Surprised Pikachu

2018reactionclassic

Also known as: Shocked Pikachu

Surprised Pikachu is a 2018 reaction meme from the Pokémon anime, popularized by Tumblr user popokko to illustrate shock at predictable outcomes, featuring the character with wide eyes and an open mouth.

Surprised Pikachu is a reaction image pulled from a 1997 episode of the Pokémon anime, showing Pikachu with wide eyes and an open mouth in a look of shock. First used as a meme on Tumblr in September 2018 by user popokko (Angela), it became the most-used meme of that year by pairing the image with scenarios where someone is "surprised" by a completely predictable outcome. A WIRED investigation into its viral trajectory raised questions about whether its November 2018 popularity spike was connected to the Detective Pikachu film marketing, though no definitive link was established.

TL;DR

A screenshot of Pikachu from the Pokémon anime with a surprised, open-mouthed expression, used to react to predictable outcomes as if they were shocking.

Overview

The meme is a low-resolution screenshot of Pikachu looking directly at the camera with its mouth in an "O" shape and eyes wide open. The image is slightly off-model compared to Pikachu's standard design, partly because the character was in the corner of the frame and not the animators' primary focus6. That slightly rough, non-corporate quality is part of what makes the image work as a meme. It looks organic, almost bootleg, which gives it an authentic internet feel9.

The format follows a simple three-part structure: state a decision, show its obvious consequence, then drop the Surprised Pikachu face as if the outcome were genuinely shocking3. It's sarcastic shorthand for "what did you expect?" and works for everything from personal bad decisions to political disasters. You don't need to know anything about Pokémon to read the expression. The face is pure, uncomplicated shock9.

The source image comes from Season 1, Episode 10 of the Pokémon anime, titled "Bulbasaur and the Hidden Village," which first aired in Japan on June 3, 19975. In the scene, Ash's Butterfree attempts to fight a wild Bulbasaur, which deflects the attack and knocks it out. The camera cuts to the group's reactions, and Pikachu is visible in the lower-right corner with its mouth agape1.

Angela, a Tumblr user known as popokko, captured the screenshot in 2017 while rewatching the original anime series5. She had been collecting screenshots of scenes where Pikachu looked "a bit... off" compared to its usual appearance, originally planning a compilation post6. She kept only the surprised expression screenshot and sat on it for over a year8.

On September 26, 2018, Angela posted the image to Tumblr paired with a self-deprecating joke about intentionally bending something she knew would break, then acting surprised when it snapped5. The post gained over 223,000 notes on Tumblr4. In a later interview, Angela said her approach was entirely spontaneous. She needed a reaction image for an unrelated joke, searched her files, and decided the surprised Pikachu face fit perfectly6.

Origin & Background

Platform
Pokémon anime
Key People
popokko, OLM Inc.
Date
2018-10-25
Year
2018

The source image comes from Season 1, Episode 10 of the Pokémon anime, titled "Bulbasaur and the Hidden Village," which first aired in Japan on June 3, 1997. In the scene, Ash's Butterfree attempts to fight a wild Bulbasaur, which deflects the attack and knocks it out. The camera cuts to the group's reactions, and Pikachu is visible in the lower-right corner with its mouth agape.

Angela, a Tumblr user known as popokko, captured the screenshot in 2017 while rewatching the original anime series. She had been collecting screenshots of scenes where Pikachu looked "a bit... off" compared to its usual appearance, originally planning a compilation post. She kept only the surprised expression screenshot and sat on it for over a year.

On September 26, 2018, Angela posted the image to Tumblr paired with a self-deprecating joke about intentionally bending something she knew would break, then acting surprised when it snapped. The post gained over 223,000 notes on Tumblr. In a later interview, Angela said her approach was entirely spontaneous. She needed a reaction image for an unrelated joke, searched her files, and decided the surprised Pikachu face fit perfectly.

How It Spread

The meme jumped from Tumblr to Reddit within days. On September 30, 2018, it appeared on r/MemeEconomy, earning 880 points. By October 2nd, Facebook's Meme Extreme page picked it up, pulling over 3,900 likes and 4,000 shares. The format grew especially popular on r/me_irl, where a post on October 14th hit 3,900 points and a deliberately blurred version (making a joke about screen-induced eye damage) reached 6,200 points on October 24th.

