About

The Dung Eater is a non-playable character (NPC) in the 2022 video game Elden Ring, first introduced in the intro cutscene of the game as "the Loathsome Dung Eater." Memes and tweets that referenced him started appearing on Twitter, Reddit and 4chan in late February 2022, mostly exploiting a screencap of him hanging, as well as making fun of his poop-centric name in general. Outside of memes, the Dung Eater is a radical character and murderer within the game.

Origin

On February 25th, 2022, Elden Ring was released. Within the introduction cut scene, "the loathsome Dung Eater" is identified as a character, shown being hung in a town square as some sort of punishment. The cut scene was uploaded to YouTube on February 24th, 2022, by the channel Esoterickk where, over the course of one month, it received roughly 50,600 views. At the 2:45-minute mark, the loathsome Dung Eater first appears (shown below).

Even though the game was launched on February 25th, tweets that referenced the Dung Eater appeared much sooner, the first one being posted on February 17th, 2022, by Twitter^[1] user MattDeMotts who wrote, "Learning that Elden Ring has a character referred to as 'the loathsome Dung Eater' and immediately pre-ordering it," earning six likes in one month (shown below).

Spread

On February 20th, 2022, Twitter^[2] user RespectElves posted a tweet that used the screencap from the intro scene, captioning it, "Imagine getting Hang for eating shit," and earning over 100 likes in one month (shown below, left). On February 27th, Redditor PunishedKojima posted a meme to /r/Eldenring,^[3] being a photoshopped image of the Dung Eater in the Sayori death scene from Doki Doki Literature Club. The image earned five upvotes in three weeks (shown below, right).

In March 2022, Dung Eater content spread to other platforms like 4chan. On March 11th, a 4chan user made a post to /v/^[4] stating, "THE HATED POOPOO GORGER" (shown below, left). A different user added onto the thread, including a picture of "The Peepee Poopoo Man" poster,^[5] part of the meme category Bye Bye Man Poster Parodies, and noted it was the same color scheme. Another meme was shared in the thread that put the Dung Eater in a Subway restaurant talking to Spyro the Dragon, making a joke about the character enjoying poop (shown below, right).

On March 12th, 2022, a Twitter^[6] user named Cybershell took the aforementioned idea a step further, making their own Bye Bye Man poster parody that replaced the background image to be the Dung Eater hanging (shown below). The tweet received roughly 102,100 likes over the course of five days.

Overall, memes and tweets about the Dung Eater often used the word "loathsome" as an adjective, in reference to the original cutscene. Most memes about the character appeared on /r/Eldenring and /r/shittydarksouls going into March 2022 and had to do with the character enjoying poop as a meal.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References