Pepe the Frog

Pepe the Frog
“ Feel's good man „ ― Pepe's Catchphrase
Vital statistics
Names	Pepe, Young Peezy
Gender	Male
Race	Frog
Occupation	Gamer
Origin	Boy's Club (2005)
Alignment	Neutral
Age	Teens
Created By	Matt Furie
Height	Varies
Weight	Varies

Pepe the Frog (/ˈpɛpeɪ/ PEP-ay) is a widely recognized comic character and Internet meme created by cartoonist Matt Furie. Depicted as a green anthropomorphic frog with a humanoid body, Pepe first appeared in Furie's 2005 comic Boy's Club. The character gained popularity as an Internet meme in 2008, spreading across platforms like Myspace, Gaia Online, and 4chan. By 2015, Pepe had become a dominant meme on 4chan and Tumblr. Various iterations of the meme include "Sad Frog," "Smug Frog," "Angry Pepe," "Feels Frog," and the "You will never..." Frog. Since 2014, "Rare Pepes" have emerged as a form of collectible digital trading cards on the "meme market."

Initially conceived as an apolitical character, Pepe was controversially appropriated between 2015 and 2016 as a symbol by the alt-right movement. In response, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) added Pepe to its hate symbol database in 2016, while clarifying that most uses of the character were not hate-related. Matt Furie has openly condemned this misuse of his creation and pursued legal action against organizations that propagated it.

Pepe has also been repurposed in more positive contexts. During the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests, the character became a symbol of resistance, unconnected to alt-right ideology. Furie has expressed support for this use of Pepe as a unifying emblem.

Today, Pepe remains a prominent figure in online culture, widely shared on platforms like 4chan, Twitch, Reddit, and Discord. His image is often customized into unique emoji and continues to evolve as a staple of Internet meme culture.

Appearance

Pepe the Frog is depicted as a green anthropomorphic frog with a humanoid body. He has a simple, round face with large, expressive eyes and a wide, often carefree smile. His body is generally drawn in a relaxed, casual posture, with his arms and legs resembling those of a human. Pepe's overall design is minimalist, with only basic details like his brown lips and occasionally a blue or plain shirt.

His most iconic pose often features him in a laid-back position, sometimes lounging or sitting comfortably, reflecting his easygoing personality. Despite his humble design, Pepe's distinctive face and expressive features have made him a widely recognizable figure across internet cultures.

Personality

Pepe the Frog is portrayed as a laid-back and easygoing character who enjoys pop, pizza, and chatting on his cellphone. Known for his relaxed demeanor, he takes life as it comes and stays cool under any circumstance, even when pulling his pants all the way down to pee because, as he says, "it feels good."

Pepe’s favorite car is the iconic Lamborghini Countach, and his alter ego or online persona, Young Peezy, makes appearances in the comics. He is rarely seen without his phone, which he uses for calls, gaming, and entertainment. His favorite game is Doom, which he is often depicted playing.

Biography

Pepe the Frog was created by American artist and cartoonist Matt Furie in 2005, originating in his comic Boy's Club #1. The character's early appearances trace back to a zine Furie created using Microsoft Paint, titled Playtime, where Pepe was one of the featured characters. In 2005, Furie began posting Boy's Club comics on Myspace as a series of blog entries, introducing Pepe to a growing audience.

One notable scene from the comic features Pepe urinating with his pants pulled down to his ankles, accompanied by the catchphrase, "feels good man," which became synonymous with the character. These blog posts were later removed by Furie following the 2006 release of the printed edition of Boy's Club.

Pepe the Frog first appeared in blog posts on Myspace in 2005 and became an inside joke among users on Gaia Online. In 2008, a page from Boy's Club featuring Pepe and the catchphrase "feels good man" was scanned and uploaded to 4chan's /b/ board, which soon became the meme's hub.

On 4chan, users adapted Pepe's expressions and catchphrases to reflect a range of emotions, including melancholy ("feels bad man"), anger, and surprise. Initially a black-and-white drawing, Pepe evolved into a green frog with brown lips, often depicted wearing a blue shirt. By 2012, "Sad Frog" gained popularity on Tumblr, and other variations, such as "Smug Pepe," emerged the same year. Meanwhile, Pepe found a following on Chinese social media platforms like Baidu Tieba, where it was referred to as shangxin qingwa (傷心青蛙), meaning "sad frog."

As the meme gained traction, celebrities like Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj began sharing Pepe images on social media in 2014. This mainstream popularity sparked a reaction from 4chan users, who labeled non-4chan users as "normies" and attempted to make Pepe memes increasingly provocative to discourage widespread adoption. Around the same time, creative Pepe variations, called "rare Pepes," became collectibles, with some even sold as physical artwork on eBay and Craigslist.

By 2015, Pepe ranked #6 on Daily News and Analysis's list of the most important memes and was the most retweeted meme on Twitter. Daily Intelligencer hailed it as Tumblr's "Biggest Meme of 2015," and Inverse noted it was among the platform's most reblogged memes that year.

In 2015, Internet trolls began creating Pepe the Frog variants designed to associate the character with the alt-right movement. These versions often incorporated Nazi, Ku Klux Klan, or white supremacist themes. Pepe’s association with the alt-right gained further visibility during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Donald Trump retweeted a Pepe-inspired image of himself in October 2015, and a parody movie poster titled "The Deplorables," featuring Pepe alongside members of Trump's campaign and other alt-right figures, was shared by Donald Trump Jr. and Roger Stone.

