Sandy Cheeks as one of the good ones that's warped into an obedient mommy bangmaid helpmeet waifu

As far as I can understand, the stages are

1. The sign is considered to bear a close resemblance to its refferant
2. The sign is considered to be a distorted image of the thing being referred to
3. There is an absence of the referred to object. Sometimes we might question whether or not it even existed, but we know what is being refered to, even if we know nothing about the referred to object.
4. The sign has no relation to the original referred to object. It just is, and few/no one knows or bothers to find out the original context.

An example that I found online:

Stage 1: You have a word processor that saves the paper you wrote to a floppy disk with a button. The button has an icon that looks like a floppy disk.

The sign (floppy disk button) directly refers to the action of saving on an actual floppy disk.

Stage 2: Your word processor saves the paper you wrote to somewhere on your computer. You can choose to save to a floppy disk with it, or to your hard drive, or perhaps some other location. The button has an icon of a floppy disk, as that is what save buttons do.

The floppy disk icon is misleading, as you don't have to save on a floppy disk. But you can still save on a floppy disk if you want.

Stage 3: You have a word processor that saves your paper to someplace, perhaps your hard drive, perhaps one of these newfangled CDs. The save icon retains the image of a floppy disk.

*The floppy disk is gone, but you still remember it. *

Stage 4: You write your paper in google docs, you click the save icon and it is saved to the cloud. You know it's the save icon because it's the save icon everywhere. You don't know what it depicts; you were born in 2005 and have never heard of a "floppy disk"

In the case of pepe the frog, it is an alt right symbol. Why? I don't know and most people don't know. It just is. For the squirrel/garbage image, we know what is being referred to since it happened very recently, so at most it is stage 3. The symbol is also still referring to the original stories of PNUT and Biden's "garbage" comment. So it is actually stage 2. I wouldn't call it stage 1 because the symbol is combining 2 stories that had no original relation and creating new meaning out of it. There is a distortion of the original.