Fight Club is a 1999 film directed by David Fincher, starring Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and Helena Bonham Carter, and adapted from Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 novel of the same name1. The story follows an unnamed insomniac narrator who meets the charismatic soap salesman Tyler Durden and starts an underground bare-knuckle boxing club that spirals into an anti-consumerist cult called Project Mayhem1.

The film flopped in its opening weeks and split critics, with Roger Ebert dismissing it as fascist in his original review. It later climbed to cult status and now sits at 79% on Rotten Tomatoes1. Online, the film's dialogue, especially the 'first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club' line, powers image macros and rule-swap joke templates all over the web4.

The most common Fight Club meme swaps the subject in Tyler Durden's rules speech, producing lines like 'The first rule of [group] is you do not talk about [group]' applied to workplaces, fandoms, or family secrets4. Image macros typically pair a shirtless Brad Pitt or bloodied Edward Norton screenshot with a Tyler Durden quote about consumerism, masculinity, or anti-corporate rebellion3.