Where did Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse come from?

The joke framing appeared on Urban Dictionary in 2005 and 2007, and the image macro version was posted to weknowmemes on November 11th, 2011 pairing Jack Nicholson, Clint Eastwood, Bill Murray, and Christopher Walken.

What does Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse mean?

In the meme, the phrase is used ironically to name any four things that share an annoying, absurd, or ominous trait, borrowing the biblical harbingers of doom for comedic effect.

How do you use Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse?

Pick four related people, characters, or objects, put them in a grid or list, and caption them as the Four Horsemen, letting the mismatch between the apocalyptic label and the mundane targets carry the joke.

Is Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse still popular?

The format is a classic listicle joke that has kept showing up in shitpost circles since the 2016 wave of roomba and dog edits.

Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse

Q: What is Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse?

It's an image macro format that groups four people, characters, or objects together and jokingly labels them the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

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Published August 20, 2026

Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse is an image macro joke that pairs four people, characters, or objects together and jokingly labels them as the biblical harbingers of the end times. The format took off online around 2011 and grew progressively more absurd as shitpost culture pushed it toward roombas, dogs, and background apps.

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Overview

Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse is an image macro format where four people, fictional characters, or objects are grouped together and jokingly declared the biblical harbingers of the end times1. The joke rides on the mismatch between the apocalyptic framing and the mundane, petty, or absurd targets picked as the supposed horsemen2.

The format is deliberately simple: four images stacked or arranged together, sometimes with a caption naming each one after Conquest, War, Famine, and Death, sometimes just labeled as the Four Horsemen with no further explanation3. Later versions dropped even the pretense of a serious pairing and leaned into shitpost humor3.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Urban Dictionary / weknowmemes (viral spread)

Date

2011

The Four Horsemen come from the last book of the New Testament, where they appear as Conquest, War, Famine, and Death1. The internet joke version started building on Urban Dictionary, where a straight definition was posted on July 2nd, 2005, followed by a joke definition on June 5th, 2007 that swapped the horsemen for annoyances like the RIAA, 4Kids, the FCC, and the Bush Administration2.

The visual image macro format was picked up by weknowmemes on November 11th, 2011, with a post pairing Jack Nicholson, Clint Eastwood, Bill Murray, and Christopher Walken as the four horsemen4. That layout, four portraits side by side with the apocalyptic label, set the template that later versions copied3.

How It Spread

In 2013, a user named Detergent posted a version to Memecenter that used popular meme characters like Grumpy Cat and Pedobear as the horsemen, moving the format from Hollywood actors into meme-native territory5. From there the joke drifted into shitpost territory, with people picking more and more obtuse combinations3.

On October 13th, 2016, a Reddit post to /r/funny 6 applied the format to roombas with weapons strapped to them, framing the household robots as harbingers of doom3. About a month later, on November 16th, 2016, the Facebook page They Boot Too Big For They Gotdamn Feet 7 posted a version made from four digitally-manipulated photos of a single dog3. Urban Dictionary entries kept updating in parallel, with one popular definition listing Discord, Spotify, Skype, and Steam, the four apps that force themselves open the moment you boot your computer2.

How to Use This Meme

To make a Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse image, people typically pick four things that share some petty, annoying, or absurd trait, then arrange them in a grid or vertical stack with the caption naming them as the horsemen3. Common conventions include using well-known meme characters, celebrities with a shared vibe, or mundane objects that irritate the poster, letting the biblical framing carry the comedic weight2.