About

Nic Cage In Kazakhstan refers to an image of actor Nicolas Cage in the country of Kazakhstan wearing a traditional robe and hat of the country. The photograph, particularly Cage's expression, led to jokes and a photoshop battle on Reddit.

Origin

On July 23rd, 2017, writer Yashar Ali tweeted the photograph of Cage in Kazakhstan with the caption, "Nic Cage is in Kazakhstan..here with the First Lady. It's likely he got paid for this (he's broke), I have reached out to his publicist." Cage was attending the 13th Eurasia International Film Festival. The tweet gained over 1,700 retweets and 4,800 likes (shown below).

Spread

Shortly after the image appeared on Twitter, people began making jokes about it. The top reply to Ali's tweet by @aberke^[2] features a zoomed in picture of Cage's face with the caption, "Boy does he look like he's reevaluating his life choices" (shown below, left). The tweet gained over 300 retweets and 1,600 likes. Another popular joke, posted by @joeltyler_,^[3] featured a Tenso edit of the photograph, gaining over over 2,400 retweets and 5,700 likes. The spread of the jokes on Twitter inspired a Twitter Moment.^[4]

Shortly after the photo hit Twitter, the picture was posted to /r/photoshopbattles,^[5] and the ensuing thread gained over 40,000 notes. Users in the thread posted various photoshops of the picture. The top photoshop, posted by gloini^[6] and gaining over 7,200 points, placed the image of Cage in the I Have The High Ground scene from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (shown below, left). Another by workingat7^[7] gained over 1,700 points, portraying Cage as Ivan the Terrible (shown below, right).

The jokes were covered by Newsweek,^[8] New York Post,^[9] The Guardian,^[10] and more.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References