# Zalgo Zalgo is an internet legend about a cosmic entity that corrupts text, images, and reality itself, usually rendered through strings of letters buried under stacked Unicode diacritics that pile into glitchy vertical columns. The character started as a visual joke in modified newspaper comics in 2004 before mutating into a decade-long creepypasta mythology with its own ritual phrase, 'He comes.' ## Origin The character was invented by Something Awful goon and cartoonist Shmorky, who on July 27, 2004 uploaded a batch of edited syndicated comics (Nancy and Archie among them) to his personal site, two of which included the word 'Zalgo'[1]. Those strips lacked the dripping-tentacle look that later came to define the visuals; Zalgo was initially just a name whispered into otherwise ordinary panels. Shmorky later recounted the origin of the character in an August 22, 2009 post on the Something Awful Forums[6], by which point the broader internet had already grafted an elaborate mythology onto his gag. - **Platform:** Personal website / Something Awful (viral spread) - **Creator:** Shmorky - **Date:** 2004 ## Overview Zalgo shows up two ways: visually, as 'Zalgoified' characters whose eyes have gone black and whose mouths split open around a creeping tentacled mass, and typographically, as readable words buried under so many stacked combining diacritics that the text drips down the page in a glitching column. Web developer David Higgins documented the typographic trick as an abuse of a Unicode feature that lets any character carry an unlimited stack of superscript and subscript marks[5]. The entity has no canonical story, only ritual catchphrases: 'he comes,' 'he waits behind the wall,' 'he who sings the song that ends the earth.' Fan sites like Zalgo Approaches collected these as if cataloguing real manifestations, warning that 'ZALGO WILL SING THE SONG THAT ENDS THE EARTH'[2]. The TV Tropes entry frames Zalgo as a corruption of innocence and of reality itself, which is why edits tend to target the most wholesome source material possible: Nancy, Archie, Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes[8]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Zalgo? Zalgo is a fictional cosmic entity associated with scrambled Unicode text and comic edits of innocent characters with blacked-out eyes and black tentacles[8]. ### Where did Zalgo come from? Something Awful cartoonist Shmorky coined the name in two edited Nancy and Archie comics uploaded to his site on July 27, 2004[1]. ### What does Zalgo mean? There is no canonical definition; fan writing describes Zalgo as 'the Nezperdian hive-mind of chaos' and 'he who waits behind the wall'[7]. ### How do you use Zalgo? The typographic effect is produced by stacking combining diacritical Unicode marks on each letter so the text appears to drip down the page[5]. ### Is Zalgo still popular? Zalgo text is still a stock gag for haunted-looking messages, and the character stayed a recurring reference on Creepypasta Wiki and single-topic blogs through the 2010s[3]. ## References 1. [http://shmorky.com/parodies/parodies.html]() 2. [https://web.archive.org/web/20090405195957/http://zalgoapproaches.com/]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/zalgo]() 4. [https://grimreviews.blogspot.com/2008/12/zalgo-comic-chronicles.html]() 5. [http://davidhiggins.me/unicode/zalgo.html]() 6. [https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3124526&userid=31459&perpage=40&pagenumber=2#post364833484]() 7. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Zalgo&defid=3724922]() 8. [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Zalgo]() 9. [https://web.archive.org/web/20111008212938/https://chanarchive.org/4chan/b/9810/zalgo-story]() 10. [https://www.somethingawful.com/flash-tub/zalgo-cartoon/]() 11. [https://zalgo.thecomicseries.com]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/zalgo Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library