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If you have seen all the best memes of the past and present and can claim that you have a Ph.D. in Memology, you might already have your personal collection of the favorite memes, that you use every day for self-expression. As a professional memologist, you are, probably, constantly learning the new memes and browsing the Internet. Moreover, you might create your own pics, what is the perfect mastery in the field of memes. However, a professional should know that practice makes perfect, and the past creations should not be forgotten! Thus, we have prepared some good old memes from our own collection for you to refresh your memory concerning their origin and meaning.
If you don’t mind to know a little bit more about the work of your colleagues, we would like to share our experience in Memology with you. Meet our collection of the best memes ever in our opinion! Have fun with it, we want you to laugh during training your meme-skills and growing professionally.
P.S. Plz, don’t pay attention to the enumeration – each meme here has equally warm and big place in our hearts 🙂
Dolan
This white swan of black humor represents a simple MS Paint picture of Donald Duck. The first pic with Dolan was posted in the summer of 2010 by its author Sakolut on a Finnish platform named Kuvalauta. Nobody even had a clue that the first, pretty innocent Dolan meme will transform into video and comic series about a feathered psychotic addict of sex, drugs, and murders 🙂
The subj originally had a poor drawing and bad English (translation from Finnish), and these details were preserved as the special features, that now differ this meme from the other ones. Since Dolan have been spoken bad English and was very popular in social networks, some words of his poor language have been widely disseminated; the famous catchphrase “PLZ”, inter alia, became more widespread owing to him.
This meme usually shows the scenes with the characters of Donald Duck cartoon, but in a whole new way – dark and sarcastic one. Some of Dolan memes are quite simple and appropriate even for underage children, but the true ones should not be shown to the sensitive people.
Only the adepts of black irony can appreciate topics that are depicted on Dolan comic with deep sympathy; so if you have your private hell with sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, you will definitely fall in love with Dolan and his favorite routines of betrayals and murders! Or you have been one of this comic’s fans since its appearance… and if so – we’re scared the hell out of you.
Confused Travolta Meme
The Great History of Memes has plenty of lolable pics, but Confused Travolta is one of the most notable examples. This meme is based on a cutout of Pulp Fiction movie featuring John Travolta. The movie was released more than twenty years ago, but it doesn’t prevent it from getting a new wave of attention because of some people’s creativity.
The GIF with Vincent Vega, who makes helpless gestures being confused with where Mia Wallace’s voice is coming from, became highly popular in 2012. One of Imgur users – ILikeToWonkaMyWilly – uploaded a GIF animation with puzzled Vega on a background of a huge toy store with the caption: “I ask my daughter what she wants for Christmas, and she says, “A doll.”.”
That GIF has spread to every corner of the Internet, getting the fame of the most distinctive confusion symbol. Since the author of this pic shared the information of how to make different Confused memes using Sony Vegas Pro, there appeared a lot of various GIFs, that expressed confusion in different situations, where the only possible reaction would be confusion. As far as there are really, we mean, REALLY many cases of getting puzzled, the Internet was attacked by the vast number of those images with various places and baffled Travolta. Several of them are just right here!
“You Don’t Say?” Meme
We bet you saw that face. We bet you tried to imitate this facial expression because it speaks for itself without words. Meet “You Don’t Say?” – one of the most sarcastic memes that the world have ever seen!
The famous image features Nicolas Cage – the man, who might hold the largest number of memes with him. “You don’t say?” is a rage meme that portrays another deadly expressive Cage’s face, that is usually used by people as an answer to an obvious statement. The image was born owing to an outtake Vampire Kiss’ scene, that appeared in July 2009 on YouTube with the title “Nicolas Cage Freaking Out”. Owing to that video, there appeared a demotivational image screenshot with the phrase “Nicolas Cage / Available in Stoic and Batshit Crazy”. The demotivational image supposedly inspired a Reddit user LeechHax to create the first comic with the contour drawing of Cage, and the Internet was flooded by plenty of similar images and comics, drawn by the adorers of sarcasm.
Today we can see several variants of “You don’t say?” meme. They include the original screenshot from the film, contour drawing version, female version, and memes with different ironic statements instead of short “you don’t say?”. The original one is the most striking in our opinion. What variant seems to be the best for you?
