Pizza Rat

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About

Pizza Rat is the nickname given to a rodent that became an overnight Internet sensation after it was spotted carrying down a slice of pizza down the stairs of a New York City subway platform in September 2015.

Origin

On September 18th, 2015, New York City standup comedian Matt Little recorded a video of a rat dragging a slice of pizza down the stairs at the First Avenue L train station in Manhattan. On September 21st, Little uploaded the video to his Instagram and YouTube accounts with a bemusing description comparing the rodent to Master Splinter from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (shown below). Within the first 24 hours, the video garnered over two million views.

A rat tries to bring slice of pizza down subway station stairs. OR Master Splinter bringing food home to feed the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

Spread

Also on September 21st, Matt Little submitted the YouTube video to Reddit's /r/NYC subreddit^[9], where the post garnered more than 800 points (95% upvoted) and 120 comments in less than 24 hours. Within the hour of the video entering online circulation via Instagram, YouTube and Facebook, a novelty Twitter account assuming the voice of the now-famous rodent was launched under the handle @NYCPizzaRat^[6].

News Media Coverage

Throughout the day, Matt Little's video was picked up by Gawker^[4] in an article titled "Pizza Rat, Pizza Rat, I Love You," followed by a number of other New York City-centric blogs and viral media news sites, including DNAInfo^[15], Gothamist^[5], VOX^[11], Cheezburger^[20], BuzzFeed^[16], CNN^[12] and Mashable^[17], among many others.

Various Examples

Soon, a handful of parodies and tributes to the Pizza Rat began surfacing on popular image-sharing sites like Imgur and Giphy, including image macros, animated GIFs, demotivational posters and fan art illustrations.