The Almighty Loaf
About
The Almighty Loaf refers to the character "Loafer the Living Bread" from the 1996 Christian children's show The Donut Man. Unlike his form from the show, the memetic Loafer is embodied as an evil, Satanic character. In memes, Loafer has been used as an exploitable in various remixes where he is photoshopped into a multitude of scenes or humorous settings for his creepy look.
Origin
Originally, the character Loafer appeared in The Donut Man, a Christian direct-to-video children's show created by musician Rob Evans, in the episode "The Repair Shop," which was released on February 24th, 1996.[1] In one segment of the episode, a bread puppet named Loafer, who was made from being baked with "words from the Bible," made his first appearance on-screen after being pulled from an oven (shown below).[2]
On November 13th, 2011, YouTuber[3] ohokthen uploaded a video titled "THE ALMIGHTY LOAF" featuring a heavily edited version of the Loafer segments with dialog spoken by The Lord of Darkness, as portrayed by Tim Curry, from the 1985 fantasy movie Legend. The video has since received over 5.8 million views, 119,000 likes and 9,500 comments in just over nine years (seen below).
Spread
On August 8th, 2014, YouTuber[7] Greeno Grenesis uploaded another variant of Loafer in a meme, receiving over 1.9 million views, 53,000 likes and 3,000 comments in roughly six and a half years (seen below, left). On June 15th, 2015, YouTuber[8] Logan Hub uploaded a video explaining the meme, receiving more than 95,000 views, 1,300 likes and 220 comments in about five and a half years (seen below, right).
References in Garry's Mod
The Almighty Loaf was later added into various mods in the video game Garry's Mod where he was used for both horror and comedy. One such example of this was uploaded on May 25th, 2016, by YouTuber[9] MsBreezy, accumulating over 1.5 million views, 20,000 likes and 2,400 comments in about five years (shown below, left). On May 30th, 2016, YouTuber[10] Alex4higher uploader another example, accumulating over 324,000 views, 1,900 likes and 210 comments in about five years (shown below, right).
Reemergence
On April 23rd, 2020, YouTuber[11] Axtell Expressions, an animatronic company, uploaded a video unboxing Loafer for the first time in more than 20 years while also referencing the meme. The video received over 21,800 views, 1,500 likes and 100 comments in 10 months (seen below).
Fandom
On November 11, 2012, a Facebook page was created for the Almighty Loaf, featuring image edits of Loafer alongside various comments about bread.[4] Several Steam groups have also been created, with the largest two featuring over 100 members each.[5][6] The Loaf is also a common YouTube avatar.
Various Examples
Videos
Images
Search Interest
References
[1] IMDb – The Donut Repair Shop
[2] The Donut Man – TheDonutMan.com
[3] YouTube – THE ALMIGHTY LOAF
[4] Facebook – The Almighty Loaf
[5] Steam – Almighty Loaf
[6] Steam – THE ALMIGHTY LOAF
[7] YouTube – WHEN WILL YOU LEARN
[8] YouTube – Episode 3 The Almighty Loaf
[10] YouTube – THE ALMIGHTY LOAF MAZE
[11] YouTube – Loafer Unboxing
Top Comments
TheBrainJemin
Aug 24, 2014 at 11:19PM EDT
CruncsTheKidder
Oct 15, 2013 at 08:29PM EDT