Recreation of Tableau’s Bigfoot & Elvis Bubble Charts

 

On the Tableau website, when you arrive at an invalid page, you get the pleasant surprise of a rare creature that is sometimes—but not often—seen in the wild—Bigfoot or Elvis…both as Tableau bubble charts. Bigfoot appears on a page that doesn't exist, while Elvis appears when you don't have access to it. I’ve always loved these images—what a fun way to let you know that you’ve gotten to the wrong page!

 

But I’m also fascinated with these bubble charts—did someone actually build these in Tableau? I’ve always assumed so, but despite my searching, I never found them. Who knows—maybe they were just pieces of art created specifically for these pages?

 

Years ago, I started thinking about creating them myself, but I never quite put in the work. But then, at TC25, I saw several people wearing t-shirts with the infamous bubble Bigfoot and I decided it was time to build them in Tableau. So here they are…(almost) exact replicas of the Bigfoot and Elvis bubble charts!! Click the images to see them on Tableau Public.

After I created these, I made an interesting observation. The two bubble charts are exactly the same, except for the colors! The bubble positions and sizes are all exact (except for a few slight variations). Take away the color and they are the same bubble chart! My guess is that this was once a real bubble chart, potentially built using an early version of Superstore or one of the other sample data sets. Then an artist came along and simply colored the bubbles to create these cool images from them.

 

If you know anything more about the history of these images, please let me know. In any case, I hope you enjoy these recreations!

Update: After publishing this blog, I saw that NAGASE Munehiko had also just created them on Tableau Public. Guessing the t-shirt gave him the same inspiration. Check out his versions here: Bigfoot, Elvis. 

Ken Flerlage, April 24, 2025

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