About

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are characters in the Christian bible who bring about the end times. Online, they are parodied in image macros which show four people or characters who are jokingly labeled the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Origin

The Four Horsemen appear in the last book of the New Testament of the Christian bible.^[1] They are usually known as Conquest, War, Famine, and Death. They are known as the harbingers of the Last Judgment. A common definition of the Four Horsemen online was posted to Urban Dictionary on July 2nd, 2005.^[2] On June 5th, 2007, a joke definition was posted there (shown below).

Spread

Online, the pictures of four people or characters paired together are joked about as being representative of the Four Horsemen. For example, an early version of the joke, posted to weknowmemes^[3] on November 11th, 2011 featured pictures of Jack Nicholson, Clint Eastwood, Bill Murray, and Christopher Walken (shown below).

An early meme version of the joke was posted to Memecenter in 2013 by user Detergent^[4] and featured popular memetic characters such as Grumpy Cat and Pedobear (shown below).

In the coming years, the meme would take on a more shitpost-like quality, as people created variations with more obtuse characters. For example, on November 16th, 2016, Facebook meme page They Boot Too Big For They Gotdamn Feet^[5] uploaded a variation showing four digitally-manipulated photos of a dog (shown below, left). An edit labelling roombas with weapons strapped to them was posted to /r/funny^[6] on October 13th, 2016 (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References