Woomy

About

Woomy is a descriptive noise for the inkling girl in Nintendo's 2015 video game Splatoon. The noise became memetic and notable due to the lack of voice chat in the game and was used as an exploitable in various remixes and image macros.

Origin

The original source of the sound effect comes from Splatoon's inkling girl character, which first denuted on May 28th, 2015. Upon hitting the downward directional pad, or the "Booyah!" button, the player can hear the catchphrase, which was a common method of communication due to the game not including voice chat (seen below).^[1]

On July 3rd, 2015, SoundCloud user frozenpandaman uploaded the earliest-known voice command files for inkling girl featuring the signature "woomy" quote (shown below).

Spread

On July 20th, 2015, YouTuber^[4] parky minch uploaded a video titled "splatoon simulator" containing a continuous loop of the sound, garnering over 88,000 views in roughly two months (shown below, left). On August 8th, 2015, YouTuber^[5] Mr Meowmers uploaded a video titled "IT'S WOOMY TIME," garnering over 80,000 views in one month (shown below, right). The noise also spread to Tumblr ^[2] and 4chan ^[3] around the same timeframe.

On June 12th, 2017, YouTuber^[6] Inkling Cyan uploaded another video referencing Woomy, receiving over 1 million views, 10,000 likes and 560 comments in roughly three and a half years (seen below, left). On February 23rd, 2019, YouTuber^[7] John Sandwich uploaded an in-game animation featuring the meme, receiving over 4.2 million views, 54,000 likes and 1,900 comments in two years (seen below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References