Entertainment
These 10 Movies Have Spawned The Most Memes
A meme used to be regarded as “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture,” and it still kind of is, though the definition’s shifted a bit. Now, it concerns things that are spread online through social media, usually within fandoms, and those things that spread are usually of a humorous variety. Or at least memes are supposed to be funny.
Certain movies have inspired more memes than others. It’s hard to determine which movies have objectively spawned the most memes, but if you spend enough time online, you start to see some usual suspects. Some of the films below have been mocked through memes, while others have been celebrated through memes (and sometimes, there’s a bit of both). They’re also generally more recent movies, but that’s understandable, since a “meme,” in the current/modern sense, is a relatively recent phenomenon.
10
‘Morbius’ (2022)
With Morbius, the memes are the only things that matter. The movie is otherwise a footnote within the broader superhero genre, because not many people genuinely like Morbius. But people did enjoy making fun of it, and while some of the other highly-memed movies that’ll be mentioned in a bit have people making memes out of love for whatever they’re memeing, the memes against Morbius were more spiteful.
Then there was that whole dance sequence, and the way it returned to theaters as a way to potentially cash in on all the ironic memes, but that didn’t seem to do much to actually allow the movie to earn that fabled “Morbillion dollars.”
“It’s Morbin’ time” was the big one, even though it obviously wasn’t said in the movie. Then there was that whole dance sequence, and the way it returned to theaters as a way to potentially cash in on all the ironic memes, but that didn’t seem to do much to actually allow the movie to earn that fabled “Morbillion dollars.” Since the film wasn’t very good, the bullying felt kind of fair, or at least could be justified as punching up. Interest in the Sony Spider-Man Universe But Without Spider-Man (the SSUBWS) was never that high, after all.
9
‘Bee Movie’ (2007)
Hey, if an entire article can be written about the memes that Bee Movie has inspired, then it’s worth giving it a quick mention here. Thomas Butt broke it all down in more detail, and made the very accurate declaration that Bee Movie is a “meme factory.” It joins Morbius as one of those not particularly well-liked movies that’s endured largely because memes made fun of it.
There are countless “Bee Movie except x” videos on YouTube, and getting lost down that rabbit hole is more fun than watching the film itself. “The Bee Movie without Anything Even Remotely Related to Bees” is especially good, and honestly almost avant-garde. Just the existence of Bee Movie already feels like a joke, so anything that makes it into even more of a joke feels hard to resist.
8
‘Titanic’ (1997)
James Cameron knows how to make movies that resonate with people, and Titanic might well show that best of all. Like, the Avatar movies have also been hugely successful, sometimes so successful that people are confused about their popularity, and you get memes about that series not having memes, even though there are still memes of a less meta variety. Look, the Avatar series is complicated.
But Titanic… you know what you’re in for, with Titanic. And the changing of the way the movie’s been perceived overall, if you’re going by memes and what people say online, is interesting. The film was huge when it came out, then mocked for some of the 2000s and a bit of the 2010s, but now, people don’t just poke fun at the movie in a mean-spirited way. There are cheesy and broad things here to enjoy and make fun of at the same time, and so that’s kind of where Titanic is right now.
7
‘A Minecraft Movie’ (2025)
The bad side of meme-making and all that was exposed by some of what A Minecraft Movie inspired. Some enjoyment of this seemed to be sincere, so it wasn’t entirely a Morbius situation again, but other things that really took off here seemed ironic, or maybe just hard to comprehend for someone who’s a little older and/or didn’t really grow up with Minecraft.
A Minecraft Movie seemed like a bit of a joke when it was first announced, and the trailer was hugely criticized, but the movie did well, and fans of the game… again, some of them sort of seemed pleased? But the “Chicken Jockey” meme did get kind of out of control, with cinemas filled with people trying to one-up each other in pulling stunts when Jack Black’s character said those infamous words. The hole is there, if you want to be a rabbit and disappear down it.
6
‘300’ (2006)
The memes that were popular around 300 aren’t really as cool or funny anymore, and maybe somebody out there has already rolled their eyes at the “This is Sparta!” movie making it onto this ranking. But 300 is historically important, as far as memes go. And yes, that’s a ridiculous thing to say, but it did feel like one of the first movies to come out at a time when memes were popular, and have memes tied to it pretty much instantly.
