About

Death Knocking on Doors or Grim Reaper Knocking on Door refers to a series of object-labeled image macros featuring an illustration of the Grim Reaper knocking on a door, while the doors behind are opened and have blood pooling at the doorway.

Origin

The earliest known instance of these cartoons was posted by Taringa^[1] xelha999 on August 16th, 2013. In this variation, the grim reaper is wearing a United States flag, while the doors are labeled "Iraq," "Libya," "Egypt" and "Syria," criticizing America's foreign policy and military engagements in other countries (shown below). However, the cartoon likely dates back earlier than this post.

Spread

Days later, on August 21st, 2013, Redditor ^[2] supersaiyanbr0ku posted the image in the /r/conspiracy subreddit. The post received more than 330 points (94% upvoted) and 30 comments in six years.

On September 3rd, 2013, the blog 1389blog^[3] posted a version of the cartoon in which a boot labeled with the Russian flag is kicking the grim reaper out of its doorway (shown below, left).

10 days later, the original cartoon was uploaded to 9GAG, ^[4] receiving more than 120 points in six years.

On April 29th, 2014, Redditor^[5] ado90 posted a variation featuring the soccer player Sergio Ramos. The post received more than 230 points (96% upvoted) and 10 comments (shown below, center).

On October 18th, 2018, Twitter ^[6] user @Rioted_ posted a variation using characters from the video game Fortnite. The post received more than 120 retweets and 1,000 likes in less than six months (shown below, right).

Several months later, Redditor^[7] Fingolf645 posted a variation featuring Will Smith and references to 2019's Aladdin and the YouTube Rewind video. The post received more than 30,000 points (95% upvoted) and 325 comments (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References