Eats a Lemon and Dies

Submission 24,555

Part of a series on Viral Videos. [View Related Entries]

About

Eats Lemon and Dies is a series of short clips in which various characters eat a lemon, reacting to it by producing a sour face and a grunt ("dying"). The clips are variations of the viral video "Sonic Eats a Lemon and Dies" and usually utilize three Discord emojis of a character and a lemon emoji to form the narrative.

Origin

On April 9th, 2021, Twitter^[1] user @WickedWizardKat created a short clip by using several Discord screenshots of three Sonic the Hedgehog emojis and a lemon emoji. In the clip, Sonic "eats" the lemon and reacts to the taste by producing a sour face and a grunt. The clip was presumably posted to an unknown Discord server.

On April 26th, 2021, Twitter^[2] user @Sonic_Prateado made the earliest public repost of the image, with the tweet gaining 7 retweets and 19 likes. Later on the same day, YouTuber^[3] Oliver Teesdale reposted the video, with the upload gaining over 880,000 views in two months (shown below).

Spread

In late April 2021, the video received viral spread online. On April 26th, 2021, Redditor Darkshreaders3 reposted it to the /r/SonicTheHedgehog^[4] subreddit where it gained over 360 upvotes in two months. On April 30th, Twitter^[5] account @TheFunny_mp4 reposted the video, with the upload gaining over 372,000 views, 11,100 retweets and 51,900 likes in two months.

On April 24th, 2021, two days prior to the original clip's first public uploads, YouTuber^[6] Soggy Memes posted the earliest edit based on it (shown below, left). The video received over 212,000 views in two months. On April 29th, 2021, YouTuber^[7] Aditya Kumbhare posted the first derivative meme within the format, "Tails eats a lemon and dies." The video gained over 449,000 views in two months (shown below, right).

Starting in early May 2021, multiple versions of the meme were posted by users on YouTube. For example, on May 5th, YouTuber^[8] Opzcaliber posted a version that gained over 397,000 views in one month (shown below, left). On May 20th, YouTuber^[9] SingNO2 posted a meme that gained over 277,700 views in three weeks (shown below, right).

Additionally, versions in which animation was used instead of Discord screenshots also appeared. On June 8th, 2021, YouTuber^[10]^[11] Lessons in Meme Culture reported on the spread of the meme.