Fancy Chef / Evil Clown

About

Fancy Chef vs. Evil Clown refers to a series of memes about two characters named "fancy chef" and "evil clown." The memes generally revolve around a scenario in which an evil clown attempts to impersonate a fancy chef in order to cook and eat someone. The earliest mentions of the meme appeared on Twitter and iFunny in the form of spoofed iMessage exchanges, before the meme gained traction on TikTok in December 2022.

Origin

The earliest known meme mentioning a clown and a "fancy" chef was posted to Twitter on October 19th, 2021, when Twitter^[1] user @nibiru_truth shared an iMessage screenshot depicting a conversation between him and a contact named "Creepy Clown." The tweet was accompanied by the caption, "That autocorrect moment when you accidentally text the Creepy Clown instead of the Fancy Chef🤦‍♂️." The tweet gathered over 7,000 likes in over a year (seen below, left). The user also posted another meme ^[2] to the thread, gathering 1,400 likes in over a year (seen below, right).

On October 27th, iFunny^[3] user FLOCHZONE posted another spoofed iMessage screenshot in which notifications from an evil clown and a fancy chef can be seen on an iPhone lock screen set against a black-and-white One Piece background. The text from the evil clown read, "wyd," and the text from the fancy chef reads, "evil clown stole my ingredients and will chop carrots into a big pot meant to fool you into believing it's an odd hot tub so he can then cook and eat you!" The post gathered over 1,000 smiles in over a year (seen below).

The aforementioned meme was subsequently reposted to /r/196^[4] and /r/ambien^[5] in 2022.

Spread

On February 15th, 2022, TikToker^[6] @realfoolbert posted a video alongside a caption that read, "Creepy clown lore recap." The post gathered over 90,000 plays and 8,000 likes in 10 months (seen below, left). On April 26th, TikToker^[7] @freyjuhs posted a slideshow featuring fancy chef/evil clown memes, gathering over 50,000 plays and 2,000 likes in eight months (seen below, right).

In December 2022 several TikTokers began to make content about the fancy chef evil clown scenario where evil clown attempts to impersonate fancy chef in order to eat someone. On December 1st, TikToker^[8] @theevilclown posted a video dressed in an evil clown costume alongside a text overlay that read, "making the dinner." The post gathered over 50,000 plays and 1,400 likes in five days (seen below, left). On December 4th, TikToker^[9] @lard.lad posted a joke about being tricked into eating a meal made by evil clown instead of fancy chef, gathering over 500,000 plays and 122,000 likes in a day (seen below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References