About

I Can't Believe Sonic the Hedgehog Is Fucking Dead is a popular snowclone used to jokingly claim that a fictional character has died. The original featured Sonic the Hedgehog and since went on to become popularly used in other fandoms.

Origin

The earliest known example of this phrase appeared on Steam on December 20th, 2012 using a screenshot from Sonic Adventure 2 of Sonic lying in front of a gravestone^[5] (shown below).

Spread

In the following months, the phrase was used as a copypasta online. On April 20th, 2013, a post submitted to DeviantArt by user ArsonNoir with the title (shown below, left). On August 25th, 2013, a tweet posted by Twitter user @fanfiction_txt reading "I can't believe Sonic the Hedgehog is fucking dead" gained over 440 retweets and 360 likes (shown below, right).

Over the following years, the phrase became a snowclone relating to other subcultures. One of the most popular was Steven Universe. On August 9th, Imgur user MaxiGamer posted text with the snowclone (shown below, left). The same day, a video appeared on YouTube with the title (shown below, right). On August 12th, a thread about the spread of the meme was posted to /r/StevenUniverse.^[3] A thread about the phrase being applied to different characters appeared on /r/OutOfTheLoop on August 10th.^[4]

[This video has been removed]

Various Examples

External References