Ren & Stimpy Waking Up Scene

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About

Ren & Stimpy Waking Up Scene or Ralph Bakshi Wakes Up refers to a Ren & Stimpy “Adult Party Cartoon” scene of fire chief Ralph Bakshi waking up and staring into nothingness. In 2021, the scene was popularized as a video caption format in memes, often used to illustrate moments of sudden realization or capitulation.

Origin

On July 24th, 2003, part two of episode three "Fire Dogs 2" of Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon," an "extreme" mature revamp of The Ren & Stimpy Show, premiered.^[1] In one of the last scenes of the episode, Ren and Stimpy are sleeping in bed together with Fire Chief Ralph Bakshi (a revamp version of Fire Chief based on adult animation director Ralph Bakshi and voiced by him), who suddenly wakes up and sits up, staring into nothingness, before shouting, "Circus midgets," grabbing a fire axe and attacking the duo. The shot of Bakshi staring is a freeze-frame with a more realistic art style (scene shown below, left).

[This video has been removed]

Prior to 2020, the video saw separate instances of use online as a reaction and as source material for edits. For example, on October 15th, 2018, YouTuber^[2] The New DEW posted a YouTube poop that gained over 5,400 views in three years. On September 5th, 2019, Tenor^[3] user cowboygameboy uploaded a GIF of Ralph Bakshi waking up to the site (shown above, right). On December 1st, 2019, Twitter^[4] user @ianpavelko used the GIF as a reaction. Another edit was posted by YouTuber^[12] GreentopPeter on April 4th, 2020.

The scene first went viral in late November 2020, after a GIF caption meme about atheists went viral on social media (show below). While the author of the meme is unknown, the earliest post was made by iFunny^[5] user lil_staircase on November 25th, 2020, gaining over 300 smiles, with multiple viral reposts being made in the following days.^[6]^[7]

Spread

On December 30th, 2020, iFunny^[8] user SlayerofBitches posted an edit that received over 44,500 smiles in two years (shown below, left). The edit was followed by a viral GIF caption "Wake up, day ruined" referencing an earlier 4chan post, created by an unknown author in January 2021 (shown below, right).^[9]^[10]

On March 1st, 2021, YouTuber^[11] alsoandanswer posted a Guts' Theme edit based on the scene, which gained over 926,000 views in 11 months. Several more GIF captions and edits setting the video to various music followed in the subsequent months until early June 2021 when the video went viral on TikTok. Within the June 2021 trend, the clip was combined with a fart sound that woke Bakshi up, with "Princess" from Miitopia following. While the entire trend has since been removed, several viral videos were reuploaded to YouTube^[13] and Instagram^[14] (original video shown below).

Overly Specific Predictions

The format briefly developed into Overly Specific Predictions memes after July 16th, 2021, when Instagram^[15] account meme._machine.mp4 posted a version of the meme in which the still freeze-frame was combined with a failed prediction of a reactor meltdown at the North Anna Nuclear Power Plant on November 15th, 2021. The post (shown below, left) gained over 2,000 likes and 11,200 views in six months. A July 22nd, 2021, repost by iFunny^[16] user Lewdling gained an additional 9,900 smiles, with more reposts following. On August 4th, 2021, iFunny^[17] user causality posted the first derivative meme within the subformat that gained over 25,000 smiles in six months (shown below, right). More similar examples followed in the August-October 2021 period.

Continued Spread

Parallel to the Overly Specific Predictions versions, the format continued to spread normally, with viral video caption and GIF caption versions being posted across all major social media. For example, on August 25th, 2021, Redditor donglethrongle posted a GIF caption meme that gained over 2,800 upvotes in the /r/whenthe^[18] subreddit (shown below, left). On September 9th, 2021, TikToker^[19] @elijah_ha_ha posted a version that gained over 842,000 views and 159,000 likes in five months. On September 15th, Twitter^[20] user @cursed_kevin posted a meme about the recent news about Nintendo Switch that gained over 4,000 retweets and 34,400 likes in the same period (shown below, center).

The format maintained moderate virality in late 2021, again surging in use as several memes based on it went viral on Twitter^[21]^[22] in late January 2022 (example shown above, right).