“Luke, I’m Your Father” Meme
The 1980 year was marked by the second film of the world famous Star Wars saga – Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back. The fans of the saga couldn’t even imagine that several years later the dialogue between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker will give a reason for a considerable number of memes with these characters.
In that dialogue, Darth Vader tries to get Luke on his side, revealing that he is Luke’s father. The young Jedi refuses to believe in this sad truth and shouts “Nooo!” in answer – and his face expresses the full range of pain, fear, and unbelief at this moment. By the way, the Skywalker’s face is often used alone, as a reaction one, although the images with both characters are more popular.
The Vader’s line “I’m your father” was transformed into “Luke, I’m your father”, as such form seemed to be more convenient to use in countless memes. Moreover, the memes were not limited by the Star Wars plot; people immediately started to associate those memes with unexpected situations or turns in real life, putting their own text variants instead of the original ones. We have several lolable examples for you below.
Distracted Boyfriend Meme
The story of the Distracted Boyfriend meme (a.k.a. Disloyal Boyfriend) started in 2015 when a photographer named Antonio Guillem posted a photo on the iStock database. After two years, one of the Facebook pages, dedicated to progressive rock, posted Guillem’s photo with an ironic message of Phil Collins trying to cheat on prog with pop.
The image was well appreciated by the group’s subscribers, and this inspired an Instagram user _dekhbai_ to share the original blank photo with the caption “Tag That Friend Who Falls in Love Every Month”. This post finally helped “the guy peering a girl” become a real meme because people have seen the immense freedom for creativity in that pic. Moreover, people discovered similar photos with the same models on stock resources and created a series that tell the story of the couple with a disloyal boy and his girlfriend; this series gained a lot of likes and general attention on Twitter.
By the way, there exists a Distracted Girlfriend meme too. Have you seen it?
Roll Safe Meme
Roll Safe (a.k.a. You Can’t X if you Y Guy) meme is a screenshot that features a smirking actor Kayode Ewumi, who portrays Reece Simpson in Hood Documentary series (BBC). Reece Simpson (Roll Safe) tells about his girlfriend, describing her as a beautiful woman with “good brains”. He points to his temple talking about this with a sly smile, and the screenshot of this moment gained a lot of attention, owing to a post of a Twitter feed @FootyHumor. However, the real fame has come to Roll Safe on January 2017, after a post by a Twitter feed named @girlposts. The post contained the screenshot with Reece Simpson and the wit phrase “you can’t get cheated on if you don’t get into a relationship”.
After all the above mentioned, the meme has spread around the Internet like wildfire. It is still used to make fun of giving obvious and useless pieces of advice.
My Brain Is Full of Fuck Meme
“My brain is full of fuck” is a pretty old phrase that has been used to express the strongest possible moral pain in response to something extremely dull. The phrase was used alone for a long time, but there came the graphic content. This meme can be called “WTF”, “What?..”, “What Is This I Don’t Even”, “Lolwut” or “Facepalm” – the sense remains unchanged, and the meme still keeps the first place of the most emotional graphic answers to a stupidity.
There were a lot of MBIFOF memes, starting with a photo of an old statue (one of the Oxford University Gargoyles) that was posted on MyConfinedSpace by a user with the nickname “TikiGod”. That happened in 2008, but the explosion of popularity took place in 2009, when DarkSky Forever posted on MemeDepot the photo with Jackie Chan with his hands in the air. The origin of the picture with the famous actor is still a mystery, and no one knows where did it come from. One of the theories says that it is a screenshot of a conference, another states that it is from an interview, but is indeed not from a film.
Luckily, the absence of the meme’s origin does not prevent us from using this pic to say that our brains are struggling from the craziness of what’s happening. Though, we hope that you experience such feelings rarely and use it just for the lulz.
Kevin Hart Meme
Kevin Hart is an American actor and comic, who is usually starring in comedies, and this is not surprising, as far as his face is a real ocean of emotions.
In 2012 he performed a stand-up concert at Madison Square Garden. The plot of that concert consisted of the long and funny explanation, why and how he has changed after divorce, that is why the show is titled “Let Me Explain”. During one of the monologues, he takes a distinctive pose with a “wait”-gesture. The screen capture with this moment has started to circulate the Internet and evoked the appearance of numerous derivatives.
