About

Nomad / Street Kid / Corpo refers to a lifepath selection screen in Cyberpunk 2077 which the player is presented with before starting the game. The screen inspired parodies in which the the images illustrating the options are replaced with three pictures of the same person or character.

Origin

On August 10th, 2020, "Lifepath Choices Trailer" for then-upcoming 2020 Cyberpunk 2077 premiered,^[1] introducing three lifepath options, "Nomad," "Street Kid" and "Corpo," that the players would be able to choose (trailer shown below)

On December 10th, 2020, Cyberpunk 2077 was released.^[2] At the start of the game, the player is presented with a choice screen for the main protagonist V's lifepath, with the choice affecting the starting point in the game and the available dialogue options.

On August 12th, 2020, Twitter fan account @PlayCyberPunk posted^[3] the earliest known meme based on the selection screen, editing in the starting Pokemon choices (shown below).

Spread

Prior to the release of the game, the choice screen saw limited presence in memes. For example, on October 24th, 2020, Redditor^[4] ocipode posted an xQc meme that received over 8,000 upvotes in /r/xqcow in two months (shown below).

Following the release of the game, the format gained larger presence online, particularly among Russian-speaking users on VK and other platforms. Viral examples of the format also appeared on Twitter, Reddit and Instagram.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References