About

He Was Asking Too Many Questions refers to a three-panel meme format based on a scene from Family Guy in which character Joe Swanson gets disintegrated by a space laser after asking questions about the United States military. The format has been used to make unusual questions and reference popular culture since February 2025, primarily on Reddit.

Origin

On December 11th, 2022, episode ten "The Candidate" of the American animated comedy series Family Guy premiered.^[1] In one scene of the episode, character Joe Swanson is excited to learn about a watch with a step counter and goes on to sing a song about wonders of technology, ending it with a question about technologies at the disposal of the United States military. As he finishes singing the last line, Joe Swanson gets disintegrated by a laser seemingly fired from space, with the scene cutting off to a military command center where one military officer remarks that Swanson "was asking too many questions".

- But what does the military have?
- He was asking too many questions.

On February 8th, 2025, Redditor Moat_of_the_Sacked posted a three-panel meme template based on the scene to the /r/MemeTemplatesOfficial subreddit^[2] together with a 9 out of 10 Dentists meme using the template (shown below). The post garnered 690 upvotes in one month.

Spread

In the following weeks, the meme format achieved popularity on Reddit, being used in /r/dankmemes, /r/memes, and in other subreddits. For example, on February 12th, 2025, Redditor dantevonlocke posted a Warhammer 40,000 meme based on it in the /r/AdeptusMechanicus subreddit,^[3] where it gained over 2,300 upvotes in three weeks (shown below).

On February 22nd, 2025, Redditor -Rose-From-Riviera- posted a meme that received over 13,000 upvotes in the /r/dankmemes^[4] subreddit in ten days (shown below).

More memes based on the format were shared on Reddit and other platforms in late February and early March 2025.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References