About

Bananas Rotat E, also known as Banana.mp4, refers to a series of animated memes featuring an audio clip of a distorted voice commenting on a GIF image depicting a three-dimensional bunch of bananas rotating. Originating from a post on Tumblr, the audio has been used in several animations and animatics online, which typically depict fictional characters watching bananas rotate.

Origin

On August 13th, 2012, YouTuber rat punk posted the video "banana rotation," which features a pixelated bunch of bananas spinning. The post received more than 38,000 views in less than nine years (shown below).

Spread

On November 15th, 2013, Tumblr^[1] user yungterra posted several versions of a GIF of a bunch of bananas spinning at various speeds, each faster than the last (shown below.) The GIF is believed to be based on a sprite from the Super Nintendo video game Donkey Kong Country. The post commented on each GIF using several intentional misspellings, unnecessary space, and extensive use of bold face and italics. User emily_annabella commented on the post asking, "Are you okay?" to which yungterra replied, "who are you to accuse me." The post received more than 413,000 notes in less than eight years (screenshot below).

At a later date, professional voice actor Austin Lee Matthews dubbed the post as well as emily_annabella's comment and yungterra's reply thereto and uploaded the audio to his Tumblr blog, amtrax. The post has since been removed from Tumblr.

On May 4th, 2018, YouTube user valley of the dead uploaded a video containing the GIF of bananas with Matthews' audio played over it (shown below, left).^[2] The video gained over 500,000 views as of December 2020.

On March 14th, 2019, YouTuber Virgil Scarborough posted a video of the Tumblr voice. The post received more than 1.3 million views in less than two years (shown below, right).

The earliest found meme using the audio was uploaded to YouTube titled "bananas ROTAT E" on March 23rd, 2019.^[3] The video received more than 70,000 views as of December 2020 (shown below, left).

On January 11th, 2020, a video entitled "[SFM Fate] Lancelot Forces a Banana to Rotat E Against Its Will".^[4] The video received more than 1 million views as of December 2020 (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References