Fred the Fish Mopping
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About
Fred the Fish Mopping refers to several meme formats utilizing the image of SpongeBob SquarePants character Fred the Fish mopping the floor while wearing headphones. Starting in Spring 2018, a cutout of Fred the Fish "cleaning the screen" has been used as a reaction to bad posts, while in late October 2019 video edits in which Fred the Fish appeared to be in danger gained popularity.
Origin
On January 21st, 2002, episode 45b "Doing Time" of season three of the animated TV series SpongeBob SquarePants premiered in the United States.[1]
In one scene of the episode, character Fred the Fish is shown mopping the floor in a Shady Shoals Rest Home hall, with a large amount of fruit punch briefly flooding the hall but leaving Fred the Fish unfazed (scene shown below).
On March 12th, 2018, Redditor Grump-e-y posted a cutout image of Fred the Fish mopping the floor captioned "Don't mind me I'm just cleaning off your screen because that last post was literally a pile of shit" (shown below).[2] The post received over 42,500 upvotes in /r/BikiniBottomSubreddit in six months. The authorship of the image is currently unconfirmed.
Spread
In the following years, the image was reposted on various platforms multiple times and used as a reaction.[3][4] For example, an October 7th, 2018, tweet by user @GabbsNava containing the reaction image received over 30 retweets and 1,300 likes in one year.[5]
Until October 2019, the cutout of Fred mopping saw limited use as an exploitable, with several variations of the meme being posted on Reddit (examples shown below).[6][7]
On October 26th, 2019, Instagram user pampam.mp4 posted a meme in which Fred the Fish got caught in the nuclear explosion on the Call of Duty: Black Ops II Nuketown map (shown below).[8] The video received over 89,600 views and 16,800 likes in two weeks. On the same day, pampam.mp4 posted a greenscreen template for the meme on their alternative account.[9]
In the following days, multiple users on Instagram posted memes in which Fred the Fish was caught in dangerous situations, including notable edits by thicc.m4v,[10] labrynth.mp4[11] and amoistnapkin.[12]
Various Examples
Template
Search Interest
External References
[1] Encyclopedia SpongeBobia – Encyclopedia SpongeBobia
[2] Reddit – Caution: Wet Floor
[3] Twitter – @Grxvey's Tweet
[4] Twitter – @galahad_3x's Tweet
[5] Twitter – @purba_ray's Tweet
[8] Instagram – pampam.mp4's Post
[9] Instagram – pamtemplates' Post
[10] Instagram – thicc.m4v's Post
[11] Instagram – labrynth.mp4's Post
[12] Instagram – amoistnapkin's Post
