The phenomenon known as the skibiddy toilet is a little harder to explain. At first glance, it appears to be a meme in which a man's head pops out of the toilet and spins around while singing “skibiddy dopp dopp yes, skibiddy double u re re re.”

If that's enough for you, you can stop reading here. If I could stop there myself, believe me, I would.

Digging a little deeper, the Singing Toilet Man is just the beginning of the (currently 76-part) Machinima series available on the DaFuq! YouTube channel. The series depicts a war between toilets with human heads (the very Skibidi Toilets themselves) and humanoids, the defenders of the earth, who have cameras and other electronic devices on their heads. Animator Alexei Gerasimov (a.k.a. Boom) created the series using Source Filmmaker. If that singing head looks familiar, it's the Male_07 character model from Half-Life 2 (also used in the webcomic about a million years ago.) G-Man (known here as G-Toilet) and other characters from the Half-Life series characters also appear.

The absurd Machinima series and other skivvying toilet-related videos exploded in popularity to 65 billion views by 2023, with about 15 billion more on TikTok. These numbers are exactly why Hollywood came calling, including former Paramount Pictures president Adam Goodman and director Michael Bay of “Transformers” fame. Yes, heads singing in toilets may one day make it to the big screen.

“Skibbidy Toilets is an IP. It's an IP,” Goodman said on Variety's ‘Strictly Business’ podcast. What started as a meme has grown, according to Goodman, to incorporate “lore, cliffhangers, and about 20 other channels that are creating content every day in the Skibbidi Toilet multiverse.”

Lamenting the millions of brain cells lost to the phrase “Skibidi Toilet multiverse,” Goodman called its popularity on YouTube and Tiktok “unprecedented” and partnered with Michael Bay and Boom and encouraged him to “watch this as they build something that could be the next ‘Transformers’ or could be the Marvel universe,” he said. According to Goodman, they are “absolutely in talks right now, both on the TV side and on the film side.”

Interestingly, or chillingly, Goodman elaborated that it is not necessarily important for Skibidi Toys to make the leap from the Internet to more traditional media forms.

“Movies and TV are flex, they look cool, and they help stimulate the consumer product business. For Wal-Mart and Target buyers, it's about knowing that media and advertising will be used against this product.” But for now, it's pretty successful on YouTube alone, so if we stay in this world, we'll be fine, and if we move into more traditional [media], it would be great for Michael [Bay] and me, and for our creator, Boom, it's like his lifelong dream. It's a lifelong dream of his.”

Yes, it is a bit startling to be told so bluntly that the ultimate goal of a film or television project may simply serve as a tool to generate interest from Wal-Mart buyers. Call me naive, but I like to at least pretend that there is even a shred of artistic endeavor going on in film and television, even if the project is clearly 99% marketing. Perhaps I am being overly optimistic. When the multiverse of skivvies toilets comes to Target, i.e., to movie theaters everywhere, we'll see.

Finally, Garry Newman of Garry's Mod offered his usual brief thoughts on the topic.