Pico (Newgrounds)

About

Pico is a character created by Newgrounds founder Tom Fulp who servers as the first mascot for the site, and features in a number of flash animations and games, most notably the games Pico's School and Friday Night Funkin'. Every April 30th (sometimes May 1st), Newgrounds users celebrate "Pico Day" in honor of the character.

Origin

Pico's School

In 1999, Tom Fulp created the point-and-click adventure game Pico's School^[1] using Flash software, posting it to his website Newgrounds that year, featuring the first appearance of Pico (full playthrough shown below).

Pico's School is a point-and-click adventure game inspired by school shootings like the Columbine Massacre, which happened the same year as the game's release. The plot of the game sees you play as Pico trying to take out a school shooter, portrayed as a goth kid. The game is excessively violent and shocking throughout, likely contributing to its success.

In the author comments for the re-upload of the game, Fulp wirtes:

Goth kids have shot up your school and it's up to Pico to save the day! This was originally created and shared on Newgrounds in 1999, before I grew out of my edgy teen phase – or did I???

Pico Day

Pico gained a significant fanbase following his premiere in 1999, inspiring original animations, fan art, and games based on the character. For example, on September 10th, 2004, Newgrounds^[7] user MindChamber posted an animation titled "Pico's Unloaded," gaining over 2.1 million views on the site in 16 years and becoming one of the most well-known Pico animations (shown below, re-uploaded to YouTube).

On Fabruary 21st, 2006, Tom Fulp announced that the first "Pico Day," on the Newgrounds Forums^[4] a day meant to celebrate Pico, would take place on April 30th of that year. He also announced a competition, in which he would award various sums of money to the best animations or games featuring Pico uploaded on that day (shown below).

On that date, Fulp re-uploaded the game to Newgrounds,^[2] which has since been played over 7.5 million times as of March 2021. On May 7th, Fulp announced the winners of the competition on Newgrounds,^[5] the first place prize going to a remake of Pico's School (shown below).

Pico Day was celebrated every year on Newground from 2006 to 2019, always in conjunction with a contest including cash prizes. All past Pico Day content is collected on Newgrounds.^[6]

On March 19th, 2021, Pico Day 2021 was announced on Twitter^[9] to be celebrated on May 1st.

Spread

Subsequent Pico Games

On May 1st, 2006, Fulp posted a new game starring Pico to Newgrounds^[3] titled "Pico vs. Uberkids," a rock-paper-scissors type game combined with Russian Roulette that continues the violent themes of the first game (playthrough shown below)

There are at least 14^[8] games starring or featuring Pico, including two Pico Sim Date games, Pico vs. Bear, and a fighting game called Newgrounds Rumble featuring a number of Newgrounds characters.

Friday Night Funkin' Fame

On December 11th, 2020, Newgrounds rhythm-game Friday Night Funkin' added Pico to the game as an antagonist, along with a number of original songs (shown below).

On December 13th, Twitter^[10] user @eyebaus_moved posted an original piece of artwork depiction Pico and the protagonist of the game, known as "bf," kissing bashfully, garnering over 5,000 likes and 650 retweets in three months (shown below).

Later that day, @ninja_muffin99, the creator of Friday Night Funkin', tweeted, "LMAO NEW LORE PICO AND FRIDAY NIGHT FUNKIN BOYFRIEND USED TO BE DATING THIS IS OFFICIAL LORE LMAO." Although many believe the tweet is a joke, fans ran with it and started making more artwork featuring the two and simping for Pico on sites like Newgrounds (examples shown below from December 2020).

The ship continued throughout early 2021, spreading to /r/FridayNightFunkin and across social media in general.

On March 17th, 2021, Twitter^[11] user @kabi_dot_jpeg posted a series of screenshots from Pico's School depicting Pico killing a student along with the text, "'OMG I LOVE PICO HE'S SO CUTE AND ADORABLE UWU'" criticizing the shipdom and Pico appreciation in general, garnering over 11,000 likes and 1,500 retweets in two days (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References