About

Army of Darkness Skeleton on Fire, also known as Marching Skeleton or Burning Skeleton, refers to a clip from the 1993 film Army of Darkness in which a skeleton soldier catches on fire but continues marching engulfed in flames. The scene has been turned into a prevalent reaction GIF and has been used with captions where one expresses feeling extreme heat. It has also been used in memes related to The Skeleton War.

Origin

In the 1993 film Army of Darkness, Bruce Campbell's character Ash is fighting off a surge of Deadites with a medieval army during the siege. One of his soldiers fires a flaming arrow at a Deadite, who catches on fire and continues marching as his head falls off (shown below). Notably, this is the same scene that hosts the Angry Dooting GIF.

The shot of the skeleton marching while on fire began seeing use in memes starting in the mid-2010s. One of the earliest extant uses of the GIF as a meme was posted to Imgur on March 5th, 2015, by user JhaneSin,^[1] receiving over 1,300 views and 148 upvotes in eight years (shown below).

Spread

The GIF continued seeing use over the following years, often as a reaction GIF commenting on heat or as a reference to Skeleton War memes. For example, on July 13th, 2017, Imgur^[2] user Xioncyrus posted it to comment about the outside temperature, gaining over 71,000 views in roughly six years (shown below, left). On October 6th, 2019, Redditor De5sperad0 posted it on /r/gifs^[3] as a reference to The Skeleton War, gaining over 230 points in four years (shown below, right).

In 2023, the meme began seeing more ironic uses. On April 9th, 2023, a screenshot of the scene was posted to /r/MemeTemplatesOfficial^[4] by user MemoryScreens that used the image as an object-labeling format, gaining over 1,600 points in three days (shown below, left). On April 11th, Redditor Johnlen1n posted an ironic meme using the GIF to /r/dankmemes,^[5] gaining over 17,000 points in one day (shown below, right).

Various Examples

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Search Interest

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External References