About

Geralt in a Bathtub refers to a memorable scene from the 2015 role-playing video game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in which the main protagonist Geralt of Rivia is shown taking a bathtub, sitting in a relaxing pose. Online, the scene gained significant popularity among the series fanbase, often being used as an exploitable. In October 2019, the scene was referenced in the trailer for The Witcher Netflix series.

Origin

In 1993, Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski published The Last Wish, a collection of short stories about Geralt of Rivia. In the titular short story The Last Wish, a scene in which witcher Geralt and sorceress Yennefer take baths is described.^[1]

On May 19th, 2015, the role-playing video game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was released.^[2] In the opening cutscene of the video game, the main protagonist Geralt of Rivia is shown sitting naked in a bathtub, with his arms and legs resting on the edges of the tub (scene shown below).

On July 7th, 2015, gaming magazine PC Gamer used the image of Geralt in the bathtub in its article and on Twitter (shown below, left),^[3] reusing the image for multiple articles and tweets about the game in the following years as an in-joke (examples shown below, center and right).^{[4][5][6][7][8]}

Spread

On December 19th, 2016, prominent cosplayer Maul posted a photograph of himself cosplaying the scene, also including it into his The Witcher cosplay calendar.^[9]

On April 7th, 2017, PC Gamer received a special Bathtub Geralt statue from CD Project RED.^[10] On February 24th, 2019, PC Gamer published an article "Great moments in PC gaming: Geralt's bath in The Witcher 3" about the scene.^[11]

On September 4th, 2019, YouTuber PewDiePie shared a photograph of himself sitting in a bathtub in a pose which copied that of Geralt (shown below, left).^[12] The post gained over 3.4 million likes on Instagram in five days. On September 5th, 2019, YouTuber Grandayy posted a Same Energy meme to his Twitter account, gaining over 3,200 retweets and 47,400 likes in two months (shown below, right).^[13]

On October 31st, 2019, the trailer for The Witcher Netflix series premiered.^[14] In one scene of the trailer, Geralt, portrayed by Henry Cavill, is shown sitting in a large tub, with the shot closely resembling the video game scene.

Following the premiere of the trailer, posts comparing the scenes were made on Facebook, Instagram and other social networks.^[15] Additionally, a number of memes based on the scene were posted in The Witcher Ciriposting Facebook group and on Reddit.^[16][17]

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References