He Could Be Any One of Us

About

"He Could Be Any One of Us," sometimes misquoted as "It Could Be Any One of Us", is a memorable quote said by character Spy in the "Meet the Spy" Team Fortress 2 animated short. Starting in October 2018, a still image of Spy paired with the quote gained popularity as an image macro.

Origin

On May 18th, 2009, Team Fortress 2 developer Valve uploaded a "Meet the Spy" animated short for the Spy class.^[1] The video received over 29.3 million views in ten years (shown below). In one scene of the video, Blue Spy tells Blue Scout, Blue Soldier and Blue Heavy that Red Spy has infiltrated their base and that he could be any one of them.

And worst of all, he could be any one of us. He could be in this very room! He could be you! He could be me! He could even be…

On August 15th, 2015, YouTuber crazyhalo posted an Unexpected John Cena SFM meme based on the cinematic.^[6] The video received over 1.4 million views in four years.

On October 14th, 2018, Redditor Normified posted the first known meme based on the still image from the cinematic paired with the quote.^[2] The post received over 19,700 upvotes in /r/dankmemes subreddit in six months (shown below).

Spread

Starting in mid-October 2018, the format received spread in major meme communities on Reddit such as /r/dankmemes and /r/memes. For example, an October 14th post by Redditor Awesomewithaz in /r/dankchristianmemes received over 490 upvotes in six months (shown below, left).^[3] An October 28th post by Redditor Lazer-Ninja in /r/dankmemes gained over 19,300 upvotes (shown below, right).^[4]

On December 7th, 2018, Redditor Ta1kativ posted an alternative macro captioned "he could be any one of us," with the post receiving over 11,500 upvotes.^[5] In the following months, this variation gained the higher popularity compared to the original version (example shown below, right).

In the following year, the format maintained moderate popularity on Reddit.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References