Bad Guys vs. John Wick

Submission 11,446

Part of a series on John Wick. [View Related Entries]

About

Bad Guys vs. John Wick refers to a series of image macro expressing the nervousness people feel when fictional character John Wick picks up an innocuous object to use it as a weapon.

Origin

On February 10th, 2017, the film John Wick: Chapter 2 was released in the United States. In the film, characters frequently remark on John Wick's (portrayed by Keanu Reeves) ability to kill people with household items, specifically a pencil (clips below).^[1]

On May 21st, 2019, Redditor ^[2] ethan_photoshops posted an image of Wick holding a pencil smiling and the caption "John Wick: *runs out of bullets* Enemies: finally we are going to kill John Wick." The post received more than 550 points (99% upvoted) in three days (shown below).

Spread

The following day, iFunny ^[3] user Jacob1336 posted a version of the meme in which Wick pulls out a crayon. Within two days, post received more than 110,000 upvotes (shown below, left).

On May 23rd, Redditor^[4] -DefaultName- posted a variation of the meme using the "Why Aren't We Alive":memes/pablo-why-arent-we-alive meme. The post received more than 23,000 points (99% upvoted) and 85 comments in 24 hours (shown below, center).

Over the next few days, others on Reddit began posting variations of the meme (example below, right).