Confused Nick Young Meme
You probably saw the meme with a tall black guy who is all “Waaat?..”. This pic is often accompanied with several question marks because the face of the guy sends a huge message of puzzlement, and the marks enhance this message nothing less than perfectly. Someone even uses this pic without knowing who that man is! We should fix that.
A person on a popular meme is a famous basketball player Nick Young. He woke up even more popular after a “Thru The Lens” episode, where he portrays himself and reveals some parts of his day-to-day life. In one of the scenes, he reacts to his mother’s absurd claim with a quizzical stare. The emotion on his face was so distinctive, that no wonder why someone couldn’t resist making a screen capture.
To make Nick Young a meme was easy – a Twitter feed @WorldStarFunny just put a sombrero on Nick and signed it with a simple “Que?..”, pinning it to the post with a joke “When you find out El Chapo escaped a maximum security jail 2 times”. The first ever meme with the basketball player inspired a lot of Internet users to create similar ones.
Owing to Nick Young, now we can show our emotions to the people, who are located far from us and usually see just our cold and lifeless texts. Do you have some additional questions or lack of understanding? Are you baffled? Remember that there is a confused guy, who will solve all your troubles of communication. Or just will make your conversation funnier 🙂
Salt Bae Meme
The Salt Bae guy is a hot chief, who became a meme in several days. We wondered, what is so different about him, and why Gordon Ramsay should be afraid of that man and decided to do some digging to find the answers.
We have discovered that just one Instagram video, posted in 2017 by a Turkish chef Nusret Gökçe (the one, who is actually depicted on the memes discussed), has given him a nickname SaltBae and the fame of the coolest man of the social platform. His fancy manner of seasoning the food was considered to be a good-looking and trained skill, and the video with him salting the steak started to spread around Instagram. By the way, Nusret has posted a lot of the videos with his skills, but only the salting one gave him so many likes and love. He has several restaurants named “Nusr-et” – and “et” means “meat” in Turkish, so this man is actually wit-minded professional and successful businessman, not only a God-looking copy of Johnny Depp.
His posture with the raised hand and falling salt became a symbol of success and is often used even without words, just to highlight the sophistication and style of something discussed. We think that Gordon Ramsay’s memes now take the second place in the culinary top!
Doge Meme
Doge (a slang variant for the word “dog”) is one of the youngest memes on our top, but one of the most popular simultaneously. This meme is usually used to express surprise, fear, concern… Well, anything that this dog could represent.
The word “doge” was mentioned in a puppet show Homestar Runner, but it no one used it before a Japanese teacher’s post with the photo of a Shiba-Inu in 2010. The photo with the dog (named Kabosu) turned to be so expressive and emotional that it did not take long to see its spread around the imageboard 4Chan.
After several years, in 2012, the photo of Kabosu appeared on a subreddit r/DogsIWannaHug, and then all the Reddit fell in love with this dog, giving the Shiba-Inu the subreddit r/Doge in 2013. Different pics of Kabosu or other Shiba-inu dogs rushed-off in high numbers. Those pictures contained captions of the dog’s thoughts like “wow”, “such X”, “many X”, “so X” written in Comic Sans. What’s interesting, Doge even became a Google’s easter egg: when someone searched “doge meme”, the Google’s font changed into Comic Sans and painted in colors. Unfortunately, this easter egg doesn’t exist anymore.
There were and are a lot of threads on 4Chan, Reddit, and Twitter. Probably, this popularity helped create Dogecoin – the first crypto based on a meme. We think that Doge meme cannot die, as it keeps up with the times and technologies! And, of course, it goes hand in hand with laugh.
Batman Slapping Robin Meme
The frame with Batman slapping Robin was in a comic book that was published in 1965. That comic told the story about an alternative universe, where Batman believes that Superboy and Superman are guilty of the murder of the B-man’s parents. Robin tries to dissuade his mentor but gets just an angry slap in the answer.
On June 2008, one of the users of SFWChan has uploaded a mirrored picture with the changed texts in bubbles: Robin asked Batman whether his parents getting him something for Christmas, and Batman answers with a slap and the cry “My parents are deeaaaaad!!!”. After that, the scene with this duo became a meme and went viral on the Internet.
