If you've seen Wawario and Wawaluigi pop up in memes, here's the short answer: they're fan-made characters, the rivals of Wario and Waluigi, who are already the rivals of Mario and Luigi. They aren't new Nintendo characters. The extra “wa” is the whole joke.
The meme has been around longer than this year's wave. Know Your Meme traces a Wawario rival to a 2015 YouTube animation, and a Wawaluigi to a fan site in 2016. Over time, the look people recognize today caught on: Wawario in orange with green overalls, and Wawaluigi in blue and black with a creepy vibe. Since fans made them, there's no single official design.
The latest boom started in July 2026, when a YouTube video and song introduced a bunch of these characters by name. Part of it was reposted on TikTok in September, and fan art and edits followed. In the posts that took off, the joke is the ever-growing list of names, delivered as if these characters had always been part of the series.
Here's a made-up example from this article: “Okay, so is Wawawario next?” It's not a real character or a quote from the video. But it shows why people love this: you give the villain a rival, and then the rival needs a rival too. Soon you'd need a family tree just to count whose rival is whose.
Sources and original clip: Know Your Meme · 2026 explainer · YouTube source video cited by KYM
