About

Kid Named Zach refers to a series of Kid Named X memes which imagine a school student named Zachary barely escaping fire and explosions during a school evacuation due to going last in alphabetical order. The joke achieved popularity as a video caption meme format on TikTok and iFunny in August 2023.

Origin

On June 14th, 2023, TikToker^[1] giliann.deserva posted a gameplay clip from Sonic Boom, a romhack of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 released in 2009. The clip, in which Sonic runs through the level as a wall of fire is chasing him and set to electronic music, received over three million views and 257,000 likes in three months.

On July 20th, 2023, X^[2] user @issep_officiel captioned the video with a joke about a student named Zakaria running for his life during a fire evacuation due to his name coming up last in alphabetical order. The post gained over 50 reposts and 270 likes in two months (shown below) and was copied by user @LeYgrek^[3] on the same day, with the remade post gaining over 2,600 reposts and 21,900 likes in the same period.

y'a le feu-prof : tout le monde sort par ordre alphabétiquePov : Zakaria pic.twitter.com/Gkj2b9GP2N

— Issep  (@issep_officiel) July 20, 2023

On July 21st, 2023, Redditor Le-Vagabond27 posted a translated version of the meme to the /r/whenthe^[4] subreddit, where it accrued over 7,500 upvotes in two months (shown below).

Posts from the whenthe community on Reddit

Spread

Starting in early August 2023, more video caption memes pairing the joke with various clips were shared on TikTok, iFunny and other platforms. For example, on August 6th, 2023, TikTok^[5] user @those.memes.139 posted a Geometry Dash version of the meme that received over 795,000 views and 82,900 likes in two months (shown below).

On September 9th, 2023, TikTok^[6] user @shiroyama_21 posted a Pirates of the Caribbean meme that received over two million views and 440,000 likes in two weeks (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References