Pumpkin Head Dwight Schrute

About

Pumpkin Head Dwight Schrute also known as Pumpkin Dwight or Dwight Gets His Head Stuck in a Pumpkin refers to a series of seasonal memes utilizing images of Dwight Schrute from The Office with a pumpkin stuck on his head. The meme comes from the cold open of The Office season 9, episode 5, which originally aired in 2012. Since the episode aired, memes and fan content referencing the episode became increasingly popular every fall leading up to Halloween.

Origin

On October 25th, 2012, season 9, episode 5 of The Office aired. In the episode's cold open, Dwight explains how he decided to "really get into the spirit of Halloween" by putting a jack-o-lantern on his head. Unfortunately, Dwight gets the pumpkin stuck on his head and is too scared of hurting himself to smash it, saying, "any blow to the pumpkin itself could prove fatal to me." Dwight decides to leave the pumpkin on, assuming it will rot off of his head in a month or two (shown below).^[1]

The earliest known meme referencing the scene is an image macro uploaded by The Office Pinterest^[2] page sometime in 2012 (shown below).

Spread

The pumpkin scene became increasingly popular online over the following years, particularly throughout fall leading up to Halloween. On September 16th, 2015, Instagram^[3] user dundermifflinpaperco posted a meme using various screenshots from the episode that gained over 4,900 likes in eight years (shown below, left). On August 14th, 2018, Instagram^[4] user wearemitu posted a meme using the pumpkin head image to celebrate fall, garnering over 37,900 likes in five years (shown below, right).

On October 24th, 2018, u/Andyh10s posted a GIF of the scene to /r/DunderMifflin,^[5] garnering over 2,700 upvotes in five years. On September 13th, 2019, u/Tucker717 posted a meme to /r/DunderMifflin^[6] titled, "It’s that time of year again," using the image, garnering over 9,200 upvotes in four years (shown below).

On October 19th, 2020, u/RuthlessFapper posted a photograph to /r/DunderMifflin^[7] of their "Dwight pumpkin" Halloween costume, garnering over 45,000 upvotes in three years (shown below, left). On October 25th, 2023, the @OfficeMemes_ X^[8] page posted an image of pumpkin head Dwight, writing, "Pumpkin Dwight was created 11 years ago today," garnering over 16,000 likes in two days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References