About

"Impossible. Perhaps the Archives Are Incomplete" is a memorable line from the 2002 science fiction film Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones. In the film, the character Obi-Wan Kenobi searches the Jedi archives for a mysterious planet, which appears to have been removed from the database. Online, people have used the moment as the punchline to a joke about incorrect history books.

Origin

On May 16th, 2002, LucasFilm and 20th Century Fox released the film Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones.^[1] In the film (clip below), Obi-Wan Kenobi studies the Jedi archives for the planet Kamino, which is missing from the database. When a librarian named Jocasta Nu tells him that if the planet is not in the archive it must not exist, Obi-Wan responds, "Impossible. Perhaps the Archives Are Incomplete."

Spread

On February 18th, 2013, Redditor ^[2] edgecuatro posted a four-panel meme based on the scene in the /r/StarWars subreddit. The dialogue plays out like normal until the final panel, when Obi-Wan says, "Getting real tired of your shit librarian." The post (shown below) received more than 940 points (94% upvoted) and 30 comments.

On March 9th, 2017, the meme was posted on the Facebook ^[3] group Star-Wars-The-Force-Awakens, where it received more than 130 reactions and 16 shares.

Four months later, on July 9th, Redditor^[4] kimilil posted a four-exploitable in which three women stand up to stereotypes and the fourth panel features Jocasta Nu with a sign "Our records does not contain the item you're looking for so it does not exist." The user posted it in the /r/PrequelMemes subreddit with the subject line "Impossible. Perhaps the archives are incomplete." The post (shown below, left) received more than 1,800 points (97% upvoted) and 40 comments.

On September 15th, the Facebook^[5] account badness10000 posted an image macro featuring Obi-Wan saying the line under the caption "When you can't find an example of tex code to steal from stack exchange." The post (shown below, right) received more than 2,200 reaction and 100 shares in two week.

The following week, on September 22nd, Redditor^[6] Mambatony posted a variation of the image macro in the /r/DankMemes with the caption "When you type in the name of that porno three times and Porn Hub says they don't have it." The post (shown below) received more than 25,000 points (93% upvoted) and 200 comments.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References