About

Mr. Krabs Overdoses on Ketamine refers to a series of memes in which the animated character Mr. Krabs from the television show SpongeBob SquarePants has an overexaggerated addiction to ketamine (a medication used for anesthesia) but also other drugs occasionally. Sharing some similarities to the Yoda's Ketamine Addiction and SpongeBoy Me Bob memes, posts typically include a caption beginning with a form of “Ahoy SpongeBob I’ve overdosed on ketamine and I’m going to die” and then an often cursed image of Krabs displaying his drug addiction. After it took off sometime in early 2019, game designer ThrillDaWill published a fully playable video game based on the meme which was released in November 2020, causing a resurgence of interest as streamers began speedrunning it.

Origin

The earliest known instance of a user posting a reference to Mr. Krabs and his fictional addiction to ketamine comes from a tweet by Twitter^[1] user cav0rting on February 10th, 2019. The tweet includes the most commonly used caption “ahoy spongebob I’ve overdosed on ketamine and I’m going to die” alongside an image of a TV wrapped in a stuffed crab resembling the SpongeBob character (shown below). The post received 351 likes and 48 retweets in roughly eight months.

Spread

The trend spread elsewhere online throughout 2019, including sites like Reddit where a variation of memes were posted to communities. One such meme was posted to the /r/im14andthisisdeep^[2] on July 17th, 2019, by Redditor lil_uzi_horz, which received 307 upvotes and 19 comments in six months (seen below, left). Another example was posted to the /r/me_irl^[3] sub on May 3rd, 2020, by Redditor Bstokes4102, which received over 11,600 upvotes and 52 comments in six months (seen below, right).

Mr. Krabs Overdoses On Ketamine Video Game

After the theme had existed throughout 2019 and 2020, game designer ThrillDaWill published a game titled Mr. Krabs Overdoses On Ketamine based on the meme. Released via Itch.io^[4] on November 1st, 2020, the game is described as “Play as Mr. Krabs in this all new action packed platformer. You will fight tooth and nail in order to make ends meet for your crippling ketamine addiction.” That same day, ThrillDaWill uploaded a trailer for the game to his YouTube^[5] channel that received over 2.9 million views, 200,000 likes and 7,500 comments in roughly one month (shown below).

In roughly a month, the game was picked up by streamers and became a trending topic in early December. One such streamer was YouTuber^[6] penguinz0, who uploaded a speedrun of the game to his channel on December 6th, receiving over 1.2 million views, 96,000 likes and 3,300 comments in three days (seen below, left). About the popularity of the game and its speedruns, YouTuber^[7] Lessons in Meme Culture uploaded a video discussing the trend to his channel on December 9th, receiving over 89,600 views, 8,900 likes and 463 comments in less than 24 hours (seen below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References