No Arms No Legs Girl In Hospital

Submission 44,457

Part of a series on Danbooru. [View Related Entries]

About

No Arms No Legs Girl In Hospital, also known as Quad Amputee Girl In Hospital, is a manga style drawing of a girl in a hospital bed who has bandages around her face, a tube going into her mouth and no arms or no legs, seemingly in a coma after an imagined accident. She is also surrounded by flowers, a teddy bear and a note that reads, "Get Well Soon!" The image was originally uploaded to Danbooru in 2009, and usage of the image became viral on Twitter and Instagram in 2022 and 2023, paired with captions about situations that made people defeated. Additionally, an edited image of the girl surfaced in June 2023, showing her smiling and with all of her limbs.

Origin

On August 12th, 2009, @evazion posted art created by @s_zenith_lee to Danbooru.^[1] The image showed a girl with no limbs in a hospital bed, surrounded by flowers, a teddy bear, and bandages covering her face (censored image shown below). The artist Danbooru^[1] relayed the inspiration for the image in their post, writing:

A while ago, there was a local girl who was hit by a truck, and ended up losing both her legs and one arm. Visiting victims with this kind of injuries would be pretty awkward -- since my cynical self thinks that telling her "get well soon" would be a little pointless.

I wanted to draw a pic with this theme for quite some time. The last pic inspired me to draw this as a continuation. I kid myself that I've used up all the blood in the last picture, that's why this one is so clean. I also always find stuffed animals a little unsettling.

Last but not least, flower bouquet is a b*tch to draw. Reminds me of the tedious drawing lessons I had when I was younger.

Spread

Some of the oldest discovered uses of the image were on 4chan in 2014, the earliest known posted to the /tg/^[2] board on February 18th, 2014. On November 29th, a thread started on /a/^[14] with the "No Arms No Legs Girl In Hospital" image. The last response in the thread was a new image of the girl with cyborg limbs, the teddy bear, the "Get Well Soon" note and a cigarette in her hands (shown below). It is currently the first discovered upload of the image. The image is supposedly a reference to Deux Ex, a futuristic RPG game, and was requested by KYM user stanpeebles.

I actually requested the pic of the girl with Deux Ex augs in a 4chan drawthread, probably on /v/ or /vg/, because the original bummed me out so much and I needed a happy ending. I have a WIP of the one where she has the cigarette and an alternate, more sketchy styled one as well, apparently saved on November 30th 2013. I couldn't find a 4chan archive that went back that far but if anybody wants to go off of that it would be a good starting point. I can upload the alts as well.

The image gained increased memetic usage in the late 2010s. For instance, on December 30th, 2019, Twitter^[3] user @DJHIMERA wrote, "Went through 7 pages of a danbooru fetish art account just to find this pic in HQ," gaining over 50 likes in four years (shown below, left).

The earliest discovered viral post that used the image had pink, Instagram Story text reading, "I'm feeling sexy and free!" (shown below, right). It is currently unknown who the original creator was, however, the earliest sharing of it was posted by Instagram^[4] user @intellectual_incel_group on January 8th, 2022. Other reposts also surfaced on Reddit^[5] and Twitter^[6] in early 2022.

Despite usage in early 2022, the image didn't become a notable meme until viral tweets spread in late 2022, the first of which was posted by Twitter^[7] user @_matthewlawson on November 11th, 2022, pairing it with a caption about coming down from a drug-induced trip, gaining roughly 5,000 likes in seven months (shown below, left). On the next day, November 12th, Twitter^[8] user @noIIybabe tweeted, "This picture gets me every single time bc what the fuck happened," gaining roughly 72,400 likes in seven months (shown below, right).

Twitter^[8] user @noIIybabe's tweet inspired many viral quote retweets, such as one posted by Twitter^[9] user @memegodmel on November 15th, 2022, that referenced the Eating Without YouTube meme.

The image became increasingly viral on Twitter in early 2023, via more viral tweets^[10]^[11] that captioned it. Inspired by the trend, on June 13th, 2023, Twitter^[12] user @nickidominantt tweeted an edited version in which the girl was smiling and had all of her limbs back, captioning it, "SHE RECOVERED!!!! 🎉🥳," gaining roughly 123,700 likes in one day (shown below, left). The new image inspired more memes, such as one posted by Instagram^[13] user @joan.of.arca on June 13th, which received roughly 12,200 likes in one day (shown below, right).

On June 24th, 2024, YouTuber skumbagovich posted a video about the piece, calling it "Limbless Anime Girl," gaining over 44,000 views in less than 24 hours (shown below).