About

Fug is a misspelling of the German word "flug" associated with the Flying type Pokémon Rayquaza, which started and popularized on 4chan's /vp/ (Pokémon) board after an image of the character with the word "fug" written underneath began circulating on in 2014.

Precursor

The word "fug" is often associated with the character Spurdo Spärde, which was originally conceived on the Finnish imageboard Kuvalauta to mock the newcomers to the site.

Origin

The Dragon-Flying type Pokémon Rayquaza was introduced in the Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire games, originally released in November 2002, and appeared in subsequent sequels, film adaptations and or spinoff games in the series. The creature is designed to resemble a flying serpent, reminiscent of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl (shown below, left).

At June 29, 2014, an image of Rayquaza's head with the Pokémon's Flying type listed as "Fug" began circulating online (shown below, right). Although the picture of the Rayquaza image is from a German shiny Rayquaza giveaway^[1], the earliest archived version of the spread of the edited image was posted on the Pokemon board of 4chan^[2] image board on October 24, 2014.

Spread

On November 24, 2014, "Fug" spread outside 4chan through GameFAQs forum discussion.

On January 1st, 2015, "Fug" was added to a list of Pokémon memes on TV Tropes.^[4] On April 1st, Reddit Jirachi_star submitted the original "Fug" image to the /r/pokemon^[2] subreddit. On November 6th, a 4chan user launched a "Fug thread" on the /vp/ board, where others replied with various illustrations of Rayquaza captioned with the word "Fug" (shown below).^[5]

On February 17th, 2016, an entry for "Fug" was created on the /r/Pokemon Discord Wiki,^[3] identifying it as "a meme revolving around the Pokémon Rayquaza." On June 17th, a post featuring the original "Fug" image asking if Rayquaza was "the most liked Legendary Pokemon" was submitted to /vp/.^[6]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References