(synthesized drums)

The Rickroll is one of the most famous yet polarizing memes on the Internet. It's a classic Bait-and-Switch, where you're linked to a web page that purports to be something relevant to whatever you're reading, only to click on it and find yourself watching the music video of British singer Rick Astley's 1987 pop hit "Never Gonna Give You Up".

How did it become so popular? It's simple, it's mostly harmless, and the song itself is pretty catchy. That said, several have found ways of avoiding it — memorizing the YouTube link for the song is a sure-fire way, although some people use alternate links to combat this. If you want to see whether it's in the middle of any given YouTube video, you can check the copyright info to see if it has the song listed (or "content from Rick Astley Official Channel").

It grew to be more than just an Internet meme, though; it was one of the few memes to break out of the Internet and into general popular culture. People were trying this in Real Life, trying to foist the video (or even a live performance of the song) on large public gatherings. Newspaper articles were even written about the phenomenon. In 2008, Rick Astley himself even Rickrolled the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.^note By popping out of a completely unrelated Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends display, surely making Cartoon Network the all-time champion of offline Rickrolling. The man is very much aware of the meme; at first, he was quite baffled by it and started to get really annoyed that it's all anyone ever wanted to ask him about, but he eventually grew to accept and embrace it. To this day, the song gets used in films and advertising every now and then, and it's very rare to see people discuss the song on its own merits (even when this does happen, it's inevitable someone will bring up the meme as an aside).

So who started it?

Like a lot of memes, it started on 4chan. It's actually a variant of the duckroll, which consisted of links to a picture of a duck on wheels◊. Duckrolling was actually part of a particularly elaborate trolling method where the point of the link was to send you to a post in another thread — such a redirect forced your browser to load the entire thread, which was super annoying, and there wasn't any easy way to distinguish such links from links to other posts within the thread (which were much easier on your browser). The duck would be in the post you linked to, and its entire point was to remind you that you got pwned.

That being said, no one's certain exactly how it transitioned to the Rick Astley video specifically. It may be a reference to an earlier joke involving the song. One possible candidate is Nick Lowe's song "All Men Are Liars", which mocks Astley and at one point transitions into the chorus of "Never Gonna Give You Up"; another is Mystery Science Theater 3000, which included the song in its riff on Attack of the Eye Creatures because a character resembled Astley. One factor is probably the lyrics of the song itself, with Rick professing how he will never tell a lie in one line. Whatever the case may be, there's almost certainly an "in-joke" element to it, as there is with many Internet memes; part of the point is to make you ask, "of all things, why that?"

The first victim of the Rickroll is commonly believed to be Kylie Minogue — but in a very meta sense. She and Astley were both members of the Stock Aitken Waterman hit factory back in the eighties. Apparently, they rushed through the production of her song "I Should Be So Lucky" because Astley was supposed to use the studio to record later that day. Looking at the production dates, it's not impossible to believe she was the first person to have something she was working on sidelined by a performance of "Never Gonna Give You Up". Despite the popularity of this video, the first Rickroll victim was not Bill O'Reilly.^note In fact, what caused him to walk off his set was a video by Sting, which is probably much more poetic, but less meme-tastic.

And where can we see it outside its natural habitat?

