About

Dick Butt is an illustration of an anthropomorphic phallus with a pair of testicles and a penis protruding from its backside. In multi-pane image macros and animated GIFs, the drawing is often revealed unexpectedly in the final frame.

Origin

On July 2nd, 2006, artist K.C. Green published a webcomic in his titled “Tree. You’ve Been Good to Us" as part of the Horribleville^[1] series, which featured an artist who illustrates the Dick Butt character after being scolded for wasting tree resources as a child (shown below).

Spread

On April 12th, 2007, an entry for "dickbutt" was submitted to Urban Dictionary,^[2] where it was defined as the "weirdest thing you can think of." On December 3rd, The Duck Web Comics^[3] user Avalon comics left a comment on a Horribleville webcomic claiming that "Dickbutt is a 4chan meme now." On June 14th, 2008, YouTube Th0ldMan uploaded a video of an animated Dick Butt 3D model made in the sandbox game Spore (shown below).

On August 27th, 4chan user VIPPER spammed the phrase "DICK BUTT" in a thread on the 4chan BBS.^[4] On June 8th, 2009, BuzzFeed^[6] highlighted a multi-pane machine code comic in which Dick Butt is revealed in a note from the superhero Batman (shown below).

On July 16th, 2010, DeviantArtist^[7] beyx uploaded an illustration of a Dick Butt character with large eyes sitting on a rainbow (shown below). On October 30th, 2011, the Xkcdickbutt Tumblr^[8] blog was launched, highlighting Dick Butt comics illustrated in the style of the Xkcd series (shown below, right).

On April 20th, 2012, FunnyJunk^[5] user atlantaboy submitted a screenshot of Dick Butt used in a 4chan thread (shown below). On December 11th, 2013, the Internet humor site College Humor^[9] posted a compilation of notable Dick Butt animated GIFs.

GIF Adaptation in 2014

On January 3rd, 2014, Redditor spacecadet06 submitted a photoshopped GIF featuring a scene from the Russian television show Matchmakers 6 in which the outline of Dick Butt emerges from a student’s wood shaving art piece. Since being uploaded to the /r/gifs^[12] subreddit, the post gained over 30,800 up votes and 670 comments within the first two months (shown below).

That same day, the /r/DickButt^[11] subreddit reached its first 100 subscribers milestone after receiving a record number of sign-ups since its creation in August 2008. On January 16th, Reddit bonebowl submitted an animated GIF from the game Line Rider of a character launching off a ramp on sled on to an illustration of Dick Butt to the /r/gifs subreddit (shown below), garnering upwards of 11,900 up votes and 190 comments in the following month.

In the coming weeks, several other Dick Butt GIFs were submitted to Imgur,^{[14][15][16][17]} while the /r/Dickbutt subreddit continued to grow in subscribers. On February 12th, The Daily Dot^[13] published an article about the history of Dick Butt, which noted a recent resurgence on Reddit.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References