Original Character Do Not Steal
Published September 19, 2026
Original Character Do Not Steal is a phrase DeviantART artists slap on their creations to warn against theft, but by 2008 it was already being used ironically to caption obvious rip-offs and terrible fan art. What started as a sincere copyright plea became a long-running joke about the Sonic the Hedgehog fandom and amateur original characters, or OCs.
Overview
The joke pairs the earnest 'do not steal' warning with art that nobody would ever want to steal in the first place, whether it's a lazy Sonic recolor, a poorly drawn anime character, or a blatant knock-off of an existing pop culture figure. The Sonic fandom became the running target because of the community's reputation for derivative fan characters, edgy hedgehog OCs, and palette-swapped clones like the fake blue hedgehog 'Blonic'1. By March 2014, DeviantART had tallied more than 29,000 submissions tagged with the phrase3.
Users also fire off the phrase as commentary, calling out other artists whose 'original characters' look suspiciously like copyrighted properties2. The tone is almost always sarcastic now, with the sincerity of the original usage mostly forgotten.
Origin & Background
How It Spread
How to Use This Meme
Post an obviously derivative or badly rendered character, especially a hedgehog OC that looks a little too much like Sonic, and caption it 'original character do not steal' to signal the self-aware joke. Common conventions include exaggerating the copy (a red-and-black Sonic recolor, a Naruto lookalike) or leaning into how sloppy the art is.