Bad Guys vs. John Wick

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).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References