• The White House Communications Department, in response to complaints on Twitter that a press conference on fiscal policy was too boring, tweeted a link that turned out to be a Rickroll.
• When the U.S. House of Representatives launched its YouTube channel, Speaker Nancy Pelosi invoked the Rickroll. More interestingly, the Oregon State Legislature managed to do something similar without anybody noticing. More recently, the Nebraska State Legislature invoked one to break up a filibuster.
• The video "Hilarious Muppet Bloopers" takes video from The Muppet Show (particularly a segment from episode 96 where Beaker sings "Feelings") and dubs "Never Gonna Give You Up" over it, essentially turning Beaker into Rick Astley.
  Commenter: The resemblance of Beaker to Rick Astley is astonishing!
• During a guest appearance on Late Motiv in 2016, Rick Astley interrupts the show with the chorus of "Never Gonna Give You Up" in three occasions: one when Litus was about to introduce him during the opening title, another during Andreu Buenafuente's monologue, and the last one by popping up right before David Broncano's entrance. He would then close out the episode performing the full song live with his touring band.
• In The LEGO Batman Movie, Robin plays "Never Gonna Give You Up" while cycling through music to use for the film's climactic battle, which Batman simply groans at.
• Ralph Breaks the Internet, having a strong focus on Internet phenomena both old and new, includes the song in its second trailer, briefly foreshadowed by an epic orchestral arrangement of it. In the film itself, The Stinger purports itself to be a sneak peek of Frozen II, before Rickrolling us into a Shot-for-Shot Remake of the music video with Ralph in Astley's place.
• In Bumblebee, a Take That! to the meme has the song depicted as a Berserk Button for the eponymous Autobot, who destroys the cassette it's on after being forced to play just a second or two of it.
• Netizens agonized over a big missed opportunity at the opening of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, where a "celebration of British pop music", had it included the song, would have Rickrolled basically not just the entire world, but all the guest, the athletes present, the foreign dignitaries, the IOC attendees and even Queen Elizabeth II and the British Royal Family present in the games.
• On a 2014 episode of Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, Rick Astley appeared during the "Singalong Live" segment, and sung "Never Gonna Give You Up" with Ant, Dec, the audience and viewers at home.
• At the Petco Park in San Diego, California in August 2019, the San Diego Padres managed to rickroll the Boston Red Sox during a singalong to "Sweet Caroline".
• On February 2020, Fortnite introduced a new emote named "Never Gonna". The choreography is the exact same as the dance performed in the music video, and it even plays the actual real life song.
• In Season 3 of The Masked Singer, the Astronaut performed "Never Gonna Give You Up". This probably would have been unremarkable as just one more pop song used on the show, except it was the final performance of an April Fools' Day episode.
  • In the Recap Episode for Season 5, Cluedle-Doo lead all the eliminated contestants (including host Nick Cannon) in singing the song.
• Omega Layers has the message "Get layer (the layer after your highest unlocked layer) now [working 2020]" which is an external link. Clicking it leads to the "Never Gonna Give You Up" video.
• The Amazing World of Gumball has a Running Gag that's obviously supposed to represent Rickrolling, where someone will click an internet link and get a still image of a chihuahua playing a saxophone with a Suspiciously Similar Song.
• El Hormiguero often starts its seasons with a short film for which the previous season's guests are asked to record a segment. The short film for season 14 (a spoof of Titanic and The Love Boat) had Edurne break an emergency glass... to find Rick Astley himself in the middle of a performance.
• Two instances (sort of) in Episode 10 of Season 2 of Ted Lasso:
  • Firstly, Rebecca haltingly breaks into the lyrics of the song when she gives a eulogy at her father’s funeral, then Ted and the rest of the congregation join in to help sing the chorus.
  • Secondly (and in a more straight up version), Rebecca and her mother, Deborah, are later watching old family home movies on VHS but suddenly the original Rick Astley video pops up because Rebecca taped it over the home video (and she had actually stated she’d done so earlier in the episode).
• In the song "Fugue State" from Octet, Toby sings a YouTube link, claiming that it's where "the secret" lies. If one were to type out said link, it would inevitably lead to a Rickroll.
• In Anti-Idle: The Game, the minigame "Mute Mute Revolution" and its successor version "MMR X: Special Edition", a Rhythm Game but without the music, has one level whose notes are clearly set to the rhythm of the song.
• The Cartoon Network LA Twitter account put out a tweet that pretended to offer the second episode of Villainous for free, but turned out to be one of these. Albeit with the entire thing redone and animated with the show's characters.
• Sesame Street put out a video "Sesame Street presents the 80s" featuring a bunch of parodies of 80s songs like "Count To Nineteen" and "Don't Stop Your Reading". The big finale has Prairie Dawn announcing "It's The Final Countdown!" and music resembling "The Final Countdown" plays for a few seconds as Guy Smiley takes to the stage dressed in a Rick Astley costume to perform a parody of "Never Gonna Give You Up" instead.
