Running Officer Earl — 3D-animated police officer in blue uniform running down a street with cars and shops in the background

Running Officer Earl

2019reaction imageclassic

Published September 14, 2026

Running Officer Earl is a reaction image pulled from the 2009 animated film Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, showing a blurry, wide-eyed Officer Earl Devereaux charging straight at the camera. Recirculated on iFunny and Reddit in spring 2019, the shot became a shorthand for anything, or anyone, coming to get you and turned into a defining dankmemes reaction image of April 2019.

reaction memes image macro memes ifunny memes delayed virality memes childrens media memes

Overview

Running Officer Earl is a cropped, motion-blurred frame of police officer Earl Devereaux from the Sony animated film Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs1. In the shot, Earl is sprinting directly toward the camera with a locked-in, wide-eyed expression, an image posters started using in April 2019 to represent being chased, whether by a person, a bill, a responsibility, or an intrusive thought2.

The format is a straight image macro. Posters caption the picture with whatever is doing the chasing, casting Earl as the pursuer bearing down on the viewer or on some helpless subject in the caption. Because the source frame is blurry and tightly cropped on Earl's face, the joke works even at thumbnail size, which helped it travel on mobile-first feeds like iFunny and the Reddit app2.

Origin & Background

Platform
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (source) / iFunny + Reddit (viral spread)
Date
2019

The source clip comes from Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, the Sony Pictures Animation film that premiered in the United States on September 18, 20091. In the scene the image is pulled from, Officer Earl Devereaux sprints after protagonist Flint Lockwood to arrest him, and the animation briefly renders Earl as a blurry, determined blur charging into frame2.

The reaction-image use is much later. According to Know Your Meme, iFunny user Sylf posted a close-up of the running Earl shot on March 11, 2019, where it pulled in over 2,000 likes within a month, marking the earliest documented use of the frame as a standalone reaction2. The film's animators created the character; the person who first cropped and reposted the frame as a meme is not confirmed.

How It Spread

The image jumped from iFunny to Reddit at the start of April 2019. On April 1, 2019, Redditor Cactux3000 posted the close-up to /r/WOSH, where it collected more than 600 upvotes in four days2. The next day, on April 2, Redditor CooperG208 shared the image with a caption to /r/MemeEconomy and noted that it had been circulating in /r/dankmemes, drawing over 220 upvotes2.

The format broke out on April 3, 2019, when Redditor 360Weeny posted a captioned Running Officer Earl meme to /r/dankmemes and cleared 17,700 upvotes in two days2. In the days that followed, more posts using the frame filled /r/dankmemes, cementing Officer Earl's blurry sprint as a go-to April 2019 reaction image on the subreddit2.

Specific viral posts, including CooperG208's /r/MemeEconomy submission and 360Weeny's /r/dankmemes hit, were documented by Know Your Meme but their exact URLs are not reproduced here.

Timeline

2009-09-18

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs premieres in the U.S., introducing Officer Earl Devereaux and the chase scene the meme is sourced from.

2019-03-11

IFunny user Sylf posts a close-up of Officer Earl running, the earliest documented use of the frame as a reaction image.

2019-04-01

Redditor Cactux3000 posts the close-up to /r/WOSH, gaining over 600 upvotes.

2019-04-02

Redditor CooperG208 shares a captioned version to /r/MemeEconomy, crediting /r/dankmemes as the source.

2019-04-03

Redditor 360Weeny's /r/dankmemes post using the image clears 17,700 upvotes in two days, marking the meme's viral peak.

Frequently Asked Questions