Memeing Classic Movies: Top Underrated Animated Films For Memes

Not all movies are appreciated equally. Some films are loved right from the beginning but fall out of the public’s interest after time passes, only for the memories of it to be conjured up by a nostalgic meme years later.

Some films quickly gave us a single meme format but left endless possibilities behind, forgotten until someone watches it again, while others are simply weird vegetarian propaganda animations about fish cannibalizing each other. Whatever the circumstances behind their obscurity may be, here are three of the best underrated animated movies for memes.

Padak (2012)

Padak (also known as Swimming to the Sea) is the Finding Nemo from hell. Unlike most other animated movies, this one should never be shown to your kids … unless you want to have the same uncomfortable conversation you had after walking out on Sausage Party. Padak is the story of a fish who is trapped in a Korean seafood restaurant (where they serve chopped-up fish live), forced to watch her friends being butchered and eaten. As you may expect, the plot revolves around Padak and the other imprisoned fish trying to escape before being consumed alive.

Everyone knows what "sells" on the internet — dark topics gone horribly wrong. Take any event from the chaos of 2020, for example. Whether it's a global pandemic, murder hornets or an entire continent burning to the ground, to the meme community, it’s all hilarious, even though there’s no reason at all why it should be. This is exactly why you should watch Padak. It’s dark enough to make a meme out of virtually any scene, and it’s already subtitled, so half the work is done for you. Plus, it’s surprisingly full of unexpected lines like, “Give me back my brain cells!” that have unlimited meme potential.

Chicken Run (2012)

Like Padak, Chicken Run really shouldn’t be marketed to kids, but somehow this one is rated "G." For anyone who grew up in the late ‘90s or early 2000s, there are some distinct memories associated with watching this movie as a child. At first, it starts out with a chicken named Rocky (voiced by Mel Gibson) as he tries to teach the other chickens on the farm to fly. It soon takes a dark turn when the farm owners begin capturing the chickens and cooking them into pies. The audience then watches along with the surviving chickens as disturbing shadows of executions play across the screen and screaming chickens are trapped on a pie-making conveyor belt.

Like Padak, this can be endlessly memed for obvious reasons. In fact, there are a number of Chicken Run conspiracy theories floating around online, many of which involve the chickens representing Holocaust victims or incarcerated prisoners of war facing certain death, so this one goes far beyond its literal meaning when it comes to darkness. There are some additional appeals to be found in this one due to the nostalgia factor. If that’s not enough, there’s always something to meme with the line "those chickens are up to something" as well.

Coraline (2009)

Coraline follows an 11-year-old girl who moves into a home with a door that leads to her fantasy life, complete with button-eyed counterparts from her reality. This fantasy life escalates into a horror-movie scenario when her “Other Mother” kidnaps her parents. This movie is equally as scary to adults as it is to kids, and though it was popular at the time of its release, people nowadays usually don’t remember it at all until they stumble across a meme or reaction image of Coraline’s dad staring blankly at his computer.

While this is by far the most popular example of a Coraline meme, there's a lot of potential in this movie that isn’t recognized as of yet. Coraline has everything you’ve seen in your childhood nightmares — an existential talking cat, an unwanted child named Wyborn and taxidermy dogs, for example. If that’s not enough, the character Mr. Bobinsky is a strangely shaped blue man whose character backstory includes cleaning up the radioactive wasteland following the Chernobyl disaster, which seems like something worth mentioning in a meme.

Though this movie has nearly passed into obscurity after 11 years, Coraline has a cult following among high school and college students, which is why Coraline’s dad has become a popular, memeable image lately; this also leaves room for more similar memes to fain interest. While Coraline hasn’t lived up to its potential in terms of memes, there are certainly many possibilities to explore in this one that haven't been discovered.

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