• CMC+ features the song as the Leitmotif of Rock Lobster, with it also being played as the menu music for the April Fools' Day build until the 2023 edition.
• In the animated version of Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, Greg clears some teenagers out of his house by playing the song on a boombox, even doing Rick's dance with a dead-serious face.
• Kitboga is a scambaiter popular on YouTube and Twitch.
  • As of 2023, one way scammers try to get money is to send a victim to a Bitcoin ATM to buy a large amount of Bitcoin. They then ask for the QR code from the receipt and make off with the Bitcoin. In this video, Kitboga trolls the scammer by sending a receipt with a QR code that instead rickrolls him. Although he and the viewers don't get to have the pleasure of listening to the scammer hear "Never Gonna Give You Up" over the phone, Kit nevertheless has tracking on the code and thus is able to verify that the scammer and/or one of his buddies did use it and thus got rickrolled.
  • Also in 2023, Kitboga and his team created the "gauntlet," a series of hoops which scammers are made to jump through in the hopes of claiming Bitcoin, but which is actually just designed to waste their time. One of these involves calling into an automated phone line, in which they sit through a long amount of hold music, every so often being asked to say a complicated phrase that is not easy for non-native English speakers. The line eventually terminates in something like them receiving a message saying that the mailbox is full, followed by them being asked to rate the service. The hold music is a series of various instrumental remixes of "Never Gonna Give You Up."
• Celeste has a Rickroll sung by the protagonist Madeline in her funny simlish sound effect hidden in the game files.
• Guardians of the Galaxy (2021) features "Never Gonna Give You Up" as one of the licensed songs on Star-Lord's playlist, which in and of itself doesn't qualify as a Rickroll, but the fact that it's set to play automatically if you fail the game's first huddle definitely does.
• The auto-tracker used by Pink Kitty Rose for her SMZ3 randomizers is programmed to recite music lyrics in its typical Machine Monotone voice if a song is requested of it. During one occasion, the tracker mistakes what Pink is saying for a song request and begins to utter the lyrics to "Never Gonna Give You Up" accordingly.^*Moment is at the 1:41:46 marker. This turns into a Rickroll a moment later when a group of people show up via a Twitch raid, leading Pink to laugh about it being an "interesting time to join".
• Of course, this can also happen if an artist released a Cover Version of the song.
• PAYDAY 3: Active QR Readers feature a QR code prominently on the front, which will lead directly to the music video on Youtube if scanned.
• Marvel's Spider-Man 2: In a flashback scene to Peter and Harry breaking into their high school at night, Peter ends up cornered in a room full of security guards. Harry distracts the guards by singing the song into the school's speaker system.
• Just before Mighty Eagle tries to take off in The Angry Birds Movie, he plays a record of the song.
• In the Doctor Who episode "Father's Day", the song can be heard in the background on a radio while Rose and Pete are in the car; most of the episode takes place in 1987, the release year of that song.
  Interestingly, the episode was broadcast in 2005, and rickrolling wouldn't become popular until 2007.
• On Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series, accessing Joey Wheeler's duelist file results in this.
  Joey: Dat bastard Kaiba rickroll'd me!
• The TV Tropes page Laconic.Schmuck Bait contains one as part of a Self-Demonstrating Article.
• In fact, the meme now automatically makes any previous use of the song Hilarious in Hindsight, if not thought of as an Ur-Example of the meme (like the Mystery Science Theater 3000 example).
• In the first Cat President game, there's a scene in which Kale tells Abigail (the player) that he doesn't mind if you wanna quit working as his campaign manager, as he feels there's no chance he'll win the election anyway. You're then prompted to make a dialogue choice, and one of the choices is "I'm never gonna give you up!"
  Kale: Never gonna let me down?
  Abigail: Never gonna run away from this campaign!
• In the DEATH BATTLE! episode "Spider-Man VS Deku", when Miles Morales falls after his web shooter breaks, a QR code that links to the YouTube upload of the music video that claims to give you 100 million dollars can briefly be seen on his left.
• Carykh has a more involved example in his video "Cary teaches you how to time travel." The video has him teaching the viewer how to skip a video forwards and backwards using the keyboard. At the end of the video, Cary asks you to continuously skip backwards every time a dot hits a wall, and if you do it correctly, you will skip to precise moments where Cary coincidentally recites the chorus line by line. Try it for yourself here, but do note that it only works on computers.
• On April 1, 2026, a Honkai: Star Rail animated short was uploaded featuring Sparxie singing the song. The short was appropriately titled "Never Gonna Give You Up".