By mid-October, the template was spreading across multiple subreddits. A Game of Thrones-themed post on r/freefolk broke 20,000 points. A tweet using the format scored over 42,000 points when crossposted to r/me_irl. According to SlangLang, Surprised Pikachu became the most-used meme of 2018 despite only debuting in late September.

The meme's popularity spiked sharply in early November 2018. A data analysis by WIRED's meme-tracking project found that Surprised Pikachu had more views in a single seven-day stretch than any other meme managed throughout the entire year. That peak landed around November 10, just two days before the first Detective Pikachu trailer dropped on November 12.

Platforms

TwitterRedditFacebookInstagramTikToknews publications

Timeline

1997-06-03

The source image for Surprised Pikachu comes from Season 1, Episode 10 of the Pokemon anime, titled "Bulbasaur and the Hidden Village," which first aired in Japan on this date.

2019-03-01

Twitter's automated systems briefly flagged the Surprised Pikachu image as "gratuitous imagery," leading to temporary account suspensions before the bug was resolved.

View on Google Trends

Video

Why acting shocked at predictable outcomes became the internet's go-to reaction.

How to Use This Meme

The standard Surprised Pikachu format follows a three-part structure:

1

Set up a decision or behavior that has an obvious consequence. ("Me: doesn't study for the exam")

2

State the predictable outcome. ("Me: fails the exam")

3

Drop the Surprised Pikachu image as the reaction, implying shock at something entirely foreseeable.

Create Your Own

Cultural Impact

WIRED's year-long meme tracking study ranked Surprised Pikachu as the fourth most popular meme template of 2018, and it held the record for the highest seven-day view count of any meme that year. The study's investigation into whether the meme was an astroturfing campaign for Detective Pikachu brought serious data journalism to meme culture, treating internet images with the same analytical rigor as TV ratings.

The Detective Pikachu connection, while likely coincidental, highlighted how memes and corporate marketing can intersect in unexpected ways. The film's trailer, which dropped November 12, 2018, featured a shot of Pikachu with a similar shocked expression, and the meme's pre-existing popularity almost certainly boosted awareness of the trailer. Some viewers came to the trailer already primed by weeks of Surprised Pikachu posts flooding their feeds.

The March 2019 Twitter suspension incident demonstrated the meme's sheer volume of circulation. The likely explanation, that the image had been mass-reported enough to trigger automated content flags, suggests millions of individual posts containing the image.

Merchandise featuring the Surprised Pikachu expression appeared on platforms like Etsy, including t-shirts, mugs, stickers, and 3D printing files.

Full History

Angela's original Tumblr post was a textbook example of organic meme creation. She wasn't trying to start a format. She had a joke, needed a reaction image, and grabbed a screenshot she'd been holding for a year. The combination of a universally recognizable character and a self-deprecating punchline hit at exactly the right moment. By the time the meme reached Reddit's meme economy traders in late September 2018, the template was already proven.

What made Surprised Pikachu spread faster than most 2018 memes was its zero-explanation barrier. Unlike formats that required knowledge of a specific show, game, or internet community, anyone who had ever seen Pikachu could read the expression instantly. The format was plug-and-play: pick any scenario where someone ignores an obvious warning, add the face, done. Users applied it to exam failures, relationship red flags, political hypocrisy, and corporate disasters with equal ease.

The WIRED investigation into the meme's viral trajectory added an unexpected layer to the story. Data scientist and meme researcher (writing under a WIRED byline) ran a year-long project downloading 400,000 images and classifying meme templates to create a Nielsen-style rating system for internet memes. Surprised Pikachu ranked fourth overall for 2018, behind the Drake format, Expanding Brain, and one other template. But its growth curve stood out. Of the 10 memes with the steepest popularity increases that year, nine peaked within a week or two of going viral. Pikachu took 26 days, more than double the average.

The researcher noted that Pikachu's growth had a "suspiciously shallow gradient" for its first 19 days before suddenly exploding in the final week before the Detective Pikachu trailer. The timing was striking: a Pikachu meme going supernova in the days immediately preceding the marketing launch of a Pikachu movie. The trailer itself even featured a shot of Pikachu with a nearly identical surprised expression. Angela dismissed the marketing theory directly: "I WISH Pokemon hired me as a sleuth marketing coordinator. That seems like a fun job". The meme's initial viral spread clearly predated any public knowledge of the film, and no evidence of coordination was found.

