Surprise, Bitch

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About

"Surprise, Bitch", not to be confused with James Doakes' "Surprise, Motherf**ker", is a catchphrase associated with the character Madison Montgomery (played by Emma Roberts) in the American TV series American Horror Story: Coven. On Tumblr, the phrase has been paired with GIFs depicting the return of a character once thought to be dead.

Origin

On December 4th, 2013, the eighth episode of American Horror Story: Coven aired on FX, which featured Madison Montgomery revealing to Fiona that she was resurrected from the dead in a previous episode. Upon returning, Madison confronts Fiona with the line "Surprise, Bitch. I bet you thought you saw the last of me." (shown below)

On the following day, Tumblr user WhoreforChrist^[6] submitted two GIFs captioned with Roberts' lines, receiving more than 243,000 notes within the first week.

Spread

The GIF of Emma Roberts quickly spread across the microblogging site^[1], with some recalling James Doakes' surprise, motherf**ker GIF meme while other began parodying the line by pairing it up with animated GIFs of other fictional characters who have been resurrected from the dead. Throughout the first week of December 2013, the GIF phenomenon was picked up by BuzzFeed^[2]^[4], Bustle^[3] and Vulture.^[5]