Memes are viral phenomena. It’s a term coined by the Scientist Richard Dawkins

Memes are viral phenomena. It’s a term coined by the Scientist Richard Dawkins that originated from his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Memes refer to an idea, phrase, or concept spread by a group of people through imitation or recreation that assigns itself a possibility of going viral.
During World War II, a meme went viral and became exceptionally popular. Typically seen in graffiti, the meme “Kilroy was here” was ubiquitous and the said phrase was found to be written everywhere. From the holds of the ships to the sides of the trucks to the walls of bathrooms and in school cafeterias, this one iconic phrase attained its heights of popularity in seemingly every place across the globe.

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The doodle pictured a strange bald man with a big-shaped nose, peering over the wall or fence and his fingers remained clutched on the wall along with the inscription of the words “Kilroy was here” written underneath.
The “Kilroy was here” graffito spread like a craze, and hence it turned up in every obscure location around the world. Many scholars and historians have spent decades and also formulated theories regarding the origin of the phrase. Howsoever, the real answers have remained as ambiguous as the Kilroy himself.
The Origin of the Phrase
Some scholars claimed that Kilroy graffiti seemed to have been derived from a similar graffiti “Foo was here,” that was highly popular among the Australian servicemen during World War I. Except for the words, the graffiti of “Foo was here” also characterized a big-nosed cartoon image peered over the wall.
Image for postImage for post
Kilroy/Chad as an RLC circuit arranged to create a band-stop filter by Original version: Eli the Bearded, SVG version: WhiteTimberwolf [Wikimedia Commons: Public Domain]
Around the same time, when Kilroy was grabbing the limelight in the United States, another graffiti “Mr. Chad,” gained popularity in England. It depicted a human like circuit diagram with one eye winking and the whole image conveyed the same eye-gazing connotation of someone watching as that depicted by Kilroy.
Henceforth, the phrase’s origin has a debatable history. It is said that throughout World War II, the meme started popping up and followed the United States soldiers to every place they went.
It therefore became a recurring global phenomenon and buzzed the waves of popularity. With time, the doodle’s fame peaked, and soon it became the center of everyone’s discussion.
No sooner, the image gained traction around the world and as mentioned earlier appeared on the walls, on the sides of the buses and even appeared on the properties belonging to the axis powers. By this time, it became clear that “Kilroy was here” was omnipresent and appeared in different forms.
Nonetheless, the vague connotation of the phrase took roots in the minds of the soldiers who lived far away from their homes and dutifully risked their lives. And as the conflicts of the war continued, those soldiers spread Kilroy throughout the world.
While the War progressed, the “Kilroy was here” graffiti seemed to have acquired an emblem of pride status that the U.S soldiers felt that it reflected the message of America as a super-power nation.
Time ahead, it became increasingly difficult for the troops not to spot a space where the graffiti wasn’t found. Some people also believe that the graffiti aroused informal competition among the soldiers who deliberately sought out remote locations that hadn’t been labelled with Kilroy graffiti. Hence, no matter where the military went, Kilroy was always pre-present.
Many historians also believe that Kilroy also became a funny meme among GIs. They found Kilroy as a soldier who always marched ahead and reached every destination much before anyone could have reached.
The Theories Behind the Kilroy Trend
As the name “Kilroy” crops up, it indeed gets associated with a dispute. While the origins behind the Kilroy trend are unknown, some historians point out that it all began with a person named James J. Kilroy, an inspector at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts.
It is believed that when the ships were under construction, this man supposedly wrote “Kilroy was here” on various parts of the ships. Later, the members who worked over there famously started popularizing the phrase in the places they travelled.
In the words of the scholar and author, Charles Panati, the popularity of “Kilroy was here” phenomenon was summed up as: “The outrageousness of the graffiti was not so much what it said, but where it turned up.”
Another theory is related to a man named Francis J. Kilroy Jr., a soldier in Florida who was unwell because of flu and eventually wrote on the walls of his barracks that “Kilroy will be here next week.” However, it is unknown that there even existed a person named Kilroy who inspired the graffiti despite several claims being proposed for years.
Another reference is from a 2007 documentary, Fort Knox: Secrets Revealed, that aired on the History Channel. In the documentary, the phrase “Kilroy was here” was found to be written on the wall situated inside the vault that possibly implied that the meme’s origin dates back to no later than 1937. Unfortunately, the truth was revealed that the vault’s footage was entirely recreated; hence the meme’s origin still stands doubtable.
Adolf Hitler Feared that Kilroy was a Master Spy
Apart from becoming popular among the U.S. soldiers, the “Kilroy was here” graffiti also baffled the opposing armies. One such legendary person was the good-humored Adolf Hitler, who supposedly didn’t find the meme funny.
According to him, some of his commanders noticed the graffiti’s image who found the words scrawled everywhere on the walls and on the American ordinances. Some reports claimed that Hitler ordered some of his top agents to learn who Kilroy was because the Fuhrer presumably believed Kilroy as an Allied spy.
According to a fictitious story, the Kilroy graffiti also appeared in a bathroom stall at Germany’s Potsdam Conference. The conference was a post World War II meeting whose chief participants were the U.S President Harry S. Truman, British Prime Minister Clement Atlee, and the Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin. It was rumored that the famously paranoid Joseph Stalin was shocked when he noticed the phrase “Kilroy was here” on VIP bathrooms walls, prompting him to ask his aides about the Kilroy’s identity.
Be it whichever apocryphal story, the graffiti “Kilroy was here” made headlines and remained in trend for quite long. Even today, the memes like “Kilroy was here” continues to exist through various sources like books, television shows, video games and sometimes stored as the modern-day artefacts. Henceforth, when we talk about memes, Kilroy seems to have appeared first.