Unpopular Opinion Guns

Submission 21,589

Part of a series on Unpopular Opinions. [View Related Entries]

About

Unpopular Opinion Guns, also known as John Wick Surrounded By Guns, refers to a series of memes, fan art and tributes based on a promotional posted for John Wick: Chapter Two film in which 20 men are aiming weapons at the head of the main protagonist John Wick, portrayed by Keanu Reeves. In the following years, the image has been used as an exploitable and object labeling meme, with "unpopular opinion* variations gaining popularity on iFunny, /r/okbuddyretard subreddit and Twitter in late September 2019.

Origin

On October 8th, 2016, the American entertainment company Liongate released a promotional poster for the then-upcoming film John Wick: Chapter Two (shown below).^[1] On the same day, the poster appeared in multiple news articles online.

Spread

In the following year, the image has been used as an exploitable and a reaction by multiple users, with John Wick usually replaced by other persons or fictional characters. On October 11th, 2016, Imgur user reapeatalifetime posted one of the earliest memes based on the image, with the post receiving over 940 points and 39,800 views in three years (shown below, left).^[2] The meme combined the image with another Unpopular Opinion format, Unpopular Opinion Swords. On November 19th, 2016, artist BossLogic posted one of the earliest notable edits of the image, replacing John Wick with Deadpool (shown below, right).^[3] The tweet received over 140 retweets and 310 likes in three years.

In the following years, the image has seen extensive use as an exploitable, with notable edits appearing on Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr and other platforms (examples shown below).

Unpopular Opinion Versions

On September 23rd, 2019, Instagram user monsieur.egg posted a meme based on the image captioned "What it's like being sexually attracted to Crazy Frog in 2019" (shown below).^[4] The post gained over 5,600 likes in two weeks.

In the following days, this format received notable spread on iFunny and /r/okbuddyretard subreddit, with notable posts by iFunny users StoneFree^[5] and Dyatlov^[6] and Redditors kyykkeli^[7] and thechanchanman111 (examples shown below).^[8]

Unpopular Opinion Swords / How It Feels

Unpopular Opinion Swords, also known as Flynn Surrounded by Swords, is an reaction image and an object-labeling meme featuring a frame from the 2010 Disney animated fantasy film Tangled. The shot sees the character Flynn with a number of swords pointing to his neck as he looks unphased and comfortable. Online, some use the image as a prompt to engage with people and their unpopular opinions.