About

Giygas (Japanese: ギーグ Gīgu) is the main antagonist of the video game EarthBound. His appearance in the game is unknown up until the final battle where he is displayed as a red ghoul. The character has become popular among fans due to his dark, creepy appearance and dialogue that is contrary to the light mood of the game, inspiring many works of fan art, video edits and memes referencing him.

Origin

Although his EarthBound counterpart is most associated with the name, Giygas originally appeared as the final boss of Mother, which was only sold in Japan.^[1] In Mother, Giygas is displayed as an alien with a human-like figure trapped inside of a shell (shown below, left). In EarthBound, Giygas is incapable of speaking sanely, saying things such as, "It hurts …" and "Ness, Ness, Ness, Ness," (shown below, right). In both Mother and EarthBound, the player's party is incapable of defeating Giygas by fighting and must sing a lullaby in the former and pray in the latter game.

In an interview with EarthBound Central,^[2] Shigesato Itoi, Mother's creator, said that Giygas' creepy dialogue and appearance in EarthBound was influenced by a traumatic moment in his childhood, where he accidentally walked into a theater showcasing the movie The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty, witnessing a scene which he interpreted as murder and rape (shown below).

Spread

Aside from the main protagonists, Giygas is the most popular character in Earthbound. The character is notable as its darkness starkly contrasts the rest of the game's bright atmosphere. A DeviantArt^[3] search for the term offers over 5,400 results for fan art (top-rated examples shown below).

A once-common theory surrounding Giygas was that it was actually a deformed human fetus in EarthBound, with several videos and images pointing out a detail in his sprite that seem to resemble a child (shown below). However, this theory has been denounced by other fans, stressing the fact that he was an alien in Mother, who had his own race.

The theory is discussed in a 2019 YouTube^[6] video by Press Start To Continue (shown below).

"You Cannot Grasp The True Form Of Giygas' Attack!"

"You Cannot Grasp The True Form Of Giygas' Attack!" is a line of text shown during the Giygas battle. On April 13th, 2008, YouTuber^[4] Megaman765 posted a video titled "You Cannot Grasp The True Form Of Giygas' Attack!," consisting of looping footage of Giygas over Giygas' theme music and voiceover reading the lines of dialogue that appear during the fight, garnering over 82,000 views in 13 years (shown below).

Over the course of the following years, a number of videos parodying the Giygas fight with titles parodying the phrase were uploaded to YouTube, many featuring distorted footage resembling the general look of the Giygas battle over various remixes of "Giygas Theme" (most-viewed examples shown below, left and right).

Continued Spread

On January 4th, 2019, YouTuber^[5] Shiromi included the battle as the first example in their video "Evolution of Scary Nintendo Boss Battles (1994 – 2018)," garnering over 2.2 million views in two years (shown below).

On February 10th, 2021, Twitter^[7] page @spongecaps2 posted a parody SpongeBob SquarePants title card reading "it hurts" over a background consisting of Giygas, garnering over 29,000 likes and 5,300 retweets in three months (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References