Garbage Day

About

"Garbage Day" is a memorable quote from a scene in the 1987 horror film Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 in which Ricky Caldwell (played by Eric Freeman) yells the phrase before shooting a man in the chest and starts laughing maniacally. The clip inspired many remix and parody videos after being uploaded to YouTube in June of 2006.

Origin

YouTuber Jamie Holler first uploaded the scene from the movie Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 on Jun 7, 2006.
A high quality version was then uploaded by YouTuber BrunoMe on June 14th, 2006. Within six years, the video received over 3.9 million views and 9,700 comments.

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2

The horror film Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 was released in limited theaters on April 10th, 1987, which follows the story of the psychotic killer Ricky Caldwell’s serial murders. After murdering a police officer, Caldwell goes on a shooting rampage through a suburban neighborhood where the “garbage day” scene takes place.

Spread

On December 22nd, 2007, Livejournal user keepyourguns posted a link to the video in a comment on the celebrity gossip community “Oh No They Didn’t.”^[1] On January 4th, 2008, Urban Dictionary user Weedoish submitted a definition entry for “garbage day”, attributing the quote to the film Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2.

"A day of death (either your own or somebody else's, metaphorically or literally). It can be said as part of trash talk or more fittingly as a war cry or victory cry. The phrase is usually said without pronoun and is followed by a maniacal (although not hysterical) laugh. It is a reference to a non-intentionally hilarious scene in the shitty 1987 film 'Silent Night, Deadly Night II.'"

On August 7th, the video was highlighted on the Internet humor site I Am Bored.^[4] On May 7th, 2009, NeoGAF Forums^[3] member Xrenity replied to a thread titled "the greatest 30 second YouTube video ever" with a link to the "garbage day" clip. On October 27th, 2011, the film blog Horrible Movie Night^[7] published a post titled "The awesomeness of garbage day", which highlighted the video and listed several YouTube parodies including "Labor day!" (shown below, left) and "Veteran's Day!" (shown below, right).

On April 30th, 2012, DeviantArt^[5] user JeffVictor uploaded an illustration of the scene in a post titled "Garbage Day" (shown below). On June 12th, Redditor Biffalkill submitted the video to the /r/youtubehaiku^[6] subreddit, where it received over 230 up votes in one month.

Notable Examples

The clip has been remixed with other well-known video clips and soundbites on YouTube, including This is Sparta! from the film 300, Tay Zonday's Chocolate Rain and Team Fortress 2 characters among others.

Search Interest

External References