The users of 4Chan and Reddit started to fill the speech bubbles with their own texts or just re-drawn variants. It was one of that nice cases when a sad story gave birth to the significant number of lolable images.
Chuck Norris Meme
This is one of the oldest viral trends. There are a lot of images with the fearless, influential, severe and impressive man of all times – an actor Chuck Norris. Chuck has portrayed a lot of really unbeatable characters, what has led to numerous ironic statements and just jokes about his powers and skills.
The actor became a legend immediately after the first appearance in Hollywood film Something Awful, 2005. His abilities and manly appearance have caught the hearts of many of us, and the wave of hilarious facts and sarcastic lulz could knock Chuck Norris over… but he would not be Chuck Norris if he allowed to beat him.
The Lord of The Rings Memes
1) You Shall Not Pass Meme
The J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Fellowship of the Ring” became the base for the fantastic trilogy The Lord of The Rings. It is spangled with memes that came from both, sad and funny moments, what is pretty good for the LoR fans, who are struggling from the end of the epic saga: they can continue talking and joking about their favorite story, and, of course, make memes. You Shall Not Pass meme was created thanks to those fans creativity and attentiveness.
Gandalf, trying to prevent Balrog from coming closer, yells that the demon shall not pass further, and ruins the Khazad-dum bridge. His stiff posture, funny face and raised hands in that moment seemed to be a cool ironic joke to different dull situations or even crossovers with the other films. The meme started to spread in all the social networks and platforms. Sadly, now it is not the most popular meme, but it is still one of the most recognizable one.
Interesting fact: the phrase “They shall not pass!” was quite popular during World War II among the French Soldiers.
2) Run You Fools Meme
Gandalf the Grey is one of the most respected and loved characters of the trilogy, so there is no wonder he has a big number of memes with his participation. Run You Fools meme has gained a lot of applause and likes mostly because of the catchphrase that could be used in plenty of situations. What’s interesting, Gandalf says, actually, “Fly, you fools”, before falling into the steep in “Fellowship of the Ring”. It was understood as his advice to run at the speed of light, but what if he told the friends to fly with the help of giant eagles?..
3) “One Does Not Simply…” Meme
This meme is also known as “One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor” and “One Does Not Simply X”. This image is a screenshot of a scene from a legendary film Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. That scene shows Hugo Weaving portraying Elrond and Sean Bean in the role of Boromir. Elrond decides that the ring should be destroyed by the Mount Doom’s fire. Boromir answers that it is impossible to come in Mordor with just a desire and several people, explaining it by the relentless defense and numerous dangers on the road to that scary place – and the fans made a screen capture of him at that moment.
The lulz that came after the film’s release were numerous. On May 2004, the Internet saw an image with a caption “One does not simply drive into Mordor” and Boromir at the wheel. Then there came “One does not simply Tank Cat into Mordor”, which evoked the advent of the really funny and sarcastic memes. Google Maps added fuel to the situation and created an easter egg that was shown if indicate Mordor as final destination on walking direction – the original phrase immediately appeared on the screen.
Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook appreciated the meme with excitement, and it is still extremely popular on the Internet.
Futurama Memes
1) Shut Up And Take My Money Meme
The statement “Shut up and take my money!” belongs to Fry – one of the main character of the Futurama series. It is often used to show the desire to get something or to express the heartfelt appreciation of something.
It appeared in the Futurama episode Attack of the Killer App (the 6th season). Fry says the famous phrase when buying an eyePhone (a direct parody of iPhone). A seller describes the advantages of that device, but Fry interrupts him with the pack of dollars and demands to shut up and give him that phone. The meme was born surprisingly fast: the next day after the episode release, a German blog Crackajack made a post about it, pinning the image with the Futurama protagonist and the sayings “Shut up and take my money!”.
The Redditors, users of Facebook, Twitter, and DeviantArt, have been creative: their minds have born a lot of this meme’s variations with different characters. The phrase usually remains the same.
2) I’m Going To Build My Own Theme Park With Blackjack and Hookers Meme
Bender has always been a noticeable and significant figure in Futurama. His sharp-witted sayings can blow away anyone! And his decision to build his own theme park is one of those blowing cases.
Bender says his dramatic phrase in Futurama’s second episode “The Series Has Landed” (season 1). Bender is cheating in the theme park on the Moon, trying to get a set of keys from an arcade machine. A mechanic claw catches him and throws out of the park. The anti-hero flourishes his arm about the situation and says that he’s going to get his own park with blackjack and hookers.
