Where did Patrick Duffy come from?

It started in a SomethingAwful thread posted on September 9, 2004 by SA Goon Zanzibar, and jumped to YTMND within weeks.

What does Patrick Duffy mean?

The joke pairs a mild-mannered TV actor with cartoonish laser-eye destruction, with the full concept stated openly in the original SomethingAwful thread title.

How do you use Patrick Duffy?

Cut out Duffy's head over a background, animate laser beams from his eyes toward a target, and add a short looping audio clip in classic YTMND style.

Is Patrick Duffy still popular?

The meme's active run stayed inside the mid-2000s SomethingAwful and YTMND scene and is now regarded as a YTMND-era classic rather than an active format.

Patrick Duffy

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Published August 14, 2026

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.

ytmnd memes something awful memes absurdist humor memes early internet memes unwilling celebrity memes

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.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

SomethingAwful (origin) / YTMND (viral spread)

Creator

Zanzibar

Date

2004

The meme began on September 9, 2004, in a SomethingAwful thread titled 'Patrick Duffy's Disembodied Levitating Laser-Shooting Head WREAKING HAVOC,' posted by SA Goon Zanzibar1. The thread title stated the concept in full, and forum regulars spent the thread producing edited images and GIFs matching that exact brief1.

Within weeks the idea jumped from SomethingAwful to YTMND, the animated-GIF-and-looping-audio site that hosted much of the era's absurdist meme output2.

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.