part of a series on Exploitables
^{sub-meme of Give Pikachu a Face}

Origin

In 2004, a deviant art user by the name of Bioviral uploaded pictures that he had made of a Pikachu and a Squirtle. In 2008, someone removed the face of the Pikachu, and posted it onto 4chan, eventually turning it into a meme. For years, the picture of the Squirtle went unnoticed. It was only a matter of time before someone else did the same thing to the Squirtle that had been done to the Pikachu.

Original picture:

Spread

On January 8, 2010, a 4chan user removed the face of Squirtle, and posted it on the site, asking users to "Give Squirtle a face". The thread received a not so great welcome for the first few posts, but eventually /b/ started to go along with the OP. The thread later died down, but many more followed after it.

On January 9, a Facepunch user by the name of Little Washu posted the Squirtle exploitable that was posted on 4chan to the Fast Threads section, telling the users to "Have at it! Give him a face!". The thread received immediate attention, and soon after creating the thread, the derivatives of the Squirtle exploitable started to pour in.

Some suspect that Little Washu was the original poster of the Squirtle exploitable on 4chan, seeing as how she posted most of the original 4chan thread's derivatives to Facepunch, but there is no real evidence to support this claim. As the first known source of the exploitable, Little Washu is credited with creating and spreading the meme.

The Big Bomb shifted the attention from Facepuch back over to 4chan when he posted a link to a 4chan thread about the Squirtle exploitable. This was the largest Squirtle 4chan thread so far, yielding over 100 derivatives. This thread later 404'd.

Aftermath

On January 11, Little Washu denied that she was the one that originally uploaded the exploitable to 4chan.

Referring to the entry on Know Your Meme, Little Washu said:

The article seemed alright. I'm not the one that posted the exploits on 4chan, though. I have all the first ones posted there because I was there when it happened. I will take credit for creating and spreading the meme though… That's always nice to have. ;)

The Facepunch thread was later moved by Facepunch Moderator RawRKat!90 to the Photoshop Contests section of the forums.

On January 12, Little Washu received a one-day temporary ban for "Meme Reply", and the ban was removed on January 13th.

Popularity

This meme is an exploitable, making it very easy to create derivatives. It is popular among imageboards, such as 4chan. Posting the exploitable in a thread usually gets a large amount of derivatives and responses, similar to the fsjal meme.

Derivatives can be made in MS Paint, allowing for easy creation and spread of the meme.

Links

Facepunch Thread: LINK
Biggest 4chan Thread (404'd): LINK

If you have derivatives of this meme that are not already present, please upload them.