Over the past week, I’ve watched a surprising number of people mourn a goblin named Fartbuckle. More curious than Fartbuckle’s sudden brief emergence is the fact that all of these emotional breakdowns have been set to a new Childish Gambino song that could not have less to do with the world of Dungeons & Dragons, a goblin, and the ultimate sacrifice made for your party. And yet, here we are.
As far as I can tell, this trend began with the TikTok user tumbleweed2319, who posted a video on July 20 which celebrated Fartbuckle. Fartbuckle appears to be an NPC the dungeon master suddenly introduced at a climactic moment, where the party was in life-threatening danger, so they could prove their worth. Boy, did they do it.
Tumbleweed2319’s post is, in a word, epic. It’s composed of a bunch of illustrations, beginning with the D&D party despairing at being on the verge of getting wiped by an encounter with a magic crystal. Just as everything seems lost, the DM brings up a goblin companion named Fartbuckle, and just as the realization of what’s about to happen hits the players, the goblin jumps in the way of a fatal attack. The final moments of the video show Fartbuckle being blasted to bits, and with his last breath he says, “I…save…friends…Fartbuckle…is…happy.” Cut, end of scene, cue the waterworks.
As dramatic as the events of the video are, I think what’s really made it take off is its triumphant score. The post, which is set to a new Childish Gambino song named “Lithonia,” feels like a heroic climax. Though the song begins on very airy synths, it eventually picks up the pace with a backing piano before erupting into a guitar-heavy anthemic riff.
As Fartbuckle makes his sacrifice to save his friends, Gambino growls the line, “I feel liberated,” and the lyrics could not feel more intrinsically tied to the actions on screen, which is of course completely accidental. Gambino, who’s abandoning the moniker and rap persona in favor of using his given name, Donald Glover, definitely did not write a song about a goblin named Fartbuckle, but someone made a video so good that it almost feels like he did.
Within a few hours of first noticing tumbleweed2319’s post on my For You page—an algorithmically organized feed on TikTok that provides videos the app thinks I’ll like—I was suddenly inundated in similar posts. Sometimes, I’ll like one cat video and get on what I affectionately call CatTok, where TikTok believes I’m part of a cat-loving community of users that needs to see every cat video ever made. Every now and then, I’ll wind up on BookTok, and then quickly try to escape it. My absolute favorite is FoodTok, because then the algorithm serves me up local New York eateries with incredible-looking food.
This time around though, I had informally been inducted into FartbuckleTok, which was filled with similar animatics reinterpreting the brave goblin’s last moments, and all set to “Lithonia.” And just like that, a meme was born. Other videos I saw featured some animation about Fartbuckle, or a video of someone pretending to cry and mourn the loss of Fartbuckle, a character nobody knew existed a week prior.
The Fartbuckle trend has become a celebration of the trope of the noble sacrifice from the most unexpected and meager characters. Fartbuckle was kind of no one until he took one for the team, and because nobody expected it, they didn’t expect to grieve him. The beat draws an uncanny parallel to how grief manages to come from unexpected places, and how it makes one appreciate things and people they might’ve taken for granted. Evidently, it’s striking an especially resonant chord with folks who are now grafting the Fartbuckle archetype and meme onto other properties and characters, such as Elden Ring and Final Fantasy XIV Online.
To make things even better, Glover, who’s terminally online despite his repeated ire for the internet and all things relating to social media, has even shared his own post about Fartbuckle. Clearly, he’s aware his song has now become synonymous with the goblin, and though he may not understand exactly why, it doesn’t seem to have stopped him from endorsing it. Long live, Fartbuckle.