Skeleton Pointing Gun
About
“Skeleton Pointing Gun” (also called Skeleton Pointing Pistol) is an image macro of a hooded, Grim Reaper-style skeleton aiming a huge handgun straight at the viewer, with ghostly skulls drifting through the smoke behind it. It's captioned with bold white top and bottom text, and these days almost always ironically: a tough-guy threat over something tiny, like swearing or eating someone's snacks. It's a staple of Imgflip, iFunny, Reddit and Facebook, and belongs to the wider family of "edgy skeleton" memes.
Origin
The artwork itself floated around tattoo sites and forums from at least 2013. Its first known use as a meme came on August 5, 2015, when the Facebook page Not Only Do We posted it with the text Betray my trust, I'll be your reaper and the caption "Hell ya!!" It was meant completely seriously.
Sincere versions kept turning up on gangster-quote Facebook pages for a few years. Then in early 2019 someone dropped the skeleton into the Born to X, Forced to Y format with the text Born 2 shit, forced 2 wipe, and the joke flipped. From then on the image was mostly used to parody its own menace.
Meaning
The humor comes from the gap between the picture and the words. A smoke-wreathed reaper with a pistol looks like it should be delivering a death threat, but the caption is something petty, wholesome or plain dumb: telling everyone to stop swearing because mom doesn't like it, or complaining about a 9:10 bedtime.
It's also used as a mock-aggressive reply in online arguments ("Clearly you are not based"), where the skeleton acts as an overblown way of saying "say that again, I dare you."
Examples
Popularity
See also
