Once the film opened, the ending set off a chain of internet reactions. Within days, developers launched "Did Thanos Kill Me?" at didthanoskill.me, a bare-bones site that randomly tells visitors whether they were one of the unlucky half wiped out by the snap4. CBR followed with its own coverage, pointing out that refreshing the page would not change the verdict, and staff writers at both outlets reported which of their colleagues had been dusted5. Screenshots of the site ran through Twitter and Reddit for weeks, with users sharing their fates alongside personal captions.

Spider-Man's death scene, in which Tom Holland's character crumbles to ash while telling Tony Stark "I don't feel so good, Mr. Stark," turned into one of the most remixed lines from the movie, reused as a template for anything from failing exams to dying Wi-Fi5. Reaction posts about which heroes survived became their own sub-genre, and fandom accounts kept score of the dusted cast list. In August 2018, actor Daley Pearson, who plays Thor's mockumentary roommate Darryl, posted a video announcing that Darryl had survived the snap and was working weekends to cover for co-workers who did not, extending the joke into the film's spinoff shorts6.

Two other stories kept the meme cycle going. Digital Spy reported that Indonesia's Film Censorship Institute had cut seven minutes from the movie, though Disney later denied the cut and said the film would screen uncut in the country, and the back-and-forth added its own layer of jokes about what those seven minutes could have possibly contained7. The home release on July 31st, 2018 (digital) and August 14th (Blu-ray) then kicked off a second meme wave, since higher-resolution stills and clips let creators remake earlier jokes with cleaner source material3. Urban Dictionary entries from 2018 defined the film as a giant cliffhanger that people had already spoiled themselves on through YouTube clips10.