Johnny Cage Trophy / Johnny Cage Wins

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About

Johnny Cage Trophy or Johnny Cage Wins refers to the win celebration of Mortal Kombat character Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat 1 in which he catches a trophy and then poses with it. The clip became a meme on TikTok in late 2023, often paired with a slowed remix of the song "Wake Up in the Sky" by Bruno Mars, Gucci Mane and Kodak Black, leading with the lyrics "I drink 'til I'm drunk, smoke 'til I'm high." Meme creators mostly added captions that joked about someone winning an award for a bad trait. The meme format was built on the precursor Johnny Cage 'International Love' meme.

Origin

Currently, the first known meme to start the Johnny Cage Wins meme format was a video posted by TikToker^[1] @burburt on September 24th, 2023, which was a Johnny Cage edit that started with his trophy scene, adding text overlay reading, "Me if hating on people That do better than me Was a reward," and added a slowed remix of the song "Wake Up in the Sky" by Bruno Mars.^[2] Over the course of one month, the video gained roughly 1.1 million plays and 171,500 likes (shown below).

@burburt you cant tell me i aint fly 🗣️🗣️ // payhip in bio #boburt #burburt #boburts #johnnycage #johnnycagemk1 #johnnycageedit #johnnycageedits #supafly #alightmotion #videostarpro @xcdonovan? @tyler @Michael @Snick ♬ original sound – Boburt

Spread

Soon after the aforementioned video's upload, its sound^[3] gained usage by multiple creators. For instance, an early usage was posted by TikToker^[4] @panchozxn on October 1st, 2023, who wrote, "Me if being the most dumbest person on planet earth was a award," gaining roughly 172,900 likes in 18 days (shown below, left). On October 11th, TikToker^[5] @icejaker used the format to make fun of "that one friend if there was an award for sending the most tiktoks," gaining roughly 4.1 million plays and 888,300 likes in eight days (shown below, right).

@panchozxn I would had so many awards #foryoupage #mk1 #johnnycage #relatable #foryoupage ♬ original sound – Boburt

@icejaker #viral #real #relatable #icejaker ♬ original sound – Boburt

On October 12th, 2023, TikToker^[6] @jozefuwu posted a video that became the sound's^[3] most-viewed video during the span of its first month, gaining roughly 13.2 million plays and 2.3 million likes in one week. The video captioned Johnny Cage with, "that one mf if replying late to texts was an award" (shown below).