Warning: this article contains spoilers for Dragon Ball manga and anime series.

About

Piccolo vs. Spaghetti refers to a photograph of toy Dragon Ball character Piccolo stopping a stack of spaghetti from hitting toy character Gohan. The photograph is a humorous reference to a memorable scene from the Dragon Ball manga and anime and has been used as an object labeling meme.

Origin

On June 18th, 2019, Japanese photographer Tatsuya Tanaka posted a photograph of toy Dragon Ball character Piccolo stopping a stack of spaghetti from hitting character Gohan behind his back (shown below, left).^[1] The photograph references a memorable scene from Dragon Ball manga and anime series in which Piccolo saves Gohan from a powerful attack at the cost of his own life (shown below, right).^[2]

Spread

On July 5th, 2019, Redditor phaaze123 posted the first known meme based on the image to /r/memes subreddit where it gained over 2,700 upvotes in one (shown below, left).^[3] On the same day, Redditor chill1208 reposted the image to /r/MemeTemplatesOfficial, receiving over 3,400 upvotes.^[4] Also on July 5th, Redditor xenos5282 posted another meme based on the templates to /r/MemeEconomy, receiving over 43,700 upvotes in one month (shown below, right).^[5]

In the following weeks, the format received significant spread on Reddit, with notable examples posted in /r/dank_meme,^[6] /r/animemes ^[7] and other subreddits.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References