Patrick Bateman with An Axe — Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman grinning while wielding an axe

Patrick Bateman with An Axe

2008reaction imageclassic

Published September 21, 2026

The Patrick Bateman with An Axe meme pulls a single frame from the 2000 film American Psycho showing Christian Bale mid-swing with a faint grin. First traced online to a 2008 upload on Taringa, the still became a widely used reaction image for moments when a comment pushes someone past their limit.

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Overview

The image works as both a plain reaction image and a captioned macro. Posters drop the still into replies when a comment pushes them past their limit, letting the character's calm-before-violence expression do the talking 2. The tone hinges on the grin. Bateman looks pleased about what he is about to do, which reads as barely-hidden contempt inside a reply thread.

The frame also had a long run inside Rage Comics as a punchline panel, and it gets treated as an exploitable, with users photoshopping different objects into Bateman's hands or dropping him into scenes from other franchises. The captioned macro variant usually pairs a top line quoting the offending statement with a bottom line about wanting to reach for the axe.

Origin & Background

Platform
Taringa / Cheezburger (viral spread)
Date
2008

The still comes from American Psycho, the Mary Harron film released April 14, 2000 1. In one of the movie's murder scenes, Bateman raises an axe to kill a colleague, and the freeze-frame of his slight grin before the swing is the shot memers cut out for reuse 2. The exact first meme built from the scene is not documented. A TinEye reverse image search cited by Know Your Meme places the earliest known online upload on Taringa on February 5, 2008, though that post has since been deleted, and the oldest surviving meme example is a Demotivational Poster shared to a Fark thread on August 10, 2009 by user drjekel_mrhyde 3.

How It Spread

After the Fark upload, the still moved through the meme sites that dominated the early 2010s. On January 28, 2012, a Cheezburger post titled 'That's Great, Honey! Where's My Axe?' by an unknown user collected more than 1,200 likes across nine years, and in 2015 ImgFlip user StoinesteanuLucian uploaded a top-and-bottom caption version that pulled in over 2,200 views across roughly five years 3.

The frame stuck around as a reaction image on forums and comment sections through the 2010s and kept its place inside Rage Comics as a punchline panel. Because the source is a well-known Christian Bale performance, the still keeps getting recut into new photoshops that swap the axe or the background for material from other franchises.

Timeline

2000-04-14

American Psycho, directed by Mary Harron, releases in US theaters and provides the source scene.

2008-02-05

Earliest known online upload of the still surfaces on Taringa, according to a TinEye reverse image search cited by Know Your Meme. The post is later deleted.

2009-08-10

Oldest surviving meme example, a Demotivational Poster by user drjekel_mrhyde, is posted in a Fark thread.

2012-01-28

A Cheezburger post titled 'That's Great, Honey! Where's My Axe?' is uploaded by an unknown user and collects over 1,200 likes over the following nine years.

2015

ImgFlip user StoinesteanuLucian uploads a top-and-bottom caption macro variant that gathers more than 2,200 views over about five years.

Frequently Asked Questions