The Engineer From Prometheus

Submission 1,491

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About

The Engineer From Prometheus refers to memes and jokes about "The Engineer," a character from the Alien prequel film Prometheus. The Engineer is depicted in the film as a pale and hairless humanoid creature responsible for the creation of humankind. The Engineer is also shown to have a deep disgust or dislike toward humans, seeing them as a failed experiment. Memes about the Engineer's facial expression after being awakened by humans in Prometheus began making the rounds in 2024. Other memes from the film include The Prometheus School of Running Away From Things.

Origin

The Alien prequel Prometheus was released on June 8th, 2012. The film follows a team of human scientists and explorers as they travel to a planet they believe to be the home of humanity's creators, who they call the "Engineers." The team eventually awakens one such Engineer from a deep sleep, only for him to set out to destroy them (scene shown below).^[1]

On June 17th, 2012, Redditor^[5] /u/raineyrainey1000 made a post showing a behind-the-scenes image of the character, which read, "Just my friend in full costume talking to Ridley Scott, he was the alien in the opening scene of Prometheus," gathering over 2,000 likes in 12 years. The Redditor also posted an image of their friend getting prepped by the hair, makeup and SFX team (seen below).

Spread

On October 10th, 2021, an anonymous 4chan user posted a joke about the Engineer's violent nature in Prometheus, with a repost to the subreddit /r/greentext^[4] gathering over 23,000 upvotes in four years (seen below).

On August 23rd, 2024, X^[2] user @LanternJS posted a frame from the aforementioned scene, calling it the "scariest frame" in the film. He continues, "the confused look on his face really says 'what the fuck are you doing here and why are you talking to me? you shouldn’t be anywhere near here.' the last expression you expect. why is god confused? instantly opens a cosmic can of worms." The post (seen below) received over 18 million views and 86,000 likes in three days.

On August 24th, X^[3] user @NeilNevins posted the aforementioned frame of the Engineer as a meme format, writing, "listening to your friend explain the rules to their new tabletop game," and gathering over 35,000 likes in a day (seen below).

On August 24th, 2024, X^[6] user @zachsilberberg posted a We Bought A Zoo parody poster featuring the Engineers and text that read, "We Brought A Goo." The post gathered over 23,000 likes in two days (seen below).