Anakin's "Liar"

About

“Liar!” is a memorable quote uttered by Anakin Skywalker (played by Hayden Christensen) to Padmé Amidala (played by Natalie Portman) from the 2005 sci-fi film Star Wars Episode: III Revenge of the Sith. The quote is used alongside a still from the scene as a reaction image to an above caption or screenshot to call someone or something out for not speaking the truth or being unrealistic. The image is also commonly seen and used in GIF format.

Origin

The original clip that the meme is pulled from is seen during Star Wars Episode: III Revenge of the Sith, released on May 19th, 2005, specifically the scene where Anakin is speaking with Padmé on the planet of Mustafar as Obi-Wan Kenobi (played by Ewan McGregor) confronts him for joining with the Sith.

During the scene (featured below), Padmé arrives on Mustafar following Anakin to the planet after learning he has succumbed to the Dark Side. Padmé and Anakin begin conversing as he explains how the Jedi and Obi-Wan turned against him, when Obi-Wan emerges from the ship after hiding on board unbeknownst to Padmé. She then frantically tries to reason with him to come back and forsake the Sith, saying, “I love you.” To which Anakin replies, “Liar!” assuming she brought his former master there to kill him.

The first time it can be seen used as a reaction image appears on January 6th, 2014, when Redditor^[1] chesZilla posted a story about a Dungeons and Dragons campaign under the title “Dung-Hams and Dragons – II – Fellowship of the Ham” to the r/fatpeoplestories sub. In this post, chesZilla used a GIF of Anakin saying “Liar!” (shown below) as a reaction to an event in the story.

Spread

Versions of the GIF initially spread around Reddit as users began using the image on various subs as replies. On Imgur,^[2] user AncientSilverback created a frequently reposted video of the scene edited to show the character Edgar from the first Men In Black movie in place of Obi-Wan on September 5th, 2015 (seen below).

Twitter^[3] users also adopted the GIF and still from the scene as a reaction image to reply to various tweets. One example of this can be seen on June 27th, 2016, when user Clau_Sheckler replied to a tweet by Blink-182 members Tom DeLonge and Travis Barker with the GIF (shown below).

Another version of the meme was uploaded on November 14th, 2019, to the r/skyrim sub by Redditor^[4] nehyolaw as a reaction image to a character from the game describing how easily the player character should be able to complete a task.

In 2020, a different variant of the meme began surfacing on Reddit, particularly on the r/PrequelMemes sub and then later spreading to r/memes and r/dankmemes. One such example was posted on January 25th, 2020, by Redditor^[5] henmanny to r/PrequelMemes (seen below), which received over 28,000 upvotes and 500 comments.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References