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About

Coronavirus Apocalypse Outfits Expectations vs. Reality, also known as What I Expected My Apocalypse Outfit To Look Like vs. How It Actually Looks, refers to a series of memes referencing the coronavirus outbreak causing people to work from home or self-quarantine as they wear pajamas, comfy clothes or other humorous outfits instead of the expected apocalyptic gear anticipated for world-ending events. The theme was seen on a majority of social media platforms in March 2020, following worldwide lockdowns attempting to halt the spread of COVID-19.

Origin

On March 17th, 2020, Redditor^[1] ALAKANDOG posted one of the earliest examples of this trend to the r/CoronavirusMemes sub. The meme (shown below) depicts a man wearing Mad Max cosplay, specifically Lord Humungus, next to a shot of someone wearing pajama pants and no shoes. The post received nearly 2,000 upvotes, 25 comments and a Reddit award.

Spread

Other variants continued to spread in the following days to other sites and platforms where users created additional apocalypse outfit comparisons. One such example was uploaded to Imgur ^[2] by user username404error on March 19th, 2020. Under the title “Working from home,” the image depicts Christian Bale’s Batman and another photo of him laying on the floor amongst paperwork. The upload (seen below) has since been viewed nearly 700 times.

A day after on March 20th, 2020, Redditor^[3] NITRISS posted another version to the r/memes sub featuring Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil next to Daniel Radcliffe Holding Two Guns. The meme (shown below) received over 94,000 upvotes, several Reddit awards and nearly 500 comments.

Instagram^[4] user annekejong uploaded her take on the trend using an outfit from Burning Man on March 22nd, 2020, and received 742 likes (seen below).

On Twitter,^[5] actor Erika Ishii (known for her work in several video games like Destiny 2) tweeted a version on March 22nd, 2020, featuring two different cosplay photos using the theme. The tweet (shown below) was retweeted 190 times and liked over 3,600 times.

What I expected my apocalypse outfit to look like versus what it actually looks like.

NAILED IT. pic.twitter.com/otVRbnLiyr

— Erika Ishii (@erikaishii) March 23, 2020

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References