Joker Sign Slam

Submission 11,183

Part of a series on Joker (2019 Film). [View Related Entries]

About

Joker Sign Slam refers to a two-panel image of 2019 film Joker titular character Joker getting hit by an advertising sign in the face. First shown in the film trailer in April 2019, the exploitable gained popularity as an object labeling meme in the following months.

Origin

On April 2nd, 2019, DC premiered the trailer for the then-upcoming film Joker at CinemaCon.^[1] On the following day, Warner Bros premiered the trailer on YouTube, where it received more than 2.1 million views in less than 12 hours (shown below).

On April 4th, 2019, Redditor TrapStormYT posted a two-panel template based on the scene in which Joker, portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix, gets hit in the face with an advertisement sign which has been stolen from him by a group of teens (shown below).^[2] The post received 20 upvotes in the /r/MemeTemplatesOfficial subreddit in six months.

Spread

On April 4th, 2019, Redditor Spaceapostle posted the first viral meme based on the template to /r/dankchristianmemes subreddit, with the post receiving over 17,800 upvotes in six months (shown below).^[3]

In the following days, the format gained popularity on Reddit, with one notable example posted in /r/dndmemes and /r/SkyrimMemes subreddits (shown below, left and right).^[4]^[5]

On October 28th, Redditor StalinLovesYou69 posted a meme based on the template which gained over 42,200 upvotes in /r/dankmemes subreddit in one day,^[6] prompting a surge in the popularity of the format.