Demon Core | Know Your Meme

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In Popular Culture

In the 1989 war film Fat Man and the Little Boy, events of the second incident are depicted, with actor John Cusack portraying Louis Slotin (scene shown below).

YouTube Videos

On YouTube, a number of documentary and popular science videos about the incident were posted starting in 2017. On October 13th, 2017, YouTube channel Qxir posted the first such video to go viral, with the upload gaining over 920,000 vies in four years (shown below, left). On November 27th, 2020, YouTuber Kyle Hill posted a video that as of May 2021 was the most-viewed video on the topic with over 6 million views (shown below, right).

Anime Girls Experimenting With the Demon Core

On April 4th, 2018, artist nibi tweeted a fan art of Touhou character Aunn Komano using a screwdriver to experimenti with the core that gained over 300 retweets and 570 likes (shown below, left).

On April 18th, 2018, artist shirosato tweeted a similar fan art of Touhou character Koakuma that received over 220 retweets and 400 likes, with a Pixiv post gaining over 540 smiles and 460 likes.

Following the posts, drawing fan art in which various characters used a screwdriver to experiment with the Demon Core became popular among Japanese artists on Twitter, Pixiv and niconico (examples shown below).

On March 13th, 2019, YouTuber Karameru (からめる) posted a humorous video titled “Demon Core-kun” that gained over 3.2 million views in two years (shown below).

In May 2021, following a fan art posted by Twitter user @HellOnEarthIII on May 6th (shown below, left) and a tweet posted by user @drab_makyo on May 10th (shown below, right; based on a 2020 artwork by Tumblr user bepisode), the Japanese trend gained recognition among the Western social media users.