Quit Telling Everyone I'm Dead!

Submission 7,944

About

Quit Telling Everyone I'm Dead! refers to a scene from the animated film Brother Bear in which the character Mabel says she had "lost her dear Edgar," after which Edgar can be heard offscreen shouting "Quit telling everyone I'm dead!" Mabel then says, "Sometimes, I can still hear his voice."

Origin

In the 2003 film Brother Bear, the character Mabel tells other bears that she "lost her dear Edgar" that year. Edgar can be heard offscreen yelling "Quit telling everyone I'm dead!" to which Mabel says "Sometimes I can still hear his voice" (shown below). On July 11th, 2009, the scene was uploaded to YouTube by user Shinjitsusei, gaining over 965,000 views in fourteen years (shown below).

Spread

The scene started seeing use in memes starting in 2015. On August 5th, 2015, Tumblr user goddessofidiocy used the dialogue exchange as a snowclone featuring Steven Universe characters, gaining over 81,000 notes in eight years (shown below). The post was archived by Meme Documentation^[1] on August 11th.

As the template spread on Tumblr, it began appearing in various forms. For example, on May 13th, 2016, DeviantArt user Excellency-Shinigami^[2] posted Gundam Wing fan art based on a Tumblr post, gaining over 1,800 views in seven years (shown below, left). On November 3rd, 2022, Redditor Omega74 posted a previously posted image macro of the original scene referencing the Minecraft Aether mod to /r/MemeRestoration,^[3] gaining over 230 points in one year (shown below, right).

The original scene also began spreading on TikTok in the 2020s. For example, on October 23rd, 2022, user @byakkobayliss paired the scene's audio with a video of their cat, gaining over 58,000 likes in one year (shown below, left). On November 13th, user @radioactiveorangeteacups used it in a video that gained over 108,000 likes in a similar time frame (shown below, right).