💀 Skull emoji

The Skull emoji 💀 was approved as part of Unicode 6.0 in 2010 and added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015.

The difference between the Skull emoji 💀 and the Skull and Crossbones ☠️ emoji is the tone, mainly. The Skull and Crossbones ☠️ emoji conveys poison and death, quite literally: it’s often the symbol to indicate poison on a product.

Meanwhile, the Skull emoji 💀 has a more fun feel … even though it still can be used when talking about death.

The human skull has long been associated with death and creepy things. Being an easily identified part of a skeleton, it’s the part of the body that conveys the deepest representational meaning of life, both past and present.

During the Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) holiday traditions, in which late loved ones are remembered, the skull is an omnipresent symbol, represented in sugary treats and colorful art. While looking death right in the face (or what’s left of it) should be scary, the bejeweled, bedazzled, kaleidoscopic Day of the Dead treatment of the human skull has a way of turning fear into something much easier to manage.

Overall, while we associate it with death, the skull has also enjoyed popularity in trendy design, being featured on everything from jewelry to clothing.