About
Butter Pikachu refers to a series of viral photographs of a statue of the Pokémon video game character Pikachu made of butter found on Istiklal Street in Istanbul, Turkey.
Origin
The earliest known photograph of butter Pikachu was posted by Twitter user @njstallard on April 10th, 2016. They captioned the post “butter pikachu is my spirit animal #istanbul.” Within three years, the post received more than 10 retweets and 65 likes.
Spread
About three years later, on February 21st, 2019, journalist Jared Holt tweeted a picture of the Butter Pikachu (shown below, left). He wrote, “This is a Pikachu made of butter that I saw in Istanbul. I cannot stop thinking about it.” The tweet received more than 16,000 retweets and 48,000 likes. He later confirmed that the Pikachu could be found on Istiklal Street in Istanbul, Turkey.
That day, reporter Carl Anka tweeted the photograph with the caption, “Absolutely done in by that butter Pikachu. YOU FEELING IT MATE?” Within 24 hours, the post received more than 15 retweets and 100 likes (shown below, center).
That day, Redditor shutupandtakemyfunny posted the image in the /r/photoshopbattles subreddit. Some responded with photoshopped version of the image (example below, right).
Various Examples
