Where did Diglett Underground come from?

The earliest documented discussion appeared on the PokemonElite2000 Forum on November 23rd, 2004, in a thread asking what Diglett looked like out of the ground.

What does Diglett Underground mean?

It refers to fan speculation and jokes about Diglett's hidden lower body, which was popularized through Pokemon forum threads and DeviantArt illustrations across 2006.

How do you use Diglett Underground?

Fans typically draw or edit their own version of Diglett's full body, often as a clawed mammalian creature or, following the 2006 DeviantArt trend, a muscular humanoid figure.

Is Diglett Underground still popular?

Diglett Underground has stayed a recognizable running joke within the Pokemon fandom since the mid-2000s, with fan drawings hosted across sites like DeviantArt.

Diglett Underground

Q: What is Diglett Underground?

Diglett Underground is a Pokemon fan joke about the mystery of what the ground-type Pokemon actually looks like below its dirt mound, since only its head is ever shown officially.

2004fan speculationclassic

Published August 17, 2026

Diglett Underground is a long-running Pokemon fan joke about what the ground-type Pokemon actually looks like beneath its dirt mound, since only its head is ever officially shown. The debate stretches back to Pokemon Red and Blue in 1998 and picked up serious steam on Pokemon forums and DeviantArt through the mid-2000s.

pokemon fan theory memes mystery memes forum era memes ytmnd memes

Overview

Diglett Underground refers to the long-running Pokemon fan debate over what the ground-type Pokemon Diglett actually looks like beneath its signature dirt mound. Since Diglett debuted in Pokemon Red and Blue in 1998, its lower body has never been shown in official media, sparking years of speculation and fan art across the Pokemon community1. The mystery became a running joke on Pokemon forums and image sites through the mid-2000s, with fans imagining everything from mammalian creatures with clawed feet to muscular humanoid figures7. The gag stuck partly because Nintendo confirmed Diglett has feet in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team but never actually showed them, leaving the design ambiguity official3.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Pokemon fan forums / DeviantArt (viral spread)

Date

2004

Documented discussion of Diglett's hidden body dates back to a PokemonElite2000 Forum thread posted on November 23rd, 2004, titled 'The Ultimate Question: What does Diglett look like out of the ground!? GASP'1. The post drew more than two dozen replies from users speculating on the character's anatomy, with several guessing at ground-mammal features consistent with Diglett's Scratch move3. The thread set the template for the running gag that spread across Pokemon fan sites over the next two years.

How It Spread

Discussion of Diglett's hidden body picked up sharply in 2006. On January 26th of that year, Serebii Forum user DragoonS started a widely referenced thread asking 'what happens when we release a Diglett in an aeroplane?'2. Similar threads followed on BulbaGarden asking 'What IS under a diglett?'4 and on additional PokemonElite2000 boards5.

The joke jumped from text discussion to visuals in August 2006, when the first YTMND page dedicated to the mystery, 'What Diglett Looks Like Above Ground,' went up on August 5th6. A few months later, on October 25th, DeviantArt user TheBlackMarket posted 'A Wild Diglett appears,' depicting Diglett as a chiseled, muscular man from the waist up7. The illustration became one of the most repeated visual takes on the gag.

DeviantArt became a hub for the format, hosting thousands of fan-drawn interpretations of Diglett's full body3. Japanese-speaking Pokemon fans developed a parallel version of the joke on sites like Tegaki Pipa, though it is unclear whether the Japanese thread predates the English discussion8.

How to Use This Meme

Fans typically create their own version of what Diglett looks like below ground. Common approaches include drawing a mammalian creature with clawed feet, following the early forum speculation about its Scratch move, or a chiseled muscular figure in the style of the 2006 DeviantArt post that popularized the visual gag7. The joke usually appears as original fan art rather than a fixed image macro template.