Clash Royale King Laughing / HE HE HE HAW

About

Clash Royale King Laughing or HE HE HE HAW refers to an emote from the mobile game Clash Royale, a spinoff of Clash of Clans, showing a king laughing in a specific way that sounds like "he he he haw." The emote is frequently spammed in-game by the winning team against the losing team to mock them. It started to become popularized as an exploitable around 2019.

Origin

Clash Royale was released on mobile devices on March 2nd, 2016, including a number of emotes that can be used in-game. One of these is the laughing king emote, showing a bearded king laughing with his eyes closed in a specific way that sounds like "he he he haw" (shown below). Since early in the game's life players started spamming the emote when winning a game to try and throw the losing player off and mock them. On March 14th, 2016 a member of the Clash Royale Fandom^[1] made a post admitting they spam the laughing king emote when they win and that it "feels so good." On April 11th, a now-deleted Redditor posted to /r/clashroyale^[2] asking how to counter the king laughing emote.

Spread

The laugh started to become increasingly popular in memes in 2021 playing off of how annoyed Clash Royale players generally get when they hear it. On May 1st, 2021, YouTuber Musti101 posted a one hour video repeating the laugh, gaining over 374,000 views in seven months (shown below). On July 8th, YouTuber Internet Things uploaded a low quality version of the laugh with a pixelated image of the king, gaining over 799,000 views in five months (shown below, right).

On September 3rd, TikToker^[3] @firespiritscr posted a video showing someone spamming the laughing king emote during a game's sudden death round, gaining over 2.1 million three months (shown below). It was re-uploaded to YouTube^[4] on the 27th, gaining over 3.8 million views in a comparable span of time.

On November 30th, YouTuber Kracc Bacc posted a video using the laughing king emote, gaining over 1.2 million views in just over two weeks (shown below).

As the emote became more popular, people began using it in shitposts and more elaborate video edits. On December 2nd, YouTuber SpellBunny uploaded a video remixing Friday Night Funkin' song "Triple Trouble" with his laugh, gaining over 88,400 views in two weeks (shown below, left). On December 13th YouTuber Memus posted an edit where an Asian man appears to laugh like the king, gaining over 20,700 views in three days (show below, right).

On December 15th, Lessons In Meme Culture posted a video about the emote, gaining over 347,000 views in a day (shown below).

Template

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References