Walmart's Tortilla Rat Meme Explained

Rats as a species have been rather unfairly maligned throughout history. For centuries they've been blamed — based on a lie, as it turns out — for causing a series of plagues that wiped out half of Europe. Well, it's not like one little meme could redeem several hundreds of years of scapegoating, but if there ever were such a meme, it would probably be Pizza Rat. That one short video clip managed to make its rodent hero look both adorable and somehow relatable, because don't we all just want to enjoy our pizza in peace?

While the Pizza Rat meme had remarkable longevity (and even inspired a minor league baseball team to temporarily change its name) it is still an older product of the mid 20-teens. It came out in 2015, which means that its star likely passed away — from non- pizza-related causes, we trust — about six years ago since the average lifespan for a rodent in the wild is about 1 year. The average lifespan for a meme is even shorter than that, with Avonews Online estimating that it may take just six weeks for a meme to go from dank to dead. Plus, TikTok's "Ratatouille" musical kept us entertained over the first part of the pandemic, but even that has since been buried in the graveyard of past TikTok trends. All things considered, it seems we're way overdue for a new rodent-related meme. Fear not, Walmart Tortilla Rat is here to save the day!

If you just googled "Walmart Tortilla Rat" and didn't find anything, that's because you're getting in on this new meme just as it's being born. No guarantees that it goes viral, but if and when it does, you can be one of the cool kids who knew about it long before it went all normie. So, where did this meme get its start? In Walmart, of course — the tortilla aisle at a Lorain, Ohio, Walmart, to be specific. One chonky li'l' rattie decided to get him some tortillas, and someone captured it on video. While the clip is no longer available on YouTube, it was screencapped and posted to the People of Walmart subreddit, which is where the fun began.

Many of the Redditors commenting on the replete rodent made mention of its size, with one person saying, "Damn that's a big boy. He must have hit up the bakery first." Another, referencing the brand of tortillas, said, "That rat is on a mission." Someone else, recalling a famous food-loving rodent, said, "Man, Remy is just trying to make some quesadillas," while another wit suggested it was "Quality inspector #6547. In store testing shelf life of soon expired product." The meme-to-be may have been born, however, with the commenter who said, "You've heard of 'pizza rat', now get a load of 'tortilla rat'!" Meme generators, start your engines!