In The Virtual End / "It Starts With"

About

"In The Virtual End" is a Machinima music video that recreates the music video for "In the End" by Linkin Park with Half-Life characters Eli Vance and Dr. Kleiner. In May 2022, the video achieved virality as an Anime Memes Replaced With X meme format in the /r/OKbuddyHalfLife subreddit, later achieving mainstream popularity and being used as bait-and-switch media.

Origin

On November 1st, 2009, YouTuber^[1] Ray Koefoed uploaded "In The Virtual End," an animated remake of the music video for "In the End" by Linkin Park featuring Half-Life characters. The video featured the character Eli Vance as vocalist Mike Shinoda and the character Dr. Kleiner as vocalist Chester Bennington and was created with Garry's Mod and SDK Face Poser. The video accumulated over 100,000 views as of August 2021 and over 870,000 views as of early August 2022 (following its meme popularity).

(It starts with one) One thing, I don't know why
It doesn't even matter how hard you try
Keep that in mind, I designed this rhyme
To explain in due time (all I know)
Time is a valuable thing
Watch it fly by as the pendulum swings
Watch it count down to the end of the day
The clock ticks life away, (it's so unreal)

After March and April 2022, the Anime Memes Replaced with Breaking Bad meme format gained virality in the subreddit /r/okbuddychicanery. On May 11th, 2022, Redditor^[2][3] mikegent01 posted two Anime Memes Replaced memes in the /r/OKbuddyHalfLife subreddit, replacing punchlines in two anime memes with the "In The Virtual End" (second post shown below). The posts gained over 600 upvotes and 1,000 upvotes, respectively, in three months.

Spread

In the following weeks, the video was used in more Anime Memes Replaced memes in the subreddit. For example, on May 12th, 2022, Redditor^[4] Black-dragon4129 posted a Couple Texting in Bed meme that gained over 1,400 upvotes in three months (shown below). On May 14th, Redditor^[5] GoldKghtRT posted a Kid Named X meme that received over 1,100 upvotes in the same period.

In late May 2022, the format achieved major popularity in the subreddit, with meta jokes appearing and users link commenting the lyrics of the song under posts (example posts shown below).^[6][7] On May 22nd, Redditor^[8] ncm_dmn_ch posted an "In The Virtual End" meme to /r/half-life, where it gained over 1,200 upvotes in roughly three months, becoming the first such meme to be posted out of the original subreddit. On May 23rd, Redditor^[9] Black-dragon3129 created a petition to set a still image of Dr. Kleiner from the video as /r/OKbuddyHalfLife's subreddit logo, with the post gaining over 2,000 upvotes in three months.

On May 28th, Gamebanana^[10] user DoDodatn submitted a mod that replaces the credits music in Half-Life 2 with "In the End."

In late May 2022, the format saw further spread within the Half-Life fandom as it gained popularity in the Half-Life Mesaposting Facebook^[17][18] group.

Starting in early July 2022, the format started gaining virality outside of /r/OKbuddyHalfLife and Half-Life Mesaposting with Anime Memes Replaced and bait-and-switch memes. For example, on July 1st, 2022, YouTube^[11] user Engineer in Home Depot posted a bait-and-switch that gained over 17,900 views in one month (shown below, left). On July 25th, YouTube^[12] user SkipFighter posted a demonstration video replacing Eli Vance and Dr. Kleiner's dialogue with the song, with the video garnering over 380,000 views in two weeks (shown below, right).

On July 19th, Tenor^[13] user Scalfiire uploaded a collection of 38 GIF captions pairing clips from the video with the song's lyrics.

In late July 2022, the format achieved popularity on TikTok ^[14][15][16] (examples shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Note: The increase of interest in 2020 is tied to the release of the comedy series The Virtual End.

External References