About

Flying Black Adam is a still image of the DC Comics character Black Adam (played by Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson) flying toward the camera from the 2022 film of the same name. In October 2022, shortly after the film's premiere, the image gained virality as a reaction image and an exploitable meme format, primarily on Twitter and Reddit.

Origin

On October 21st, 2022, the superhero film Black Adam, based on the DC Comics character of the same name who's one of the archenemies of the superhero Shazam, premiered.^[1] The film stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as Black Adam, a former slave from Kahndaq who gets granted powers from Egyptian gods. In one shot, Black Adam is shown flying towards the camera, with his head appearing disproportionally large (still image and GIF shown below, left and right).

On October 21st, Twitter^[2] user @JILexander tweeted the image of Black Adam flying, commenting, "Fave shot of the movie." The tweet gained over 580 retweets and 9,500 likes in three days (shown below).

Spread

Starting on the same day as the movie's release, October 21st, 2022, the image gained popularity as source material for memes, primarily image captions and as an exploitable. For example, that day Redditor^[3] The_Negotiator1012 posted an image caption meme that gained over 2,500 upvotes in /r/memes in three days (shown below, left). On October 22nd, the Twitter^[4] account for FACEIT Team Fortress 2 (@FACEITTF2) posted a Team Fortress 2 meme that gained over 4,600 retweets and 38,900 likes in two days (shown below, right).

In the following days, more memes based on the image were shared online, primarily on Twitter.

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References