Cartoon badgers standing upright with arms raised on green grass under a blue sky from the Badger Badger Badger animation

Badger Badger Badger

2003viral videoclassic

Published July 26, 2026

Badger Badger Badger is a 2003 Flash animation by British animator Jonti Picking, better known as Weebl, showing a row of dancing cartoon badgers chanting their own name over a synth loop before a snake interrupts. It became one of the defining earworm cartoons of the early Newgrounds era.

flash animation memes earworm memes newgrounds memes early internet memes british memes

Overview

Badger Badger Badger is a looping Flash cartoon showing a line of pixel-art badgers doing stiff arm-lifting calisthenics while a synthesised voice chants the word 'badger' for three measures and then shouts 'mushroom, mushroom' on the fourth1. After roughly three cycles the scene cuts to an animated desert where a snake slithers past as a voice calls out 'snake, a snake, oh it's a snake', and then the badgers return and the loop starts again3.

The whole gag rides on unchanging repetition set to a chirpy electronic backing track, with no punchline beyond the sudden snake interruption4. On its original page the animation ran forever, which was part of the appeal for viewers who tried to see how long they could sit through it3.

Origin & Background

Platform
Newgrounds (viral spread on YouTube from 2008)
Creator
Jonti Picking
Date
2003

British animator Jonti Picking, who works under the alias Weebl, uploaded the cartoon to Newgrounds on September 1, 2003 from the account TheWeebl1. Picking had been publishing short animated loops on his own site Weebl's Stuff, and the badger cartoon was one of the earliest of those loops to break out to a wider audience3.

The original Newgrounds submission racked up more than 1.1 million views over the following two decades, keeping the file alive well after the Flash format itself was retired1.

How It Spread

The chant format was quickly rebuilt with new audio. On July 11, 2006, YouTube user ReelTreble92 posted a version that swapped the badger vocals for lyrics from Raffi's 1994 children's song, producing the 'Bananaphone' badger remix, which pulled in over 4 million views on YouTube3.

Fans also turned the animation into a real-world dance, holding both arms out and bobbing in time with the badgers. On March 24, 2008, YouTuber cccati uploaded a live-action performance of the routine that passed 250,000 views3.

Weebl himself finally posted the cartoon to his own YouTube channel on June 28, 2008, and that upload went on to gather more than 28 million views, giving the loop a much larger second audience once Flash playback in browsers began to disappear2.

How to Use This Meme

The clip is typically shared as the full looping animation or as a 30-second YouTube trim, often linked as a hypnotic gag to trap a friend2. In text form, fans quote just 'badger badger badger... mushroom mushroom', or drop the 'snake, snake, oh it's a snake' line as a mock warning when something unexpected shows up4.

Frequently Asked Questions