Big Chungus is a meme that has completely exploded and taken over the internet. It originates from Reddit, where a clip of Bugs Bunny was distorted to make him look fat. It was then edited onto a PlayStation 4 game case. The name “Big Chungus” comes from video game journalist Jim Sterling, who coined the word “chungus”.

The meme didn’t really take off until the story of a boy pranking his mother surfaced to the internet. Gamestop manager Justin Laufer made the post on Facebook, sharing his experience. The boy’s mother went into a Gamestop store and asked the employee for a game, showing him a photo of the Big Chungus game case. The employee had to sadly tell her that her son had pranked her, barely able to control his laughter. Justin then released the story onto the internet, where it took over.

The phrase “big chungus” was first made by Redditor GaryTheTaco, March 20th, 2018, but it wasn’t released to the public until December 1st, where it began its explosion of popularity. A subreddit was created solely for big chungus memes in December, where a plethora of creators made their own versions and shared images of the bunny.

Big Chungus spread from Justin’s post on Facebook to Twitter, where user @fluffypkmn shared a screenshot of the original post, where it went viral. Within two weeks, the tweet gained over 13,800 retweets. Other variations began to spread through other social media sites, such as the Facebook page of a woman Karen Chungus and Ugandan Chungus, a mix between Ugandan Knuckles and Big Chungus.