# Lord Marquaad E

Lord Marquaad E is a deep-fried image mashing YouTuber Markiplier's face onto Lord Farquaad from Shrek, captioned with a single letter 'E' in Impact font. What started as a stray 2015 Twitter photoshop mutated into a Tumblr deep-fry in 2018 and blew up into one of the defining absurdist meme templates of that year.

## Origin
Source image: The Markiplier-on-Farquaad photoshop was first posted on May 25th, 2015 by Twitter user and YouTuber Cyndago[2]. It circulated as a straightforward gag mashup, in line with the 'Shrek Wazowski' style of Shrek-plus-random-celebrity edits that were common in 2014 and 2015[1].

Earliest known meme form: The deep-fried, 'E'-captioned version that became the actual meme surfaced on February 15th, 2018, when the Tumblr blog photo-frier reposted the image drenched in distortion and topped with the letter 'E'[2]. That post pulled in 728 notes on Tumblr and became the reference point everyone else copied[2].

- **Platform:** Twitter (source image) / Tumblr (deep-fried viral spread)
- **Creator:** Cyndago (source image), photo-frier (deep-fried 'E' version)
- **Date:** 2018

## Overview
Lord Marquaad E, also called Lord Farquaad / Markiplier E, is built from three visual layers glued together in Photoshop: Lord Farquaad's hair and bald pate from Shrek, Markiplier's grinning face and glasses, and, in later edits, Mark Zuckerberg's body from his April 2018 Congressional testimony[1]. The whole composite is deep-fried, meaning it's cranked through filters until the JPEG turns crunchy and oversaturated, then stamped with a single Impact-font 'E' that carries no punchline at all.

The joke is that there isn't one. Daily Dot writer Ellen Cushing called it 'truly, nothing, and that's what makes it great,' framing the image as an emblem of the surreal, deliberately incoherent style that dominated meme feeds in early 2018[1]. Users on r/deepfriedmemes openly admitted they didn't get it, which was part of the appeal[1]. The face is also swapped onto other characters, most notably Mr. Incredible with the letter 'M' as a running gag about eventually spelling out 'e=mc^2' with meme characters[2].

## How It Spread
Reddit picked it up in April 2018. On April 11th, the image was slotted into a 'Memes Then, Memes Now' post on r/dankmemes that hit 3,884 upvotes, and a subsequent r/me_irl post cleared 7,000[2]. Two days later, on April 13th, an edit that grafted the Farquaad-Markiplier head onto Mark Zuckerberg's body during his Congressional hearing landed on r/deepfriedmemes and pulled over 15,000 upvotes, reaching Reddit's r/all front page[1].

April 23rd, 2018 was the format's peak day: the image was folded into the 'Why Is Millennial Humor So Weird?' template on r/dankmemes for more than 23,000 upvotes, one of the posts most responsible for pushing that meta-template into wider rotation[2]. Confused onlookers filed at least two 'what am I looking at' threads on r/OutOfTheLoop the same month[2]. The Daily Dot ran an explainer titled 'What's the E meme?' on May 2nd, 2018[1], and on May 26th PewDiePie referenced the meme in a video that racked up more than 4.2 million views[3].

The format kept mutating through June. On June 6th, r/dankmemes user thezerg505000 posted Markiplier's face grafted onto Mr. Incredible with the letter 'M,' which hit around 6,700 upvotes and kicked off the 'letter memes will eventually spell e=mc^2' bit that ran for weeks after[2].

## How to Use
The template is typically a heavily deep-fried image, high saturation, JPEG noise, added grain, with Markiplier's face pasted onto a bald cartoon or public figure and a single capital letter in Impact font floating on top. The common convention is that the letter is meaningless. 'E' is the canonical version; swapping in other letters (M for Mr. Incredible, C for Cookie Monster) is the standard variation.

## Frequently Asked Questions
### What is Lord Marquaad E?
A deep-fried image of Markiplier's face photoshopped onto Lord Farquaad from Shrek, captioned with a single Impact-font 'E' that intentionally means nothing[1].

### Where did Lord Marquaad E come from?
The base photoshop was posted by Twitter/YouTube creator Cyndago on May 25th, 2015; the deep-fried 'E' version was posted on Tumblr blog photo-frier on February 15th, 2018[2].

### What does Lord Marquaad E mean?
Nothing, deliberately. The Daily Dot described it as an emblem of the surreal, non-sequitur meme style of 2018, with even r/deepfriedmemes commenters admitting they didn't get it[1].

### How do you use Lord Marquaad E?
Deep-fry an image of a bald cartoon character or public figure with Markiplier's face pasted on, then overlay a single Impact-font letter, most commonly 'E'[2].

### Is Lord Marquaad E still popular?
It's a classic 2018 deep-fried meme rather than an active format. Its viral peak ran from April through June 2018, capped by a PewDiePie shoutout on May 26th, 2018 that pulled over 4.2 million views[3].

## References
1. [https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/lord-farquaad-e-meme/](<https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/lord-farquaad-e-meme/>)
2. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/lord-marquaad-e](<https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/lord-marquaad-e>)
3. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmhtqOP7zok](<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmhtqOP7zok>)

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Source: https://meme.com/memes/lord-farquaad-markiplier-e
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