What is Shark In The Woods?

It's an image macro built from Chris Austin's surreal paintings of sharks floating through forests, usually captioned to frame the shark as a local rural danger or cryptid.

Where did Shark In The Woods come from?

Chris Austin posted the central painting to Instagram on September 3, 2021, and iFunny user @MoonLittt turned it into a meme a month later with the caption "Deep in the Missouri Woods".

What does Shark In The Woods mean?

The joke plays the clearly impossible scene straight, treating a floating shark as a mundane woodland threat with captions like "Deep in the Missouri Woods" or "Heard There Was Tomfoolery Here".

How do you use Shark In The Woods?

Pair one of Austin's shark paintings with a deadpan caption that treats the shark as a local danger or cryptid, often with a US state name or a crossover with another meme format like "I'm Coming Over You Better Not Be Tweaking".

Is Shark In The Woods still popular?

The format peaked in 2022 and 2023 through viral TikTok and Instagram video edits that gave Austin's paintings a second life, with @mxnke.vfx's bird-sounds edit alone pulling roughly 160,100 plays.

Shark In The Woods

2021image macroclassic

Published October 9, 2026

Shark In The Woods is an image macro built from surreal oil paintings by Australian artist Chris Austin showing sharks drifting through forests. iFunny users turned the artwork into a running joke in October 2021 with captions like "Deep in the Missouri Woods," and video edits set to nature sounds and TikTok effects pushed it to a second viral wave in 2023.

image macro memes absurdist humor memes ifunny memes fine art memes cryptid memes

Overview

Shark In The Woods, also known as Shark In The Forest, Floating Shark In The Woods, or Flying Shark In The Woods, pulls from Chris Austin's photorealistic paintings of great white sharks gliding between pine trees and over rural buildings1. The images come from his longer dream-landscape series pairing marine creatures with land settings, and the most reposted single painting shows a shark cruising through dense Appalachian-style forest1.

Memes using the picture treat the obviously impossible scene like a mundane local hazard, with captions framing the shark as a woodland cryptid, a backwoods threat, or an unwelcome visitor who had better not be tweaking3. Common caption formats include regional variations such as "Deep in the Missouri Woods," reaction-style text like "Heard There Was Tomfoolery Here," and video edits that stitch together Austin's paintings over nature sounds or TikTok sound effects for a deadpan absurdist feel9. The joke works because the delivery stays straight-faced, as if a shark hovering past the trees is just a thing the locals have learned to deal with4.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Instagram (artwork) / iFunny (viral spread)

Creator

Chris Austin; iFunny user @MoonLittt

Date

2021

Chris Austin kicked off the series on March 22, 2019 with an Instagram post of orca whales floating around a house, the first in his ongoing run of marine animals placed in land-based dreamscapes4. He followed on May 2, 2019 with his first shark piece10, then kept adding paintings over the next two years. The specific image that fueled the meme came on September 3, 2021, when Austin posted a shark drifting between tall pines on Instagram, pulling in around 10,600 likes1.

The meme format itself arrived about a month later. On October 13, 2021, iFunny user @MoonLittt paired Austin's shark-in-the-woods painting with a bar chart of shark attack statistics and the caption "Deep in the Missouri Woods," turning the surreal picture into a joke about landlocked shark attacks2.

How It Spread

The iFunny post jumped platforms fast. Instagram page @fakenewsnetwork reposted it on October 15, 2021 and pulled in roughly 58,500 likes6. By October 21, it hit Reddit's /r/memes with about 8,900 upvotes5 and landed on Twitter through @fyrewyre_, who tied it to the "I'm Coming Over You Better Not Be Tweaking" format and racked up roughly 21,400 likes3. Twitter user @Ac03x45dh3 posted an animated video version the same day11, and replies to the thread stacked up more edits.

The format kept circulating on Tumblr into late 2021. On December 24, 2021, user teathattast fit the painting into the "I sure hope we don't see that tree with the thick ass" template for roughly 1,200 notes7. Sometime in late 2022, an unknown creator built a compilation of Austin's shark paintings set to peaceful nature sounds, and the earliest documented repost went up from YouTuber Meme Asylum on December 12, 20228.

Video edits drove the second wave. On February 18, 2023, TikToker @mxnke.vfx cut the paintings against TikTok's bird-sounds effect, pulling roughly 160,100 plays and 31,300 likes in three months9. Reposts of the compilation video also went viral on TikTok and Instagram going into 2023, bringing the paintings back onto Twitter later that year4.

Timeline

2022-12-12

YouTuber Meme Asylum reposts the shark painting compilation set to nature sounds.

2023-02-18

TikToker @mxnke.vfx posts a shark painting edit set to the bird sounds TikTok effect, pulling roughly 160,100 plays.

How to Use This Meme

The common convention is to drop one of Chris Austin's shark paintings into a post with a deadpan caption that treats the shark as a familiar rural threat, local cryptid, or regional warning. Captions often include a US state ("Deep in the Missouri Woods"), a reaction-image phrase, or a crossover with another meme format like "I'm Coming Over You Better Not Be Tweaking." Video edits typically pair Austin's full painting series with nature sounds or TikTok's bird-sounds effect for a quieter, more unsettling tone.