Urban Dictionary included this saying to their website in 2003, describing it as a reaction of someone, who was chucked out a place and was highly disappointed because of that. After six years, a Futurama fan page named Blackjack and Hookers was created on Facebook, and in 2010, a subreddit with the same name was formed too.
The recent meme with the Bender’s blackjack and hookers represent a screenshot of a scene in the Raging Bender episode, where he wears white fur and gold rings. And yes, looks just perfect.
4) Not Sure If Meme
Say “hi!” to Fry again!
As far as he is a pretty emotional guy, he has got several memes, including one of the most famous – “Not Sure If”. This meme is often called Uncertain Futurama Fry, and we love this name more than the original one because it expresses the main emotion of the meme and makes it for short.
The meme originates from the episode 11, season 2 – “The Lesser of Two Evils”. In this episode, Fry digs through Leela’s underwear, and the face that became the meme appeared in those minutes. The shortcut of the scene was uploaded on YouTube by Infernvs. The video became viral, and the meme advent was quick to follow, and all the popular image boards started to post their own variants of the image. You can find the derivatives on Instagram, Facebook, Quickmeme, Memegenerator, and, of course, below.
Condescending Wonka Meme
Condescending Wonka is a slightly weird meme because it looks a bit creepy, but the sayings that the authors of memes put there are full of fun. Probably, this combination of incompatible can explain the still growing popularity of this pic.
This Wonka was portrayed by Gene Wilder in musical Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971). Willy asks children whether they want to see a new sweet tongue breaker, reclining against his candy-making machine. His face in that episode became a trigger for endless jokes and sarcastic sayings; the first phrase that was associated with this meme was “You must be new here”, and then there came a lot of other variants that were more lolable and ironic.
Quickmeme saw the first true Condescending Wonka memes in 2011, and then those memes flew to Reddit. This is one of the memes that are famous even on Tumblr – it can be found there under the tag “condescending wonka”.
Drunk Baby Meme
Drunk Baby meme is a pretty controversial image that shows a kid, who is sitting near the glass of beer and looks like he is really drunk – at least, this is the illustration of drunk adults and their weird behavior, but a baby looks a lot more interesting because of the short stories that usually accompany the image.
The photo of a drunk baby was submitted to the subreddit r/funny by MaryjaneBrewington with a caption “She tells the worst jokes”. Then there came a funnier version of a drunk baby meme, telling “This guy…. I love this guy”. It was revealed in r/AdviceAnimals subreddit. However, the meme became really widespread after an article with the title “Drunk Baby: Another Damn Advice Meme” that was published in Slacktory blog on June 2012. Additionally, 9gag took a hand in raising of the meme’s spreading too: one if its users posted another Drunk Baby meme with his own caption, and it was such a perfect match to the image, that the post has got more than 3,000 of shares.
The Drunk Baby meme is one of the most notable pictures on Facebook, Tumblr, and Quickmeme. We suppose that you are constantly observing the births of the multiple drunk babies with screamingly funny drunken ravings, and hope that you are not tired of those lolable little dudes yet.
Grumpy Cat
Grumpy Cat (Cat Is Not Amused) is a name that was given to a tiny cat with an extremely gloomy facial expression. The cat’s name is Sauce Tardar, and she is one of the cutest cheerless pet in the world.
Tabatha Bundesen could not imagine that her beloved moody pet would become a real meme legend in 2012. The brother of Tabatha uploaded the photos of her cat to the r/pics subreddit on September 2012, and it caused an avalanche of attention and derivatives on the platform. The same day, the Imgur page titled “Meet Grumpy Cat” has got more than a million views within two days. Tardar became a star.
Later, Grumpy Cat has caught Quickmeme, Tumblr, and the blogs/websites like Meta Picture, Pawnation, The Daily What, etc. The huge popularity allowed the owner of Tard to create some merchandise with her cat’s photo prints and get a power of money.
Grumpy cat memes are still used to express the annoyance, anger, sadness, or just a dark mood. The face of Tardar is so emotional and distinctive that the Internet users often use blank photos of that cat – there are many of them on the official Facebook fan page of the cat.
