Have you ever seen Pikachu’s face freeze in cartoon-wide shock? That image—Pikachu with a gaping mouth and wide eyes—became an internet sensation known as the “Surprised Pikachu” meme. But where did it come from, and why did it latch onto our collective funny bone?
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Origin
The image is a still from the Pokémon anime, specifically Season 1, Episode 10: “Bulbasaur and the Hidden Village,” airing back on June 3, 1997. Fast-forward to September 26, 2018, when Tumblr user “popokko” shared the first known meme using this expression. The template quickly popped up across Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and more its timing was impeccable.
Meaning Explained
The core of the meme is deliciously simple: depict someone acting oblivious, only to then be surprised when the obvious happens. It’s the perfect punchline for self-inflicted misfortune. As the image itself expresses mild shock at circumstances you had a hand in creating, it became a go-to reaction GIF when predictability meets surprise.
By October 2018, the meme went from niche to ubiquitous—popular in subreddits like r/me_irl, viral meme pages, and Tumblr repost chains. Although some suspected its spike in November coincided with the Detective Pikachu trailer release, in reality, the meme’s surge predated that trailer by nearly a week—making any marketing tie-in purely coincidental.
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Popular Captions
- Me: “I’ll just stay up until 1 AM and still be fine!”
- My alarm tomorrow: Surprised Pikachu
- Friend: “I forgot to save my project.”
- Them at deadline: Surprised Pikachu
- Game me: “I can dodge that hazard.”
- Game: “Oops.”
- Surprised Pikachu
