Expand Dong

About

Expand Dong is a photoshopped reaction image featuring the face of the Nintendo character Donkey Kong with perverted captions below it. While the image and similar parodies were already shared on the online imageboard 4chan at the beginning of 2013, they managed to inspire an even larger series of similar parodies featuring several other video game characters on the microblogging website Tumblr later that year. The images commonly follow the style of Tony Kornheiser’s “Why” reaction face.

Origin

The original photoshopped parody of the Donkey Kong 64^[4] box art was seen as early as October 8th, 2012 in a thread on 4chan’s /v/ (Video Games)^[1] board. The image shows a digitally composited caption that consists of the words “Expand” and “Dong” cut out from the box art for the 1999 Nintendo 64 platformer game Donkey Kong 64.

Spread

On March 14th, 2013, Tumblr^[6] user heatcrashemboar posted the “expand dong” image. On April 21st, the same image was posted in a comment on the Internet humor site Funnyjunk.^[2] On June 12th, Tumblr^[8] user goubatsu posted a two-pane image macro featuring Donkey Kong accompanied by the caption “No / This does not expand dong” (shown below).

On June 27th, YouTuber Dexter Dee uploaded a video titled “Expand Dong,” featuring a clip of Donkey Kong singing a song in Season 1 Episode 4 of the French computer animated television show Donkey Kong Country (shown below).

On July 22nd and 23rd, Tumblr^[9]^[10] user foalonthehill posted two video game box arts featuring the Donkey Kong character Dixie Kong and the Super Mario character Luigi in a similar style to the original expand dong image (shown below). In the first five months, both posts received over 1,400 notes.

On July 30th, the Tumblr^[5] blog “Tumbl Trends” highlighted several notable expand dong examples. On October 1st, IGN Forums^[7] user pizzachu1 posted a thread titled “Expand Dong,” which contained the original Donkey Kong image macro.