Do you ever encounter a compelling image online and decide you're going to learn more about it? I found myself enjoying this delightful pixel reaper and wanted to find out more. Spoiler alert, I failed!

The exact image appears in two places and is referenced in a few others.

• Screenshots of the system and programs of the first Macintosh - a German site showcasing some vintage computing imagery. They do not cite their sources but given the 2024 publication date, I imagine these were lifted from the link below.
• Stories of Early Mac from Ken Wessen. I am confident this is a mirror of a university site from "kwessen" that cites the Reaper as:

  ...a mysterious Grim Reaper icon in the Finder, but I have not been able to find any reference to this icon in the code.

  This is the best evidence I have run across regarding the image source.
• "Death" icon in 128k guided tour's Finder - a message board thread referencing the same "9998" icon from the same 128k Guided Tour Disk of the original Mac System 0.85.
• Downloadable Mac System 0.85 - you can certainly download the original Tour disk and likely emulate it yourself but even if I did that, I would have no way to inspecting the possible source files for the Reaper. Not saying it isn't possible, just saying it's beyond me.

In the end, I come to the same conclusion as Ken Wessen; I believe the Reaper to be part of an official MacOS release (likely from 1984). The screenshot showing ICN # ID = 9998 from Finder insinuates that the image is not just a drawing from MacPaint, it's actually in the system.

If you get a wild hair and want to confirm any of the above. Please do so and let me know!