Pokémon — 3D render of a red and white Pokeball on a gray background

Pokémon

1996franchise / meme categoryclassic

Published September 22, 2026

Pokémon started as a Game Boy RPG designed by Satoshi Tajiri and released by Nintendo in Japan on February 27, 1996, and grew into one of the most productive meme sources on the early web. From 'I Herd U Liek Mudkips' to Slowpoke reaction images, Professor Oak macros, Dat Ash, and the MissingNo. glitch, the franchise fed 4chan's /vp/, deviantArt, and Tumblr with two decades of catchphrases, image macros, glitch lore, and fan-made creatures.

pokemon gaming nintendo memes 4chan memes fandom discourse memes

Overview

Pokémon, also known online through spin-off meme tags like 'Dat Ash', is less a single meme than a decades-long meme category. Fans built dozens of separate formats around the games, the anime, the cards, and the glitches, and most of them still circulate today. The recurring formats include catchphrases like 'A Wild X Appears!' and 'It's Super Effective!', image macros of Professor Oak and Gary Oak, glitch lore around MissingNo., and fan-drawn creatures known as Fakémon 4.

The visual style leans on Game Boy sprites, the Ken Sugimori art, and screenshots of the anime with Ash Ketchum and his rivals. Community writing sites like Bulbapedia, Serebii, and Smogon feed a steady drip of trivia, competitive metagame data, and set leaks that meme accounts remix into jokes 2 3. Fanfiction.net, meanwhile, hosts thousands of stories in the Pokémon category, including the badfic classic 'Pokémon: Attack of Mewtwo' 5.

Tone across the memes swings wildly. Slowpoke sits at the sarcastic end, used to mock people posting old news. 'Hoenn Confirmed' plays the same role as 'Half Life 3 Confirmed', treating any scrap of concept art as proof of a Ruby and Sapphire remake 4. Fakémon culture, by contrast, is earnest, with artists producing polished sprite sheets and full ROM hacks like 'Pokémon: Tentaquil Edition' 4.

Origin & Background

Platform
Nintendo Game Boy (source) / 4chan and deviantArt (meme spread)
Creator
Unknown
Date
1996

The source franchise began on February 27, 1996 with the Japanese Game Boy release of Pocket Monsters Red and Green, designed by Satoshi Tajiri at Game Freak and published by Nintendo. Blue Version followed on October 15, 1996 and was later repackaged for the US as Red and Blue on September 30, 1998 4. The Independent later ranked Pokémon second only to Mario among best-selling game series, a scale that helped push the games into wider pop culture 1.

The meme layer grew separately from the games. Nintendo developed the franchise; anonymous fans on 4chan's /vp/ board and artists on deviantArt built the earliest formats. 'I Herd U Liek Mudkips' first surfaced on deviantArt as early as February 2005 as a recruitment slogan for a fan art group called MudKipClub, before being rewritten as a 4chan copypasta 4. Later formats such as 'Top Percentage' pulled dialogue directly from Youngster Joey in Pokémon Gold and Silver, released in North America in 2000, and turned it into a mock brag 4.

How It Spread

The games hit the US in 1998, and the fandom scene formed alongside them on Usenet and early web forums. By the mid-2000s the memes had their own beats. 'I Herd U Liek Mudkips' spread from deviantArt into a 4chan copypasta by 2005 and was used to flag fellow /b/ posters offsite 4. Slowpoke reaction images and Professor Oak macros followed on 4chan and Something Awful, while a dedicated Pokémon board, /vp/, was later spun up on 4chan to hold the constant flow of threads.

Brazilian Portuguese-speaking users kicked off a second wave in the early 2010s with 'Ash Pedreiro', better known internationally as 'Dat Ash', an advice-animal image macro that pairs an alternate-universe Ash with lewd puns on Pokémon names. The nickname comes from 'pedreiro', slang for construction workers known for shouting pick-up lines on the street 4. Around the same time Tumblr blogger butt-berry launched Handstand Abs Guy on January 7, 2014, editing Pokémon characters and other cartoon figures onto a photoshopped torso. Posts routinely cleared 36,000 notes at their peak 4.

The modding and fangame scene delivered its own headline moments. Pokémon Uranium, built by Brazilian developer JV (João Pedro Reis) and designer Involuntary Twitch, launched on August 6, 2016 with 150 fan-designed creatures. It logged 1.5 million downloads in a week before Nintendo takedowns forced the developers to pull the download links on August 13, 2016 6. Fandom keeps ticking over on news hubs like Serebii, which is still posting daily set reveals and event schedules in 2026, and on Marriland, a fansite that has run since 2000 2 7. Original videos referenced in the KYM writeup, including the Pokkén Tournament reveal, sit on YouTube 8.

Timeline

1996-02-27

Pocket Monsters Red and Green launch on Game Boy in Japan, designed by Satoshi Tajiri for Game Freak [4].

1998-09-30

Pokémon Red and Blue reach the US, seeding a Western fandom that later drives most of the meme output [4].

2000

Pokémon Gold and Silver ship in North America; Youngster Joey's 'top percentage of Rattata' line later becomes a mock-brag copypasta [4].

2005-02

'I Herd U Liek Mudkips' surfaces on deviantArt as a MudKipClub recruitment slogan before jumping to 4chan [4].

2013-08-26

Pokkén Tournament is officially announced with a YouTube trailer, feeding a wave of crossover jokes with Tekken [8].

2014-01-07

Tumblr user butt-berry launches Handstand Abs Guy, edited GIFs featuring Pokémon and other cartoon characters [4].

2026-09-22

Serebii posts an exclusive Mega Evolution: Delta Reign card reveal, showing the franchise's news cycle is still active [2].

How to Use This Meme

There is no single template. Reaction image formats pair a Pokémon sprite with a caption: Slowpoke reacts to old news with 'Hey guys, did you hear...', Professor Oak macros point out world-building holes, and Gary Oak images taunt the reader. Catchphrase formats swap a name into a fixed phrase, as with 'A Wild [name] Appears!' or '[thing] is super effective'. Fakémon posts usually accept a base sprite, a name that puns on two real Pokémon, and a fake Pokédex entry. Ship names such as 'Rocketshipping' for Jessie and James and 'Pokéshipping' for Ash and Misty follow a standard '[X]shipping' convention listed by Bulbagarden and reused across the community.

Frequently Asked Questions