Major Hellstrom Sees Three Fingers
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About
Major Hellstrom Sees Three Fingers, also known as Guy Holding Up Three Fingers, refers to a series of image caption memes based on an image of Inglourious Basterds character Major Hellstrom (portrayed by actor August Diehl) realizing that he's talking to a British soldier. The format achieved virality on X / Twitter in February 2024, typically being used to joke about situations when somebody pretending to be someone else makes a slip.
Origin
On August 21st, 2009, the adventure war film Inglourious Basterds premiered.[1] In one scene of the film, the character Archie Hicox, a British officer, blows his cover when ordering drinks by using the wrong finger gesture for "three" (a German would normally use his thumb, index finger and middle finger for it) which is immediately noticed by German officer Major Hellstrom, portrayed by August Diehl. The mistake ultimately leads to a deadly shootout (scene shown below).
Drei Gläser!
On February 11th, 2024, X[2] / Twitter user @vanillatary posted an image of Hellstrom looking intently at the three-finger gesture, captioning it with a joke about Millennials pretending to be Gen Z online giving themselves away by using the word "doggo" (shown below). The post garnered over 4,900 reposts and 90,000 likes in three days.
Spread
In the following days, the image caption format spread on X / Twitter. On February 12th, 2024, X[3] user @goth600 posted a meme that received over 40 reposts and 380 likes in two days (shown below, left). Later that day, X[4] user @BriaNamtar posted a meme about Canadian death metal band Cryptopsy that garnered over 10 reposts and 170 likes in two days (shown below, right).
On February 13th, 2024, X[5] user @Izhnash12k used the image when quoting a post by another user in which they wrote, "Being born in America doesn't make you American, mate," possibly giving themselves up as non-American as it is unlikely for one to use "mate" as a term of address. The post (shown below) received over 150 reposts and 5,400 likes in one day.
Various Examples
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Search Interest
External References
Related Entries 196 total
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