About

Fat Rat Being Grabbed refers to a photograph of a large white rat being held by its neck. Following initial use as a photoshop exploitable through 2019, the image reached viral spread in ironic memes in November 2019. In mid-May 2020, a cutout image of the rat gained popularity as an exploitable, with the rat being edited as a handheld weapon into screenshots of various video games.

Origin

On October 6th, 2018, Instagram^[15] user @socalratpack posted a photograph of themselves holding their white pet rat named Baby Rose to their Instagram account. The post received 95 likes in two years (shown below).

Spread

On May 7th, 2019, Twitter^[1] user @JUSTcatmeme posted the earliest known edit of the photograph, a Crying Cat meme that received 5 retweets and 32 likes in one year (shown below, left). On May 31st, 2019, the earliest found reupload of the original photograph was made by Twitter^[2] user @emkamo_.

The image did not see significant spread online until late November 2019. On August 3rd, 2019, Redditor^[3] umopapisdn99 posted a photoshopped edit of the image in which the rat was given abs; the post received over 470 upvotes in six months. On October 7th, Twitter user @GhostMaxima used the image, captioned "SHUT UP!", as a reaction, gaining over 90 likes in nine months.

Ironic Demotivational Posters

On November 29th, 2019, Redditor^[4] RamenDuck posted an ironic Demotivational Poster referencing the animated film Ratatoille that received over 44,400 upvotes in /r/okbuddyretard six months (shown below) and was widely circulated online in the following days. For example, a same-day iFunny^[5] repost received over 47,700 smiles in six months. A December 22nd Instagram^[6] repost received over 28,500 likes in five months.

The post prompted Demotivational Conversations posts In late November and early December 2019; for example, a November 29th meme by Redditor^[7] TheGreenPrince02 received over 520 upvotes in six months (shown below, left). On December 6th Twitter^[8] user @slazo posted a meme that gained over 900 retweets and 7,800 likes in the same period (shown below, right). On January 8th, 2020, Twitter^[9] user @little_paisano posted a dubbed version of the meme.

Video Game Weapons

On February 3rd, 2020, Twitter^[10] user @ThisBearHugs posted two cutouts of fat rats being held in a hand, writing: "Doing a Doom mod where this is your weapon." The tweet received over 60 retweets and 140 likes (shown below, left). On May 5th, 2020, an anonymous 4chan^[11] user posted an edit in which the rat replaced the Sandman ball in Team Fortress 2 (shown below, center). The edit received viral spread online in the following days; for example, a May 10th, 2020, repost in No context TF2 Facebook^[12] group received over 1,200 reactions and 500 shares.

Starting on May 14th, 2020, Twitter^[13] user @datonestarfox posted multiple video game screenshots in which the rat was imagined as a handheld weapon, starting with a Blood edit which received over 750 retweets and 4,800 likes (shown below, right). On May 16th, 2020, @datonestarfox2^[14] posted a PNG template for the meme.

Death

On September 20th, 2020, @socalratpack,^[16] the Instagram account for the rat's owners, reported that the rat had died. They wrote, "Baby has crossed the rainbow bridge :( we had to make the difficult choice to put Baby to sleep but it was time. Thank you all for loving her goofyness. It makes me so happy that she makes people smile and her memory lives on. Ill be posting more pictures soon." The post received more than 395 likes in less than one month (shown below).

Related Memes

Plague Be Upon Ye

Plague Be Upon Ye is a catchphrase often used to accompany images of various characters throwing objects at the viewer. Originating from a viral photoshop of Eminem throwing a fat rat captioned in this fashion, the image macro series gained popularity in October 2020 and has been used as a template for redraws.

Various Examples

Template

External References