Top TV Memes: The Best Formats From 'The Umbrella Academy'

The Umbrella Academy is the Netflix show that follows a family of adult siblings and horribly stunted superheroes who to try and stop multiple apocalypses that they ironically also start. It's currently at two seasons in length, and more than half the fanbase consists of My Chemical Romance fans, since the original comic book series it’s based on was written by lead singer Gerard Way. Needless to say, it's a very weird show, especially when half of the plot points are revealed by a talking monkey whose presence is never really explained.

The Umbrella Academy has a large fandom devoted to making memes about the series, sometimes known as "Moonposting," as well as photoshopping pictures of the characters as actual umbrellas. Some formats have grown so big that there are easily recognizable to people who haven't ever seen the show before. Of course, you don't need to have extensive knowledge of the show to get the jokes, but it helps. This is where some of the best Umbrella Academy memes were born.

!

Most Popular Memes: Season 2, Episode 7: "Öga for Öga"

In this episode Vanya (played by Elliot Page) and her brother Number Five (Aiden Gallagher) pass by one another in two separate cars. Before they stop and confront one another, there is a long moment where they stare at one another while driving. And considering they have a complicated history, the awkwardness of the scene it's even better and easily exploitable when it comes to memes within the fandom, but outside of the fandom, it still makes just as much sense.

The whole second season was already a lot to grasp, since the characters all started the story over in the ‘60s, where some of them formed an unhealthy obsession with stopping JFK's assassination. There is also a fish man instead of a talking monkey this time around, and this episode is no exception when it comes to confusing, memeable plots. When you signed up to watch the umbrella and talking monkey show, you probably weren't expecting it to be about a ton of time travel and family drama, and since this episode is the perfect example of all of that combined, it's become famous in the meme world.

Most Meme Potential: Season 1, Episode 5: "Number Five"

Episode five of the series is appropriately titled “Number Five.” It primarily follows the story of the character Five, who has, for some reason, decided not to use a normal name like the rest of his siblings. A post apocalyptic version of Five falls in love with a mannequin named Dolores and proceeds to talk to it like Wilson the volleyball from Castaway, and for some reason everyone in the fandom just goes along with it. I guess his options were pretty limited, but there's still a lot of jokes we can make about this, especially in the scene in which he actually looks a lot like Chuck Nolan and hauls the mannequin around in a wagon.

In the second half of the episode, five arranges a meeting with his former supervisor in a situation about as tense as a hostage exchange; then, at the worst possible moment, his drug-addicted brother Klaus (played by Robert Sheehan) appears, driving in an ice cream truck. It's probably the last thing we expected from the scene, and it's led to some great jokes online. A lot of them feature Klaus in the ice cream truck as a third frame for the Vanya and Five meme. Others explore the ice cream truck concept as a meme in itself, where it has a surprising amount of potential.

Meme Insider is a Know Your Meme publication and the world's leading internet culture magazine. Find out how to get your first print copy for free, and check out the Meme Insider website for more info.