Your Pal, Friendpatine

About

Your Pal, Friendpatine refers to a long-running joke among the Star Wars Prequel fandom taken from a Rifftrax watch of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. In the scene, Obi-wan Kenobi warns Anakin Skywalker about "Your friend, Palpatine," to which Rifftrax performer Kevin Murphy quips, "And your pal, Friendpatine," making a pun on the character Palpatine's name. The joke has been reposted and used in various memes since 2017.

Origin

On September 25th, 2007, Rifftrax released their watchthrough of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.^[2] During the movie, Obi-wan Kenobi warns Anakin Skywalker about "Your friend, Palpatine," to which Rifftrax performer Kevin Murphy quips, "And your pal, Friendpatine" (clip shown below).

Spread

Roughly a decade after the Rifftrax was published, the scene began seeing use in memes and posts on social media. On April 10th, 2016, the scene was published in GIF form to Tumblr by user prettynerdieworks,^[3] where it gained over 118,000 notes in eight years.

On August 9th, 2017, Redditor titusmoley posted screenshots of the line on Reddit's /r/prequelmemes^[1], gaining over 20,000 points in nearly seven years. The user admitted that they'd reposted the meme from "a Facebook group" (shown below).

Over the following several years, the joke was reposted in various formats. For example, on July 30th, 2020, Tumblr user ferventvervet^[4] found that a user had compared Palpatine and improv comedian Colin Mochrie as "Your friend, Palpatine and Your pal, Friendpatine." The post gained nearly 140,000 notes in four years (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References