Danny and Michael Philippou

Danny and Michael Philippou were born in Adelaide and raised in the northern suburb of Pooraka.^[1] They are of Greek descent.^[2] Their father is a Greek Cypriot and their mother is Greek.^[3]

Danny and Michael Philippou began filming their WWE-inspired backyard wrestling matches, with their close friends in Adelaide at 11 years old.^[4] The matches included the Philippou brothers "crashing into furniture, "flipping kids over and bashing them headfirst into the ground and jumping off everything, including roofs". They also filmed in a half-built house and caused water to flood the site; Danny and Michael later admitted some of the things they did were extremely risky and even life-threatening, and were thankful to a friend's elder sister who helped steer them away from doing such things that could have taken them down a path of juvenile delinquency.^[5] At the age of 13, the Philippou brothers moved on to making a "TV show" and "movies".^[4] In 2013, they began creating "fake fail" videos for Facebook and started the YouTube channel RackaRacka, where they upload sketch comedy horror action videos with special effects, stunts and parodies of popular culture, such as their videos depicting McDonald's mascot Ronald McDonald (played by Michael) as a psychopathic evil clown.^[4] The channel was initially not monetised, with Danny financing the videos by volunteering for paid medical trials.^[6]

The channel's first huge success was Harry Potter VS Star Wars, which attracted 7 million views in a week,^[7] and won them a trip to the U.S.^[1] In 2014, Michael and Danny both crewed on the Australian horror film, The Babadook.^[8] The production company responsible for The Babadook, Triptych Pictures, has also produced videos for RackaRacka, including Versus, a series of three short films; RackaRacka Live (Stunt Gone Wrong); and Extreme Handball. Written and directed by the Philippou Brothers, the videos were shown on the Foxtel pay channel.^[9]

On 10 July 2017, Danny and Michael Philippou announced that they moved into a mansion with their close friends, marking the beginning of a series of videos for the channel titled House of Racka, which combined their real-life adventures and special effects skills altogether into a vlog-like series.^[10] The House of Racka series became the majority of the channel's uploads for around a year. On 2 April 2018, among complaints of YouTube demonetising the channel, the brothers announced that they were being evicted from their mansion. Many fans thought this meant the end of the channel, as the video contained an emotional tribute to the experiences the twins had in the mansion, in a more sombre mood than they usually projected.^[11] This was later proven to be false, however, as the two later revealed that the House of Racka series was the only cancellation to their YouTube careers.^[12]

On 25 August 2018, Michael fought American YouTuber Scarce in an amateur boxing match on the undercard of KSI vs Logan Paul at Manchester Arena in England, winning via technical knockout in the 3rd round.^[13]

In December 2019, Michael was charged by South Australia Police with numerous crimes related to a video uploaded on 16 January 2019, which depicted him driving a heavily modified and watertight car on public roads while completely submerged and breathing partially through a hole in the roof.^[14][15] He was ordered to appear in court on 14 January 2020,^[16] but avoided conviction^[1] after entering a plea deal that saw him pay $2,000 in fines and court costs and disqualified him from driving for two weeks.^[17][18]

In June 2025, Hideo Kojima revealed via Instagram that the Philippou brothers would be featured as non-playable characters in the video game Death Stranding 2: On the Beach.^[35]