Fiddlebert

About

Fiddlebert is a fake character and Mandela Effect said to be from the 2001 Pikmin game depicted as a green-tinted version of the player character, Captain Olimar, who speaks Lithuanian and was purportedly removed from re-releases of the game. The character was created by Redditor u/Cabbage-426 in late June 2023 leading up to the release of Pikmin 4, inspiring numerous memes claiming that the character is real and expanding on his lore, with many painting him as a racist and antisemite. Fiddlebert is similar to other fake characters like Graggle Simpson and Scripulous Fingore.

Origin

On June 27th, 2023, /u/Cabbage-426 posted an image macro to /r/Pikmin^[1] titled, "I'm really curious to see what any other gamecube players thought of him, I feel like he's not very talked about on here for whatever reason." The image macro (shown below) asks if anyone remembers the second captain from Pikmin, Fiddlebert, a green-tinted Captain Olimar who would sometimes speak Lithuanian. The meme also claims the poster didn't like Fiddlebert and assumes Nintendo didn't either, claiming he was removed from the re-releases of the game. The post gained over 1,700 upvotes in two months.

Fiddlebert's lore was expanded by OP in the comments of the post. For example, /u/Cabbage-426 commented^[2] that some of his jokes "did not age very well" and that they "can't believe some of the shit he said was normalized in 2001," writing in a later comment^[3] that he made "antisemitic" jokes. Other commenters claimed that Fiddlebert would use the word "fiddle" in many of his jokes, with catchphrases including "fiddlesticks" and "fiddle me this."

Spread

Memes about Fiddlebert, largely acting like he existed in Pikmin, continued to spread online over the following weeks, largely on /r/Pikmin. On July 2nd, 2023, /u/-GI_BRO- posted a Photoshop to /r/Pikmin^[4] depicting Fiddlebert, asking, "Is there a lore reason why Fiddlebert only uses white Pikmin," garnering over 1,100 upvotes in two months (shown below, left). On July 7th, Destructoid^[5] published an article investigating the meme. On July 13th, /u/NotVerySorry posted an image to /r/Pikmin^[6] of the Pikmin GameCube disc, which has a green color scheme, writing, "If Fiddlebert 'Isn’t real' Explain This," garnering over 1,300 upvotes in two months (shown below, right).

On July 14th, YouTuber^[8] jl bros. and family posted a compilation of Fiddlebert memes, garnering over 20,000 views in two months. On July 16th, /u/Nell2002 posted a meme depicting Fiddlebert to /r/Pikmin^[7] that gained over 690 upvotes in two months (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References