A real-time strategy game where you engineer a disease and try to wipe out humanity, released by Ndemic Creations in 2012. It became a Reddit meme around 2018 for its Madagascar and Greenland gags.

What does Plague Inc. mean?

The name is the in-game brand for the disease-engineering scenario, and online it's used as shorthand for 'this real-world outbreak feels like a Plague Inc. run'.

How do you use Plague Inc.?

As a meme, people post in-game screenshots (usually Madagascar closing ports or a failed Greenland infection) captioned with a real-world headline they mirror.

Is Plague Inc. still popular?

The game is a classic mobile title with over 85 million downloads and a console version from 2015, and the Madagascar and anti-vaxxer memes still circulate as older Reddit references.

Plague Inc.

Q: Where did Plague Inc. come from?

Ndemic Creations built it, drawing on the 2008 Flash game Pandemic II by Dark Realm Studios, and released it on iOS in May 2012.

2018video game meme / catchphraseclassic

Published September 22, 2026

Plague Inc. is a mobile strategy game from Ndemic Creations where players engineer a pathogen to wipe out humanity, released in 20121. It became Reddit meme fodder in 2018 when players started joking about Madagascar closing its borders and Greenland being impossible to infect, feeding a wave of screenshots and edits that peaked with a viral anti-vaxxer petition in early 20193.

mobile game memes gaming subreddit origin memes delayed virality memes 2018 memes

Overview

The Plague Inc. meme format leans on two running jokes from the game's mechanics. Players spent years struggling to infect Madagascar and Greenland because both countries have limited sea and air routes, so any global outbreak tends to stall at their borders3. Screenshots of failed runs and edited menu shots became shorthand for the game's absurd difficulty, and by 2018 the joke was spilling onto /r/memes and /r/me_irl as reaction posts about closed borders and stubborn islands.

A second wave of jokes tied the game's upgrade system to real-world debates about vaccines and pandemic response. Urban Dictionary entries from the period define Plague Inc. as 'what you say when a pandemic occurs in real life,' which captures the tone4. The humor stayed absurdist: treat the game's transmission vectors and symptoms as a lens for whatever health-policy fight was in the feed that week.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Mobile game (source) / Reddit (viral spread)

Date

2018

Plague Inc. was created and published by Ndemic Creations, inspired by the 2008 Flash game Pandemic II by Dark Realm Studios3. It launched for iOS on May 26, 2012 and for Android that October, with a Metacritic listing that catalogued strong reviews of the mobile release1. The game passed 85 million downloads before Ndemic released Plague Inc. Evolved on Steam, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 20153.

The meme angle came later. Reddit users started posting Plague Inc. screenshots as jokes about closed borders and stubborn islands around 2018, with Madagascar becoming its own running gag for locking down before any disease could get in3. The video walkthrough embedded on the Know Your Meme entry is a representative early example of the gameplay footage that got recycled into edits and reaction posts2.

How It Spread

On July 23, 2018, Ndemic pushed a free Royal Update that added a 'Science Denial' scenario where exiled scientists work on a cure in a 'Super Science' utopia while the rest of the world relies on alternative medicines3. The scenario read like the game was already making its own memes, and screenshots of it moved quickly on gaming subreddits.

On November 5, 2018, a /r/OutOfTheLoop thread asked why Plague Inc. jokes were suddenly everywhere, which is a decent marker of how far the format had traveled beyond dedicated gaming subs by that point3. In February 2019, Change.org user Eduard Gabrian started a petition asking Ndemic to add anti-vaxxers as a gameplay buff, and the screenshot of the petition took off on Reddit the next day, pulling more than 680 upvotes on /r/memes in the first 48 hours3. Redditor jojuju1611 reposted an edited version to /r/me_irl that pulled over 18,600 upvotes in two days, followed by crossposts to /r/PewdiepieSubmissions (about 33,900 upvotes), /r/dank_meme (about 30,600) and /r/teenagers (about 5,100)3.

On February 19, a /r/gaming post by user itsbryandude pointed out that the game already had a mode similar to what the petition was asking for, which cooled the joke slightly but kept the game in circulation as a reference point3. Urban Dictionary picked up the pandemic-metaphor usage around this period, defining the game in terms of both its gameplay and its second life as a reaction line4.

Timeline

2012-05-26

Ndemic Creations releases Plague Inc. for iOS.

2012-10-04

Android version launches.

2015

Plague Inc. Evolved released on Steam, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

2018-07-23

Royal Update adds the 'Science Denial' scenario, which starts circulating as a screenshot joke.

2018-11-05

/r/OutOfTheLoop thread asks why Plague Inc. jokes are suddenly all over Reddit.

2019-02-17

Change.org user Eduard Gabrian starts a petition to add anti-vaxxers as a Plague Inc. buff.

2019-02-18

Redditor jojuju1611's edited screenshot of the petition pulls 18,600+ upvotes on /r/me_irl, then crossposts to /r/PewdiepieSubmissions, /r/dank_meme and /r/teenagers.

2019-02-19

A /r/gaming post by itsbryandude notes the game already has a similar mode built in.

How to Use This Meme

The common convention is to screenshot a moment from Plague Inc. that mirrors a real headline, then caption it. Typical setups include an in-game news ticker announcing Madagascar has closed its ports, a failed run where Greenland stayed disease-free, or an edited symptoms tree that swaps upgrade names for real-world talking points. Posts often include the game's menu UI to make the reference legible at a glance.