About

Dick Butt is an illustration of an anthropomorphic phallus with a pair of testicles and a penis protruding from its backside. In multi-pane image macros and animated GIFs, the drawing is often revealed unexpectedly in the final frame.

Origin

On July 2nd, 2006, artist K.C. Green published a webcomic in his titled “Tree. You’ve Been Good to Us" as part of the Horribleville series, which featured an artist who illustrates the Dick Butt character after being scolded for wasting tree resources as a child (shown below).





Spread

On April 12th, 2007, an entry for "dickbutt" was submitted to Urban Dictionary, where it was defined as the "weirdest thing you can think of." On December 3rd, The Duck Web Comics user Avalon comics left a comment on a Horribleville webcomic claiming that "Dickbutt is a 4chan meme now." On June 14th, 2008, YouTube Th0ldMan uploaded a video of an animated Dick Butt 3D model made in the sandbox game Spore (shown below).





On August 27th, 4chan user VIPPER spammed the phrase "DICK BUTT" in a thread on the 4chan BBS. On June 8th, 2009, BuzzFeed highlighted a multi-pane machine code comic in which Dick Butt is revealed in a note from the superhero Batman (shown below).





On July 16th, 2010, DeviantArtist beyx uploaded an illustration of a Dick Butt character with large eyes sitting on a rainbow (shown below). On October 30th, 2011, the Xkcdickbutt Tumblr blog was launched, highlighting Dick Butt comics illustrated in the style of the Xkcd series (shown below, right).





On April 20th, 2012, FunnyJunk user atlantaboy submitted a screenshot of Dick Butt used in a 4chan thread (shown below). On December 11th, 2013, the Internet humor site College Humor posted a compilation of notable Dick Butt animated GIFs.





GIF Adaptation in 2014

On January 3rd, 2014, Redditor spacecadet06 submitted a photoshopped GIF featuring a scene from the Russian television show Matchmakers 6 in which the outline of Dick Butt emerges from a student’s wood shaving art piece. Since being uploaded to the /r/gifs subreddit, the post gained over 30,800 up votes and 670 comments within the first two months (shown below).





That same day, the /r/DickButt subreddit reached its first 100 subscribers milestone after receiving a record number of sign-ups since its creation in August 2008. On January 16th, Reddit bonebowl submitted an animated GIF of a cyclist launching off a ramp on to an illustration of Dick Butt to the /r/gifs subreddit (shown below), garnering upwards of 11,900 up votes and 190 comments in the following month.





In the coming weeks, several other Dick Butt GIFs were submitted to Imgur, while the /r/Dickbutt subreddit continued to grow in subscribers. On February 12th, The Daily Dot published an article about the history of Dick Butt, which noted a recent resurgence on Reddit.

Notable Examples





Search Interest

Know Your Meme Store

External References