Scared Luigi

Submission 25,102

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

About

Scared Luigi refers to a viral E3 2019 photograph of Nintendo character Luigi appearing to be shying away from two women approaching for a photo. Online, the photograph has gained popularity as an exploitable, often used to illustrate fear, particularly that of social interactions.

Origin

On June 12th, 2019, gaming journalist Juan Rubio (@MrDawe) posted a photograph of two women approaching a statue of Nintendo character Luigi as he appears in the upcoming Luigi's Mansion 3 video game, made at the E3 2019 (shown below, left),^[1] and comparing it to a memorable image of The Simpsons character Mr. Smithers shying away from two strippers. Later on the same day, Rubio posted another photograph of the women posing with the statue (shown below, right).^[2]

Spread

On the same day, the image was reposted to Reddit several times, including posts in /r/me_irl^[3] and /r/Gamingcirclejerk^[4] subreddits. On June 13th, 2019, Redditor Akashsiri posted the first known meme based on the image to /r/memes subreddit, garnering over 5,800 upvotes in two weeks (shown below).^[5]

In the following days, the image has been used as an object labeling meme format in multiple subreddits, including /r/dankmemes^[6] and /r/egg_irl. ^[7]