In March 2019, the meme generated a different kind of controversy. On March 16, Twitter user @0xKruzr reported that posting the Surprised Pikachu image triggered automatic account suspensions for "posting gratuitous imagery". Multiple users confirmed the issue, noting that only the original (slightly blurry) version of the image caused suspensions. By March 18, the bug was resolved. A Reddit thread on r/OutOfTheLoop investigating the auto-locks gained over 700 upvotes, with users speculating the image had been mass-reported, tripping Twitter's automated content filters.

By 2019, the meme had moved beyond being just an image format. People started referencing "surprised Pikachu face" in plain text, without attaching the actual picture. The phrase itself became internet shorthand, a rare case of a reaction image generating its own verbal idiom. Brands attempted to use it for social media engagement, with mixed results. A well-timed corporate Surprised Pikachu could read as witty, but most attempts felt forced.

In a 2024 interview with Know Your Meme, Angela shared that she had been creating popular Tumblr content for years before the Pikachu post, with several posts reaching hundreds of thousands of notes. But Surprised Pikachu was her biggest hit by a wide margin. She expressed satisfaction that her most lasting internet contribution connected two of her passions: Nintendo games and comedy.

Fun Facts

Angela captured the screenshot in 2017 but let it sit on her hard drive for over a year before using it in a meme post.

Pikachu's expression in the screenshot is slightly off-model because the character was at the edge of the frame, not the animators' main focus for that shot.

Of the 10 fastest-growing memes in 2018, Surprised Pikachu was the only one that took more than two weeks to reach peak popularity, taking 26 days compared to the typical one to two weeks.

The meme's peak on November 10, 2018 came two days before the first Detective Pikachu trailer, making it impossible for the trailer to have caused the spike.

Twitter's content moderation system briefly auto-suspended accounts for posting the image in March 2019, flagging it as "gratuitous imagery".

Derivatives & Variations

Ultra Surprised Pikachu

Even more exaggerated surprise face

(2019)

Detective Pikachu Surprised

Live-action Pikachu (Ryan Reynolds) version

(2019)

Frequently Asked Questions

Surprised Pikachu

2018reactionclassic

Also known as: Shocked Pikachu

Surprised Pikachu is a 2018 reaction meme from the Pokémon anime, popularized by Tumblr user popokko to illustrate shock at predictable outcomes, featuring the character with wide eyes and an open mouth.

Surprised Pikachu is a reaction image pulled from a 1997 episode of the Pokémon anime, showing Pikachu with wide eyes and an open mouth in a look of shock. First used as a meme on Tumblr in September 2018 by user popokko (Angela), it became the most-used meme of that year by pairing the image with scenarios where someone is "surprised" by a completely predictable outcome. A WIRED investigation into its viral trajectory raised questions about whether its November 2018 popularity spike was connected to the Detective Pikachu film marketing, though no definitive link was established.

TL;DR

A screenshot of Pikachu from the Pokémon anime with a surprised, open-mouthed expression, used to react to predictable outcomes as if they were shocking.

Overview

The meme is a low-resolution screenshot of Pikachu looking directly at the camera with its mouth in an "O" shape and eyes wide open. The image is slightly off-model compared to Pikachu's standard design, partly because the character was in the corner of the frame and not the animators' primary focus. That slightly rough, non-corporate quality is part of what makes the image work as a meme. It looks organic, almost bootleg, which gives it an authentic internet feel.

The format follows a simple three-part structure: state a decision, show its obvious consequence, then drop the Surprised Pikachu face as if the outcome were genuinely shocking. It's sarcastic shorthand for "what did you expect?" and works for everything from personal bad decisions to political disasters. You don't need to know anything about Pokémon to read the expression. The face is pure, uncomplicated shock.

The source image comes from Season 1, Episode 10 of the Pokémon anime, titled "Bulbasaur and the Hidden Village," which first aired in Japan on June 3, 1997. In the scene, Ash's Butterfree attempts to fight a wild Bulbasaur, which deflects the attack and knocks it out. The camera cuts to the group's reactions, and Pikachu is visible in the lower-right corner with its mouth agape.

