I Drink Your Milkshake! — Illustrated poster of Daniel Plainview drinking through a straw from a tiny figure's burning house

I Drink Your Milkshake!

2008catchphraseclassic

Published August 29, 2026

"I Drink Your Milkshake!" is the climactic line Daniel Day-Lewis delivers as oil baron Daniel Plainview in the 2007 film There Will Be Blood, hurled at pastor Eli Sunday during the movie's brutal final scene. The bizarre metaphor about siphoning oil through a straw was so absurdly memorable that YouTubers began mashing it up with Kelis's "Milkshake" song within days of the film's wide release, spawning years of parody videos and image macros.

movie quote memes mashup video memes catchphrase memes late 2000s memes villain memes

Overview

The joke plays on the whiplash between Plainview's menacing bowling-alley monologue and the childlike imagery of straws and milkshakes5. The exaggerated pause between each word in "I. Drink. Your. Milkshake!" gave remixers an audio hook that worked as both a taunt and a punchline. Fans quickly figured out that pairing the clip with unrelated pop music, especially Kelis's 2003 song "Milkshake," pushed the absurdity even further1.

Beyond music mashups, the line got picked up as a general-purpose victory taunt online, sitting alongside "pwned" in mid-2000s slang6. Urban Dictionary entries from the era define it as what you say after totally destroying someone who did not see it coming6. Video parodies, image macros, and character swaps kept the joke alive well after the film left theaters3.

Origin & Background

Platform
Film (There Will Be Blood) / YouTube (viral spread)
Creator
Paul Thomas Anderson / Daniel Day-Lewis
Date
2008

The line comes from the final scene of Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, which opened for critics in late 2007 and rolled out wide on January 25, 20085. In that scene, oil baron Daniel Plainview mocks pastor Eli Sunday's offer to sell him the Bandy Tract by explaining that the oil beneath it had already drained into his own wells through slant-drilling. Plainview then delivers the drawn-out declaration: "If you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw, my straw reaches across the room and starts to drink your milkshake. I. Drink. Your. Milkshake! I drink it up!"3

How It Spread

The remix wave started a week before the film's wide release. On January 18, 2008, YouTuber KevinKoonz uploaded "There Will Be Milkshakes," a montage of trailer clips cut to the Kelis song "Milkshake"1. On February 2, 2008, user ShawnRay9 posted a longer version centered on the actual milkshake scene, and other accounts followed with their own edits of the same audio-visual pairing2.

Parody videos then took over. Comedian Brock Baker uploaded "I Drink Your Juicebox!" on May 30, 2009, a straight impersonation of the delivery that pulled over 40,000 views on YouTube4. On YTMND, dedicated pages like "There Will Be Picard" and "There Will Be Connery" swapped Plainview for Patrick Stewart and Sean Connery clips3. The catchphrase also turned up in Demotivational Posters and I Can Haz Cheezburger edits through the late 2000s, cementing it as a stock reference for any lopsided defeat6.

How to Use This Meme

The catchphrase is typically deployed as an exaggerated victory taunt after decisively beating someone, especially when the other person did not realize they had already lost6. Common convention involves mimicking Day-Lewis's delivery, with sharp pauses between each word. Video edits often pair the audio with the Kelis "Milkshake" chorus or swap Plainview and Eli for other movie or cartoon characters facing off1.

Frequently Asked Questions