John Lemon is an anthropomorphic lemon photoshopped with John Lennon's round wire-rimmed glasses, riffing on the singer's surname[1].

Where did John Lemon come from?

YouTuber indeedable posted the earliest known predecessor, an edited orange singing 'Imagine,' on August 20, 2007[1], with the lemon-specific edit surfacing on Tumblr in February 2011 through users accordingtoant and Ohmycroft[2].

What does John Lemon mean?

The name is a citrus pun on Beatles co-founder John Lennon, applied to any lemon image styled with his signature round sunglasses[2].

How do you use John Lemon?

Photoshop round wire-frame glasses onto a lemon and pair it with a Beatles lyric or Lennon reference, like the widely shared 'Imagine All the Citrus' caption[2].

Is John Lemon still popular?

The format peaked on r/dankmemes in early January 2017 and is now remembered as a classic dank meme template rather than an active trend[2].

John Lemon

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Published September 2, 2026

John Lemon is an anthropomorphic lemon fruit wearing the round wire-rimmed glasses of Beatles co-founder John Lennon. What started as a 2007 YouTube photoshop of an orange singing 'Imagine' grew into a recurring Tumblr edit by 2011 and returned as a staple of r/dankmemes during the early 2017 dank meme boom.

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Overview

The joke works on two layers, the visual gag of a citrus fruit sporting Lennon's signature circular sunglasses and the pun on the singer's surname1. Common formats include clean photoshops of a lemon with wire-frame shades, Beatles lyric riffs like 'Imagine All the Citrus,' and image macros pairing lemon photos with nods to Lennon's biography or Yoko Ono2.

The style is deliberately low-effort, part of the wave of absurdist 'dank' humor that dominated Reddit's meme boards in late 2016 and early 20172. Urban Dictionary entries also record use of 'John Lemon' as slang for a talented person or as a euphemism for going to the toilet, though the fruit-with-glasses edit is the version that circulated online5.

Origin & Background

Platform

YouTube / Tumblr / Reddit (viral spread)

Creator

indeedable

Date

2007

The earliest known John Lemon predecessor came from YouTuber indeedable, who on August 20, 2007 uploaded a picture of an orange edited with John Lennon's glasses and hair, set to a clip of the 1971 single 'Imagine'1. The lemon-specific version arrived in February 2011, when Tumblr user accordingtoant published a post declaring Justin Bieber 'better than John Lemon'; the original was later deleted but survived through reblogs2.

How It Spread

Later in February 2011, deactivated Tumblr user Ohmycroft screenshotted accordingtoant's post and paired it with a photoshopped lemon wearing Lennon's circular sunglasses, a variant that pulled in over 28,500 notes over the next six years2. On January 13, 2012, FunnyJunk user mrmoxie reposted the image alongside an 'All the Things' edit captioned 'Imagine All the Citrus!,' which drew upwards of 63,000 views and 3,800 upvotes within five years2.

Cross-platform pickup arrived through video. On October 29, 2014, Filthy Frank read a Facebook comment misspelling Lennon as 'John Lemon' in his 'Loser Reads Hater Comments' upload3, and on February 17, 2015 YouTuber Direct 2 Brain posted an Esselunga supermarket commercial featuring an anthropomorphic lemon mascot literally named John Lemon4.

The format peaked on Reddit in early 2017. On May 26, 2016 Redditor offandthenonagain posted a Lennon and Yoko Ono photograph to r/dankmemes captioned 'John Lemon,' and on January 1, 2017 EternallySexual submitted 'New Year New Meme' with a fresh lemon-with-sunglasses edit2. Within 24 hours other John Lemon posts flooded r/dankmemes, including a 1,000 degree knife video slicing an anthropomorphic lemon, prompting Redditor The_Sliding_Lion to declare the format 'on the rise' in an r/MemeEconomy post the next day2.

How to Use This Meme

Typical John Lemon posts start with a lemon photograph or 3D render, add round wire-frame glasses via photoshop, and pair the image with a pun or reference to a John Lennon song, quote, or biographical moment. The joke usually lives in the caption rather than the edit itself, so even a rough cutout of glasses on a supermarket lemon works.

Frequently Asked Questions

References (5)