What is There Are No Accidents?

It is a three-panel exploitable built from a still of Master Oogway in Kung Fu Panda, where his quote 'There are no accidents' bookends a chosen subject and 'no' is crossed out in the final panel so the turtle reverses himself.

Where did There Are No Accidents come from?

Redditor King_of_Connaught posted the first three-panel version to r/dankmemes on September 5, 2017, using 'anime' as the middle-panel target.

What does There Are No Accidents mean?

The joke is a reversal: Oogway's koan from Kung Fu Panda is set up as wisdom in panel one, applied to a specific target in panel two, then undone in panel three when 'no' is scratched out, labeling the target an accident after all.

How do you use There Are No Accidents?

Posters put Oogway's line in the first and third panels, slot a target into the middle, and cross out 'no' in the final copy, sometimes swapping Oogway's face or rewriting the line for extra variation.

Is There Are No Accidents still popular?

The template is a classic Master Oogway exploitable from the 2017 r/dankmemes era and still shows up in Kung Fu Panda meme compilations, though its peak traffic was September 2017.

There Are No Accidents

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Published November 4, 2026

In September 2017, Reddit user King_of_Connaught turned a still of Master Oogway from Kung Fu Panda into a three-panel exploitable where the tortoise's line 'There are no accidents' bookends a chosen target, with 'no' scratched out in the final frame. The r/dankmemes post picked up over 1,200 upvotes, and a day later a Hitler-featuring variant on r/MemeEconomy carried the template beyond its home subreddit. By late September 2017, face swaps and reworked punchlines had turned the template into a dankmemes staple.

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Overview

Three identical crops of Master Oogway from Kung Fu Panda sit in panels one and three, each carrying his line 'There are no accidents'1. The middle panel holds whatever the poster wants to label an accident, from fandoms to historical figures, and the final copy crosses out 'no' so Oogway reverses his own wisdom1. That bait-and-switch structure made the image an exploitable rather than a one-liner.

Tone leans edgy, since the humor rides entirely on what sits in the middle slot. Early r/dankmemes entries went with soft targets like 'anime,' but within a day users were slotting in Adolf Hitler and other shock picks to push the reversal further2. The visual grammar is rigid: same tortoise shot, same wording, same cross-out, so riffs stay recognizable even when the subject is obscure3.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Reddit (r/dankmemes, viral spread on r/MemeEconomy)

Creator

King_of_Connaught

Date

2017

The still of Master Oogway comes from Kung Fu Panda, DreamWorks Animation's 2008 feature, where the tortoise delivers 'There are no accidents' as a koan to Shifu. The exact cropped frame first appeared online on June 4, 2014, in a Zillion Designs blog post that used it to illustrate a graphic-design article, not as a joke4. A YouTube clip uploaded by user 2Cor12.9 on November 7, 2013, had already paired the same frame with the quote5.

On September 5, 2017, Redditor King_of_Connaught posted the first three-panel version to r/dankmemes under the title 'the shitpost to end all shitposts,' using 'anime' as the middle-panel target and crossing out 'no' in the final Oogway panel1. The post picked up more than 1,200 points at a 92% upvote rate and set the template others copied1.

How It Spread

Within 24 hours of King_of_Connaught's post, r/dankmemes filled with riffs that swapped the middle panel's content or altered Oogway's face in the third panel to flip the punchline from accident back to not-an-accident1. On September 6, 2017, Redditor abradilf_lincler posted a version with Adolf Hitler in the middle slot to r/MemeEconomy, pitching it as a buy signal in the subreddit's roleplay meme-market, where it hit more than 1,900 points at 92% upvoted2.

That r/MemeEconomy post is the moment the format broke out of r/dankmemes and into wider Reddit rotation3. Edits appeared across Imgur and Twitter reposts over the following weeks, with the same three-panel grid applied to current-event targets and franchise punching bags3. The template later folded into the larger Master Oogway meme set alongside other koan-based image macros drawn from the film.

Timeline

2008

Kung Fu Panda releases, with Master Oogway telling Shifu 'There are no accidents.'

2013-11-07

YouTube user 2Cor12.9 uploads a clip pairing the Oogway still with the quote.

2014-06-04

Zillion Designs blog post uses the cropped Oogway image to illustrate a graphic-design article.

2017-09-05

Redditor King_of_Connaught posts the first three-panel version to r/dankmemes, picking up 1,200+ upvotes.

2017-09-06

Redditor abradilf_lincler posts a Hitler variant to r/MemeEconomy, hitting 1,900+ points and carrying the format beyond r/dankmemes.

How to Use This Meme

A typical post follows the rigid three-panel structure: Oogway with 'There are no accidents,' then the subject the poster wants to call an accident, then Oogway again with 'no' struck through. Picking a target that genuinely reads as a mistake (a baby photo, a misspelled word) or an obviously deliberate one (a dictator, a franchise) decides whether the gag lands as absurd or edgy. Common variations swap Oogway's face for another character in the third panel, or rewrite his line so the final judgment flips the other way1.