Could Mozart Be Still Alive?

Submission 30,340

About

Could Mozart Still Be Alive? is a question, associated with a conspiracy theory surrounding the whereabouts of a famous Austrian composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Origin

The theory originated from an Easter egg found in the first generation Pokemon games for GameBoy (Red, Green, Blue, Yellow). In the games, there are the legendary Pokemon: Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres. By taking first few letters off each of their names, we get the word MOZART (MOltres, Zapdos, ARTicuno).

Though the Easter Egg had been already known as of September 22nd, 2010^[3], the first known instance of the question being used in this context, was on January 30th, 2013, in a Gaia Forums thread^[1], about whenever or not the Pokemon games are funded by the German government.

Spread

On March 7th, 2013, the earliest known example of a satirical image, featuring various video game Easter eggs, was posted on 4chan's /a/ board^[2]. One of them was about the legendary Pokemon and their connection to Mozart, followed by a question "Could Mozart be still alive?".

The question itself had been ask in other sites, like Reddit^[5], GameFAQs^[6], and Bodybuilding.com^[7]. It is also often used as a punchline in various theories, some of them are usually related to Nintendo, and the video games made by them^[4].