About

Dad, Are You in the Mafia? is a line said by The Sopranos character Meadow Soprano to her father, mobster Tony Soprano, catching him off guard. Starting in 2020, the scene has been used as source material for memes, with the line becoming a phrasal template.

Origin

On February 7th, 1999, "College," episode five of season one of the crime drama series The Sopranos premiered in the United States.^[1] In the opening scene of the episode, character Meadow asks her father, mobster Tony Soprano, if he is "in the Mafia." Tony, taken aback, initially denies it but then partly confirms Meadow's suspicions by admitting that part of his income comes from illegal activities (scene shown below).

On August 7th, 2020, Twitter^[2] user @Hezbolsonaro posted a still image from the scene, captioning it, "Dad, are you in Hezbollah?" The tweet gained over 530 retweets and 7,700 likes in three years (shown below), with another tweet^[3] building upon the joke gaining 60 retweets and over 1,000 likes in the same period.

Spread

The scene achieved more presence in memes in early 2021. On February 1st, 2021, Twitter^[4] user @lunch_enjoyer posted a meme that gained over 2,400 retweets and 36,900 likes in two years (shown below, left). On April 16th, 2021, Facebook^[5] user D Ellison Darnell posted a The Elder Scrolls version that gained over 1,000 reactions and 60 shares in the same period (shown below, right).

More versions of the meme went viral in 2022 and 2023. For example, on May 6th, 2022, Twitter^[6] user @henrylmcnamara posted a joke about NFTs that gained over 200 retweets and 2,800 likes in one year (shown below, left). On April 21st, 2023, iFunny^[7] user LowIQ posted a Gangster SpongeBob meme that received over 6,800 smiles in three weeks (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References