Angela, a Tumblr user known as popokko, captured the screenshot in 2017 while rewatching the original anime series. She had been collecting screenshots of scenes where Pikachu looked "a bit... off" compared to its usual appearance, originally planning a compilation post. She kept only the surprised expression screenshot and sat on it for over a year.

On September 26, 2018, Angela posted the image to Tumblr paired with a self-deprecating joke about intentionally bending something she knew would break, then acting surprised when it snapped. The post gained over 223,000 notes on Tumblr. In a later interview, Angela said her approach was entirely spontaneous. She needed a reaction image for an unrelated joke, searched her files, and decided the surprised Pikachu face fit perfectly.

Origin & Background

Platform
Pokémon anime
Key People
popokko, OLM Inc.
Date
2018-10-25
Year
2018

The source image comes from Season 1, Episode 10 of the Pokémon anime, titled "Bulbasaur and the Hidden Village," which first aired in Japan on June 3, 1997. In the scene, Ash's Butterfree attempts to fight a wild Bulbasaur, which deflects the attack and knocks it out. The camera cuts to the group's reactions, and Pikachu is visible in the lower-right corner with its mouth agape.

Angela, a Tumblr user known as popokko, captured the screenshot in 2017 while rewatching the original anime series. She had been collecting screenshots of scenes where Pikachu looked "a bit... off" compared to its usual appearance, originally planning a compilation post. She kept only the surprised expression screenshot and sat on it for over a year.

On September 26, 2018, Angela posted the image to Tumblr paired with a self-deprecating joke about intentionally bending something she knew would break, then acting surprised when it snapped. The post gained over 223,000 notes on Tumblr. In a later interview, Angela said her approach was entirely spontaneous. She needed a reaction image for an unrelated joke, searched her files, and decided the surprised Pikachu face fit perfectly.

How It Spread

The meme jumped from Tumblr to Reddit within days. On September 30, 2018, it appeared on r/MemeEconomy, earning 880 points. By October 2nd, Facebook's Meme Extreme page picked it up, pulling over 3,900 likes and 4,000 shares. The format grew especially popular on r/me_irl, where a post on October 14th hit 3,900 points and a deliberately blurred version (making a joke about screen-induced eye damage) reached 6,200 points on October 24th.

By mid-October, the template was spreading across multiple subreddits. A Game of Thrones-themed post on r/freefolk broke 20,000 points. A tweet using the format scored over 42,000 points when crossposted to r/me_irl. According to SlangLang, Surprised Pikachu became the most-used meme of 2018 despite only debuting in late September.

The meme's popularity spiked sharply in early November 2018. A data analysis by WIRED's meme-tracking project found that Surprised Pikachu had more views in a single seven-day stretch than any other meme managed throughout the entire year. That peak landed around November 10, just two days before the first Detective Pikachu trailer dropped on November 12.

Platforms

TwitterRedditFacebookInstagramTikToknews publications

Timeline

1997-06-03

The source image for Surprised Pikachu comes from Season 1, Episode 10 of the Pokemon anime, titled "Bulbasaur and the Hidden Village," which first aired in Japan on this date.

2019-03-01

Twitter's automated systems briefly flagged the Surprised Pikachu image as "gratuitous imagery," leading to temporary account suspensions before the bug was resolved.

View on Google Trends

Video

Why acting shocked at predictable outcomes became the internet's go-to reaction.

How to Use This Meme

The standard Surprised Pikachu format follows a three-part structure:

1

Set up a decision or behavior that has an obvious consequence. ("Me: doesn't study for the exam")

2

State the predictable outcome. ("Me: fails the exam")

3

Drop the Surprised Pikachu image as the reaction, implying shock at something entirely foreseeable.

Create Your Own

Cultural Impact

WIRED's year-long meme tracking study ranked Surprised Pikachu as the fourth most popular meme template of 2018, and it held the record for the highest seven-day view count of any meme that year. The study's investigation into whether the meme was an astroturfing campaign for Detective Pikachu brought serious data journalism to meme culture, treating internet images with the same analytical rigor as TV ratings.

The Detective Pikachu connection, while likely coincidental, highlighted how memes and corporate marketing can intersect in unexpected ways. The film's trailer, which dropped November 12, 2018, featured a shot of Pikachu with a similar shocked expression, and the meme's pre-existing popularity almost certainly boosted awareness of the trailer. Some viewers came to the trailer already primed by weeks of Surprised Pikachu posts flooding their feeds.

