You never know when something will appear on the internet. Here’s what I thought when I saw a photo of a lone Taco Bell against a broad Midwestern landscape. It was shared by someone with two toilet emojis in their Twitter name. I have know this has happened.
The read jokes, “Does anyone want something from the jrpg tacobell world map?” It rose to prominence because it was trustworthy, received over 60,000 likes, and inspired a series of memes where people stitched JRPG landscapes into Taco Bell photos.
Twitter user A Jay Holmgren shared the original image in the summer of 2021, with the caption, “I love when hotels have great views.” He and his fiance, Carlyn Haffey, were staying at a hotel outside of Rapid City, South Dakota when she decided to take a picture of the scene and told him to post it along with the joke. Holmgren, professor of medicine and health policy at UC San Francisco, told Polygon via Twitter that, “My years of research posting and my twitter legacy will forever be Taco Bell aesthetics.”
The image appeared on January 8, many years later, when user Punishment Joj shared the image and compared it to the JRPG landscape. It fits a little too well, and now a lot of people online are talking about “JRPG Taco Bell”. This is a picture of Shulk from Xenoblade Chronicles I mean walking across the great plains of South Dakota, plains of bulls.
As a rule with any good online joke, everyone has to join in the fun. Everyone created their own images and edited various scenes from other JRPGs into the scene. Everyone edited in Final Fantasy 7 remake, The Last Fantasy 14and Generation of monster huntersbut I like Xenoblade best.
You know, you could spend a lifetime looking for adventure only to find it in your backyard. As a fellow Midwesterner and someone who doesn’t live far from South Dakota, I feel terrible about living in a place that isn’t the coast or the big city. Next time I’m faced with that attitude, I might look someone in the eye and say: But we have JRPG Taco Bell.
