Red Circle Perpetrators

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Published August 1, 2026

Red Circle Perpetrators is a photo edit format where a circled cutout of a character is pasted into an unrelated picture, mimicking clickbait "zoom-in" arrows to frame them as the culprit at the scene. The template started in late 2021 with the Trojan Horse Chuu K-pop edits and hit peak reach during the summer 2022 Taylor Swift private jet story.

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Overview

Red Circle Perpetrators is a photo edit format in which a small circled cutout of a character is pasted into an unrelated image, mimicking the red-arrow "zoom-in" style used in clickbait thumbnails to point out a supposed culprit at a scene1. The joke works by inserting someone who was obviously not present, a K-pop idol, a cartoon character, or a celebrity, into a real news photo or viral image and framing them as the secret perpetrator3.

The format is instantly recognisable because it copies the crude visual grammar of low-effort tabloid graphics: a red ring, an arrow, and a tightly cropped face floating over a chaotic scene3. It took off in late 2021 through the "Trojan Horse Chuu" edits on Twitter and hit its biggest run of variants in summer 20222.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter (Trojan Horse Chuu) / Tumblr (viral spread)
Creator
@hwmhm
Date
2020

The visual template predates the meme by several years. Around 2014, an unknown user made a Chuck Norris edit in which the actor's face, inside a red circle with an arrow, was pasted onto a highway photo of a single car driving against traffic. That image was reshared for years on 9GAG, Facebook, and Twitter through the mid-2010s3.

The Red Circle Perpetrator format specifically started on September 26, 2020, when Twitter user @hwmhm posted the first "Trojan Horse Chuu" edit, dropping a circled cutout of LOONA member Chuu into a real photograph1. The post pulled roughly 11,000 likes but did not spawn a wider template. That changed on November 16, 2021, when stan account @loonapostagem tweeted their own Chuu version, which broke 13,000 likes and turned the joke into a repeatable format1.

How It Spread

By late November 2021, more Trojan Horse Chuu variants filled K-pop Twitter, including a @vaisefudechuu edit that grafted Chuu onto the original Chuck Norris highway photo3. The format broke out of the LOONA fandom on June 1, 2022, when Twitter user @ratiothesenuts edited a dog in round glasses into the same highway image. That post reached about 12,100 likes before being deleted3.

Tumblr picked it up almost immediately. On June 2, 2022, user joshlovesyou reposted the dog edit and pulled over 6,800 likes and reblogs in two months, and on June 4 user pinkmoondoll9shihtzu swapped in Chainsaw Man's Power for another 1,200 notes3. The template broke free of the highway photo on June 15, 2022, when @catfactory circled a figure into a low-resolution White House shot, and an Animals with Captions reformat on July 17 pulled roughly 20,000 likes3.

Peak reach came on July 30, 2022, during the Taylor Swift private jet emissions story, when Twitter user @emopunkloser edited Swift into the cockpit of the plane hitting the World Trade Center. The post pulled about 64,100 likes in four days and set off a wave of Swift-as-perpetrator variants2.

How to Use This Meme

The template typically starts with a real photograph of a chaotic or newsworthy scene: a car crash, a highway shot, a landmark, a historic disaster. Creators then paste a small circled headshot of a character somewhere in the frame, usually with a crude red arrow pointing at a specific spot, so the character reads as the hidden perpetrator3. Common conventions include keeping the circle low-effort and pixelated to match the clickbait look, and picking a face that is absurd in context (a K-pop idol, a fictional character, or a celebrity known for unrelated drama)1.

Frequently Asked Questions