Patrick Bateman with An Axe

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Part of a series on American Psycho / Patrick Bateman. [View Related Entries]

About

Patrick Bateman with An Axe refers to a reaction image and image macro of the character Patrick Bateman (played by Christian Bale) from the 2000 film American Psycho swinging an axe with a slight grin. In memes, the still of the scene is typically used when another person says or does something that the other person hates or doesn't agree with. It's also used in Rage Comics as a reaction to proceeding captions, as well as being used as an exploitable where it is photoshopped to include elements from other pop culture references.

Origin

The original scene that the image comes from takes place in American Psyco, released on April 14th, 2000.^[1] In one of the scenes, Bateman uses an axe to kill one of his victims, which is where the still used in the meme comes from (shown below).^[2]

Although the exact first meme using the scene is unknown, a reverse image search on TinEye,^[3] shows that it first appeared online February 5th, 2008, on the site Taringa^[4] but has since been deleted. In memes, the earliest known variant that still exists online was posted in a Fark^[5] thread by user drjekel_mrhyde on August 10th, 2009, in the form of a Demotivational Poster (shown below).

Spread

On January 28th, 2012, another example of the meme was posted to Cheezburger^[6] by an unknown user under the title "That's Great, Honey! Where's My Axe?" that received over 1,200 likes in nine years (seen below, left). In 2015, ImgFlip^[7] user StoinesteanuLucian posted an image macro variant of the meme with a top and bottom caption, receiving over 2,200 views in roughly five years (seen below, right).