Surprised Pikachu
September 26, 2018 — June 2019
"Nothing surprises us anymore; we saw this coming"
Obituary
*surprised Pikachu face*
On September 26, 2018, Tumblr user popokko posted a screenshot from Pokemon Season 1, Episode 10: "Bulbasaur and the Hidden Village" (Nintendo Legal: we come in peace). At the 3:05 timestamp, Pikachu appears with his mouth agape, eyes wide, looking utterly stunned by something happening off-screen. The image garnered over 223,000 notes.
The format was devastatingly simple: describe an obviously predictable outcome, then express shock when it occurs. "I ignored all advice and made bad decisions / *surprised Pikachu face* / Things went poorly." It was meme as self-own, a format for roasting your own terrible judgment.
Surprised Pikachu spread like wildfire through Reddit's r/MemeEconomy and r/me_irl in late September and October 2018. Within weeks, it had become the default reaction for anyone experiencing consequences they definitely should have seen coming.
The meme tapped into something universal: our human capacity for denial, our ability to be genuinely shocked by predictable outcomes of our own actions. We diet for one day and expect to lose weight. We stay up all night and wonder why we're tired. We pet a cat's belly and act surprised when it attacks. Pikachu understood.
In March 2019, Twitter briefly auto-locked accounts posting the image—a moment of chaos that felt deeply on-brand for a meme about predictable consequences.
Surprised Pikachu faded as all reaction images eventually do, replaced by newer expressions of shock and disbelief. But for one glorious autumn, we all knew exactly what face to make when our chickens came home to roost.
*surprised Pikachu face*