Parody Nintendo Direct Leaks

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About

Parody Nintendo Direct Leaks refers to a series of photoshops and edits parodying leaked games and game announcement lists for upcoming Nintendo Direct streams or showcases. The fake leaks often resemble poorly taken photographs of internal documents listing all the announcements for a specified Nintendo Direct with one or several obviously fake games listed for the announcement. The parody leaks first began appearing online as early as 2014, becoming increasingly popularized in the following years, often during times when Nintendo Direct leaks were announced. The leaks sometimes crossover with the My Uncle Works at Nintendo meme.

Origin

The earliest known parody Nintendo Direct leak was posted to Tumblr^[8] by user captain-lelouch^[7] on January 12th, 2015, and then reposted to Cheezburger^[1] the following day. The photograph shows a fake list of games to be announced at the January 19th, 2015, Nintendo Direct performance, each game featuring a comedic description underneath its title (shown below). The post gained over 100 upvotes and 300 downvotes in nine years.

Spread

Memes depicting fake games to be announced during Nintendo Directs became increasingly popularized over the following years. On September 22nd, 2021, X^[2] user @smugry posted a fake screenshot of a game titled "Super Mario C-m Factory," writing, "I've been sent this a Nintendo Direct leak from a very reliable source, things are going to be getting a little messy for Mario," garnering over 5,900 likes in three years (shown below, left).

On May 31st, 2022, X^[3] user @little_paisano posted a fake list of announcements, writing, "broooooo this nintendo direct leak be crazy," garnering over 29,000 likes in two years (shown below, right). On June 6th, ResetEra^[4] user Regiruler started a thread to collect examples of parody Nintendo Direct leaks, garnering around 40 replies in two years.

On November 2nd, 2023, a version of the meme was posted to /r/casualnintendo^[5] that garnered over 1,900 upvotes in seven months (shown below).

On June 10th, 2024, X^[6] user @operagxofficial posted a Nintendo Direct leak parody featuring a list full of Hollow Knight: SIlksong release announcements, garnering over 18,000 likes in under a day (shown below).