Who Is 'Kid Named Finger?' The 'Breaking Bad' Mikeposting Trend Explained

Why are people suddenly calling Mike Ermantraut from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul "kid named finger?" How did Mikeposting become a thing? What do poor-quality anime memes have to do with all of this?

Find all the answers for the latest ironic Breaking Bad trend in our explainer on the Kid Named Finger meme here.

Where Does "Kid Named Finger" Come From?

Before we explain why the character Mike Ehrmantraut, portrayed by actor Jonathan Banks, is being called a "kid named finger," we have to explain two earlier memes that led to this.

First, in late September 2020, a misinterpretation meme based around the snowclone "Kid Named X" gained popularity. The trend involved intentionally misinterpreting a word in idioms said by a teacher as a student's name, with an image showing that student's reaction. It's much easier to show than to explain, so see the examples below for how it works.

Fast forward to March 2022 — a trend known as "Mikeposting" gains popularity in the ironic Breaking Bad memes subreddit /r/okbuddychicanery. The trend involves taking terrible anime memes, usually image captions, and replacing the image with Mike Ehrmantraut (or sometimes other characters) from Breaking Bad.

Ten days after the Mikeposting meme started, Redditor Monday965 combined the two memes in an ironic amalgamation, making a post that got 3,800 upvotes in the subreddit.

From that post, a trend of calling Mike a "kid named finger" or simply "finger" grew, allowing for a great variety of memes ranging from ironic captions to terrifying photoshops.

"Kid Named Finger" Usage In Memes

Making Kid Named Finger memes are easy, but you really want to make sure your audience will be in on the joke … unless you want to confuse people, which totally works too.

The first step is calling Mike "kid named finger" or "finger" and not providing any additional context. You really want to use some meme format that already exists and replace the original punchline with Mike. That's it, you're ready to shitpost!

---

For the full history of Kid Named Finger and Mikeposting be sure to check out our entries for more information.