In spring 2023, DaFuq!?Boom! became one of the most-watched YouTube channels in the entire world. Between January and May, it shot from getting 3 million views a month to nearly 3 billion, and cemented one word in the minds of all those hundreds of millions of viewers:

Skibidi.

Plagued by recurring nightmares of hands and heads coming out of toilets, animator Alexey Gerasimov (the creator behind DaFuq!?Boom!) had decided to exorcise them by turning them into short animated clips. In the very first, 11-second Skibidi Toilet video, the viewer swings through what looks like an office building (complete with tiny suited man) and into its bathroom, where a head pops out of the toilet singing a popular TikTok mashup of Timbaland’s “Give It to Me” and Biser King’s “Dom Dom Yes Yes.”

The next few videos were similarly simple, and set the tone for Skibidi Toilet as a lo-fi,...