About

Why Is Oscar A Grouch refers to a series of images and comics that often try to explain that the Sesame Street character Oscar the Grouch was not always a grouch, and that it was a result of of events that occurred before he lived on Sesame Street. This is frequently done with Vietnam flashbacks, as Sesame Street started in 1968, during the United States involvement in the war at the time.

Origin

It is unknown when the combination of Grouch and Vietnam occurred.

Spread

On March 18th 2015 a comic with Oscar asking why he was a grouch was posted to Imgur.^[1] In it, Oscar's image is superimposed over various scenes of the Vietnam Conflict, suggesting PSTD flashbacks from the event. In a year, this post gained over 10,000 votes and a million views.

On August 15th of the same year, the Tumblr blog for the internet comic "Gone Into Rapture" posted a comic with Big Bird asking Oscar how he came to Sesame Street.^[2] The Comic then depicted a flashback with Oscar holding a fellow troop dying in his arms and yelling screaming no, the reverting back to Oscar telling Big Bird no. Withing less than a year this post gained over 4,500 notes.

On December 11th 2015, Reddit user big_fudge_high_score posted a shorted version of the imgur comic to /r/funny.^[3] The post gained 5,667 votes (90% positive) before being archived.

Search Interest

External References