About
Cheatermen and Haggletoads refers to a two-pane image that consists of a Wheel of Fortune Solution describing Cheetahmen and Battletoads and a screenshot of a contestant erroneously answering “Cheatermen and Haggletoads,” a misspelling of Rare and Active Enterprises’s iconic video game characters Cheetahmen (Action 52) and Battletoads (Rare). Though it was subsequently debunked as a photoshopped hoax, the image went viral on Twitter anyway, wrongly labeled as an example of FAIL humor.
Origin
On October 1, 2010, YouTuber WayoshiM uploaded a video clip of the $6000 speed-up round on the television game show Wheel of Fortune, in which the contestant Chris Albert solves “I SEEWHERETHIS IS GOING” in response to a puzzleboard about the only category to share a phrase (shown below).
On October 20, 2014, cartoonist Chris Vincent tweeted a photoshopped screenshot of the Wheel of Fortune clip with the blown solve “Cheatermen and Haggletoads” said as a solution to a puzzleboard about the video game characters Cheetahmen and Battletoads. Within the first week, the tweet gained over 1,300 retweets and 1,000 favorites. According to the Wheel of Fortune Recap,[4] the Cheetahmen and Battletoads solution on the puzzleboard has never been used on the game show.
Immediately after, Vincent tweeted another screenshot of a Wheel of Fortune contestant whose solution had been photoshopped to misread “Shag Fu,” a misprouncing of Shaq Fu from the Electronic Arts fighting game featuring Shaquille O’Neal.
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Also on January 8th, 2014, Redditor lividd3ad submitted a link to Vincent’s tweet to the /r/gamegrumps[1] subreddit, where it garnered more than 150 up votes and 20 comments in the following week.