Winton Overwat (Overwatch)

About

Winton or Winton Overwat refers to memes and jokes made about a character named Winston in the 2016 multiplayer first-person shooter video game Overwatch. The jokes revolve around a misspelling of Winston's name, a super-intelligent gorilla scientist and one of the main playable characters in the videogame series, and the game's title.

Origin

On May 9th, 2017, a user named Chum posted a meme featuring Winston from the videogame series Overwatch to Amino,^[1] alongside a caption that contained a misspelling of his name, reading "winton does a reminder to done science, not drug." The post received eight likes in over five years and is the earliest known mention of the misspelled name (seen below).

The earliest viral instance of the meme "Winton" was in a March 29th, 2019, Reddit^[2] post by FungusXd to /r/comedyheaven, featuring a screencap from an in-game conversation where somebody misspells the gorilla's name. The post gathered over 13,000 upvotes in over three years (seen below).

Spread

In May 2016, Blizzard released new Overwatch merch to its store, including a Winston plushie.^[3] The plushie soon began to be featured in various Overwatch memes, with the earliest known meme image of the plushie being an April 7th, 2019, post to the subreddit /r/Overwatch_memes by an unknown Redditor.^[4] The post gathered 50 upvotes in three years (seen below, left). The plushie made an appearance in subsequent Reddit posts, including one posted by Redditor Andreeeeeeeeeeeeeee3 to /r/Overwatch_memes on February 28th, 2020, gathering over 1000 upvotes in nine months (seen below, right). ^[5]

The misspelling and the plushie also made an appearance in several TikTok videos after the October release of Overwatch 2, with TikToker^[6] @spiderdum posting a gameplay video on November 7th, 2022, and gathering over 800,000 plays and 120,000 likes in a month (seen below, left). On November 16th, TikToker^[7] @yawnymays posted a video of someone saying "Winton" as they played Overwatch together, gathering over 1 million plays and 200,000 likes in two weeks (seen below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References