Entertainment
No internet craze can take off without some element of mockery, cuteness, self-importance, irony, or nostalgia.
You’d think that since thetitle of this meme is two words longand one of those words is “Pikachu,” that thisstory would begin with Pikachu.
You wouldbe wrong.
Featured Video
Like the Pokedex itself, the story ofSurprised Pikachu(or Shocked Pikachu) actually begins with #001 itself,Bulbasaur. In the Summer of ‘97,Pokémon: Indigo Leaguewas 10 episodes into its original run when for thefirst time ever,a wild Bulbasaur appeared to Ash Ketchum and company.
Advertisement
Foolishly choosing hisButterfreeof all options to try and weaken it, Ash waseasily rebuffedby the seed Pokémon, to thesurprise and shockof everyone—most notably,Pikachu.
On TV, this was ablink-and-you’d-miss-it moment. But a generation later, in the fall of 2018, a Tumblr user and Pokémon superfanposted the image to her blog, thinking it “looked a bit…off.” It was neither her first meme post, nor her first Pokémon meme,but for whatever reason it is the one that stuck.
Four days later, it wasreposted to /r/MemeEconomy, and a few days after that, to a Facebook page called “Meme Extreme.” It soon began to leak into otherunrelated subredditslike /r/Freefolk, dedicated to the Game of Thrones fandom, /r/me_irl, and especially X.
The use case for Surprised Pikachu isactually a pretty accurate reflection of the in-universe scenariofrom which the image is taken.
Advertisement
Internet people post surprised Pikachu either totease someoneor toself-deprecatein a situation where the outcome was obvious and they should have known better.
Angela, the original Tumblr poster,should have knownthat forcibly bending a thing would cause it to break, and Ash Ketchumshould have known betterthan to use Butterfree’s “
Sleep Powder”—a grass type move—against a
Bulbasaur, a Pokémon who isnaturally resistant to grass type attacks.
Ultimately, Surprised Pikachubecame so popularthat the official Pokémon X accountleveraged itto promote the first trailer for their 2019 film,Detective Pikachu.
When you star in a trailer for a new movie, but everyone’s talking about Mr. Mime: pic.twitter.com/3NZ8NosRVC
— Pokémon (@Pokemon) November 13, 2018
Advertisement
The following March, X users noticed that their accountswould be suspendedfor “depicting gratuitous gore” after posting the meme.
https://twitter.com/0xKruzr/status/1106943084787625986
That’s weird because little Pikachu’s awe of Bulbasaur isinnocent, cute, and fluffy, and not actually goryin any way whatsoever.
A leading explanation on Reddit
/r/OutoftheLoopwas that when enough usersall report the same image, eventually X’s content removal system learns toauto-classify said imageand then bans the users posting it. In other words, Surprised Pikachumay have gotten so popularthat it inspired anorganized and coordinated effortby users who were sick of seeing it, in order to get itblanket-removed from the site.
But that’s not the only evidence of obsessive devotion to this meme. At least one TikTokergot a tattooof Surprised Pikachu on their left arm, and another person created a series of
Surprised Pikachu pixel art—matching the style and colors of the original Gameboy games.
No internet craze can take off without some element of mockery, cuteness, self-importance, irony, or nostalgia. This onehappens to have all of the above, and it went viral.
Is anyone Surprised Pikachu?
Advertisement
The internet is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletterhereto get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
