Halo 3 Rat
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About
Halo 3 Rat refers to a rat NPC character in the 2007 video game Halo 3. In late August 2020, ironic shitposts referencing the Halo 3 Rat gained popularity online following a viral tweet, primarily on Reddit.
Origin
On September 25th, 2007, first-person shooter Halo 3, developed by Bungie, was released.[1] On several maps in the game, players can encounter non-hostile rat NPCs. On May 2nd, 2010, Halo Alpha[2][3] user Dragonclaws uploaded an image of the rat taken on the in-game level Crow's Nest (shown below).
On August 13th, 2020, Twitter[4] user @sprngclean tweeted the image, writing "halo 3 rat." The tweet (shown below) received over 690 retweets and 1,800 likes.
Spread
In the following days, the screenshot of the tweet received moderate circulation online; for example, on August 24th, 2020, Twitter[5] user @tj99er posted a screenshot of a Discord conversation in which a person posted the screenshot of the tweet. On August 23rd, 2020, Twitter[6] user @Fiyaproofmatch tweeted "Thinkin about Halo 3 rat," attaching the image, with the tweet gaining over 170 retweets and 470 likes (shown below).
The screenshot of @Fiyaproofmatch's tweet received viral spread online after on August 23rd, 2020, iFunny[7] user Suh_shi posted it on the app, with the post getting featured and gaining over 54,900 smiles in one week. In the following days, the screenshot was widely circulated online with multiple reposts across all major platforms.
On August 28th, Redditor[8] Geigerbuzz posted a shitpost based on the image to /r/dankmemes, where it gained over 18,900 upvotes in three days.
Following the post, ironic shitposts based on the image and the phrase "Halo 3 Rat" gained significant popularity in mainstream Reddit meme communities.
Related Memes
Horizontally Spinning Rat
Horizontally Spinning Rat, originally known as Rats Multiplying, refers to a series of memes based on videos of 3D rat models usually set to "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Spawned in late January 2022 on iFunny with memes in which the number of rats progressively increased, the format received further spread online in Spring and Summer 2022 with videos captioned "spinning rat."
Various Examples
Template
Search Interest
External References
[3] Halo Alpha – Rat.jpg History
[4] Twitter – @sprngclean
[6] Twitter – @Fiyaproofmatch
[8] Reddit – His name is Hubert
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Top Comments
NFTs are bad for the enviroment
Aug 31, 2020 at 10:55AM EDT
Molemanninethousand
Aug 31, 2020 at 11:42AM EDT