![[gasps] I promised myself I'd never kill an old person. I'd let the American healthcare system do that.](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/list/002/179/285/4c8.jpg "He's right you know")
King Shark
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About
King Shark also know as Nanaue is a fictional character from the DC Universe and comic series The Suicide Squad. The character was first created in 1994 by comic writer Karl Kesel. Memes related to King Shark began to surface in March 2021 when the first The Suicide Squad (2021) trailer was released. More notable and more frequent memes about the character began surfacing just before and in the week following the movie's release on August 6th, 2021.
Origin
King Shark's character in the DC Comics universe was originally created by Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett, first appearing in Superboy Volume 4 #0. Nanaue, as he's also known, first appeared as part of the Suicide Squad with the New 52 series in Volume 4 #1 by Adam Glass and Federico Dallocchio.[4]
On March 26th, 2021, the official Suicide Squad trailer was revealed on HBO, and then later on YouTube[1] (shown below), where it received over 2.3 million views in four months. This first-ever live-action version of King Shark propelled the character into memes shortly after.
Memes about the character and his new CGI design began to surface on Reddit (shown below, top), pulling from King Shark stills and moments from the trailer. Memes also began to pull from a movie poster (shown below, bottom) released around the same time.
Spread
On August 6th, 2021, the movie was released in theaters and on HBO Max, and fans took to social media to rave about King Shark's character on platforms like Reddit, Twitter and iFunny, most notably. Overall, everyone loved the character for his comic relief and general badassery. King Shark had some memorable quotes and catchphrases in the movie as well that received meme attention like, "Bird," "Nom-nom" and "I no friends" (examples shown below).
Most of the memes, in general, revolved around the character's mass appeal to the audience. Fans were overall pleased with the character's new representation, one similar to that of other simple-minded superhero characters like Groot from Guardian's of the Galaxy. Like Groot, King Shark is described as dumb, loveable and otherworldly in memes. Some of this most notable fan love has also appeared on TikTok (examples shown below).
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6994219907088944390
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6994277878883994885
James Gunn, the director of the film, even retweeted several fan-made memes that expressed love towards the character after Suicide Squad's release (shown below).[2][3]
Various Examples
Search Interest
External References
[1] Youtube – THE SUICIDE SQUAD Official Trailer
[2] Twitter – @LBStudios
[3] Twitter – @moe_factor
[4] Fandom – King Shark
Top Comments
Väinö
Aug 12, 2021 at 03:05PM EDT
kraas
Aug 12, 2021 at 03:48PM EDT