Creepy Marshtomp

Submission 45,112

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About

Creepy Marshstomp (キモ過ぎる) is a photoshop meme based on a screen-captured image of the blank-eyed Pokémon Marshtomp (an evolved form of the Mudkip) from Nintendo's Generation VI Pokemon RPG titles that began circulating among Japanese Twitter users in November 2014.

Origin

On November 22nd, 2014, the day after the official release of Pokemon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire, Twitter user @kuroarivega^[4] tweeted an illustration of a Mudkip juxtaposed next to the in-game avatar of Marshstomp as portrayed in the game, while noting that the evolved form of the Pokémon had the “eyes of a killer” (shown below). In the first two weeks, the tweet gained over 100 retweets and 60 favorites.

Precursors

Espurr is a Psychic-type Pokémon introduced in the 2013 Nintendo 3DS role-playing video games Pokémon X and Pokémon Y. Upon the titles’ release in October 2013, the character quickly developed a fan following online for its vacant stare and aloofness. Its popularity is reminiscent to that of Snivy, a starter Pokémon introduced in Black and White, that earned the fan name “Smugleaf” for its seemingly conceited facial expression.

Spread

On November 25th, Twitter user @Zenmai_AbsoL^[5] tweeted another screenshot of Marshstomp from the game with a list of several possible scenarios that may have caused Marshstomp’s blank-eyed facial expression, such as failing an exam, losing a video game collection and general feeling of apathy (shown below, left). On November 27th, Twitter user Seo_t^[3]posted a photoshopped image of several Marshstomps on the Splash Mountain log-flume ride at Walt Disney World (shown below, right). In the first week, the tweet gained over 21,200 retweets and 19,700 favorites.

Marshstomp photoshopped into a scene from the ending sequence of the Japanese role-playing game and animated TV series Yo-Kai Watch, which garnered upwards of 4,600 retweets and 3,900 favorites that week (shown below). On November 28th, Redditor Taehoonger posted an Imgur gallery featuring notable instances of photoshopped images to the /r/pokemon^[6]subreddit, which received more than 780 votes (96% upvoted) in less than a week. In the coming days, the Japanese culture news sites RocketNews^[1] and Kotaku^[2] reported on the latest Pokemon photoshop meme trending on Twitter Japan.