Pac-Man's a Bad Guy!?

Submission 124

Part of a series on Reaction Images. [View Related Entries]

About

Pac-Man's a Bad Guy!? is an exploitable reaction image meme format based on a scene from the 2015 film Pixels in which Adam Sandler says in shock, "Pac-Man's a bad guy!?" An image macro of the scene was first posted to Reddit as early as May 2023 and became the subject of edits over the following months, which often use the original as a recaption format and replace the word "Pac-Man" with another subject as the phrasal template "X's a bad guy!?"

Origin

The 2015 film Pixels is about aliens misinterpreting classic arcade games as declarations of war, inspiring them to attack Earth with recreations of retro video game characters. In one scene, Adam Sandler (playing the character Sam Brenner) sees Pac-Man attacking the city and exclaims, "Pac-Man's a bad guy!?" The scene was uploaded to YouTube^[1] on November 21st, 2022, garnering around 9,500 views in two years.

On May 8th, 2023, Redditor u/Dogr11 posted a low-resolution image macro of the scene to the subreddit /r/okbuddyretard, ^[2] garnering over 100 upvotes in a year. This is the earliest known user to post the meme.

Spread

The image macro spread over the following months, becoming the subject of edits in which the word "Pac-Man" is replaced with another subject.

As early as May 10th, 2023, the X^[3] gimmick account @PacManbadguy started posting the original reaction image to posts on the app. On January 9th, 2024, an edit of the meme reading "Weezer's a bad guy!?" was posted to the subreddit /r/WeezerCircleJerk^[4] referencing allegations that Weezer band member Brian Bell was allegedly grooming minors, garnering over 500 upvotes in nine months.

On March 17th, 2024, X^[5] user @spaceashes posted a version of the reaction image in which the caption is altered to read, "Keemstar's a bald retard!?" garnering over 24,000 likes in seven months. On July 5th, X^[6] user @StarFrogRBLX posted a version of the reaction image about Chiitan in response to a video of Chiitan shooting fireworks, captioned, "Chiitan protects Elon Mask," garnering over 25,000 likes in three months.

On August 12th, X^[7] user @EvelynInaba posted a version of the meme reading, "Sol's a bad guy!?" referencing the Guilty Gear character Sol Badguy, garnering over 2,400 likes in two months.

On October 2nd, 2024, X^[8] user @Xlad99 posted a version of the meme referencing the Hawk Tuah Girl Haliey Welch in response to a post she made that day reading, "If Mr. Elon has a million fans, I am one of them," garnering over 218,000 likes in just under two weeks.