About

Crocodile Tears (not to be confused with the idiom "Crocodile Tears") refers to a series of PSAs from the California Department of Public Health with audio from other media remixed into the footage. The original commercial features an off-screen voice asking a crocodile a question, the crocodile hurting the unseen person because of the question asked, followed by the just-injured man saying "Just thought I'd ask." In edits, social media users added audio of someone asking a different question, prompting the crocodile to attack. The meme grew popular in the YouTube Poop community in July of 2018.

Origin

In the year 2000, the animation company "Kurtz and Friends"^[1] produced 3 PSAs for the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) that were critical of the "new look" tobacco companies attempted to sport through charitable means, especially targeting the community service ventures of Phillip Morris. The ads featured a crocodile character which represented "Big Tobacco" and was voiced by Harry Shearer, best known as the voice of Principal Skinner from The Simpsons. Bob Kurtz is said to have directed all three, which were named "Crocodile Tears", "He's Back", and "The Business" ("Crocodile Tears" shown below).

On July 14th, 2018, Cameron W. Cowan, a prominent YouTube pooper, tweeted an edit of Crocodile Tears in which some lines from Superintendent Chalmers in The Simpsons sketch Steamed Hams as well as the segment where Skinner gets fired, from S5 E19 of the show, were inserted in place of the lines of a character in the commercial who only appeared behind the camera.

pic.twitter.com/LyGiN8nxn1

— Cameron W. Cowan (@YourBoi_CamHead) July 14, 2018

Spread

Shortly after Cowan's tweet, Mark Riquelme, another prominent YouTube pooper and the owner of Sailor Moon fan website Sailor Moon Universe, tweeted an edit of the commercial with different audio.

pic.twitter.com/F2QQTQkZjC

— Mark Riquelme (@Riquelme9405) July 14, 2018

After that tweet, Taylor Ledbetter tweeted his own iteration of the Crocodile Tears edit (shown below).

I have to thank/blame YourBoi_CamHead</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/e_karasz?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">e_karasz for inspiring me to do this… pic.twitter.com/IwuysHiuWF

— Taylor Ledbetter (@tlrledbetter) July 14, 2018

Both Cowan's and Riquelme's tweets were uploaded to YouTube, where they influenced other YouTube poopers like SuperKeegan910, Liam Taheny and Waltman13 to edit the commercial and insert their own lines. Edits continued to be created throughout July. On August 2nd, YouTube pooper Gsgiraffes used his editing software to remaster the commercials which were then used in a YTP featuring all 3 PSAs (shown below)

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References

^[1] Wikipedia – Kurtz and Friends