Marvel Memes

Now that The Infinity Saga of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has wrapped up with Avengers: Endgame (I won’t spoil it but maybe have some tissues ready), I made a few memes based on some of the memorable characters and their moments from across the MCU.

Memes can be broken down into three parts. The first is the ideals, ” The ideal of a meme is the aggregate of all manifestations of that meme,” (Davidson, 133). Then there is the behavior (how the meme was made) and the manifestation (the individual parts of the meme).

First here is one I made about one of the most complex characters in the franchise, Loki:

If you have seen any of the Thor movies then you are well aware of Loki’s constant death fake-outs. This particular meme is based on the “Loki’d” meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/lokid).

Loki is one of my favorite characters and one who several people love to pick apart because you never know what he is going to do next. Maybe he will agree to help you but then stab you in the back or maybe he’ll just stab you. The ideal of this meme is that, when you watch these movies, you never can trust Loki. As for the behavior of the meme, “Loki’d” was started by Loki’s actor Tom Hiddleston. A brief skit on MTV involved Hiddleston playing pranks on the host. According to the Know Your Meme page, “Given that Loki is known as the God of Mischief, the term is often used after one plays a prank or a joke on someone, therefore embodying the prankster part of Loki’s character.” The manifestation of the meme is a picture of Tom Hiddleston as his character and the line “Loki’d” being featured after some kind of prank. This is comparable to a RickRoll’d type of meme, in that it is meant to be a prank, but in this case the Loki is the one pulling the pranks- which fits a lot better with this site.

Next we have a meme based on the film Avengers: Age of Ultron.

In case you need a refresher, the point of the movie is that Tony Stark decides to build a robot, Ultron, that can keep the earth safe from invaders. However, Ultron ends up seeing the only way to keep the earth is by wiping out humanity. In the end Tony decides to build an android named Vision to save the day. This is a very famous meme called “Distracted Boyfriend” (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/distracted-boyfriend).

The ideal of this meme is that Tony was pretty quick to try to recreate a super robot to protect earth a second time. As for the behavior of this meme, it all started when “the source image, taken by photographer Antonio Guillem, was posted on the stock photo database iStock.” Over time people began to spread the meme on Instagram and Twitter with funny references written over the people in the photo. The manifestations of the meme are always the man, his girlfriend, and the other woman. The crux of the joke is that a person may not be loyal.

Finally we have:

Here we have a picture of Peter Quill, also known as Star-Lord, from Guardians of the Galaxy. Here I gave him a caption about how he is the reason there was another avengers movie after the film, Avengers: Infinity War. I based it off this image here: (https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1472959-avengers-endgame ).

The ideal here is that Quill was the reason that the previous Avengers film ended the way it did. Quill loses his temper and attacks Thanos after Mantis had made him fall asleep, so Thanos wakes up and ultimately gets away. This intended as a reference to both the fact that he is the in-universe reason for the next film and how the audience felt watching this scene. The original meme that inspired mine is based on a YouTube video that defended Quill’s actions since we ended up getting another movie because of it. The manifestations of the meme are Quill and a reference to his actions in the film. There are several memes that deal with how we often get angry but still enjoy a major part of it so we really have nothing to complain about, but I believe that this meme in particular is great at capturing the mix of excitement and rage that all came from one short scene with this character.