Obunga

About

Obunga refers to a photoshopped image of former U.S. President Barack Obama distorted to resemble roach creatures from the manga Terra Formars, which has been described as a cursed image. The image is frequently displayed along with music from the horror game Five Nights at Freddy's.

Origin

While the exact origin of the photoshopped image is unknown, the earliest archived instance on 4chan was submitted to the /tv/ (television) board on July 24, 2013.^[4]

Spread

On March 29th, 2016, the photoshopped image was submitted to the /v/ (video games) board on 4chan with the filename Juhrack Johbama.jpg.^[1] On February 14th, 2018, YouTuber Homosneksual uploaded a video titled Obunga.mov, featuring the photoshopped image accompanied by the "new round" sound effect in Call of Duty: World at War (shown below, left). On June 11th, the first version of the image uploaded along with music from Five Nights at Freddy's was uploaded by YouTuber by Maguku (shown below, right).

In June 2018, the meme experienced a burst in popularity as multiple Instagram accounts posted Obunga memes, including screamer videos. For example, on June 15th, 2018, Instagram^[5] user bepis.man posted a Five Nights at Freddy's Obunga meme that gained over 31,000 views and 3,200 likes in four years (shown below, left). On June 21st, 2018, bepis.man posted^[6] another meme that gained over 44,000 views and 4,800 likes in the same period (shown below, right).

On June 27th, 2018, YouTuber PewDiePie released a video about the Obunga meme titled "OBUNGA 💖ELAS 🆃🅷🅸🅲🅲💖 GIRL" (shown below). Within 24 hours the video accumulated upwards of 2.7 million views and 35,200 comments.

On June 28th, 2018, Redditor CharlotteNetherlands submitted a captioned version of the image to /r/okbuddyretard,^[2] where it gained over 1,000 points (91% upvoted) and 60 comments in 15 hours. Meanwhile, Redditor TheMemeKid uploaded a version of the image meant to resemble the character Sans from the video game Undertale to /r/dankmemes^[3] (shown below, right).

Obunga NextBot

In Summer 2022, Obunga regained online popularity as a bot used in the NextBot Chase Garry's Mod game. The mod was submitted to Steam Workshop by the user The Globfather on July 2nd, 2018.^[7]

The mod appeared in multiple viral videos on TikTok and YouTube. For example, on July 6th, 2022, YouTuber^[8] Whitt posted a gameplay video that gained over 2.6 million views in three weeks (shown below, left). On July 20th, 2022, YouTuber^[9] GirthQuake posted a video that received over 263,000 views in one week (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References