This Isn't Even My Final Form

About

“This isn’t even my final form” is a catchphrase commonly associated with image macros or videos depicting oddly shaped or deformed looking characters.

Origin

The phrase was originally uttered by the villain character Frieza in the Japanese anime series Dragon Ball Z. During his pinnacle battle scene against the protagonists, Frieza boasts his capacity of strength by saying “You FOOL! This isnt even my final form! Wait until you see my TRUE power! HYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” before morphing into his next level incarnation.

Although unclear exactly when or where the phrase began to gain significance as a popular catchphrase, its earliest known instance can be found in the comments section of a Rule34 post submitted on January 1st, 2011. The post featured an image of a mixed media sculpture that consists of Disney’s Toy Story character Woody and a wall of plastic boobs. The image was captioned with the phrase “this isn’t even my final form” months later and uploaded onto FunnyJunk on September 24th, 2011 (shown below).

Spread

Throughout 2011, the phrase gradually evolved into a caption for image macros depicting oddly shaped or crudely drawn characters in popular culture. There are hundreds of image macros bearing the caption available on well-known image sharing platforms like 4chan, Tumblr and Reddit, as well as internet humor blogs FunnyJunk, Memebase and Memecenter among others. The phrase has been also used as the title of YouTube videos, typically in boasting one’s own skills. Due to its reference to the evolutionary process or metamorphosis, the quote has been also associated with Pokemon and RPG fandom.