By The Pope

2016image macroclassic

By The Pope is a three-panel exploitable image macro built around a stock crusader whose greeting to peasants is cut off, then followed by a deep-fried reaction panel captioned "By the Pope." It started on iFunny in 2016 and spread through Memedroid and Reddit as users swapped the middle panel for shocking or absurd content.

exploitable templatesmulti panel memesifunny memesdeep fried memesstock photo exploitables

Overview

By The Pope is a three-panel exploitable image macro built around a stock photo of a medieval crusader knight1. The first panel shows the knight with the caption "Greetings Peasants, how goes th-," the dash signaling that his line is about to be interrupted. Whatever gets slotted into the middle panel is the joke, and the third panel returns to the same knight, this time deep fried and captioned "By the Pope," to register his shock3.

The format works because the crusader's medieval politeness collides with something the character could never plausibly encounter, from lewd tweets to modern politics. The deep fried final panel amplifies the reaction into cartoon outrage, a visual style that was popular across iFunny and Memedroid in the mid-2010s2.

How It Spread

Over the weeks after JosephtheGerman's post, iFunny users churned out more variations, most of them swapping the middle panel for something sexual or crude3. On June 18th, iFunny user ByThePope_2016 posted a version in which the middle panel was a tweet about tampon use and menstruation, and the post picked up more than 495 upvotes over the next two years4.

Later that year, on October 5th, Memedroid user JoloJuha posted a variation whose middle panel featured a tweet from a pro-Hillary Clinton furry Twitter account, and it collected more than 1,500 points at a 92% upvote rate5. The format kept traveling: on May 7th, 2018, Redditor MacroMike published a By The Pope edit that swapped the crusader for The Soldier from Team Fortress 2, and the post pulled more than 3,000 points at a 97% upvote rate within three months2.

The cross-platform hop from iFunny to Memedroid to Reddit is what turned By The Pope from an iFunny in-joke into a broader exploitable, though it never left the meme-forum circuit for mainstream platforms3.

How to Use This Meme

To make a By The Pope edit, keep the first and third panels intact: the crusader saying "Greetings Peasants, how goes th-" on top, and the deep fried crusader captioned "By the Pope" on the bottom. The middle panel is where you drop whatever image, tweet, or screenshot you want the knight to be scandalized by, and the sharper the tonal clash with medieval etiquette, the better the joke typically lands.

Frequently Asked Questions

By The Pope

2016image macroclassic

By The Pope is a three-panel exploitable image macro built around a stock crusader whose greeting to peasants is cut off, then followed by a deep-fried reaction panel captioned "By the Pope." It started on iFunny in 2016 and spread through Memedroid and Reddit as users swapped the middle panel for shocking or absurd content.

exploitable templates multi panel memes ifunny memes deep fried memes stock photo exploitables

Overview

By The Pope is a three-panel exploitable image macro built around a stock photo of a medieval crusader knight1. The first panel shows the knight with the caption "Greetings Peasants, how goes th-," the dash signaling that his line is about to be interrupted. Whatever gets slotted into the middle panel is the joke, and the third panel returns to the same knight, this time deep fried and captioned "By the Pope," to register his shock3.

The format works because the crusader's medieval politeness collides with something the character could never plausibly encounter, from lewd tweets to modern politics. The deep fried final panel amplifies the reaction into cartoon outrage, a visual style that was popular across iFunny and Memedroid in the mid-2010s2.

How It Spread

Over the weeks after JosephtheGerman's post, iFunny users churned out more variations, most of them swapping the middle panel for something sexual or crude3. On June 18th, iFunny user ByThePope_2016 posted a version in which the middle panel was a tweet about tampon use and menstruation, and the post picked up more than 495 upvotes over the next two years4.

Later that year, on October 5th, Memedroid user JoloJuha posted a variation whose middle panel featured a tweet from a pro-Hillary Clinton furry Twitter account, and it collected more than 1,500 points at a 92% upvote rate5. The format kept traveling: on May 7th, 2018, Redditor MacroMike published a By The Pope edit that swapped the crusader for The Soldier from Team Fortress 2, and the post pulled more than 3,000 points at a 97% upvote rate within three months2.

The cross-platform hop from iFunny to Memedroid to Reddit is what turned By The Pope from an iFunny in-joke into a broader exploitable, though it never left the meme-forum circuit for mainstream platforms3.

How to Use This Meme

To make a By The Pope edit, keep the first and third panels intact: the crusader saying "Greetings Peasants, how goes th-" on top, and the deep fried crusader captioned "By the Pope" on the bottom. The middle panel is where you drop whatever image, tweet, or screenshot you want the knight to be scandalized by, and the sharper the tonal clash with medieval etiquette, the better the joke typically lands.

Frequently Asked Questions