WIP

About

The hide and seek champion refers to a phrase used to mock certain fugitives and/or people who have disappeared who have eluded being caught for a significant amount of time. The phrase can also be used for cryptid creatures which have never been found by modern science.

Origin

The earliest known use of the phrase online was by Urban Dictionary user AgentSythe for "Anne Frank" on April 23rd, 2007, in which she is described as "Hide and seek champion 1941-1944."^[1] On April 8th, 2008, eBaum's World user PeachyKeen uploaded a demotivational poster of Anne Frank with the text "Hide and Seek World Champion 1942-1944" (shown below).^[2]

Precursors

The phrase itself was used as the punchline to a joke of a unknown origin. The joke is meant to be able to poke fun at a group of people, and is edited as needed. One example of the joke would be:

A very large, old, building was being torn down in Chicago to make room for a new skyscraper. Due to its proximity to other buildings it could not be imploded and had to be dismantled floor by floor.

While working on the 49th floor, two construction workers found a skeleton in a small closet behind the elevator shaft.

They decided that they should call the police. When the police arrived they directed them to the closet and showed them the skeleton fully clothed and standing upright. They said, "This could be Jimmy Hoffa or somebody really important."

Two days went by and the construction workers couldn't stand it any more, they had to know who they had found. They called the police and said, "We are the two guys who found the skeleton in the closet and we want to know if it was Jimmy Hoffa or somebody important."

The police said, "It's not Jimmy Hoffa, but it was somebody kind of important."

"Well, who was it?"

"The 1956 Blonde National Hide-and-Seek Champion."

Along with aforementioned joke the phrase had also been used on Monty Python's Flying Circus during its 35th episode, which aired on December 14th, 1972. In the episode one of the sketches was titled "The Olympic Hide-and-seek Final".^[7] Former fugitive Eric Robert Rudolph, whom was suspected in the 1996 Olympic bombings, was noted to have a cultural following around him, which produced T-shirts and posters which read "Hide and Seek Champion".^[3][4]

Spread

On May 2nd, 2011, the same day as the assassination of Osama bin Laden by Seal Team 6, FunnyJunk user userusatogermany uploaded a demotivational poster of Osama bin Laden which read "HIDE AND SEEK CHAMPION 2001-2011" (shown below).^[5]

On August 4th of that same year Reddit user brimur submitted a thread called "C++ Hide and Seek champion, 1983 – 2011" which linked to an image of a semicolon.^[6] This is in reference to how a missing semicolon in the C++ programming language can lead to a programmer having to spend a significant amount of time having to read through lines of script to find the missing character. On May 6th, 2014, Let's Player jacksepticeye uploaded a video titled "HIDE & SEEK CHAMPION | Gmod Prop Hunt w/ Minx,Ohmwrecker,Chilled,Dlive" (shown below). As of August 2015, the video has over 2 million views.

Various Examples

External References