Creepy Katara — Portrait of Katara from Avatar: The Last Airbender with a subtly creepy smile

Creepy Katara

2008image macroclassic

Published July 30, 2026

Creepy Katara is a 2008 DeviantArt image macro built from a strange screenshot of Katara from Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender. Three DA users, =AnimantX, sractheninja, and alternatecoppa, isolated the frame in July 2008 and used it as a jumpscare-style crop pasted behind or over subjects in edited pictures.

deviantart memes creepypasta memes nickelodeon memes late 2000s memes photoshop memes

Overview

Creepy Katara is a screenshot-based image macro pulled from a single frame of Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender, specifically the episode "The Day of Black Sun, Part 1: The Invasion," where the character wears an oddly unsettling facial expression2. According to =AnimantX, who co-created the meme, none of the founding group could look at the frame for long without getting creeped out1.

The format follows the same "creeping character" logic as earlier internet mascots like Pedobear and Weegee, which also drop into other pictures uninvited2. Fans typically layer the cropped Katara face over webcam photos, comics, and journal images so she appears behind unsuspecting subjects or fully replaces their features3.

Origin & Background

Platform
DeviantArt
Key People
=AnimantX, sractheninja, and alternatecoppa
Date
2008

The image was picked out in July 2008 by three DeviantArt users, =AnimantX, sractheninja, and alternatecoppa1. In =AnimantX's Creepy Katara FAQ, the group said they were searching Avatar Spirit Network (ASN) for reference screenshots of Katara's outfit when sractheninja instant-messaged a particularly weird still, which the trio then named "Creepy Katara"1. The crop reached the wider DeviantArt audience on July 15, 2008, when alternatecoppa published the first Creepy Katara comic2.

How It Spread

On DeviantArt, =AnimantX built a network of PLZ accounts, the tiny avatar accounts DA users can call into comment threads, and tiling the icons together assembled a giant Creepy Katara portrait fans could paste into journals and comments1. Avatar-fandom users on the site collected and remixed the edits, with accounts like ishizusv keeping curated favorites galleries of the crop3.

The PLZ accounts were later deleted, but by then the image had already spread out of the founding circle and into the wider Avatar fanbase on DeviantArt1. Fan galleries like ishizusv's favorites collection kept the crop archived and visible inside the community3.

How to Use This Meme

The common convention is to grab the Katara crop and drop it inside another picture, most often a webcam self-portrait or a comic panel, so she looms behind the subject, peers around a corner, or covers their face entirely1.

Frequently Asked Questions