Patrick Duffy

2004image macroclassic

Patrick Duffy is a 2004 image macro featuring the Dallas actor's disembodied head floating in mid-air and shooting laser beams from its eyes. It began in a SomethingAwful thread and jumped to YTMND within weeks, where dozens of animated GIF sites showed his head blasting things with lasers, lightning, and fireballs.

Overview

Patrick Duffy is a 2004 image macro built around one absurd premise: take the Dallas actor's disembodied head, make it float in mid-air, and have it shoot laser beams from its eyes1. The format spawned animated GIF sites showing Duffy's head blasting people and objects with lasers, sometimes with bolts of lightning or fireballs instead2.

The comedy leaned on Duffy's real-world persona, a mild-mannered TV actor best known for Bobby Ewing on the CBS drama Dallas and Frank Lambert on Step by Step, cast against type as the source of cartoonish destruction3. Patrick Duffy sites sat inside a broader mid-2000s laser-eyes tradition, with edits like 'Patrick Duffy is Evil' showing the disembodied-head-with-eye-beams format at its most direct2.

How It Spread

The earliest known YTMND site, 'Patrick Duffy is Evil,' went up in October 2004 and set the template for what followed2. Copycats piled on quickly, with 'Duffy Hates Sundaes' pairing the laser-blasting head with new one-liners and running jokes4. Others such as 'WTFOMGcatHavoc' blended Duffy's format with unrelated meme characters of the moment5.

The Patrick Duffy sites shared a specific visual signature: a cutout of the actor's smiling head hovering against a static background, animated eye beams streaming toward the target, and a short audio loop underneath2. That formula defined the meme's short but productive run inside YTMND and SomethingAwful, and it stayed a niche reference for people who lived through those specific communities during the mid-2000s.

How to Use This Meme

Classic Patrick Duffy edits typically start with a static cutout of the actor's smiling head placed against a background, then animate laser beams shooting from both eyes toward a target1. Common conventions include swapping the lasers for bolts of lightning, fireballs, or other destructive effects, and pairing the loop with short repeating audio in the YTMND style2.

Frequently Asked Questions