About

"Shut Down Everything" is a catchphrase used to depict the reaction of the President of Madagascar in the flash game Pandemic II. It has since been used as a reaction to various events, particularly large-scale disasters, tragedies and epidemics. In the game, the Republic of Madagascar is often considered the most difficult target to infect with contagions due to the fact that the island nation has no airports or bordering countries. Therefore, any potential outbreak can be prevented by shutting down the shipyards, which happens quite often during gameplay. Since its debut in 2008, Madagascar's near-perfect border security has become a popular joke among the fans, spawning comics and videos depicting the President of Madagascar yelling "shut down everything."

Origins

Pandemic 2 is an online flash game loosely based on the cooperative board game Pandemic, designed by Matt Leacock and published by Z-Man Games in 2008.^[1][2] Developed by Dark Realm Studios and hosted by Crazy Monkey Games, Pandemic II was released on July 14th, 2008. It has been subsequently uploaded to various flash game sites like Kongregate, AddictingGames and Newgrounds.

The game's premise is creating a disease, modifying the symptoms, resistances, and other variables in order to effectively manipulate it to wipe out the human race, keeping track of progress through a world map. In the game, Madagascar's shipyards are often shut down before the diseases can infiltrate through the island, causing much frustration for players trying to beat the game (shown below).

Spread

Shortly after the game's release, references to "shut down everything were seen on 4chan's /v/ ^[3] and Encyclopedia Dramatica.^[4] On July 19th, 2008, Gamefaqs user MangoPirate posted the phrase in a thread about Madagascar.^[5]

On July 22nd, Urban Dictionary ^[6] user ryanxwonbin defined Madagascar as "A fad created in GameFAQs, from the game Pandemic 2, where the country of Madagascar is the main reason why players lose the game. In Pandemic 2, the player tries to infect the world with a disease and attempt to wipe out humanity. Madagascar is a country hard to infect because it only has one port to infect it from, and it tends to close the port down even when the infection is not 'big.' Thus, people lose the game, and people complain. A few comics have also been made." The post also featured usage of the meme and received more than 200 upvotes in less than 12 years (shown below).

Roughly two weeks after the game was released, a popular flash cartoon depicting the President of Madagascar screaming "shut down everything" went viral. The earliest available version of the cartoon was published by YouTuber Powerpoint12321 on July 25th, 2008. It received more than 53,000 views in less than 12 years (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References