GitHub’s mascot began as a stock drawing called Octopuss.
In 2008 the founders wanted something fun for the site’s error pages, and Git calls combining three or more branches of code an octopus merge. They bought the rights to a stock drawing its illustrator, Simon Oxley, had called Octopuss, and renamed it the Octocat. In 2018 Microsoft announced it was buying GitHub with a photo of its chief executive, Satya Nadella, in front of a giant Octocat.
GitHub on Brandseum