About

Luigi's Death Stare, not to be confused with Weegee, refers to the odd facial expressions worn by the character of Luigi during gameplay in the eighth installment of Nintendo's Mario Kart franchise. Upon the release of the game in late May 2014, the character's creepy gaze quickly became the butt of many jokes and parodies among the fans of Mario Kart.

Origin

Luigi's illusive stare was first picked up by a video titled "Waluigi vs Luigi" (shown below, left), which was posted to YouTube by Rizupicorr^[1] on May 30th, 2014, which shows a section of a highlight reel in which Luigi knocks out Waluigi using a green shell, before giving him an uncomfortable stare as he continues to drive past, and gained over 60,000 views. Another video, titled "Mario Kart 8 – Luigi's Death Stare" was also posted to YouTube the same day by user Mega Beardo^[2](shown below, right), featuring Luigi attempting to overtake Mario, gaining over 5,000 views.

Spread

His stare did not grow in popularity until May 31st, when YouTuber CZbwoi^[3] posted a parody of the video using the original clip (shown below), which shows the scene alongside the 2006 song Ridin' by Chamillionaire. As of June 2nd, the video has over 400,000 views and over 11,000 likes.

Luigi's "death stare" further grew in popularity after a post titled "Luigi Death Stare" featuring a GIF of the scene was posted to Reddit's r/gaming board on June 1st^[4]. The post received a positive reception from the community, garnering over 3,000 upvotes and over 800 comments, enticing other users to post parodies of their own. The topic was soon brought up on a number of different gaming forums and news sites, such as The Independent^[5], IGN^[6], Polygon^[7] and Pixelitis^[8]. On the same date, Tumblr user Scarfydog posted a video on Tumblr^[10] featuring the same clip made into a Dear Sister Parody (shown below). Within 48 hours, the post managed to gain more than 95,000 notes.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References