Syndrome Walking

Submission 1,943

Part of a series on The Incredibles. [View Related Entries]

About

Syndrome Walking is an exploitable video meme template using a scene from The Incredibles showing the villain character Syndrome (Buddy Pine) walking dramatically and smiling manically. In the scene, Syndrome is seen with his high-peaked orange hair and a black-and-white supersuit. The Syndrome Walking meme trended en masse on TikTok in mid-2024 when a green-screen template and CapCut template went viral. Users layered Syndrome Walking on top of different backgrounds correlating with the video's caption, which often outlined a scenario in which someone's walking with a purpose despite said purpose being ridiculous or unserious. The most common song used in the Syndrome Walking memes was the God of Basketball's intro from Regular Show, which was also sampled in the Yeat song "Breathe."

Origin

On November 28th, 2004, Pixar's The Incredibles released in American theaters.^[1] In one scene, the villain character Syndrome (Buddy Pine) is seen walking away from the Incredibles family and towards the stairs of a ship (YouTube^[2] upload shown below).

The earliest discovered meme with the scene was posted by TikToker^[3] @massimo.mono on June 23rd, 2024, who added an Elden Ring top caption about fighting the Furnace Golem in the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, gaining over 29,700 plays and 5,000 likes in a month (shown below).

Spread

On July 7th, 2024, Spanish-speaking TikToker^[4] @tecuentobro posted an iteration with a caption reading in English, "Me walking straight to the casino with my kids college savings," using the God of Basketball's intro from Regular Show as the sound.^[5] Over three weeks, the video received roughly 544,100 plays and 107,300 likes (shown below, left).

Other TikTokers used the abovementioned video's sound^[5] in their iterations. For instance, on July 10th, Spanish-speaking TikToker^[6] @arnieshs posted an iteration, receiving over 1.9 million plays and 390,000 likes in 20 days (shown below, right).

On July 11th, 2024, Twitter / X^[7] user @TheMechaRoboT used the video in a meme, gaining over 9,900 likes in 19 days (shown below).

English-speaking users adopted the format in late July 2024. For instance, on July 23rd, TikToker^[8] @xxroaxhxx posted an iteration about World War III, amassing over 1.7 million plays and 319,300 likes in a week (shown below).