Surprised Pikachu
Where it came from
A screenshot of Pikachu from the original Pokémon anime (1997), mouth agape in exaggerated shock. Became a meme in late 2018 when people started using it to react to completely predictable consequences.
Pikachu stares at the camera with his mouth in a perfect O, looking absolutely stunned. The joke is that you use him to react to something that was one hundred percent predictable — usually with a three-line setup. "Ignores every warning sign for six months. Builds entire life on a foundation of denial. Is shocked when it collapses." And then Pikachu, shocked.
The humor is performative innocence. The situation is obviously the person's own fault. Pikachu refuses to accept this. His face is doing the "who could have possibly seen this coming" routine, and the answer is always "literally everyone".
Still in heavy use. It's become one of the default "face of disbelief" reactions on Twitter and text messages. Has comfortably replaced older "wait, what?" formats from the early 2010s.
Search interest, over time
↳ data courtesy of google trends
