John Darksoul / John Dark Soul

About

John Darksoul or John Dark Soul is a joke name given to the player character of the Dark Souls series of video games, imagining if the customizable, silent player character of the games were a scripted protagonist akin to generic, playable main characters in other AAA video games. Over time, the meme evolved such that humorous customizations of the player character were dubbed "John Darksoul" and posted with the copypasta, "That's John Darksoul, the titular protagonist of Dark Souls."

Origin

In 2013, Tumblr user ohnoproblems^[1] made a text post titled "John Darksoul has had a hard life," including several action-hero cliché lines of dialogue with Dark Souls references shoehorned in. The post gained over 640 notes in eight years (shown below). It appears they first made the post on another account and reblogged it to ohnoproblems on November 30th, 2013.

On February 22nd, 2014, ohnoproblems wrote, "John Darksoul is simply a joke that poses the hypothetical that Dark Souls was yet another tired and bland AAA offering with a default doomguy protagonist on a quest to finally be allowed to feel Manly Emotions because the women he has ownership over in his life have been robbed of even more agency by someone who isn’t him."^[2]

Spread

In 2016, Tumblr user animedads posted a picture of the player character wearing Smough's helm, Catarina armor, Havel's leggings and wielding the Moonlight Greatsword and Bonewheel shield. They captioned the picture, "it’s 'Dark Soul,' the famous protagonist of the hit franchise, Dark Souls! known for his famous quotes: 'everything is darkest before the soul' and 'every soul has its dark.'" The account was deactivated, but the post was reblogged by user addiemonster on April 20th, 2016.^[3] It went on to gain over 71,000 notes in roughly five years (shown below). The picture saw reposts on iFunny^[4] and Reddit,^[5] with some renaming the character "John Darksoul."

This specific iteration of "John Darksoul" went on to become a frequent joke in the Dark Souls community, appearing in photoshops and video jokes about the games. For example, on September 23rd, 2021, YouTuber nicemyth posted a video of themselves playing a modded version of Dark Souls III as "John Darksoul" (shown below).

Others have made memes in which they referred to the character on the game's boxes as "John Darksoul." For example, Redditor SaidTheEmu posted a meme in /r/shittydarksouls^[6] on July 30th, 2021, gaining over 4,100 points (shown below, left). On October 9th, iFunny user crispyGoCommitDie posted a 3D rendering of "John Darksoul" at an AMA booth (shown below, right).^[7]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References