They were impossible to avoid in the late 2000s, and even if you were too young to actually watch this R-rated movie, you likely knew a bunch of the hammy dialogue. There were also eye-catching visuals here and a style that was easy to simultaneously celebrate and mock, because 300 is spectacular and very silly at the same time, so maybe it was all inevitable.
5
‘Shrek’ (2001–Present)
Some of the memes around Shrek are horrifying, or might be horrifying if you’ve not grown up online and seen the degradation of Shrek happen in real time. Maybe it’s fitting, though, because from the very first movie, Shrek was irreverent and definitely felt quite adult if you were just a kid, with some of its humor.
So, as those kids in question grew up, some felt a need to find ways to push the humor of Shrek a little further. Sometimes, uncomfortably far. “Shrek is love… Shrek is life” is something you can research yourself if you feel so inclined, but it’s not really worth it. Other memes and parts of the fandom are more endearing, though, like the time in 2018 when more than 200 people collaborated to make a chaotic remake of the first film called Shrek Retold.
4
The Marvel Cinematic Universe (2008–Present)
It might seem like cheating to put a whole cinematic universe here, but it’s hard to find a series within the Marvel Cinematic Universe that feels particularly heavily-memed. Also, just about all the movies within the series have had some degree of memes made about them, so it’s not just that there’s a quantity of memes because there’s a large quantity of movies.
There are lots of memes per movie, at least for a lot of the movies, and sometimes even before the movie itself has come out. You can see Avengers: Doomsday getting memed even with people only having a few minutes to make fun of or celebrate (or do a bit of both), via the trailer footage released to date. This whole cinematic universe has been dominant and popular for almost two decades now, so it having inspired a ton of stuff meme-wise shouldn’t be too surprising.
3
‘The Dark Knight’ Trilogy (2005–2012)
Whenever Christopher Nolan makes a movie, memes follow. An honorable mention should go out to Oppenheimer, though it was hard to figure out whether to include that or Barbie, because both undeniably contributed to the overall memetic phenomenon that was Barbenheimer. And then more recently, The Odyssey inspired quite a few memes, largely thanks to one Robert Pattinson line about beggars and the ease with which music can be added to the Sirens sequence for comedic effect.
But the most memed movies with Nolan’s name attached would have to be his Dark Knight trilogy, and especially The Dark Knight Rises, which was the hammiest of the bunch (largely thanks to Bane). There’s also a balance here, with the kinds of memes, because there are lots of things The Dark Knight movies do right, and quite a few things they do wrong, so you get a mix of affectionate and cynical memes with this trilogy.
2
‘The Lord of the Rings’ (2001–2003)
Before The Lord of the Rings movies, the books (or book, if you’re talking just The Lord of the Rings) were popular, and you sometimes got references to the whole saga outside the book sphere (oh hey, Led Zeppelin IV). But the movies did catapult The Lord of the Rings to new heights culturally, even if some might prefer the books, but the sheer enormity of the memes here… one does not simply discount the memes.
Like the only example ranking above The Lord of the Rings here, it’s hard to watch these three movies without finding at least one highly-memed moment per scene. Over-explaining trivia has become a meme, there was the “They’re Taking the Hobbits to Isengard” remix, and the time someone uploaded a version of The Fellowship of the Ring where Sam said, “If I take one more step, it’ll be the farthest away from home I’ve ever been” every time he took a step. And on, and on, and on…
1
‘Star Wars’ (1977–Present)
The Star Wars series is going here largely because of the prequel trilogy. What more has to be said? Well, maybe a little more. It’s probably worth noting that the prequels became so memeable and popular on that front because the original trilogy was also a juggernaut pop culture-wise, and so the momentum kept going, people were always making jokes (often affectionately) about the series, and then a new trilogy came out in a world where the internet was a thing.
And the internet got more popular in the years following 2005’s Revenge of the Sith, or at least making memes online got more popular, and then things reached a point where it’s hard to watch a scene from any of the prequels without being reminded of at least one meme. The original trilogy has its memes, too, and even the sequel trilogy has some attached to it, but the prequels are the memequels. They are unstoppable. One can drown in memes there.
- First TV Show
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Star Wars The Clone Wars
- Created by
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George Lucas
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