Salad Fingers

About

Salad Fingers is a popular flash cartoon series about a green, mentally-ill humanoid creature with thin, long fingers named Salad Fingers created by David Firth. On the show, Salad Fingers travels a barren world touching various objects and deriving sexual pleasure for them. The series contains elements of surreal, nightmarish horror and absurd comedy.

History

Created by David Firth, the first episode of Salad Fingers (shown below, left) premiered on Newgrounds on July 1st, 2004 and was posted by user Doki (David Firth).^[1] A second installment entitled "Friends" (shown below, right) soon followed.

In this second episode, Salad Fingers introduces his finger puppet friends, Hubert Cumberdale, Marjory Stewart Baxter and Jeremy Fisher (shown below).

Following episode seven in January 2006, Firth took more than a year-long break from Salad Fingers, returning on September 22nd 2007 with episode eight.

Since then, he has released episodes intermittently. On July 28th, 2013, Firth appeared in "Heroes of Animation with Bing," where he mentioned work on a new Salad Fingers episode (shown below, left). The final installment, episode 10, "Birthday" premiering on November 24th, 2013 (shown below, right).

On July 16th, 2014, Firth compiled the full 10-episode series of Salad Fingers to YouTube. As of June 2017, the 52-minute compilation has received more than 9.8 million views.

Episode 11

In November of 2018, Firth confirmed to Daily Dot^[9] that Salad Fingers would be returning. On December 2nd, the YouTube channel Insight posted an interview with Firth in which he offered backstory on the creation of Salad Fingers and updates on the new episodes (shown below, left). On January 23rd, 2019, Firth uploaded a trailer for an upcoming episode of Salad Fingers to be released in a week (shown below, right).

On January 30th, 2019, Firth uploaded the 11th episode of Salad Fingers, titled "Glass Brother," gaining over 350,000 views in 24 hours.^[8] The episode entails Salad Fingers turning Hubert Cumberdale into a sentient being made of flesh and a family that lives on the other side of a mirror. The episode was covered by LADBible.^[10]

Reception

The first episode of Salad Fingers holds a four-star rating on Newgrounds and has received more than 3.1 million views on the site as of June 2017. Salad Fingers' grew in popularity during its initial seven-episode run between 2004 and 2006. In 2005, the San Francisco Chronicle included Salad Fingers in their "2005 in Review / Pop Culture."^[2] They wrote:

"Salad Fingers The creepiest and best flash animation online is up to six episodes and still going strong. Not especially violent and about as far from sexy as one can imagine; nonetheless, not for the faint of heart. Check out Episode 1 at "fat-pie.com/salad.htm":www.fat-pie.com/salad.htm, in which Salad Fingers discovers the joys of rusty spoons. And remember: In cyberspace, no one can hear you scream."

In 2007, the first seven episodes were shown at the Sydney Underground Film Festival (shown below).^[3]

Fandom

On his website, Firth has posted numerous fan creations based on Salad Fingers and other characters from the series (shown below).^[4]

Since August 10th, 2004, numerous DeviantArt pages for Salad Fingers fans have existed.^[5] The group SaladFingersLovers launched on June 29th, 2011, and as of June 2017 has more than 250 members and 9,000 views. The group posts Salad Fingers fan art (examples below).

Impact

On October 6th, 2016, the YouTube channel The Film Theorist released a series on Salad Fingers. The first installment (shown below, left) entitled "The HORRIFIC Story of Salad Fingers" has received more than 6.3 million views in less than a year. Its follow-up, "ENDING The Salad Fingers Mystery," which the Film Theorists uploaded on October 29th, received more than 6.1 million views.

On October 8th, 2014, Salad Fingers was the subject on an episode of the web series YouTube Explained. The episode "Salad Fingers: Explained" (shown below) received more than 1.2 million views in under three years.

Parodies

Since its release, there have been numerous Salad Fingers tributes and parodies (examples below).

Search Interest

External References