The March 2019 Twitter suspension incident demonstrated the meme's sheer volume of circulation. The likely explanation, that the image had been mass-reported enough to trigger automated content flags, suggests millions of individual posts containing the image.

Merchandise featuring the Surprised Pikachu expression appeared on platforms like Etsy, including t-shirts, mugs, stickers, and 3D printing files.

Full History

Angela's original Tumblr post was a textbook example of organic meme creation. She wasn't trying to start a format. She had a joke, needed a reaction image, and grabbed a screenshot she'd been holding for a year. The combination of a universally recognizable character and a self-deprecating punchline hit at exactly the right moment. By the time the meme reached Reddit's meme economy traders in late September 2018, the template was already proven.

What made Surprised Pikachu spread faster than most 2018 memes was its zero-explanation barrier. Unlike formats that required knowledge of a specific show, game, or internet community, anyone who had ever seen Pikachu could read the expression instantly. The format was plug-and-play: pick any scenario where someone ignores an obvious warning, add the face, done. Users applied it to exam failures, relationship red flags, political hypocrisy, and corporate disasters with equal ease.

The WIRED investigation into the meme's viral trajectory added an unexpected layer to the story. Data scientist and meme researcher (writing under a WIRED byline) ran a year-long project downloading 400,000 images and classifying meme templates to create a Nielsen-style rating system for internet memes. Surprised Pikachu ranked fourth overall for 2018, behind the Drake format, Expanding Brain, and one other template. But its growth curve stood out. Of the 10 memes with the steepest popularity increases that year, nine peaked within a week or two of going viral. Pikachu took 26 days, more than double the average.

The researcher noted that Pikachu's growth had a "suspiciously shallow gradient" for its first 19 days before suddenly exploding in the final week before the Detective Pikachu trailer. The timing was striking: a Pikachu meme going supernova in the days immediately preceding the marketing launch of a Pikachu movie. The trailer itself even featured a shot of Pikachu with a nearly identical surprised expression. Angela dismissed the marketing theory directly: "I WISH Pokemon hired me as a sleuth marketing coordinator. That seems like a fun job". The meme's initial viral spread clearly predated any public knowledge of the film, and no evidence of coordination was found.

In March 2019, the meme generated a different kind of controversy. On March 16, Twitter user @0xKruzr reported that posting the Surprised Pikachu image triggered automatic account suspensions for "posting gratuitous imagery". Multiple users confirmed the issue, noting that only the original (slightly blurry) version of the image caused suspensions. By March 18, the bug was resolved. A Reddit thread on r/OutOfTheLoop investigating the auto-locks gained over 700 upvotes, with users speculating the image had been mass-reported, tripping Twitter's automated content filters.

By 2019, the meme had moved beyond being just an image format. People started referencing "surprised Pikachu face" in plain text, without attaching the actual picture. The phrase itself became internet shorthand, a rare case of a reaction image generating its own verbal idiom. Brands attempted to use it for social media engagement, with mixed results. A well-timed corporate Surprised Pikachu could read as witty, but most attempts felt forced.

In a 2024 interview with Know Your Meme, Angela shared that she had been creating popular Tumblr content for years before the Pikachu post, with several posts reaching hundreds of thousands of notes. But Surprised Pikachu was her biggest hit by a wide margin. She expressed satisfaction that her most lasting internet contribution connected two of her passions: Nintendo games and comedy.

Fun Facts

Angela captured the screenshot in 2017 but let it sit on her hard drive for over a year before using it in a meme post.

Pikachu's expression in the screenshot is slightly off-model because the character was at the edge of the frame, not the animators' main focus for that shot.

Of the 10 fastest-growing memes in 2018, Surprised Pikachu was the only one that took more than two weeks to reach peak popularity, taking 26 days compared to the typical one to two weeks.

The meme's peak on November 10, 2018 came two days before the first Detective Pikachu trailer, making it impossible for the trailer to have caused the spike.

Twitter's content moderation system briefly auto-suspended accounts for posting the image in March 2019, flagging it as "gratuitous imagery".

Derivatives & Variations

Ultra Surprised Pikachu

Even more exaggerated surprise face

(2019)

Detective Pikachu Surprised

Live-action Pikachu (Ryan Reynolds) version

(2019)

Frequently Asked Questions