About

Death at the Claw Machine, also known as Grim Reaper Claw Machine or X? Is Y Even In This Thing?, refers to an illustration depicting the grim reaper pulling humans out of a claw machine game. It has become a widespread exploitable image macro meme that appears en masse after a notable celebrity death. Variations tend to depict Death as disappointed that he grabbed a certain celebrity instead of a living elderly celebrity, especially ones that are widely hated or considered controversial.

Origin

The image of death at the claw machine (shown below) was illustrated by Nacho Diaz^[1] and was first posted to his now-defunct website, Naolito Art. The earliest extant appearance of the piece online was in a gallery of Diaz's work posted by the blog Twisted Sifter on September 18th, 2011.

The earliest-known instance of the image being used as an image macro following a celebrity death was posted by Imgur^[2] user BruisedBananas on January 13th, 2017, in relation to the passing of George Michael.

Spread

Over the following years, the image was used to comment on celebrity deaths, particularly more surprising ones, with Death depicted as disappointed he "got" a certain celebrity instead of the one he was hoping for. In 2018, around the time of John McCain's August 25th death, Imgflip^[3] user Some_Internet_Man depicted Death as disappointed he'd received McCain instead of Jake Paul, gaining over 14,000 views in five years (shown below, left). On September 18th, 2020, Redditor woakula posted a variation to /r/memes^[4] depicting death disappointed he'd gotten Ruth Bader Ginsburg instead of Betty White, gaining over 40 points in three years (shown below, right).

A particularly popular variation features the punchline, "Is Henry Kissinger even in this thing?", referring to the former United States Secretary of State who, at the time of writing, is 100 years old. Popular examples include a June 8th, 2023 post by Twitter user @Gritty20202^[5] after the death of Pat Robertson, gaining over 70 retweets and 500 likes in two and a half months (shown below, left) and a December 31st, 2022 post by Redditor kolibrifityma in /r/behindthebastards^[6] that used the punchline in response to Pope Benedict's death, gaining over 1,800 points in eight months (shown below, right).

"Death" of the Meme

On November 29th, 2023, it was announced that Henry Kissinger had died, which led to celebratory versions of the meme (example shown below).

Others commented that Kissinger's death may mean that the meme itself would die out, as the subject of its most common punchline had finally passed. For example, Twitter user @OrganizerMemes^[7] posted a Death and the Dog meme where Death was welcoming the meme to the afterlife, gaining over 370 retweets and 3,600 likes in one day (shown below).

User @loserbent^[8] remarked that they were saddened the meme would no longer see use, gaining over 265 likes in one day (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References