About

Fat Pikachu refers to the original design of the Pokémon Pikachu in the Pokémon video game series, which is significantly more rotund than the later, more svelte designs of the character as it became the iconic character of the franchise. The original design of the character has been a source of jokes among Pokémon fans, who later celebrated when the Gigamax form of Pikachu revealed for Pokémon Sword and Shield appeared to resemble "Fat Pikachu."

Origin

The original design of Pikachu for Pokémon Red and Green, released in Japan on February 27th, 1996, showed the character with a round figure akin to a fat rodent.^[1] Atsuko Nishida, who designed the character, wrote "I didn’t draw an illustration on paper, but went straight to the computer screen and punched in the dots. Using dots to create the face of this dumpling-shaped creature with no definition between its head and body!"

Spread

Over the course of several games and anime series, Pikachu's design grew slimmer as it became the face of the franchise (shown below).

However, fans remembered the original design of the Pokémon and used it in memes. For example, on September 26th, 2018, a deleted Reddit user posted the design in an Oh Lawd He Comin meme (shown below, left). It has also been used in When Did This Become Hotter Than This? memes (shown below, right).

Gigamax Fat Pikachu

On October 16th, 2019, Pokémon released a trailer for the upcoming Pokémon Sword and Shield games showing off the games' "Gigamax" function, a unique battling technique in which Pokémon become giant versions of themselves for several turns (shown below).

The trailer shows off a Gigamax version of Pikachu, which is exclusively available to players who had previously played Pokémon Let's Go Pikachu!. People were quick to point out that the Gigamax version of Pikachu resembled the character's original design, aka "Fat Pikachu." Twitter user @xpatriciah^[2] tweeted "BREAKING NEWS, AND THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS TODAY: Pikachu is fat again!", gaining over 600 retweets and 2,100 likes (shown below, left). Twitter user @Connor_Gaming00^[3] tweeted a Big Chungus joke about the character, gaining over 300 retweets and 980 likes (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References