Daredevil Dog

About

Daredevil Dog refers to a video of a dog, named Bodhi, sitting and wearing a Daredevil mask as the camera pans around him. The video was first uploaded to Instagram and YouTube in 2016 and is often paired with Evanescense's 2003 song "Bring Me To Life," which is featured in the Daredevil film released the same year. Bodhi died in 2016 shortly after the video began going viral. In 2021, the video became a frequent reaction to cringe content on TikTok showing people making vigilante-like or "badass" statements, implying they don't mean what they're not as tough as they seem.

Origin

The earliest available upload of the Daredevil Dog video was uploaded to YouTube^[1] on July 26th, 2016. It shows Bodhi sitting very still on a couch with a serious face and a Daredevil mask on (shown below). On July 27th, 2016, UNILAD^[3] made a post on Facebook announcing Bodhi's death, gaining over 66,800 shares in five years. Bodhi was owned by Instagram user rondellholmes (Rondell Holmes), who originally uploaded the video to an old Instagram page before it was deleted. On December 2nd of that year, Holmes posted the video to his new Instagram^[2] page with a different song overtop, along with a caption describing how Daredevil Dog died several months ago and how his video was stolen and shared across social media around that time (shown below).

Spread

In the years following Daredevil Dog's passing, Holmes occasionally posted fan art of the dog on his Instagram page inspired by the original viral video (examples shown below).

On December 9th, 2020, YouTuber^[4] Rodrick posted a version of the video adding the song "Bring Me To Life" by Evanescence overtop, a song notably featured in the 2003 Daredevil movie, gaining over 82,000 views in 10 months (shown below). On October 3rd, 2021, TikToker^[5] @domtorettoscousin posted the video, gaining over 109,000 views in two weeks.

TikTok

Over the course of October 2021, the video of Daredevil Dog set to "Bring Me To Life" became increasingly popularized on TikTok as a reaction to cringe videos and content of people making vigilante-like or attempted "badass" statements. For example, on October 5th, TikToker @swoosh_swish posted a video of the dog with on-screen text reading "How teachers feel after saying 'in my 20 years of teaching I've never had a class like this…' when the class talks:" gaining over 190,000 views in two weeks (shown below).

On October 9th, TikToker^[6] @fish..legs posted a video using the dog to react to a skit where a woman describes wanting to kill a man who assaulted her, gaining over 10 million views in just under two weeks (shown below, left). On October 11th, TikToker^[7] @im_wqo posted a video using the dog to react to a commenter on TikTok who claims they wouldn't run from a person with a knife, gaining over 679,000 views in a week (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References