About

Kirby Does His Taxes refers to a fictional video game in which the character Kirby by Nintendo performs the mundane task of doing his taxes. Since the idea appeared on Tumblr in early 2017, it has become a joke in the Nintendo fandom.

Origin

On March 27th, 2017, Tumblr user shadowsaregrey^[1] published a text post that read:

"weird thing about kirby is that nintendo could make a game about anything with kirby in it and i still wouldn’t be mad.
kirby is just good.
like if there was a game about kirby doing his taxes i would play it and even if it’s bad because how could you be mad at kirby."

The following day, user sn0wbro^[2] reblogged the post with an image of box art for a fake Nintendo game called Kirby Does His Taxes for the Nintendo 3DS. The post has gained over 58,000 notes (shown below).

Spread

In the week after the post spread on Tumblr, it began spreading to other sites as well. On April 4th, 2017, a screenshot of the thread was posted to /r/tumblr,^[3] gaining over 470 upvotes. The same screenshot was also posted to iwastesomuchtime.^[4] Artwork devoted to the concept appeared on Drawception^[5] on April 12th, 2017 (shown below).

Over the course of the following months, the joke was presented in various iterations online, particularly during E3 2017. On June 13th, 2017, Twitter user @Sn0wy^[5] posted a photoshopped variation of the original picture, making it appear as though Nintendo had announced Kirby Does His Taxes Deluxe (shown below, left). The following day, Twitter user @SuperBluey2749 uploaded a logo for a game called Kirby Does His Taxes 2 (shown below, right).

The popularity of the parody led to a Mario parody called "Mario Does His Taxes" that spread online shortly after the Kirby variant was first posted. For example the Mario edit was posted to Instagram by user grandpa.died.last.week^[6] on April 11th, 2017 (shown below).

Search Interest

External References