About

How Are You Not Dead? refers to a scene from the trailer for the 2020 film Sonic the Hedgehog in which character Tom Wachowski wonders how the main protagonist Sonic the Hedgehog managed to stay alive. Online, a two-panel meme format based on the scene gained popularity following the trailer release.

Origin

On November 12th, 2019, the second trailer for the 2020 film Sonic the Hedgehog premiered. In one scene of the trailer, character Tom Wachowski, portrayed by James Mardsen, asks titular character Sonic the Hedgehog how he managed to stay alive, to which he responds that he has no idea how (shown below).^[1] The trailer accumulated over 12.8 million views within 48 hours.

- How are you not dead?
- I have no idea!

On the same day, Redditor sim0n2 posted the earliest known meme based on the scene which gained over 37,300 upvotes in the /r/dankmemes subreddit in one day.^[2]

Spread

In the following hours, the format received further spread on Reddit, with notable memes based on the template being posted in /r/dankmemes, /r/historymemes and other subreddits. For example, a meme posted by Redditor G00DNAME2 in /r/dankmemes recieved over 26,700 upvotes in 24 hours.^[3] A meme posted by Redditor guyshani in /r/HistoryMemes on the same day received over 15,900 upvotes in one day.^[4]

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References