Give Pikachu A Face is an exploitable drawing game built around a blank template of Pikachu's head, which users fill in with any face they want. It started as a 4chan /b/ thread in 2008 and kept resurfacing on forums like Something Awful, GameStop, and OnePlus for more than a decade.
Origin
The source drawing came from DeviantArt user Bioviral, who posted a Pikachu illustration to their page on June 6th, 2004[2]. Four years later, in 2008, a 4chan poster dropped Bioviral's image into /b/ with a call for anons to fill in the blank face.
- Platform: DeviantArt (source image) / 4chan (viral spread)
- Creator: Bioviral (source image); anonymous 4chan /b/ poster
- Date: 2008
Overview
Give Pikachu A Face is an exploitable image game built around a blank template of Pikachu, the Pokémon mascot[2]. Participants take the empty face area and draw in whatever they want, from cartoon expressions to celebrity portraits to grotesque scribbles. The head-only crop is the most common canvas, though some editors work with full-body Pikachu shots too[3].
The appeal is the contrast between Pikachu's soft, familiar silhouette and whatever unhinged face someone bolts onto it. Threads collecting hundreds of edits still pop up on old-school message boards, and the format works as a lightweight drawing prompt for anyone with a paint program[1].
How It Spread
The game jumped off 4chan and started showing up on hobby forums within a year. On April 25th, 2009, Something Awful user Melted Clocks opened a Give Pikachu A Face thread that ran for pages of user submissions[1]. That thread was promoted into Something Awful's Comedy Goldmine section on June 28th, 2009, the site's showcase for stand-out community posts[5]. A separate thread appeared on the GameStop forums around the same window[6].
The template kept resurfacing every few years on unrelated communities. On October 15th, 2014, a fresh Give Pikachu A Face thread went up on the OnePlus phone forums, drawing edits from users with no obvious link to 4chan or Something Awful[7]. On November 5th, 2017, the Facebook page Listables published a roundup of standout edits from across the game's history[8]. That kind of periodic revival is why the format still turns up on new platforms almost two decades after Bioviral's original drawing.
How to Use
Grab the blank Pikachu template, open it in any image editor, and draw a face inside the empty area. Common conventions include swapping in famous faces, exaggerated cartoon expressions, or deliberately crude MS Paint scrawls[1]. Threads typically encourage posting your version as a reply so the whole gallery builds in one place.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Give Pikachu A Face?
It is an exploitable image game where users take a blank template of Pikachu and draw a new face onto it, then share the result[3].
Where did Give Pikachu A Face come from?
The source Pikachu drawing was posted by DeviantArt user Bioviral on June 6th, 2004[2], and it became a face-drawing game on 4chan's /b/ board in 2008[4].
What does Give Pikachu A Face mean?
It is a call to participate in a drawing game, where the challenge is inventing the most funny or absurd face for the blank Pikachu template[1].
How do you use Give Pikachu A Face?
Save the blank Pikachu image, draw any face onto it in an image editor, and post your version in the thread or feed where the prompt appeared[1].
Is Give Pikachu A Face still popular?
The format has resurfaced periodically on new platforms, including a OnePlus forum thread in 2014[7] and a Facebook roundup by the page Listables in 2017[8].
