About

Mads Mikkelsen Snoring or Hannibal Lecter Snoring refers to a reaction image of actor Mads Mikkelsen in his Hannibal Lecter role resting in a restraint trolley with his head tilted back and his eyes closed. In November 2023, the image achieved popularity as it was used to express boredom and frustration with clichés in fantasy video films and video games, and in sci-fi fantasy in particular.

Origin

The image originates from a still photograph of character Hannibal Lecter, portrayed by Mads Mikkelsen, made by photographer Brook Palmer^[1] for season three of Hannibal (shown below). The respective scene appears in episode 12 of the season.

On November 11th, 2023, X^[2] / Twitter user @ManletThorin posted a cropped image of Hannibal Lecter tilting his head back as if sleeping, captioning it with a frustrated greentext about a fantasy cliché of naming an underdog faction simply "the resistance." The post (shown below, left) received over 830 reposts and 14,000 likes in three days. On November 12th, 2023, @ManletThorin posted an edited version of the image, adding a drool bubble to it, and captioning it, ">science fiction setting >utopian society is named 'Eden'" The post received over 850 reposts and 11,000 likes on X^[3] in two days (shown below, right).

Spread

Following the posts, the format achieved popularity on X. For example, on November 12th, 2023, X^[4] user @RoosterRabid made a post about the presence of alternate timelines and multiverses in superhero settings, with the post garnering over 110 reposts and 1,100 likes in two days (shown below, left). Later on the same day, X^[5] user @HMBohemond used the image in a post about avoiding the topics of slavery and racism in fantasy settings which received over 560 reposts and 5,300 likes in the same timeframe (shown below, right).

The format maintained brief popularity on the platform in mid-November 2023.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References