# Fake History
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.
## 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 footnote[1]. The joke sits in the same lineage as Troll Quote macros, but the target is history itself rather than a single misattributed sentence[4].
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 Wall[1]. 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 photograph[2].
## 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 subreddit[3]. Two months later, on October 14, 2016, r/fakehistoryporn launched as a dedicated home for the format[1].
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 months[5]. On November 16, r/fakehistoryporn moderator Vmoney1337 released the Fake History Caption Maker so anyone could generate the format without editing tools[1].
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 week[1]. 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
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 impact[2]. The Fake History Caption Maker released in November 2016 automated the layout with a plain white caption bar below the image[1].
## Frequently Asked Questions
### What is Fake History?
Fake History is a Reddit image macro that pairs black-and-white cartoon screenshots or movie stills with completely fabricated historical captions written in a straight-faced documentary voice[1].
### Where did Fake History come from?
The format started on July 10, 2016, when Reddit user JRA50 posted a SpongeBob SquarePants picture titled 'Horrors of war' to r/BikiniBottomTwitter and captioned it as a World War I scene[2].
### What does Fake History mean?
The name describes the joke itself: taking an obviously non-historical image (a cartoon character, a sitcom character, a movie frame) and giving it a solemn, invented historical caption to mimic archive photo captions[1].
### How do you use Fake History?
Users typically take a screenshot from an animated show or film, apply a black-and-white filter, and write a caption in a dry historical-record voice referencing a real event or figure; the Fake History Caption Maker released in November 2016 automates the layout[1].
### Is Fake History still popular?
r/fakehistoryporn launched on October 14, 2016 as the format's dedicated hub, and standout entries like the Drake & Josh/Pablo Escobar post drew 17,600 votes within one week of posting in January 2017[1].
## References
1. [https://www.reddit.com/r/fakehistoryporn/]()
2. [https://www.reddit.com/r/BikiniBottomTwitter/]()
3. [https://www.collegehumor.com/]()
4. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/fake-history]()
5. [https://www.reddit.com/r/MemeEconomy/]()
6. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Idubbbz/]()
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Source: https://meme.com/memes/fake-history
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