About

Do I Look Like I Need Your Power? refers to a scene from the trailer for Sonic The Hedgehog 2 where Sonic says "Face it, you're never going to get my power," then spin dashes at Knuckles only to be stopped mid-air by him, Knuckles says, "Do I look like I need your power?" and slams Sonic into the ground. The scene inspired memes including image macros, object labeling memes and video edits starting in December 2021.

Origin

On December 9th, 2021, the first trailer for the movie Sonic The Hedgehog 2, the sequel to 2020s Sonic The Hedgehog premiered, gaining over 11 million views on the Paramount Pictures YouTube^[1] channel in four days. The last scene of the trailer shows a face-off between Sonic and Knuckles the echidna. Sonic says, "Face it, you're never going to get my power" then surges with electricity and spindashes toward Knuckles. Knuckles holds out his hand and stops Sonic right before impact, still spinning mid-air, then says, "Do I look like I need your power?" and spikes Sonic into the ground (shown below).

Spread

The scene became the subject of memes over the following days. One of the earliest memes is a video edit posted by YouTuber Infinite The Jackal King on December 9th, adding a mushroom cloud explosion after Sonic gets spiked, gaining over 29,000 views in four days (shown below).

On December 10th, Redditor PaddyTheLegend16 posted a labeled meme to /r/dankmemes^[2] using captioned screenshots from the scene, gaining over 1,800 upvotes in three days (shown below, left). It was reposted to Instagram^[3] page dank_memes_melting_screens the next day gaining over 12,000 likes in two days. On the same day, Facebook^[4] and Instagram^[5] page Memes For Jesus posted another version of the meme, gaining over 2,000 reactions on the former and 9,100 likes on the latter in two days (shown below, right).
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YouTuber Dreadful Destruction posted numerous labeled versions of the clip to YouTube at this time, the most popular uploaded on December 10th and 11th and gaining over 695,000 and 495,000 views respectively in roughly two days (shown below, left and right).

On December 11th, YouTuber ChunChasku posted a video recreating the trailer but replacing Knuckles with Ugandan Knuckles, gaining over 8,000 views in two days (shown below).

Template

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References