Vomiting Water Puffer Fish — Cartoon puffer fish vomiting a stream of blue water on a white background

Vomiting Water Puffer Fish

2019image macroclassic

Published October 4, 2026

Vomiting Water Puffer Fish is a photograph of a nontoxic puffer fish spitting a stream of hot spring water, originally published by a Japanese newspaper in March 2019. The image went viral on Japanese Twitter and spawned a wave of lookalike photos, cartoons and a widely shared Irasutoya illustration riffing on the same pose.

japanese internet memes animal memes viral photo memes reaction memes exploitable templates

Overview

Vomiting Water Puffer Fish is a reaction photo of a plump, slightly bewildered puffer fish shooting a thin jet of water out of its mouth. The original shot came from a Japanese news story about nontoxic puffer fish kept in hot spring water, and the fish's deadpan expression paired with the stream of liquid turned a straightforward wildlife photo into a reusable visual joke1.

Once the image hit Twitter, users started pairing it with photos of other animals, people and objects caught mid-spit, mid-drip or mid-splash, treating the puffer fish as the ur-example of a specific posture2. The follow-up contributions ranged from side-by-side comparisons to full illustrations, and the Japanese stock art site Irasutoya cemented the format by publishing its own cartoon version of a puffer fish exhaling seawater to inflate itself3.

Origin & Background

Platform
Tokyo Shimbun (source photo) / Twitter (viral spread)
Creator
Unknown
Date
2019

On March 6th, 2019, the Tokyo Shimbun website tokyo-np.co.jp published an article titled "Nontoxic puffer fish in hot spring water" (translated from Japanese), which included the now-famous photo of a puffer fish spitting up spring water1. The piece was a short local-interest story about captive fugu bathing in warm water, and the accompanying image was initially just a quirky illustration of the article's subject.

Four days later, on March 10th, 2019, the Twitter account @oyakode_manaboo posted the image along with a link back to the Tokyo Shimbun article2. That repost, rather than the original news page, is what kicked the picture into meme circulation on Japanese social media.

Loading tweet...

How It Spread

The @oyakode_manaboo tweet from March 10th, 2019 pulled more than 42,000 retweets and 81,000 likes in under two weeks, which is where most of the format's reach came from2. Replies and quote tweets quickly filled up with other photos of animals and objects mid-spit, treating the puffer fish shot as a template rather than a one-off.

On March 14th, 2019, the Japanese stock illustration site Irasutoya published a cartoon of a puffer fish exhaling seawater, described in the artwork's notes as an image "drawn to make the body look bigger" (translated from Japanese)3. The same day, the official Irasutoya Twitter account tweeted the illustration, drawing more than 28,000 retweets and 55,000 likes in a week and giving the meme a reusable, royalty-free version4. Know Your Meme later archived the whole chain of events, from the Tokyo Shimbun article through the Irasutoya illustration, as a single entry5.

Timeline

2019-03-06

Tokyo Shimbun publishes the article "Nontoxic puffer fish in hot spring water" with the original photo of the fish spitting water[1].

2019-03-10

Twitter user @oyakode_manaboo reposts the photo with a link to the article, triggering the viral wave[2].

2019-03-14

Irasutoya uploads a cartoon illustration of the puffer fish spitting seawater and tweets it from its official account[3][4].

2019-03

Know Your Meme documents the format as "Vomiting Water Puffer Fish"[5].

Loading tweet...

How to Use This Meme

The format typically pairs the puffer fish photo with another image of a creature, person or object captured in a similar water-spitting pose, often as a side-by-side comparison or a quote-tweet. Users also commonly swap the fish for cartoon stand-ins, like the Irasutoya illustration, when they want the same joke in a cleaner graphic style3.

Frequently Asked Questions