Negan Smiling

About

Negan Smiling refers to a series of memes based on a close-up of The Walking Dead character Negan Smith (played by actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan) smiling slowly. Starting in 2022, the clip saw use as a caption format and a reaction GIF in memes online.

Origin

On March 18th, 2018, episode 12 of season eight of the post-apocalyptic horror television series The Walking Dead premiered in the United States.^[1] In the opening scene of the episode, the character Negan Smith, portrayed by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, is shown smiling slowly in a close-up shot.

On October 17th, 2020, Tumblr^[2] user jdmorganz posted a GIF based on the scene to the site together with several more GIFs of Negan smiling from the same episode (shown below). The post garnered over 360 likes and reblogs in four years. On April 2nd, 2023, Tenor^[3] user Cannonbult posted the GIF to the site.

Spread

The GIF has been used as a caption format online at least since late December 2022. On December 27th, 2022, TikTok^[4] user @homer.strong made the earliest found caption meme based on the GIF, a meme referencing Comically Large Spoon that garnered over 1.2 million views and 183,000 likes in two years (shown below, left).

On December 12th, TikTok^[5] user @star_wars_falcon posted a caption meme that garnered over 963.000 views and 216,000 likes in two years (shown below, right).

More memes based on the format were posted on TikTok^[6] and other sites^[7] in 2023 and 2024. The GIF has been used to express the feeling of being giddy in morally dubious situations or to express sexual intent (example^[8] of use shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References