Challenge Accepted

About

“Challenge Accepted” is a series of four-pane comics depicting real life situations where the character is presented with a highly difficult or dangerous task requiring blind courage, yet chooses to embrace the near-impossible challenge against all odds.

Origin

The four-pane series is believed to have originated on Bungie’s Flood forums in a discussion thread titled “When your teacher tells you” circa early November 2010.

Prior to the popularity of 4-pane iterations, “Challenge Accepted” became a popular trope in TV sitcom series How I Met Your Mother. In the series, the ladies man Barney Stinson (played by Neil Patrick Harris) often takes up seemingly impossible challenges that others bring up as a joke. The earliest instance of Barney uttering “challenge accepted” can be heard in the Season 4 of the series.

Exploitable

Notable Derivatives

Two derivatives of Challenge Accepted are “Challenge Considered” and “Challenge Denied”. Challenge Considered is used when the person does not yet know if he’s going to accept the challenge given, whereas with Challenge Denied the person rejects the challenge and refuses to complete it.

Spread

The joke has since spread to other lulz-friendly sites like Tumblr, Funny Junk, as well as the Miscellaneous board forums on Bodybuilding.com. The meme has also seen some development on Memebase.com.