Fake History

2016image macroclassic

Fake History is a Reddit image macro that pairs black-and-white cartoon screenshots and movie stills with completely fabricated historical captions written in a straight-faced documentary voice. It started in July 2016 on r/BikiniBottomTwitter and grew into the dedicated r/fakehistoryporn subreddit.

hoax memesimage macro memessubreddit origin memesexploitable templatesfake quote memes

Overview

Fake History is a Reddit-born image macro style where an unrelated photograph or screenshot gets paired with a fictional historical caption written in the deadpan voice of a museum plaque or textbook footnote1. The joke sits in the same lineage as Troll Quote macros, but the target is history itself rather than a single misattributed sentence4.

Most examples run the source image through a black-and-white filter to sell the 'archival' look, then tag it with a date, a war, a political figure, or a specific moment like Pearl Harbor or the fall of the Berlin Wall1. Captions often invoke gravitas ('Our brave soldiers,' 'moments before his tragic assassination') to heighten the absurdity of a Shrek or SpongeBob screenshot standing in for a real historical photograph2.

How It Spread

By August 13, 2016, CollegeHumor had published a listicle collecting twenty 'SpongeBob moments hilariously captioned with historical context' pulled directly from r/BikiniBottomTwitter, which pushed the joke outside its origin subreddit3. Two months later, on October 14, 2016, r/fakehistoryporn launched as a dedicated home for the format1.

The new subreddit sped things up. On November 5, 2016, Redditor Trutrundle posted a Bob the Builder Fake History image titled 'Fake History memes on the rise' to r/MemeEconomy, where it cleared 1,100 votes at 95% upvoted within two months5. On November 16, r/fakehistoryporn moderator Vmoney1337 released the Fake History Caption Maker so anyone could generate the format without editing tools1.

A viral entry came on January 5, 2017, when Redditor Scep19 posted a Drake & Josh screenshot to r/fakehistoryporn recasting Josh Nichols as Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar; it drew about 17,600 votes and 280 comments in one week1. A follow-up on January 12 by The_King_Of_Memes on r/dank_meme reworked a Shrek frame as John F. Kennedy in the Dallas motorcade, described as 'moments before his tragic assassination'4.

How to Use This Meme

The typical Fake History post takes a screenshot from an animated show, sitcom, or film, desaturates it to black and white, and pairs it with a caption in a dry historical-record voice: a date, a place, a war or political event, and an assertion about who or what the image 'shows'1. Common conventions include name-dropping recognizable 20th-century events (Pearl Harbor, the Berlin Wall, the JFK assassination) and picking clearly cartoonish subjects so the mismatch lands on impact2. The Fake History Caption Maker released in November 2016 automated the layout with a plain white caption bar below the image1.

Frequently Asked Questions

Fake History

2016image macroclassic

Fake History is a Reddit image macro that pairs black-and-white cartoon screenshots and movie stills with completely fabricated historical captions written in a straight-faced documentary voice. It started in July 2016 on r/BikiniBottomTwitter and grew into the dedicated r/fakehistoryporn subreddit.

hoax memes image macro memes subreddit origin memes exploitable templates fake quote memes

Overview

Fake History is a Reddit-born image macro style where an unrelated photograph or screenshot gets paired with a fictional historical caption written in the deadpan voice of a museum plaque or textbook footnote1. The joke sits in the same lineage as Troll Quote macros, but the target is history itself rather than a single misattributed sentence4.

Most examples run the source image through a black-and-white filter to sell the 'archival' look, then tag it with a date, a war, a political figure, or a specific moment like Pearl Harbor or the fall of the Berlin Wall1. Captions often invoke gravitas ('Our brave soldiers,' 'moments before his tragic assassination') to heighten the absurdity of a Shrek or SpongeBob screenshot standing in for a real historical photograph2.

How It Spread

By August 13, 2016, CollegeHumor had published a listicle collecting twenty 'SpongeBob moments hilariously captioned with historical context' pulled directly from r/BikiniBottomTwitter, which pushed the joke outside its origin subreddit3. Two months later, on October 14, 2016, r/fakehistoryporn launched as a dedicated home for the format1.

The new subreddit sped things up. On November 5, 2016, Redditor Trutrundle posted a Bob the Builder Fake History image titled 'Fake History memes on the rise' to r/MemeEconomy, where it cleared 1,100 votes at 95% upvoted within two months5. On November 16, r/fakehistoryporn moderator Vmoney1337 released the Fake History Caption Maker so anyone could generate the format without editing tools1.

A viral entry came on January 5, 2017, when Redditor Scep19 posted a Drake & Josh screenshot to r/fakehistoryporn recasting Josh Nichols as Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar; it drew about 17,600 votes and 280 comments in one week1. A follow-up on January 12 by The_King_Of_Memes on r/dank_meme reworked a Shrek frame as John F. Kennedy in the Dallas motorcade, described as 'moments before his tragic assassination'4.

How to Use This Meme

The typical Fake History post takes a screenshot from an animated show, sitcom, or film, desaturates it to black and white, and pairs it with a caption in a dry historical-record voice: a date, a place, a war or political event, and an assertion about who or what the image 'shows'1. Common conventions include name-dropping recognizable 20th-century events (Pearl Harbor, the Berlin Wall, the JFK assassination) and picking clearly cartoonish subjects so the mismatch lands on impact2. The Fake History Caption Maker released in November 2016 automated the layout with a plain white caption bar below the image1.

Frequently Asked Questions