About

Wheatley Crab is a quote referring to an animation from the beta tests of Portal 2 in which the robotic character Wheatley, a sentient robotic orb in the original game, grows legs and morphs into a crab-like shape. After being discovered in 2020, the animation inspired remixes pairing the animation with songs.

Origin

The Portal 2 beta footage was posted to YouTube on February 10th, 2012 by YouTuber Mystery Ezekude. The footage showed multiple unused animations for the game, including Wheatley turning into a crab-like creature (shown below, left). In the footage, the person filming can be heard saying "Hahaha… Wheatley crab!" On July 5th, 2020, YouTuber Allison Ghost set the footage to a remix of "Out Of Touch" by Hall and Oates as sung by GLaDos (shown below, right).

Spread

On February 16th, 2021, Allison Ghost set footage of "Wheatley Crab" to Ruler Of Everything, gaining over 770,000 views (shown below, left). On April 21st, they posted a remix using the Shower Thoughts meme, gaining over 59,000 views (shown below, right).

The "shower thoughts" video inspired further variations and animations. For example, on June 1st, 2021, YouTuber SpectDraw posted an animation of the video, gaining over 18,000 views (shown below, left). On July 15th, 2021, YouTuber Kewi Kiwi posted a "remastered" version of the meme, gaining over 62,000 views (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References