Porgs

About

Porgs are small, puffin-like creatures found on the planet Ahch-To in the film Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Since the release of behind-the-scenes and preview footage of the film, porgs have been a topic of conversation, jokes and memes, particularly one shot of a porg screaming, which has been used in various reaction images and photoshops.

Origin

On July 15th, 2017, the official Star Wars YouTube ^[1] account posted a video of behind-the-scenes footage for the film Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which premiered at D23. About two minutes into the clip, a porg can be scene looking up at the camera. This is considered to be the earliest public appearance of porgs.

Spread

Five days later, StarWars.com^[5] published an interview with Pablo Hidalgo, a member of the Lucasfilm Story Group on porgs. In the interview, Hidalgo said, "Porgs are native to Ahch-To, and can be found dwelling along the cliffs of the island where Luke and Rey are. In many ways, they’re the Star Wars version of puffins. They build nests. They can fly. Their babies are called porglets."

Shortly after the release of footage, numerous media outlets reported on the popularity of the characters, including Polygon,^[2] Mashable,^[3] CNET^[4] and more.

While the characters have become something of a fan favorite, some have reacted negatively to porgs. On September 7th, 2017, Redditor whitemike40 posted an image of a storm trooper holdings a porgs decapitated head on the /r/StarWars^[6] subreddit. The post (shown below) received more than 7,200 points (90% upvoted) and 240 comments in one month.

Screaming Porg

On October 9th, the final trailer for Star Wars The Last Jedi was released (shown below). In the trailer, at about 1:30, a porg can be seen screaming with the character Chewbacca. The video received more than 10 million views in less than 24 hours.

Shortly after the trailer was released, people online began using the moment as a reaction image. On Twitter, people would post the picture of the porg screaming with a humorous caption (examples below). That night, Twitter^[7] published a Moments page about the reaction to the porgs.

The image also became the popular image to photoshop. That night, Twitter^[8] user @GenePark posted a variation of the Distracted Boyfriend featuring the boyfriend ignoring the character Jar Jar Binks for the screaming porg. The tweet (shown below) received more than 6,300 retweets and 17,000 likes in less than 24 hours.

The following day, Redditor^[9] tommy0b started a photoshop battle on the /r/photoshopbattles, inspiring other Redditors to post photoshopped versions of the moment. Within four hours, the post had more than 4,900 points (92% upvoted) and 100 comments.

Baby Porgs

On November 8th, the website Cinema Blend^[10] reported that the Japanese website Natalie^[11] posted several pictures of then-unreleased toys from Star Wars: The Last Jedi. One of the toys, Cinema Blends notes, is of a Baby Porg, which they say, "baby porgs look like the pork buns you find in a dim sum restaurant."

On Twitter, people reacted to the toys negatively. Some referred to the appearance of the baby Porgs as nightmarish, belonging in the work surreal horror filmmaker David Cronenberg (examples below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References