Frozen Pines of Namhan-gang River, Korea by Jaeyoun Ryu
Can I get that K-pop demon hunters fun fact please? :D
Today You Learned about the origin story of the Derpy Tiger!
[And also the magpie. And also, yes, the people who made the movie also call him Derpy.]
You see, Derpy Tiger and the Magpie are based off of a traditional bit of Korean art: Minhwa, specifically a subgenre called hojak-do which portrays tigers and magpies. You'd hang up these images to ward off bad spirits. But as time went on, the images started to evolve:
You might be thinking something like, "Hey, wow, that tiger looks a bit dopey, but I can't say that, because that's traditional Korean art and that'd be offensive." But guess what! You totally can say that because it's entirely intentional! See, traditionally, the idea was that the tiger represented the noble, aristocratic class, the people meant to protect society and look all serious and shiz. But around the 1600s, there was a shift where people, at least the artists, were getting kind of fed up with aristocratic BS, and started mocking the traditional image by making the tigers look... well, Derpy.
And so you have the magpie in these images, which symbolized common folk, which is not a very 'noble' creature, which yet looks much more dignified compared to the symbol of the ruling class.
So Derpy Tiger isn't just a parody of traditional Korean art of tigers... he's entirely in line with the fact that the art is a parody of a "noble" creature, being portrayed as being a bit... well, derpy.
The makers of the movie get into it here.
