Masahiro Sakurai Bad Game Design Meme

How A Google Glitch Created The "Who Created Kirby?" Meme

A Google glitch led to the creation of the "Who Created Kirby?" meme in 2018. Amused fans helped make the meme go viral before the error was fixed.

A strange glitch in Google led to the creation of the viral"Who Created Kirby?"meme back in 2018. Kirby is a beloved video game character who first appeared in 1992 Game Boy title Kirby's Dream Land, where he has to retrieve all the food stolen by an evil King from Dream Land. Kirby himself is essentially a round ball who absorbs enemies by inhaling them and, depending on the title, he can absorb their powers too and expand to float around the level. Putting aside his somewhat disturbing methods of dispatching foes, his cuteness soon made him a star.

Kirby's look was originally intended as a placeholder for another design, but the developers working on Dream Landliked the cuteness of Kirby and decided to keep this look. In addition to appearing in his own franchise, Kirby has also shown up in the Super Smash Bros franchise. He also earned his own anime series, which ran for over 100 episodes, and numerous other merchandise. Kirby now ranks alongside Super Mario or Donkey Kong as one of Nintendo most iconic mascots.

Kirby himself was created by Masahiro Sakurai, who worked on the series for over a decade before moving on to other projects. The franchise would continue to evolve in interesting ways, such as 2010's acclaimedKirby's Epic Yarn, while Sakurai has worked on titles like Kid Icarus: Uprising and 2018'sSuper Smash Bros. Ultimate for the Nintendo Switch. Fans typing "Who Created Kirby?" into Google back in early 2018 noticed something strange in the search results, however.

While Masahiro Sakurai's name came up as creator, the first picture was of a rotund black man instead of Sakurai. This picture apparently came from a Twitter account with a large following, which is why it came up first in search results. It took a few months for this glitch to be corrected, but in that time it led to the creation of several memes and videos poking fun at the error. It was a source of fun for people to type in the search result for themselves, but now no picture is shown if "Who Created Kirby?" is typed into Google.

Such glitches happen on Google from time to time, but this easily became one of the most high-profile within the fan community. "Who Created Kirby?" still goes resurfaces occasionally, but it appears to have died down since the error was fixed. While Masahiro Sakurai is no longer working on the main series, Kirby himself is keeping busy. Kirby Star Allies for the Switch quickly became one of the platform's best-selling titles upon release in 2018 and an enhanced update titled Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn arrived for the Nintendo 3DS in 2018.

Next: Super Smash Bros Ultimate: Most Powerful Attacks

Resources For D&D Players Trying to Make Fun Character Backstories

About The Author

Padraig Cotter (3239 Articles Published)

It's pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that's out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he'd like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site. A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU - where Hawkeye is clearly the best character - to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle. He's super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.