Simpsons Monkey Knife Fight

About

Simpsons Monkey Knife Fight is a series of memes and jokes using a screenshot from an episode of the American animated sitcom The Simpsons that features a group of people betting on a physical fight between two monkeys.

Origin

On January 23rd, 2000, the episode of The Simpsons entitled "The Mansion Family" aired in the United States. In the episode, the character Homer Simpson (voiced by Dan Castellaneta) captains a ship to international waters, where an organized fight between monkeys holding knives takes place (shown below, left).^[1]

Seven years later, on December 11th, 2007, YouTuber djbuddylove3000 edited footage from the episode into a "mockumentary" on "Monkey Knife Fighting." The post received more than 92,000 views in 12 years (shown below, right).

Spread

On January 27th, 2013, Penny-Arcade^[2] user Sterica used a screenshot from the episode as a reaction image. They wrote, "Let's give this thread the REAL Klepek experience and have it mimick the comments of his articles" (shown below).

Later that year, on December 1st, Redditor ^[3] oprangerop posted a GIF of the scene with the label PC Gamer, X-Box and Playstation on the characters. The post received more than 1,400 points (80% upvoted) and 600 comments in six years (shown below, left).

On April 14th, 2016, a Redditor^[4] who has since deleted their account posted the image with the monkeys labeled Sweden and "President Donald Trump." The post received more than 37,000 points (74% upvoted) and 1,400 comments in three years (shown below, center).

On April 4th, 2019, Redditor^[5] TacticalAcquisition posted an image of the fight with the characters labeled different video game distribution platforms. The post received more than 46,000 points (91% upvoted) and 2,000 comments in 24 hours (shown below, right).

Templates

Various Examples

External References