Stardew Valley Grandpa Dying In Bed

Submission 24,421

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About

Stardew Valley Grandpa Dying In Bed is an image from the intro cutscene of the 2016 video game Stardew Valley showing the player's grandfather on his death bed as he gives the player an envelope containing the deed to his farm. The image became the subject of photoshops and memes in the years following the game's release as well as mods altering the image in the game.

Origin

On February 26th, 2016, Stardew Valley was released. The game's intro cutscene shows the player character's grandpa on his deathbed. He gives the player a sealed envelope, telling them to open it when they feel "crushed by the burden of modern life" (shown below). The envelope contains the deed to his farm. Some Stardew Valley players think the bed Grandpa is laying in in the intro looks uncomfortable. For example, on April 29th, 2019, Tumblr^[14] user pissvortex posted, "mods are asleep post grandpas fucked up bed from stardew valley," gaining over 80,000 notes in three years.

Spread

One of the earliest known mods of the scene was posted to Nexus Mods^[1] on May 26th, 2016, titled "Better Dying Grandpa." The mod replaces the image of Grandpa on his deathbed with one of grandpa sitting in a chair (shown below).

On April 15th, 2018, Redditor LeChickenSurAFez posted a meme to /r/StardewValley^[2] zooming in on grandpa's hand after he gives the player the envelope, comparing it to The Circle Game symbol, gaining over 5,100 upvotes in four years. On August 7th, 2020 and November 2nd, 2021, mods were uploaded to Nexus Mods^[3]^[4] giving grandpa a more comfortable-looking bed than the cot he has in the game (shown below, left and right).

On April 19th, 2022, Nexus Mods^[8] user aux1printer posted a mod titled "Slightly Worse Grandpa Bed" that changes the bed to make it less comfortable, adding a broken leg to it (shown below). On April 21st, Redditor sanseri shared the mod on /r/StardewValley,^[9] gaining over 15,000 upvotes in six days.

On April 22nd, 2022, Redditor cloudyfour posted a screenshot to /r/StardewValley^[5] of a Nexus Mods^[6] upload titled "FAMILY GUY DEATH POSE" that replaces the image of grandpa with an image of him dead on the floor to resemble a pose made by Family Guy's Peter Griffin, known as the Peter Death Pose, gaining over 20,000 upvotes in five days (shown below).^[7]

The posts inspired a variety of new mods on Nexus Mods and memes on /r/StardewValley photoshopping Grandpa in various ways. On April 24th, Nexus Mods^[10] user Croey posted a mod removing the bed and photoshopping Grandpa to look like he's rotting (shown below, left). On April 26th, Nexus Mods^[11] user EvilInu posted a version where the game's characters George and Evelyn are using his deathbed as a ping pong table (shown below, right). The image of the ping pong mod was shared to /r/StardewVally^[12] by mintchip28 on April 26th, gaining over 10,000 upvotes in a day. It was shared by the rStardewValley^[13] Twitter page the next day, gaining over 1,600 likes in under a day.