Variants of the Rickroll

At this point, the Rickroll is big enough that it would be more effective to do some unexpected variant of it.

• The more obvious variants include (e.g. the "Barack Roll", right around the time Barack Obama was elected president) and the "Reich Roll" (because of course).
• YouTube gave us the "Ruth Roll", misdirecting viewers on April Fools' Day to a video of a cute dancer.
• In Plants Vs Zombies 2, in Neon Mixtape Tour Day 32, Dr. Zomboss says the lines in which is a reimagined version of the lyrics.
  Dr. Zomboss: Hear me now: Ever shall you give up; ever shall you be down; always you’ll run aground, I’ll revert you. I intend to make you cry; I mean for you to say goodbye; I'm not really that nice a guy - I alert you!
• Pokémon GO did an event on one of the biggest meme-worthy Pokémon, Bidoof. On the final day of the event, this appeared on the official Pokémon channel.
• Users of The Miniatures Page have a variation that directs you to a picture of Sean Connery as Zed.
• Fans of Chrono Trigger have said for a long time that the Leitmotif of the character Robo sounds a lock like Rickroll, hence the RoboRoll.
• The Takarazuka Revue fandom has the Zukaroll, sung by Suzukaze Mayo.
• The song itself has been remixed with other pop culture artifacts, one of the most prominent being Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", which is particularly apt for such remixes as it shares the exact same time signature (and Ear Worm quality) as "Never Gonna Give You Up". This might be the Foo Fighters, during one live performance, started what seemed to be a cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit", only to invite Rick Astley on stage to sing "Never Gonna Give You Up".
• Tumblr created a variant that Rickrolls the Rickroll — the video starts with "Never Gonna Give You Up" (especially its distinctive opening drumbeats) but transitions to something different. One variant transitions to a memetic segment of Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek", while another transitions to a mashup of "Never Gonna Give You Up" with Darude's "Sandstorm".
• Randall Munroe's What If? (xkcd) blog featured an inversion in "Lava Lamp". A linked video that is labeled "The music video for Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up.'" actually goes to video of a can of pasta being overrun by a lava flow.
• 2020 brought yet another similar Bait-and-Switch tactic called Stickbugging. Here's an example of such a meme. And yes, it's overlapped with the Rickroll.
• And that same year, fans of Henry Stickmin brought us the Distraction Dance.
• SiIvaGunner, in addition to doing regular rips with the song, has also done rips involving "the new rick rolld", a video by wtfradio1000 with an odd 7-note melody playing over two still images of Rick Astley over a still from the Nyan Cat video^note actually a clip from a previous video by said user.
• On the podcast Too Beautiful to Live, a phenomenon called catrolling started when co-host Luke Burbank played the audio from a YouTube video of a cat ''singing'' the theme from Game of Thrones to an unsuspecting co-host, Andrew Walsh.
• Tokusatsu fans have a variant known as Ryukirolling. This usually applies to scenes with glass shattering cutting to the opening for Ryuki.
• In 2021 Caitlyn Myers did a Japanese cover: "Rickroll but make it Anime''.
• Arknights had the lobby song (night version) for the sidestory So long, Adele line up nicely with Astley's masterpiece. This inevitably led to someone mixing the two songs together to produce the Eyja Roll.

Why hasn't YouTube taken it down yet?

By this point, the vast majority of Rickrolls use the official Vevo upload of the song, which has remained on the website untouched since 2009 as Vevo is a joint-venture between Google and several major music companies. Since it's licensed, that link isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Prior to 2009, the main upload was this one, simply entitled "RickRoll'D". This upload actually has been removed a few times, namely brief periods in 2010, 2014, and 2015. The 2015 removal might have had to do with British cellular provider Virgin Mobile using the song in a number of their commercials, some of which include Astley himself. Claiming that YouTube has taken it down is, of course, a good way to get people to go check on it, thus unconventionally Rickrolling them.

Enjoy the Rickroll, everyone — it's preferable to the Screamer Prank (since it's a Lighter and Softer Sister Trope to the latter).

---