The Skeleton Appears

About

THE SKELETON APPEARS is a bait-and-switch format based on a video of a burning skull captioned with the phrase and set to "The Skull Gang" from Kirby Mass Attack soundtrack. The format originated from a viral tweet and has been popularized on Discord and Twitter and through efforts of a dedicated gimmick account. A video is sometimes met with comments "FUCK YOU STAR," which is a reference to the original video.

Origin

On November 4th, 2021, Twitter^[1] user @y2_kazoo posted a parody Joey's Delayed Reaction / Big Twitter Artist meme in which the third panel was replaced with an image macro of a skull captioned, "THE SKELETON APPEARS." The meme (shown below) gained over 5,700 retweets and 47,200 likes in three months (unedited image shown below, right). The skull image is the Skull item from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.^[2]

On December 9th, 2021, gimmick Twitter^[3] account Everything With Kirby Music (@ImagesKirby) posted a bait-and-switch Mercy Offers a Hand meme, which transitioned into the image from the @y2_kazoo's meme set over a video of burning flame as "The Skull Gang" from Kirby Mass Attack played. At the end of the video, additional message reading, "FUCK YOU STAR" briefly appears. The post (shown below) gained over 2,900 retweets and 14,200 likes in two months.

Spread

On January 24th, 2022, Discord users Chromeno#2377, harley#4248 and six other users created a Discord^[8] server THE SKELETON APPEARS for the purpose of spreading the meme across Discord, creating multiple THE SKELETON APPEARS bait-and-switch videos and GIFs and posting them in various popular servers (examples shown below, left and center). On January 27th, Chromeno#2377 created a Five Night's at Freddy's meme with the bait-and-switch, posting it in several popular Discord^[9][10] servers, including the official Terraria and The Binding of Isaac servers, with other users reposting the video to other social media in the following days (reupload shown below, right).

On January 30th, 2022, Twitter^[4][5] users @Gsn1vy and @ObjectsCountris both made tweets discussing the spread of the meme (shown below, left and right).

On February 1st, 2022, the gimmick Twitter^[6] account THE SKELETON APPEARS (@THESKELETONLOOK) was created, starting to post videos based on the bait-and-switch format on the same day. For example, a Mr. Incredible Becoming Uncanny bait-and-switch posted^[7] by the account on February 1st gained over 100,000 views, 3,500 retweets and 16,400 likes in two days (shown below). The account accumulated nearly 30,000 subscribers in three days.

In early February 2022, the format received viral spread on Twitter and other platforms, with users creating bait-and-switch memes and referencing the joke.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References