Blue Grinch / That Feeling When Knee Surgery Is Tomorrow is an ironic image macro pairing an excited character, most popularly a blue-tinted Grinch, with the caption 'That feeling when knee surgery is tomorrow'.

Where did Blue Grinch come from?

The caption first appeared on a MemeCreator.org squirrel image sometime before April 2021, with the blue Grinch version arriving on the Instagram page blinch.feels on March 14, 2022.

What does Blue Grinch mean?

The joke flips the expected reaction to dreaded medical appointments, pairing joyful faces with the knee surgery line so the mismatch reads as absurdist, ironic complaint.

How do you use Blue Grinch?

Keep the caption 'That feeling when knee surgery is tomorrow' exactly as written and swap the image for a character whose expression reads as unambiguous joy, such as the blinch.feels blue Grinch face.

Is Blue Grinch still popular?

The meme peaked in late 2022 and early 2023, with the blue Grinch version earning over 110,000 likes on a February 2023 blinch.feels post before settling into classic status on dedicated subreddits.

Blue Grinch

2021image macroclassic

Published October 23, 2026

Blue Grinch / That Feeling When Knee Surgery Is Tomorrow is an oddly specific image macro that pairs excited characters with a non sequitur caption about an upcoming knee operation. Starting as a squirrel joke in early 2021, the gag found its definitive form when a blue-tinted Grinch face took over Instagram and Reddit in late 2022, racking up over 85,000 likes on a single grubburd repost.

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Overview

Blue Grinch / That Feeling When Knee Surgery Is Tomorrow is an ironic image macro where a happy or celebratory character sits above the caption 'That feeling when knee surgery is tomorrow'1. The absurdity is in the mismatch: nobody is excited about orthopedic surgery, so pairing giddy expressions with a dreaded appointment reads as the exact wrong emotion for the moment. The blue-tinted Grinch face, drawn from the 'blinch' meme page on Instagram, is the version most people recognize2.

Typical posts stick to the base format with little text variation, so the humor rides entirely on which cursed happy face sits above the caption. Early entries ranged from a cheering squirrel to a Drake 'liking' pose, while later ones layered in self-aware riffs about sending the Grinch picture to one's own surgeon3. On the dedicated subreddit r/Kneesurgerymemes, posts began referencing the blue Grinch version itself as the canonical form rather than just reusing it1.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

MemeCreator.org / Instagram (viral spread)

Date

2021

The earliest known version of the meme appeared on MemeCreator.org sometime before April 2021, showing a squirrel holding its arms up in triumph above the knee surgery caption1. On April 6, 2021, Instagram account stupid.fricken.meme reposted a cropped version of the squirrel image, which picked up more than 1,300 likes over the following two years1.

On August 2, 2021, Redditor ZyeAxe posted a Drake-based variant of the caption to r/okbuddyretard, the earliest known swap of the character inside the format3. The same day, the r/Kneesurgerymemes subreddit opened as a home for new entries1. The blue Grinch itself was not involved yet; that character arrived through a separate Instagram meme page, blinch.feels, which spent 2022 posting edits of a blue-tinted version of the character before plugging him into this caption.

How It Spread

Through 2022 the caption migrated across meme reposting accounts. On January 16, 2022, iFunny user Tidus posted a version that reached over 840 smiles within a year1. The shift that cemented the format came on March 14, 2022, when Instagram account blinch.feels, a page dedicated to the blue Grinch character, applied his face to the knee surgery caption and gained more than 1,100 likes1.

That Grinch version broke out in October 2022. A repost to r/Kneesurgerymemes on October 23 picked up over 500 upvotes1. The next day, October 24, r/oddlyspecific carried it to over 10,000 upvotes, and Instagram account grubburd pushed it to more than 85,000 likes with its own repost1. On November 2, 2022, a dedicated r/bluegrinchkneesurgery subreddit opened to collect entries referencing the specific variant1.

The format kept going into 2023. On February 9, 2023, blinch.feels posted a meta entry showing a user DMing the blue Grinch image to a knee surgeon, reaching over 110,000 likes within two months4. On April 18, 2023, Twitter account @MemeHut1990 reshared the original squirrel version and picked up around 640 likes in a day5.

Timeline

2021-04-06

Instagram account stupid.fricken.meme reposts the original squirrel version of the image macro, the earliest documented spread of the caption.

2021-08-02

Redditor ZyeAxe posts a Drake-based variant to r/okbuddyretard, and the r/Kneesurgerymemes subreddit opens the same day.

2022-01-16

IFunny user Tidus posts a version that collects over 840 smiles across the year.

2022-03-14

Instagram page blinch.feels publishes the first blue Grinch version of the knee surgery meme.

2022-10-24

The blue Grinch version crosses 10,000 upvotes on r/oddlyspecific and 85,000 likes via Instagram account grubburd.

2022-11-02

The r/bluegrinchkneesurgery subreddit opens as a dedicated hub for the Grinch variant.

2023-02-09

Blinch.feels posts a meta entry showing someone sending the blue Grinch meme to a knee surgeon, hitting over 110,000 likes.

2023-04-18

Twitter account @MemeHut1990 reshares the original squirrel version, bringing the format back to X.

How to Use This Meme

A typical post keeps the caption 'That feeling when knee surgery is tomorrow' exactly as written and swaps only the image above it. The common convention is to pick a character or animal whose expression reads as pure, uncomplicated joy, then let the clash with a dreaded medical appointment do the work. Later entries often include a meta layer, such as showing someone texting the blue Grinch image to a surgeon4.