Potato Girl

2013character memeclassic

Published September 23, 2026

Potato Girl is the fandom nickname for Sasha Braus, an Attack on Titan cadet caught munching a stolen potato during a Survey Corps roll call in the anime's third episode in April 2013. The scene turned a minor recruit into a lasting fandom mascot, spawning a devoted subreddit, birthday tributes from her Japanese voice actress, and even an official Denny's cameo.

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Overview

Potato Girl is what Attack on Titan fans started calling cadet Sasha Braus after a scene where she gets caught eating a stolen potato in the middle of a formal Survey Corps roll call1. The joke centers on her wide-eyed, cheeks-stuffed reaction and her panicked attempt to defuse the situation by tearing the potato in half and offering the drill instructor a piece3.

The nickname stuck as shorthand for Sasha's whole personality: rural accent, bottomless appetite, terrified of authority yet weirdly earnest. Fans use screenshots of the potato scene as reaction images for hunger, food theft and being caught doing something dumb, and Urban Dictionary entries even repurpose the term to describe any girl with a comically strong devotion to potatoes4. The character became a fandom mascot well beyond her small role in the early manga.

Origin & Background

Platform
Attack on Titan anime (source) / YouTube and Reddit (viral spread)
Creator
Hajime Isayama; fandom-originated nickname
Date
2013

The potato scene comes from chapter 15 of Hajime Isayama's Attack on Titan manga, titled One by One, in which drill instructor Keith Shadis notices new recruit Sasha Braus chewing on a stolen potato while he questions the trainees3. She splits it in half, offers him a piece, and gets ordered to run laps until she collapses. Other recruits then start calling her the potato girl.

The anime adaptation aired the scene on April 20th, 2013 in episode 3 of the first season. Two days later, on April 22nd, YouTuber Rawr Taiga uploaded the clip, and it went on to pull in more than 150,000 views in its first two years1. That upload is the moment English-speaking fandom really latched onto the moniker.

How It Spread

On April 24th, 2013, just two days after the YouTube clip went up, Reddit user Dusthunter0 created the /r/potatogirl subreddit as a hangout for Sasha Braus fans, which pushed past 2,800 subscribers by September 20153. Fan art, reaction gifs and potato jokes kept the community active as the anime rolled out.

The nickname eventually crossed over to the people who made the show. On July 26th, Yū Kobayashi, the Japanese voice actress for Sasha, posted a photo of two potatoes to mark her character's birthday, and the tweet pulled in more than 1,200 retweets and 1,300 favorites in the two years after3.

The strangest crossover came on August 15th, when a Twitter user named Weepy sent Denny's a fan illustration of Sasha holding two potato halves and suggested she become the chain's mascot. Denny's official account replied with a mash-up putting a drooling Sasha over one of its Grand Slam breakfast plates, a moment Kotaku wrote up under the headline that Potato Girl loves their hash browns2.

Frequently Asked Questions