Does He Know?

About

Does He Know? is a New Rockstars Thumbnail reaction image of the Batman character Riddler (Paul Dano) captioned, "Does he know?" Gaining virality together with What Was He Cooking? and other similar thumbnails from New Rockstars' YouTube channel, the image achieved notable prevalence online through 2022, inspiring edits and redraws as an exploitable meme format.

Origin

On March 7th, 2022, the YouTube^[1] channel New Rockstars uploaded a film theory video titled, "The Batman: Does Riddler Actually KNOW Batman = Bruce?" The video used an image of The Riddler, portrayed by actor Paul Dano in the 2022 remake, as a thumbnail (shown below). The video accumulated over 854,000 views in seven months.

On May 1st, 2022, following the viral popularity of the What Was He Cooking meme spawned by the thumbnail from another New Rockstars' video, Tumblr^[2] user campyvillain made a compilation post for thumbnails from the channel, which included The Riddler version (shown below). The post gained over 15,000 likes and reblogs in six months.

Spread

In the following weeks, the image saw a gradual spread as a reaction on Twitter. For example, on May 21st, 2022, Twitter^[3] user @YourGameTVlol used it as a reaction to a now-deleted post, with the reply gaining over 20 likes in six months (shown below, left). On June 26th, Twitter^[4] user @SohSketch used the image to reply to another deleted tweet, with the reply gaining over 490 retweets and 27,500 likes in one week (shown below, right).

In the following months, the image achieved major virality as a reaction on Twitter, with users also posting edits and remakes referencing the original. For example, in September 2022, a version captioned "he knows" gained notable spread,^[5] often used to further build upon the joke (shown below).

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References