Fred Flintstone Dies

About

Fred Flintstone Dies refers to a clip from Adult Swim's Come and Learn With Pibby! trailer where Fred Flintstone slides off a dinosaur and is then consumed by a wave of glitchy darkness, presumably dying. The clip became the subject of edits showing Fred dying in various ways shortly after the trailer dropped in late October 2021.

Origin

On October 30th, 2021, Adult Swim dropped a short animation called Come and Learn With Pibby! on YouTube^[1] about a cute cartoon character, Pibby, experiencing different cartoon worlds being overrun by a mysterious dark matter called "The Darkness," which turns the characters it captures into hostile, zombie-like entities. Throughout the trailer, Pibby is shown entering different cartoon worlds and encountering various iconic Cartoon Network characters, including The Flintstones at around the 0:48 mark in the video. In the scene, Pibby is talking with Fred, who then says "yabba-dabba-doo" and slides off a dinosaur straight into The Darkness, where he is consumed and turned into a zombie (shown below via reupload, original age-restricted).

On that day, YouTuber^[2] Wholesome Jones posted an edit of the Fred Flintstone clip where he slides off the dinosaur followed by the Final Smash death effect from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, gaining over 1,300 views in five days (shown below). This is the earliest known edit of the clip.

Spread

YouTubers continued to upload edits of the scene to the platform. On October 31st, 2021, YouTuber FNAF 1987 13 posted a video editing the scene of Fred dying to the end of the original Flintstones theme song, gaining over 148,000 views in four days (shown below).

On November 1st, YouTuber^[3] datarxz posted a version of the meme changing the audio to someone saying "I cannot hold it in anymore, I just wanna" then a notification sound effect, gaining over 100,000 views in three days (shown below, left). On November 3rd, YouTuber^[4] Bookybapoco posted a labeled version about trying to play Roblox while it was down around the same period of time,^[5] gaining over 219,000 views in a day (shown below, right).

On November 4th, YouTuber^[6] Lessons In Meme Culture posted a video about the meme, gaining over 117,000 views in five hours (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References