are available online.

Heesco, Windsor. Born and raised in Mongolia and now living and working in Melbourne, Heesco is well known for his skill in rendering photo-realistic portraits. They speak to the viewer in a way that the subtext is enjoyable to decipher. Just what is the Blue Lady’s message? The sunglasses might mask the confronting gaze but her body language fills in the gaps. Heesco’s characters often wear traditional jewellery and clothing that remind us of his Mongolian cultural heritage. (Photo by Lou Chamberlin/The Guardian)

An employee places goods of Pokemon video game characters on display at a Pokemon store in Tokyo on February 26, 2021. Twenty-five years after Pokemon first began delighting children and adults alike, the phenomenon is still capturing hearts, with smartphone craze Pokemon Go enjoying record success in virus-hit 2020. (Photo by Behrouz Mehri/AFP Photo)

A unidentified woman protests at Broad Street for the pending arrival of Vice President Mike Pence at the Union League, in Philadelphia, Monday, July 23, 2018. Dozens of demonstrators dressed as characters from the novel-turned-TV series “The Handmaid's Tale” descended on downtown Philadelphia to protest Pence’s visit. (Photo by Jose F. Moreno/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP Photo)

Children with painted faces in the art of the bahurupi tradition in Bardhaman, India on April 24, 2021. Impersonators family where their generations are engaged in making face painting and can easily metamorphose into different characters during a performance, as per different Traditional & Tribal myth which is the main earning source for their family. (Photo by Avishek Das/SOPA Images/Rex Features/Shutterstock)