Oompa Loompas Celebrating

About

Oompa Loompas Celebrating refers to a series of jokes about the macabre response to children being hurt or tortured in the children's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and its various film adaptations. In these works, as a child is ironically harmed by their desire for candy, the Oompa Loompas dance and sing about the child's punishment.

Origin

On January 17th, 1964, the children's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl was published. In the book, the characters known as the Oompa Loompas, who make the candy in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, sing after each child on a tour of the factory is punished. In 1971, the first film adaptation of the book was released. The film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory featured a number of musical numbers of the Oompa Loompas dancing and celebrating the children's demise (example below).^[1]

On April 18th, 2018, Twitter^[6] user @muyrando tweeted, "*job interview* Wonka: Any questions? Oompa Loompa: So we just go out and start singing whenever a kid dies?" The tweet received more than 18,000 retweets and 68,000 likes in less than one year (shown below).

Spread

On December 25th, 2018, Twitter^[7] user @OfficialErnst tweeted a variation of the Dancing Theresa May meme with a caption about a child being punished in the chocolate factory (shown below).

On February 18th, 2019, Twitter ^[2] user @twoghostin posted a variation of the Family 'Act My Age' Dance with the caption "the oompa loompas whenever one of the kids got hurt in the movie." The post received more than 465 retweets and 2,000 likes in less than two months (shown below).

the oompa loompas whenever one of the kids got hurt in the movie pic.twitter.com/HQpc6gBk66

— . (@twoghostin) February 18, 2019

On March 26th, 2019, Twitter ^[3] user @UnderwearMemes tweeted an image of several people doing the Shoot Dance as the punchline to a joke about an "innocent child" dying. The post received more than 100 retweets and 475 likes in less than one week (shown below, left).

On March 28th, Redditor^[4] HectorDBotyInspect0r posted a screenshot from the film Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. They captioned the image "innocent child *dies*" and used the image to represent the Oompa Loompa celebration. The post received more than 11,000 points (98% upvoted) and 60 comments (shown below, center).

The following day, Redditor^[5] posted a similar variation, using an image of Psy from the music video for "Gangnam Style". The post received more than 28,000 points (96% upvoted) and 110 comments (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References