During the election, news outlets highlighted Pepe’s connections to white nationalism, and the Clinton campaign described Pepe as a symbol of white supremacy. Clinton's remarks inadvertently brought further attention to the meme’s alt-right usage, with some experts noting this amplified its notoriety. In response to Pepe’s appropriation, Matt Furie, the creator of Pepe, expressed frustration, stating that he could not control the misuse of his character. Furie collaborated with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to launch the #SavePepe campaign, aiming to restore Pepe’s image as a symbol of positivity. The ADL clarified that most uses of Pepe were not hate-related, and Furie created an online repository of peaceful Pepe images as part of the initiative.

Despite Furie's efforts, Pepe’s controversial associations persisted. The Russian Embassy in the UK tweeted a Pepe image in 2017, and far-right figure Richard Spencer wore a Pepe pin during an interview, moments before being punched in a widely circulated video. Furie briefly "killed" Pepe in a comic published in 2017 as an artistic response to the character’s appropriation but later announced plans to resurrect him in a new comic.

Pepe’s image continued to face exploitation in various contexts. In 2017, Furie settled a lawsuit against the author of The Adventures of Pepe and Pede, a children’s book with racist and Islamophobic themes. The settlement required the book’s withdrawal and the donation of profits to the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Furie also succeeded in removing unlicensed Pepe images from websites like The Daily Stormer and won a $15,000 settlement from Infowars in 2019 for unauthorized use of Pepe on far-right merchandise.

Pepe's legacy remains complex, embodying both a beloved meme and a symbol misused in divisive contexts. Furie has consistently worked to reclaim his creation, emphasizing Pepe's original intent as a harmless and inclusive character.

Powers and Statistics

Tier: 10-B physically, Unknown with acid reflux

Powers and Abilities: Toon Force (Shown here and here. Should be comparable to his roommates), Body Control (Can remove his eyes/elongate them), Shapeshifting (Changed his head's shape), Acid Projection (Via acid reflux), Pain Resistance (Comparable to his roommates, is unbothered by having his eyes pulled out), possibly Regeneration (Mid. Should be comparable to his roommates who regenerated from skeletons in an unknown amount of time)

Attack Potency: Human level physically, Unknown, possibly ignores conventional durability with acid reflux (Caused this)

Speed: Unknown, likely Human level (Similarly to the other guys, he has no real speed feats)

Lifting Strength: Unknown, likely Average Human

Striking Strength: Human level

Durability: Human level

Stamina: Unknown

Range: Standard Melee Range, Varies with abilities

Standard Equipment: Cellphone and axe spray

Intelligence: Average (Is as smart as a normal person, though is naive)

Weaknesses: Easily vomits, becomes overcome emotionally when his phone dies. He will stop whatever he is doing to answer his phone. He is a pushover.

Tier: 2-B, likely 1-A

'Powers and Abilities: 'Superhuman Physical Characteristics, Higher-Dimensional Existence and Higher-Dimensional Manipulation (Is a 4th dimensional being in one of his avatars, transcends dimensions entirely scaling of Wojak), Abstract Existence and Conceptual Manipulation (Pepe is just an idea, corrupted and used by internet users to their own gain), Regeneration (likely True Godly), Immortality (type 1, 3, 8 reliant on the internet and 9, likely 10), Spatial Manipulation, Time Manipulation and Reality Warping (Can manifest Space-time continuums in himself), Avatar Creation (Should be able to do this based on his dimensional tiering and scaling of Wojak), conceptual Data Manipulation (Can manipulate data itself to his own will), Resistance to Temperature, Fire and Radiation Manipulation (Bathed in cosmic plasma), Law Manipulation, Physics Manipulation and passive conceptual Corruption type 3 (Corrupts concepts and breaks the laws of Physics to his own image), Large Size (Type 6, 8 and 11), Shapeshifting and Adaptation (Pepe can take any fictional character into himself and adapt their characteristics), passive Chaos and Empathic Manipulation through his nature, Existence Erasure and all the powers of the complete Infinity Gauntlet (Erased Wojak ), possibly way more

Attack Potency: Multiverse Level is directly behind infinite Universes and a 4th dimensional being, likely Outerverse Level (Scaling off of Wojak whom he is superior to in the hierarchy)

Speed: Infinite, likely Irrelevant (Can Keep up with Wojak in fights and is superior to him)

Lifting Strength: Immeasurable, likely Irrelevant 

Striking Strength: Multiversal, likely Outerversal

Durability: Multiverse Level, likely Outerverse Level (Took hits from Wojak and kept fighting)

Stamina: Infinite, likely Irrelevant

Range: Multiversal, likely Outerversal

Standard Equipment: Irrelevant

Intelligence: Extraordinary Genius, has been shown time and time again outsmarting Wojak who was shown to win chess matches against his own brain

Weaknesses: Unknown

Trivia

• A Rare Pepe, or RarePepe, refers to a variation of the "Pepe the Frog" meme, often created as unique digital artworks. Between 2016 and 2018, the Rare Pepe crypto project emerged, involving artists worldwide who created and traded these variations as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Counterparty platform. The project featured 1,774 officially released cards across 36 series.
• On October 26, 2021, one such Rare Pepe NFT, titled PEPENOPOULOS, was auctioned at Sotheby’s for $3.6 million USD. The project and its cultural significance also gained broader recognition, with PEPENOPOULOS appearing on the cover of Fortune magazine as part of a special report on cryptocurrency.
• A 2020 documentary, Feels Good Man, relates the story of Pepe's origins and co-option by the alt-right, and Furie's attempts to regain control over his creation.
• In August 2019, it was reported that various demonstrators at the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests were using Pepe as a "resistance symbol".