Fireblu

About

FIREBLU is a pulsating blue, red and black texture that appears in the 1993 video game Doom. A shaded blue background encrusted with bright-red veins, the texture became notorious in the mapmaking and modding communities, and later within the Doom fandom over its garishness, and has been a subject of memes and references since the early 2020s.

Origin

On December 10th, 1993, the first-person shooter video game Doom was released.^[1] In the game, a texture named FIREBLU, a shaded blue background with pulsating red inclusion, is used. The texture was derived from an unused stone texture that has been recolored (texture and unused files shown below).^[2]

The earliest thread dedicated to the use of the FIREBLU texture was created by Doomworld^[3] forum user DeathevokationN on August 12th, 2010. In the opening post, DeatevokatioN refers to the texture as "easily the most awesome texture ever made in any game ever made," and requests others to share examples of its use in their custom maps (opening post and reply^[4] by another user shown below, left and right).

Spread

On April 8th, 2018, Tumblr^[5] user crabwithglasses posted the earliest discovered piece of fan labor dedicated to the texture, posting a gijinka drawing of "FIREBLU-chan" that received 37 likes and reblogs in five years (shown below).

FIREBLU achieved more recognition in the Doom community in 2020 as it became a subject of memes and references. For example, on September 27th, 2020, Redditor Mr-Whoops posted an image of the FIREBLU theme set on his mobile device which received 40 upvotes in /r/doom^[6] in six months (shown below, left). On November 12th, 2020, Redditor UltimateCraneo posted a Ladies, One at a Time meme referencing the texture in the /r/okbuddydoom^[7] subreddit, where it received over 250 upvotes in three years (shown below, right).

Through the early 2020s, FIREBLU maintained popularity as the subject of memes and references within the Doom fandom For example, on December 22nd, 2022, Redditor quitepotato posted a demonstration of FIREBLU flashlight modded into Doom 3 that received over 480 upvotes in /r/doom^[8] in one year (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References