Pikachu is not just popular around the world as a cute, yellow character reimagined into toys, plushies and collectables. The internet, too, has repurposed stills from the tv-series as iconographic media better known as “meme”.
Memes represent units of information transmitted within cultures. However, while that is the overarching definition, scholars have differing views when it comes to the intricacies of meme-creation and its cultural influence. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, who is credited with coining the term, likens them to genetic information stored in brains, manifesting as behaviours, ideas, or symbols, which replicate, i.e. “copy”, through imitation (1976, p. 109). American biological anthropologist William Durham (1991) emphasizes memes as socially transmitted units of information, with holomemes representing all variants and allomemes referring to the subset actually influencing behaviour in a particular culture.
British scholar Susan Blackmore gives the most in-depth definition of memes in her work The Meme Machine (1999), defining them as behavioural instructions stored in brains and transmitted through imitation. This has also become the leading definition chosen by English dictionaries, denoting memes as either “an idea that is passed from one member of society to another, […] often by people copying it”— one example being the famous Kilroy Was Here meme during World War II (“Kilroy Was Here,” 2024)—or “an image, a video, a piece of text, etc. that is passed very quickly from one internet user to another, often with slight changes that make it humorous” (“Meme,” 2024).
It is this latter definition, then, which defines what is known on the internet as the Surprised Pikachu meme (“Surprised Pikachu,” 2018). This meme took the internet by storm after its first use in the autumn of 2018, when used as a reaction image “paired with captions where a set-up leads to a predictable outcome that nevertheless leaves one surprised” (“Surprised Pikachu,” 2018).
This meme is not the only one referencing the iconic Pikachu. If you are interested in learning about other Pikachu memes, consider checking out the collection on KnowYourMeme!
Blackmore, S. J. (1999). The meme machine. Oxford University Press.
Dawkins, R. (1982). The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene. Oxford Univ Press.
Durham, W. H. (1991). Coevolution: Genes, Culture and Human Diversity. Stanford University Press.
Kilroy was here. (2024). In Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilroy_was_here
Meme. (2024). In Oxford Learner’s Dictionary. Oxford University Press. https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/meme
Surprised Pikachu. (2018). In Know Your Meme. Knowyourmeme.com. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/surprised-pikachu
Surprised Pikachu - Meme Version. (2018). [Online image]. In Know Your Meme. Know Your Meme. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/surprised-pikachu
Surprised Pikachu - Original Image. (2018). [Online image]. In Know Your Meme. Know Your Meme. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/surprised-pikachu