Patrick Duffy (2004)

Background

Patrick Duffy (born March 17, 1949) is an American television actor. He is best known for his roles as Bobby Ewing on the immensely popular CBS drama Dallas (a role he played from 1978-85 and 1986-91), and as Frank Lambert on the ABC television sitcom Step By Step (1991-98).

In 1997, South Park made Duffy into the subject of parody in the episode Volcano where the character of Scuzzlebutt is introduced, a beast much like a yeti but with a stalk of celery for an arm and a leg made out of Patrick Duffy.

About

Duffy’s TV fame turned to irreverent Internet fame as an online meme beginning in a thread on SomethingAwful on September 9th 2004.

• “Patrick Duffy’s Disembodied Levitating Laser-Shooting Head WREAKING HAVOC” by SA Goon Zanzibar

Everything needed to understand the meme was present in the threads title. Take Patrick Duffy’s head, make it levitate, and shoot laser beams from its head.

This trend spread to YTMND within mere weeks.

Patrick duffy sites consisted of gifs of a floating Patrick Duffy head shooting lasers (and sometimes bolts of lightning, flame balls, etc.) from his eyes, causing destruction. While this “laser eyes” theme had been present in earlier media, Patrick Duffy may have helped popularize this theme in other memes. Pictures of happy-cat (re:NEDM) and other popular online meme’s could be found online, each with their disembodied head hovering about, blasting people or things with its’ “laser-eyes”.

Some notable YTMNDs are

• Patrick Duffy is Evil (the original from October 2004)
• Duffy Hates Sundaes
• WTFOMGcatHavoc

This continued on as Patrick would resurface again as an internet phenomenon via YouTube in 2009. “Duffy and the Crab” is an online webisode featuring Patrick Duffy and his felt crab companion (an ill-tempered puppet voiced by David Leisure, best known as Joe Isuzu) reacting to the world around them, according to creators Conor Duffy and Emily Cutler. The Crab was a theater prop the married couple was storing in their garage, and Patrick Duffy is Colin Conor’s father (and thus Emily’s father-in-law).

In “PATRICK DUFFY & The Crab discuss Facebook & Ringtones”, the tech-saavy crab attempts to explain modern “new-media” / “Web 2.0” sites to an aged Duffy, who is seemingly disengaged from modern technology.