The sound comes from Beedle, a recurring shopkeeper in Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, first released for GameCube in 2002. Beedle runs a travelling shop aboard his boat and greets Link with exaggerated, cheerful enthusiasm, which made his short vocal reactions easy to lift from gameplay. As Zelda clips were shared online, his surprised Oh became a handy reaction sound for edits and memes, valued because it is instantly recognisable to fans and immediately understandable even without knowing the game.