What is Professor Oak?

Professor Oak, also called Advice Oak, is an Advice Animal image macro that places the Pokemon professor's face on a color wheel background and uses top-and-bottom captions to joke about Pokemon's internal logic.

Where did Professor Oak come from?

The earliest documented example was posted on December 7, 2010, by Forumotion user St2udent to the Penro board in a thread called 'Pokememes: Gotta spam 'em all!'

What does Professor Oak mean?

Captions point out Pokemon video game logic and portray Oak himself as a jerk, such as forgetting the player's name or sending a child to capture wild animals alone.

How do you use Professor Oak?

Users drop Oak's headshot on the color wheel template and add a two-line caption, typically a question or observation about something that makes no sense in the Pokemon world.

Is Professor Oak still popular?

The template is a classic Advice Animal that peaked between 2011 and 2014; a Quick Meme variant from October 2014 kept collecting shares for years afterward, reaching close to 8,000.

Professor Oak

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Published November 9, 2026

Professor Oak, also called Advice Oak, is an Advice Animal image macro that uses the face of the Pokemon professor against a color wheel background to mock video game logic and the character's own sketchy behavior toward players. The format first surfaced on a small Forumotion board in December 2010 and spread through FunnyJunk, Reddit and MemeCenter across 2011 and 2012. By 2014, Quick Meme users were still cranking out new captions, including a popular 'Successful Oak' crossover with Success Kid.

advice animals pokemon image macro memes gaming early 2010s memes

Overview

Advice Oak sticks a head shot of Professor Oak over the standard Advice Animal color wheel and loads top and bottom captions that call out plot holes in the Pokemon games3. Typical setups needle the player, the professor or the world itself: Oak forgetting his own grandson's name, sending a ten-year-old into tall grass with a single Rattata, or asking a trainer who they are after a lifetime of research2. The humor leans on the gap between the series' wholesome tone and how little sense its rules make when you stop to think.

Variants kept the same template but swapped the joke angle. Some entries made Oak the straight man to the player's absurd behavior, while others treated him as the real villain who sends children to catch wild animals for a living3. Crossovers with other Advice Animals, including a 'Successful Oak' remix that borrowed the Success Kid pose, showed up on MemeCenter by late 20124.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Forumotion (Penro board) / Reddit (viral spread)

Date

2010

Game Freak introduced Professor Oak in Pokemon Red and Blue, released in Japan in 1996 and in Western markets in 1998, where he hands the player their first Pokemon and a Pokedex6. The meme format is a fan creation and its true author is not confirmed. The earliest documented example found online was posted on December 7, 2010, by user St2udent in a Penro forum thread called 'Pokememes: Gotta spam 'em all!' on Forumotion, which is also the first known use of the name 'Advice Oak'5.

The template followed the standard Advice Animal layout that had already taken hold through Advice Dog, so adoption needed no explainer. Captions called out Pokemon's internal contradictions, which gave the format an endless supply of material drawn from decades of games.

How It Spread

Through 2011 the image migrated to the big meme-creator sites. On September 24, 2011, FunnyJunk user pokefunnies uploaded a Pokemon-logic version that leaned into the game's rules problems2. By mid-2012 the format had reached Reddit, where user ipodbeast posted a three-pack of Advice Oak macros to r/pokemon on July 28, 2012, picking up 261 upvotes and 16 comments over the following half year1.

MemeCenter and Quick Meme carried the second wave. On October 12, 2012, MemeCenter user unparalleled uploaded 'Successful Oak,' a mash-up with the Success Kid fist pose that passed 800 likes over roughly eight years4. On October 9, 2014, an anonymous Quick Meme entry titled 'Naming Rivals' approached 8,000 shares in six years, keeping the template alive well after the Advice Animal boom had cooled7.

Timeline

2010-12-07

User St2udent posts two Advice Oak variants to the Penro forum on Forumotion, the earliest documented use of the format and the name.

2011-09-24

FunnyJunk user pokefunnies uploads a Professor Oak macro about Pokemon's game logic.

2012-07-28

Redditor ipodbeast posts a three-pack of Advice Oak macros to r/pokemon, which picks up 261 upvotes.

2012-10-12

MemeCenter user unparalleled uploads 'Successful Oak,' a crossover with Success Kid that passes 800 likes.

2014-10-09

An anonymous Quick Meme variant titled 'Naming Rivals' is uploaded and approaches 8,000 shares over the next six years.