The Ol' Spicy Keychain

Confirmed 108,835

About

The Ol' Spicy Keychain is an illustration by comic artist Will Laren, which depicts a man holding a burning key chain while yelling at his brother for heating the metal in an oven, referring to the prank as "the ol' spicy keychain." The original drawing has inspired an exploitable image series, featuring a variety of other characters expressing their discontent.

Origin

On November 9th, 2010, Laren published the illustration on Blogspot^[1] and subsequently posted to Laren's Tumblr^[2] and Flickr^[3] (shown below).

Spread

On October 12th, 2011, Redditor bjester submitted Laren's illustration to the /r/funny^[5] subreddit. On December 16th, Urban Dictionary user attractivecryingman submitted an entry for "spicy keychain." On January 13th, 2012, Laren posted a Limes Guy photoshop of the spicy keychain man, claiming he received an email informing him that the illustration had "become a meme on the sports section of 4chan" (shown below).

On May 9th, Redditor mansizerooster reposted the original illustration to /r/WTF,^[6] where it gathered upwards of 1,500 votes (88% upvoted) and 250 comments prior to being archived. on May 9, 2012 which was frontpaged, having 1159 upvotes.