Everything you need to know about the Pikachu army staging a hostile takeover of the internet

For years, platoons of costumed Pikachu have been marching and dancing across Asia (and the internet), striking delight (or fear depending on your worldview) in the hearts of millions.

Last week, the army of Pokémon's flagship mascot was literally dragged into the global spotlight, when its lead Pikachu deflated a few seconds into a dance cover of "You Can't Stop the Beat" from the "Hairspray" musical. The Verge broke the story of the cutest Deflategate ever, noting the alarming overreaction from event staff and security. The mayhem begins a minute in. And don't miss the 4:30 mark when the deflated Pikachu tries to rejoin the fray.

In a PikaGate postmortem published in NPR, Pokémon World Festival 2017 security did not realize that the first man rushing in was an event staffer, which prompted the hilarious overreaction from the six additional men who rushed the Pikachu.

The video went viral partly because of the chaos, and partly because of how adorably synchronized the Pikachu dance cover was. They even made "Uptown Funk" tolerable again.

These Pikachu have been marching through the internet for years.

In 2014, Yokahama, Japan, started what has now become an annual "An Outbreak of Pikachu" summer event. The city's harbor area is overrun with Pikachu merchandise, and all that capitalism is occasionally interrupted by unannounced, extremely militaristic marches by the Pikachu. The first one started with a puny 20 Pikachu. But in 2016, the harbor was overrun by a thousand of them.

Most of the viral images of parading Pikachu seem to stem from the Yokohama events, although as seen above, they've started to appear in other events throughout Asia. No surprise since Pikachu is often thought of as Japan's answer to Mickey Mouse.

Witness them march down the streets with precision the world hasn't seen since those drummers from the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. Hear the sharp staccato of the whistle as they walk in step, side by side, until they merge into a single line with such uninterrupted coherence, they could cure the world's road rage.

They don't just march. They also do choreographed dancing, including an especially buoyant dance rendition of Flo Rida's "I don't like it, I love it" featuring Robin Thicke and Verdine White. It's delightful. I've never even heard the song before, and it's now my favorite.

That was filmed at the annual Otominato music festival in Japan. And I'm hoping they'll headline Coachella next year.

This should be easy. Just take any footage or GIF of the Pikachu parade and set it to menacing music. Witness the power of a Pikachu parade fully armed and operational with Darth Vader's "Imperial March."

From there, you'll spend hours making a whole host of Pokémon/"Star Wars" crossover jokes.

For music that's even better timed to the steady harmonized hell of Pikachu pitter-patter, nothing's better than "Hell March" from the real-time strategy video game series "Command and Conquer: Red Alert."

As far as we can tell, the only way to experience this is to head over to Japan, where they make regular appearances at parades and festivals. The Yokohama Pikachu outbreak event is probably your safest bet.

Let's circle back once more to the Pikachu Deflategate. Here's a fun fact: The lead Pikachu hauled away is female. How can you tell?

It's all in the tail: A small indentation indicates female. This tidbit of information would delight everyone at your C-suite networking cocktail party.