You know what they say: “Rule 34: If it exists, there is porn of it.” This internet rule posits that every fictional character has lewd art of them somewhere online, and there’s a website called Rule 34 that curates it and lets you search by character. But are you internet poisoned enough to be able to guess which characters have the most entries on that site? I thought I was, but I was very wrong.
Rule34dle is a browser game that pits two characters or franchises against one another and asks you to guess which of the pair has been the subject of more smutty art on the internet. I figured this would be easy. I know who the sickos are on the internet, and I also know which fandoms have the most artistically inclined community members. Or so I thought. But even after being a fan for nearly 30 years and writing about the series almost every day here at Kotaku, I underestimated the depravity of the Pokémon fandom. What do you mean Snivy, the sassy little snake guy from Black and White, has more entries than Kitana from Mortal Kombat?
In just a few minutes of guessing, I was repeatedly taken aback by the gaps between some characters. Sometimes they were as wide as the ocean, and at other times they were too close for comfort. Leavanny from Pokémon being just a couple of hundred entries away from the frost giant heartthrob Loki? That didn’t sound right, so I went investigating, and lo and behold, it was true. Do with that information what you will.
The surprising answers do make Rule34dle a really fun game to play with friends or on stream. I’ve started seeing streamers play the game, and they’re also shocked at some of the results, so maybe some of us have just never quite peered into the abyss long enough.
If you want to try it out, none of the NSFW stuff is shown in the game itself, so you’re safe on that front. You can also try AO3dle, which is the same concept but specifically pulling from fanfiction site Archive of Our Own. That one at least offers some plausible deniability because not everything on there is porn.
