Skip to Content
The Daily Dot home
The Daily Dot home
Log In
Advertisement
Memes

‘Godzilla Had a Stroke Trying to Read This and F*cking Died’: how the copypasta and meme blew up

Godzilla in a bucket with text that says "godzilla had a stroke trying to read this and ******* died"

Godzilla Had a Stroke Trying to Read This and F*cking Died is an absurdist copypasta and meme referencing a BTS photo from 1992's Godzilla vs. Mothra, in which Godzilla is seen lying in a wheelbarrow. Versions of the meme have become popular ways to poke fun at typos and writing errors, though, similar to the Garfield Why Do They Call It Oven? copypasta, its nonsensical nature can be seen as a precursor to the brain rot memes of the early 2020s.

Featured Video

Meme basics:

  • Meme Creator: iFunny user Alpha_Grizzly
  • Meme Type: Reaction, copypasta
  • First Appearance: May 24, 2019
  • Origin Source: iFunny
  • Peak Popularity: May 2021godzilla had a stroke google trends

Meme origins

Advertisement

The image that prompted the Godzilla Had a Stroke Trying to Read This and Fucking Died meme came from a collection of behind-the-scenes photos from 1992's Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth.

The photos were shared by Gizmodo in late August 2012, and later that month were shared to the r/movies sub on Reddit. One of the photos depicted Godzilla lying in a wheelbarrow.

godzilla wheelbarrow photo

Cultural context

Advertisement

In the mid-2010s, jokes about hard-to-read text online were met with a new response. Comments would read, "I just had a stroke." This is meant to indicate that something is hard to understand and in 2018, a subreddit titled r/ihadastroke appeared.

The photo and copypasta appeared together for the first time in an iFunny post shared by user Alpha_Grizzly on May 24, 2019.

Godzilla had a stroke trying to read this and fucking died meme

Within months, the meme appeared on r/ihadastroke, where it began to spread and gain more frequent use.

Advertisement
photo album blurb godzilla meme
dog yard godzilla had a stroke

Godzilla Had a Stroke Trying to Read This and F*cking Died copypasta

In addition to the use of the meme, Godzilla Had a Stroke Trying to Read This and F*cking Died has become a copypasta reaction comment found across social media. It appears in two ways. For one, it calls out text posts that contain a lot of misspellings. In another sense, the copypasta slickly points out nonsensical things.

Advertisement
godzilla had a stroke reading this
godzilla had a stroke

Meme examples

dictionary godzilla had a stroke
Advertisement
worcestershire sauce godzilla had a stroke
gps jumbled words godzilla had a stroke
airplane aeroplane fly flight air godzilla had a stroke trying to read this
Advertisement
godzilla had a stroke
couple selfie godzilla had a stroke
Godzilla had a stroke trying to read this and fricking died ban speech
godzilla had a stroke street signs
Advertisement
fried godzilla had a stroke
relations godzilla had a stroke
garbled text godzilla just had a stroke
Advertisement
Advertisement

More copypasta memes:

The internet is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here to get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.




Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter