Did Okabe Really Say “El Psy Kongroo”, and What Does It Mean?

Yes. "El Psy Kongroo" is Rintaro Okabe's sign-off in Steins;Gate, and CBR ranked it among anime's coolest catchphrases in 2022, calling it "His signature catchphrase". The words are on the record. A meaning is not: we found no official source that says what the phrase means.

The verdict

True, with a spelling split. Wikiquote's page for the game, in a section it labels as the PlayStation 3 English version (2015), records a long video message from Okabe that ends: "I pray for your success, you insane mad scientist. El...Psy...Congroo." That is an English transcription filed under Wikiquote's label, and the page history shows the video-message passage was added in 2019 by an unregistered editor with no stated source, so its translation is unidentified; we could not open the game text itself to compare it. CBR's catchphrase ranking calls the phrase his signature catchphrase, which does not depend on that transcription. The phrase is his. The spelling depends on where you read it, and the meaning is not something any source we read from the game's makers spells out.

Where it appears

Steins;Gate began in 2009 as a visual novel by 5pb. and Nitroplus, and Anime News Network's encyclopedia dates the TV anime from April 5 to September 13, 2011. The video message above comes from the game. Spike Chunsoft, which publishes Steins;Gate Elite in English, closed its 2019 announcement of a tenth-anniversary sale, reprinted by Anime News Network, with the line "El Psy Kongroo." In both places it ends a message. CBR reads it as more than a goodbye: the catchphrase, it says, "is reassurance that Okabe stays true to his ideals".

Kongroo or Congroo

Both spellings turn up, and the sources we checked do not settle which English release prints which. Wikiquote's transcription spells it "Congroo" under its PlayStation 3 label. Yet Anime News Network reported in 2015 that the retailer Rice Digital was offering an exclusive "Steins;Gate El Psy Kongroo Edition" as PQube Games brought the game to PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 3 in North America, and Spike Chunsoft's 2019 announcement uses "Kongroo". A product name and a transcription can disagree for ordinary reasons, and we could not open the game text to see which one it prints. What the record does show is that marketing for the English releases has used the K spelling.

Does it mean anything?

We found no official glossary, publisher note or creator interview that translates the phrase, which is not the same as proof that none exists. If any part of it borrows from a real language, the last word is the likeliest candidate. Lewis and Short's Latin dictionary, as the Perseus Digital Library publishes it, gives the verb congruo the senses "to coincide or correspond with a person or thing" and "to agree with, accord, suit, fit". So "Kongroo" sounds like a Latin word for agreeing. That is a resemblance in one word, not a translation of three, and nothing we read from the game's makers says the phrase is Latin at all. Any English sentence built out of it is a guess resting on that resemblance.

A name that doesn't mean anything

The same video message makes an admission about a different coinage. Of the name "Steins Gate", Wikiquote's transcription has Okabe tell his younger self that he chose it and that he should understand why: "It doesn't really mean anything." That sentence is about "Steins Gate", not about the sign-off, and it should not be stretched to cover both. It does show Okabe owning up to a grand name that, by his own account, means nothing. One reading is that the sign-off belongs to the same act as Hououin Kyouma, the "mad scientist moniker" that Anime News Network's review of Steins;Gate 0 describes him abandoning. On October 7, 2026 we withdrew our own entry for the sign-off, because its only source is that unidentified transcription; it returns when an identified English release can be quoted. Okabe's page keeps his true-ending lines, and the wider ending is on the ending explainer.

How we checked

On October 7, 2026 we read Wikiquote's Steins;Gate page in raw form, CBR's catchphrase ranking, Spike Chunsoft's anniversary announcement, Anime News Network's 2015 report on the PlayStation 3 and Vita release, Anime News Network's encyclopedia entry for the anime, its Steins;Gate 0 review, and the Lewis and Short entry for congruo. We found no interview in which the game's writers explain the phrase. The entry in the fact-check database is true for the sign-off and says no meaning is on the record. Our verification process explains why we print only what a source shows. More of Okabe's lines are on the Steins;Gate hub.