Hiding From a Serial Killer

Submission 46,615

About

Hiding From a Serial Killer is an image macro series featuring a photograph of a man in his underwear hiding behind a closet door. The images are typically captioned with mock interactions in which a person trying to hide from a serial killer is tricked into giving away their location in a variety of humorous ways. In 2019, a variation which used an "armed robber" instead of a serial killer grew popular on Twitter.

Additionally, "Hiding From a Serial Killer" refers to a comic by Filipino comic artist Nazzquipit based on the joke. Starting in December 2017, the comic has been used for memes based on the joke.

Origin

On December 14th, 2016, Twitter user @tylercoleray^[1] tweeted a mock dialogue in which he accidentally replies with the lyrics to "Rain Drop Drop Top" while being hunted by a serial killer (shown below). Within three months, the tweet gained over 2,600 likes and 1,500 retweets.

Spread

That same day, Twitter user @ItsKermit^[7] reposted @tylercoleray's tweet. On December 23rd, 2016, Instagram user thefunnyintrovery^[5] posted a photograph of a man hiding in a closet captioned with @tylercoleray's tweet (shown below). Within three months, the post garnered more than 18,800 likes and 670 comments.

On March 12th, 2017, Redditor Berwve submitted a post titled "Hiding from serial killer memes on the rise!" to /r/memeeconomy,^[2] highlighting an image macro in which the man accidentally replies "Trivago" when the serial killer asks "Hotel?" (shown below, let). That same day, Redditor unixstickers uploaded a Linux operating system-themed image macro to /r/linuxmemes.^[3]

On March 12th, the 9gag Instagram^[4] feed posted a photograph of a woman hiding in a library, who is tricked into revealing her location by singing along to "All Star" (shown below). Within 48 hours, the post gained over 415,000 likes.

Comic Version

On December 27th, 2017, Filipino comic artist Nazzquipit posted a four-panel comic comic based on Facebook. The post received over 16,000 reactions and 8,600 shares in two years (shown below).^[11]

In the following days, users on Facebook re-edited the speech bubbles in the comic in the vein of Hiding From a Serial Killer jokes, with the format also spreading to Twitter and Reddit. For example, a January 4th, 2018, post by Redditor LuxDivina in /r/Xenoblade_Chronicles subreddit received over 400 upvotes in six months (shown below, left).^[12] A June 18th, 2018, post by Redditor Glassbil123 in /r/PrequelMemes gained over 3,800 upvotes in six months (shown below, center).^[13]

Armed Robber

In August of 2019, a variation on the meme grew popular on Twitter, this time showing people highlighting from an armed robber. These variations did not include a reaction image as the "serial killer" edits did. The resurgence started with an August 26th tweet from @real_jaeflex^[9] that gained over 8,000 retweets and 20,000 likes (shown below).

This led others to adopt the same format in their own variations. Other popular tweets include tweets by @MCMVIII (shown below, left), @amaditalks (shown below, middle), and @bkerogers (shown below, right). The jokes were covered by Daily Dot.^[10]