# Rattle 'Em Boys! Rattle 'Em Boys!, also known as Bones Malone and the Spooky Boys, is a Tumblr image of skeleton gangsters bursting into a room that picked up a catchphrase in 2018 and later voice acting from Zane Schacht in 2019. By late 2022, Twitter users turned the picture into a bait-and-switch gag hidden under the site's blurred content warning. ## Origin Tumblr user malignantlyuseless posted the original illustration of the skeleton mobsters on March 8th, 2018[1]. Dethchilada reblogged it with the caption "Bones Malone and the Spooky Boys," and on April 17th, 2018, jooshbag added the line "RATTLE 'EM BOYS!" that locked in the catchphrase[2]. The thread went on to pass 78,000 notes on Tumblr[6]. The artwork itself is the meme's source; the shouted command was a later caption, not an element of the original drawing. Because the image traveled through reblogs and rewrites, no single person made the finished format, though jooshbag's reply is the post that fused the picture to the line most users quote today[2]. - **Platform:** Tumblr (image + caption) / Twitter (viral spread) - **Creator:** malignantlyuseless (image), jooshbag (catchphrase), Zane Schacht (voice acting) - **Date:** 2018 ## Overview Rattle 'Em Boys!, also tagged as Bones Malone and the Spooky Boys, pairs a drawing of tommy-gun-toting skeletons with the shouted command that gives the meme its name[1]. A typical post treats the skeletons like a Prohibition-era mob crew bursting into a room, with captions styled after old radio serials and gangster slang[2]. The gag rides on the contrast between the macabre art and the goofy boomer-dad energy of the catchphrase. Voice actor Zane Schacht gave the picture a performed version in 2019, delivering the scene like a lost radio drama and letting other creators lip-sync, animate or remix the audio[3]. Later Source Filmmaker and Team Fortress 2 edits reused the voice lines on modeled skeletons, so the meme works as both a still image with the caption and a short voiced clip[4][5]. By late 2022, the picture picked up a second life on Twitter as a bait-and-switch, where users hid it behind the platform's sensitive-content blur so that tapping "show" would reveal the skeletons yelling "Rattle 'em boys!"[6]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Rattle 'Em Boys!? It is a Tumblr image of skeleton mobsters paired with the shouted catchphrase "RATTLE 'EM BOYS!", also known by the caption Bones Malone and the Spooky Boys[2]. ### Where did Rattle 'Em Boys! come from? The illustration was posted by Tumblr user malignantlyuseless on March 8th, 2018, and Tumblr user jooshbag added the catchphrase to the reblog chain on April 17th, 2018[1][2]. ### What does Rattle 'Em Boys! mean? It is a mock gangster battle cry yelled by cartoon skeletons, playing the undead crew as a Prohibition-era mob with old-radio delivery[3]. ### How do you use Rattle 'Em Boys!? Users post the skeleton picture with the caption, or hide it behind a Twitter content-warning blur so that unblurring reveals the shout as a bait-and-switch prank[6]. ### Is Rattle 'Em Boys! still popular? It is a classic Halloween-adjacent meme that resurfaces each spooky season and still appears in SFM edits and Twitter blur pranks dating to 2023[6][8]. ## References 1. [https://web.archive.org/web/20180621031444/https://malignantlyuselesss.tumblr.com/post/172362371438]() 2. [https://web.archive.org/web/20180601141929/http://jooshbag.tumblr.com/post/173045055796/dethchilada-bones-malone-and-the-spooky-boys]() 3. [https://x.com/i/status/1154815624692064256]() 4. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyfiEInKbUM]() 5. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXldwk4Wtsw]() 6. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/rattle-em-boys]() 7. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Bossfight/comments/afo8yd/bones_malone_and_the_spooky_boys_mobsters_from/]() 8. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf2AdlkGTOc]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/rattle-em-boys Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library