Origin

In late 2006, stick-figure comics depicting a character who is bound to fail at everything he does started to appear on 4chan.





The Character soon became known as "Epic Fail Guy."

On September 30th, 2006, a thread was posted in which "Epic Fail Guy" found a Guy Fawkes mask similar to the one in the movie V for Vendetta in a garbage bin.





From this point onward, many more Epic Fail Guy threads would appear on /b/ depicting him both with and without the Guy Fawkes mask. Exactly why EFG wore the mask is unknown, but Anonymous's preference for the mask seems to have grown directly from this meme. As time went on, Epic Fail Guy began to appear almost exclusively wearing the mask.

Epic Fail Guy on YouTube

On October 15th, 2006, YouTube user Chainsaw09 posted the video "Epic Fail Guy on HW lan."





Through the various EFG threads, EFG became something of a beloved 4chan folklore figure. By 2008, a thread appeared in which EFG travels through time, explaining that he has ALWAYS had the mask, in true 4chan revisionist tradition.

Relevance to Chanology

By the time Project Chanology rolled around in January of 2008, Anonymous chose to show up in meatspace wearing the Guy Fawkes masks popularized by V for Vendetta not out of tribute to the movie, but as a way of visually telling Scientology they were an EPIC FAIL.

Epic Get Guy?

Due to 4chan's numbering system utilized for tracking posts, Anonymous has had a long tradition of making a game out of the reply system. When the number begins to approach any significant hallmark (such as post ending in 000,000) an Anon will attempt to claim the post, as can be seen below.





In the picture above, Epic Fail Guy would have succeeded in his GET, if not for the sake of exclaiming "57M GET" when what he meant to say was "56M GET."

In the next screen grab, we see the thread in which Epic Fail Guy maneuvered a successful GET for a post ending in 5.





Given the 1 in 10 chance, this is not really Epic. There is very little search traffic to reflect any genuine interest in "Epic Get Guy" outside of the historical recount of the character and GET games. Anonymous decided to commonly agree in renaming the character "Epic GET Guy," and Dramatica followed suit.

Know Your Meme Store

Google Insights for Search shows that although Epic Fail Guy predates Project Chanology, interest in Epic Fail Guy peaked at the same time as Chanology's peak. Epic Fail Guy also seems to be most popular in Finland.