Jeopardy contestant with the question "who is Dankey Kang?" for $11600

Dankey Kang

Updated Dec 13, 2020 at 10:33AM EST by andcallmeshirley.

Added Jan 15, 2014 at 03:06PM EST by Don.

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About

Dankey Kang refers to a two-pane image that consists of a Jeopardy! question describing Sonic the Hedgehog and a screenshot of a contestant erroneously answering "Dankey Kang," a misspelling of Nintendo's iconic gorilla character Donkey Kong. Though it was subsequently debunked as a photoshopped hoax, the image went viral on Twitter anyway, wrongly labeled as an example of FAIL humor.

Origin

On May 31st, 2010, YouTuber geminitech uploaded a video clip of the Final Jeopardy round on the television game show Jeopardy!, in which the contestant Jen McFann answers "What is Berkeley?" in response to a clue about the only United States city to share a name with an element from the periodic table (shown below).



On January 8th, 2014, cartoonist Mike Rosenthal tweeted a photoshopped screenshot of the Jeopardy! clip with the answer "Who is Dankey Kang?" written as a response to a clue about the video game character Sonic the Hedgehog. Within the first week, the tweet gained over 1,300 retweets and 1,000 favorites. According to the Jeopardy! Archive,[4] the Sonic the Hedgehog clue has never been used on the game show.




Immediately after, Rosenthal tweeted another screenshot of a Jeopardy! contestant whose answer had been photoshopped to read "Who is Princess Zorldo," a misspelling of Princess Zelda from the Nintendo action-adventure game series Legend of Zelda.

Spread

Also on January 8th, 2014, Redditor lividd3ad submitted a link to Rosenthal's tweet to the /r/gamegrumps[1] subreddit, where it garnered more than 150 up votes and 20 comments in the following week. On January 9th, Rosenthal tweeted a screenshot of his Twitter interface displaying the hashtag "#DankeyKang" as a trending topic in the United States.




On January 11th, the image was reposted to the /r/funny[8] subreddit, gathering upwards of 26,000 views and 900 comments. On the same day, DeviantArtist[2] Kevin Bolk uploaded several illustrations of a blue gorilla named "Dankey Kang," who bears many similarities to the video game character Sonic the Hedgehog (shown below, left).


COTTA Go bokl 011 ㄥ 2 14 Dakey KANG

Also on January 11th, the Jeopardy! image was reposted by blogger Tyler Oakley on his Tumblr blog.[7] On January 12th, NeoGAF Forums[5] member Vanillalite posted the Dankey Kang screen capture in a thread titled “Who is Dankey Kang?" On January 14th, an eBay[3] listing was created for a shirt with the phrase "Who is Dankey Kang?" screen printed on the front (shown below).


who 15 DANKEY A KANG? BLO GS COL AND ST

Search Interest

External References

[1] Reddit – Reading this in Jons voice makes like a lot better

[2] DeviantArt – Kevin Bolk

[3] eBay (via Wayback Machine) – Who is Dankey Kang?

[4] Jeopardy – J Archive

[5] NeoGAF – Who is Dankey Kang?

[6] Reddit – Who is Dankey Kang?

[7] Tyler Oakley – So close

[8] Reddit – Nailed It

[9] Twitter – Final Jeopardy

Recent Videos 14 total

Recent Images 35 total



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