Vince McMahon Surprised / X When Y Walks In

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About

Vince McMahon Surprised, also known as X When Y Walks In or Vince McMahon Worried, refers to a meme, phrasal template and GIF Caption that uses a GIF of WWE executive Vince McMahon turning and looking shocked towards a TV screen in the distance while holding a microphone. The GIF is used to express a group of people's or person's disbelief at an opposing group's arrival, heavily related to Group Names Misinterpretation memes. The original video is from early 2001 but was used in memes predominantly on iFunny and Reddit in the early 2020s.

Origin

In March 2001, the March 26th, 2001 Edition^[1] of WWE Raw took place in Cleveland, Ohio. In the middle of the show, Vince McMahon took to the main stage to talk ill of the organization's competitor WCW. At that moment, a simulcast was held with WCW Monday Nitro on TNT, wherein, McMahon's son, Shane McMahon, appeared on screen to reveal that he had bought WCW. The original clip is still accessible on the WWE website.^[2] Also, on March 26th, 2017, the official YouTube channel of the WWE posted the clip, earning roughly 262,000 views over the course of five years (shown below).

On January 1st, 2018, the moment McMahon turned to the simulcast was made into a GIF and posted to GIPHY.^[3] Over the course of four years, it received roughly 817,300 views (shown below, left). Going into 2020, the GIF started to be used in memes on iFunny within the Group Names Misinterpretation trend. On October 3rd, 2020, iFunnyer^[4] ImperiusRex made a GIF Caption with it that read, "Democrats when a fullgamecraft walks in," earning over 350 smiles in two years (shown below, right).

Spread

On April 18th, 2021, the aforementioned GIF Caption was reposted to Reddit's /r/dankmemes^[5] by Redditor ChaplinshireFuzzy, earning roughly 8,600 upvotes in one year. On June 23rd, 2021, Redditor Skqdoodle shared a meme to /r/dankmemes^[6] that captioned a still image of the GIF to make a meme about alpha males, earning roughly 15,500 upvotes in one year (shown below, left). On July 13th, 2021, Redditor Adept_of_Blue posted a GIF Caption to /r/okbuddyretard, ^[7] earning roughly 1,000 upvotes in ten months (shown below, right).

More GIF Captions using the template surfaced online going into 2022. For instance, on January 22nd, 2022, Redditor z_shah7 posted an iteration to /r/shitposting^[8] related to Star Wars and Prequel Memes, earning roughly 18,300 upvotes in four months (shown below, left).

Furthermore, the template and phrasal template started to be referenced without the GIF of Vince McMahon. On February 6th, 2022, TikToker ^[9] ttjmmwks posted a video that stated, "People with ADHD when people with AD144p walk in," earning roughly 257,000 plays and 48,200 likes in three months (shown below, right).