Official Pokémon artwork of Magikarp, a red fish with white and yellow fins, above blue ocean water.

Magikarp

1996character memeclassic

Published September 5, 2026

Magikarp is the Water-type Pokemon widely ridiculed as one of the weakest creatures in the franchise, famous for flopping helplessly with only the Splash attack until it evolves into Gyarados at level 20. Since 1999 the "horribly weak" fish has been the subject of newsgroup debates, ironic YTMND tributes, YouTube "Magikarp Sweep" battle videos, and eventually a 2017 mobile spin-off called Magikarp Jump.

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Overview

The joke depends on Magikarp being legitimately terrible. At low levels the Pokemon knows only Splash, an attack that does nothing at all, and it stays that way until reaching level 20 and evolving into the powerful Gyarados1. Community humor plays the joke two ways: pure mockery of a useless fish, or ironic worship of the underdog hero.

The "Magikarp Sweep" captures the second mode. Competitive players post YouTube videos of a single Magikarp defeating a full team of six strong Pokemon in one battle, and by October 2013 the phrase pulled over 15,200 YouTube search results4. Tribute content spans multiple platforms, from artist Nina Matsumoto's 2006 Magikarp tattoo design to a May 2007 Newgrounds Flash animation called "Splash Attack" that showed two trainers battling with nothing but the fish.

Origin & Background

Platform
Pokemon Red and Blue (source) / Usenet and YTMND (viral spread)
Creator
Game Freak / Nintendo; community-created meme
Date
1996

Magikarp first appeared in Pokemon Red and Blue, released in Japan in 1996 and in North America in 1998, where the in-game Pokedex described the fish as "horribly weak"4. Ironic appreciation for the creature can be traced to 1999 newsgroup threads on alt.games.nintendo.pokemon and alt.games.pokemon, where posters argued about whether training a Magikarp to level 20 was worth the payoff of getting a Gyarados, which could not be caught in the wild in the original two games.

How It Spread

Fan discussion of Magikarp battle strategy moved from newsgroups to dedicated Pokemon message boards including Evermore Forums and Pokemon Elite 2000 between 2004 and 2006. YTMND joined in during April 2006 with tribute pages like Turbo Magikarp, which depicted a level 100 fish one-shotting Alakazam, Jynx and Sharpedo, and battle compilations of the fish started circulating on YouTube around the same period5. A novelty @Magikarp Twitter account launched in March 2009, followed by a Facebook fan page on January 10, 2010, and the single-topic Tumblr blog Fuck Yeah, Magikarp in December 2010.

The fish got its own dedicated title on May 23, 2017, when The Pokemon Company released Magikarp Jump for iOS and Android1. Players raise Magikarp through eight leagues of competitive jumping instead of standard battles, and Polygon called the spin-off a rare mobile Pokemon title that "truly gets the spirit" of the mainline RPGs2. Five days after launch, The Verge reported on the game's darker feature: unlike other Pokemon that only faint, Magikarp in the app can actually die, either blown up by an errant Voltorb or snatched mid-jump by a Pidgeotto, and shocked players flooded Twitter with grief posts3. Urban Dictionary entries meanwhile repurposed the name entirely, one definition using "magikarp" as slang meaning "strongest person alive"6.

Frequently Asked Questions