Jedi Killer

About

Jedi Killer refers to a series of memes imagining increasingly elaborate weapons meant to kill Jedi from Star Wars. Started by an image of a triple-barreled gun captioned "Jedi Killer," the meme achieved virality on the /r/PrequelMemes subreddit in March 2023.

Origin

On November 7th, 2015, Redditor and YouTuber Kmlkmljkl posted an MS Paint drawing of a triple-barreled gun and a Jedi who's been shot with it despite deflecting two of the three shots (captioned "Jedi Killer") to the /r/StarWars^[1] subreddit. The drawing (shown below) gained over 1,700 upvotes in seven years.

Spread

Prior to its virality in March 2023, the image saw moderate spread online through reposts on 9GAG, Facebook, iFunny and other sites.

On January 24th and 25th, 2017, 9GAG^[2][3] users babarbrunhoff and hunt posted the two earliest edits of the image, which gained over 13,000 upvotes and 6,900 upvotes, in six years, respectively (shown below, left and right).

On March 27th, 2023, Redditor z0l02 reposted the original image to the /r/PrequelMemes^[4] subreddit, where it gained over 30,800 upvotes in two days.

The post inspired an "arms race" trend in the subreddit as users invented ways for the Jedi to protect himself from extra shots, with other users coming up with extra additions to the gun to surpass the new defenses.

On March 28th, Redditor PossessionCorrect829 added a second blade to the lightsaber to deflect the third shot, with the post gaining over 1,600 upvotes in /r/PrequelMemes^[5] prior to being removed (shown below, left). Later that day, Redditor^[5] Boatwhistle added two extra barrels to the gun, naming it "Jedi Killer 2.0." The post gained over 31,400 upvotes in the subreddit in one day (shown below, right).

In the following days, multiple other memes within the trend went viral in the subreddit. A version submitted by Redditor Johnmarmalade on March 28th gained over 11,800 upvotes in one day (shown below, left). A March 29th post by Redditor Al2theE_X gained over 18,000 upvotes in a similar timeframe (shown below, right).

Related Memes

Anti-Weezer Gun

The Anti-Weezer Gun, also known as the Anti-Podcast Gun, refers to a photograph of a four-barrel duckfoot pistol that gained virality online after an X / Twitter post that claimed it could be used to shoot "four evenly-spaced dudes." The photograph of the gun has since been used together with images of four people or characters standing next to each other, most notably Weezer's Blue Album, with the memes implying that the gun would be the perfect tool to kill them all at once.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References