Batman Pulled Up to France

Submission 5,206

Part of a series on Nahel Merzouk France Protests 2023. [View Related Entries]

About

Batman Pulled Up to France or Batman at the France Riots refers to a series of viral videos and memes framing clips of people dressed as Batman as if they were taken at the 2023 Nahel Merzouk France Protests, suggesting Batman had to show up to handle the situation. The trend began in early July 2023 when a video of a Batman impersonator walking through a smoke-covered protest went viral under the context of being taken at the riots, however, the video was actually taken at a 2020 BLM protest at Philadelphia City Hall. As the trend progressed, people began posting videos of other character impersonators and cosplayers as if they also pulled up to France.

Origin

On July 2nd, 2023, TikToker^[1] @dave_bateman posted a video captioned "Nah Batman pulled up to France," showing a man in a Batman costume walking through a smoke-covered protest, garnering over 12 million views in four days (shown below).

The video does not actually show a Batman impersonator at the protests in France. In actuality, it was originally posted to YouTube^[2] by Bucks County Batman, an impersonator, on May 30th, 2020, and shows him wandering through a BLM protest at Philadelphia City Hall following the death of George Floyd (shown below).

Spread

The meme gained viral spread to sites including Twitter,^[3] inspiring further memes depicting clips from Batman movies and clips of Batman impersonators as if they were taken at the France protests in Paris. On July 2nd, 2023, TikToker^[4] @shitheadsteve posted a recreation of the original meme, garnering over 2.2 million views in four days. On July 3rd, TikToker^[5] @wardog_edits posted an edit of a viral video of Florida State University students dressed as Batman for a bar crawl,^[6] captioned, "The whole multiverse of Batmans had to pull up to stop this," garnering over 870,000 views in three days (shown below). The video was posted to Twitter^[7] that day, garnering over 6,900 likes in the same span of time.

The original meme was debunked by Newsweek^[8] on that day.

Later that day, TikToker^[9] @musticihan posted a video of police arresting a man in a Batman costume captioned, "Nah thre police really tried to stop the only one who can save France," garnering over 6.3 million views in three days (shown below, left). On July 4th, TikToker^[10] @icejaker posted a Batman at France Riots meme that gained over 4.9 million views in two days (shown below, left).

As the trend progressed, TikTokers began posting videos of other impersonators, framing them as if they pulled up to France. On July 4th, 2023, TikToker^[11] @harris_o23 posted a compilation video of various impersonators with captions about them pulling up to France, garnering over 2.8 million views in two days (shown below, left). On the same day, TikToker^[12] @slidesareamazing posted a video captioned, "Nah even Gustavo Fring pulled up to France," garnering over 1.2 million views in the same span of time (shown below, right).