About

Neo Stopping Bullets refers to a scene from The Matrix Reloaded where the protagonist Neo (played by Keanu Reeves) stops a hail of bullets coming toward him in mid-air by holding his hand out in front of his body, suspending them in midair. The scene has been the subject of memes as early as 2008, often used in image macros and as an object-labeling format used to joke about stopping something in its tracks.

Origin

The image of Neo stopping bullets in midair comes from The Matrix Reloaded, released on May 15th, 2003. In the scene, a group of people shoot guns at Neo and he holds his hand out in front of him. The bullets stop in midair and then drop to the ground (shown below).

It is unknown who first used the image in a meme, but one of the earliest available uploads of a meme using the image is a Demotivational Poster making an In Soviet Russia joke posted to the IGN forums in 2008, which was archived by Wayback Machine^[1] (shown below).

Spread

Aversion of the format was added to IMGflip^[2] in 2013, becoming notably popularized and inspiring over 200 variations eight years, most simple top-and-bottom text memes (examples shown below).

On November 26th, 2019, a Redditor posted a meme to /r/MemeEconomy^[3] using the image remixed with the Woman Yelling at a Cat meme, gaining over 26,000 upvotes in two years (shown below).

Templates

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References