About

Elon Musk Laughing at Dead Deer refers to a memorable fragment of the Meme Review episode hosted by Elon Musk and Justin Roiland. In the episode, Elon Musk laughs at a meme showing a deer lying at the bottom of a pool, and continues to do so after learning that the deer was, in fact, dead.

Origin

On February 22nd, 2019, entrepreneur Elon Musk and Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland hosted an episode of PewDiePie's YouTube series Meme Review titled "Will Smith hosts Meme Review".^[1] In one scene of the episode, the guests hosts are presented with a meme showing a deer lying at the bottom of the pool, captioned "Why my dolphin not working lol", to which Elon Musk reacts by laughing. After learning that the photograph was indeed showing a drowned deer, Musk reacts with more laughing.

Roiland: Oh my god, dude…
Musk: *laughing*
Roiland: It's so fucking dead
Musk: Jesus. Wait, is that a real picture?
Roiland: I think that's a real photo of a deer that probably jumped into a pool and then just fucking thrashed around and drowned.
Musk: Je-jeez, is that true? [laughs] Wha? [wheezes] What? Is that? That actually happened? [continues laughing and throws his head back] Oh my god! [laughs] Oh – haha – oh my god! [laughs] Why is my dolphin not working, lol.

Spread

On the same day, YouTube^[2] user Archivist uploaded an edited fragment of the episode highlighting Elon Musk's and Justin Roiland's reactions to the meme.

In the hours following the release of the episode, memes featuring Musk laughing at the dead deer and otherwise demonstrating dark, twisted sense of humor, spread on Reddit and on social networks. For example, a meme posted by Redditor^[3] Anything_butDat on February 22nd, 2019 (shown below, right), gained over 28,500 upvotes in three days.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References