Polish Jerry / Khe Berga?

About

Polish Jerry refers to a series of image macros featuring a picture of Jerry from Tom and Jerry with his eyes half-open, usually accompanied by an offensive or edgy joke. In Spanish-speaking communities, the image was often coupled with the catchphrase Khé berga? to express confusion, disgust or disbelief.

Origin

The Tom & Jerry short film "The Milky Waif" premiered on May 18th, 1946.^[1] In the short, a baby mouse is left at his Jerry's hole doorstep, and in his attempt to feed the baby, Jerry tries to steal the cat Tom's milk (shown below).

The image of Jerry that inspired the meme is one of the frames used in a sequence where Jerry turns his head to call the baby mouse after gazing at Tom's dish (shown below).

Spread

On November 17th, 2015, Taringa! user Moonchild_16^[2] posted several screenshots from Tom and Jerry. On March 2nd, 2016, mrpablin reposted the image of Jerry in the comments section using the caption “uhhh como pegoo chaboonnn”, phrase equivalent to “uhhh, how this got me blitzed, duudee!” (shown below).

Khé Berga?

Between late 2016 and early 2017, the image of Jerry trended as a reaction image with an impact font caption reading "Khé Berga?", a misspelling of “¿Qué verga?” (equivalent to “What the fuck?"). The earliest known instance of this meme was posted on Amino Apps^[3] on April 4th, 2016 with the watermark "Khriz Reef" (shown below).

On October 3rd, 2016, the Facebook page Khe Berga^[4] was created inspired by the meme. As of November 2020, the page has gained over 42,000 likes and followers.

On October 4th, 2017, Amino Apps user Toshi3x^[5] included it in a post about top memes of 2016 and early 2017.

English Variants and Polish Jerry

The first known usage of the image macro in an English language meme had the caption "When you're watching a holocaust documentary in school and the teacher asks why you're masturbating" (shown below).

On December 11th, 2016, various Instagram accounts accounts began sharing the meme.^[6][7] The next day, the same pic appeared on 4chan’s /pol/ board^[8] where a user asked "Why do people deny The Holocaust?" and several anonymous users responded with Holocaust denial conspiracy theories. Two days later, on December 13th, the user Skymochi^[9] posted the meme on FunnyJunk, where it received more than 360 points and 11,600 views.

On December 17th, 2016, a year before the creation of this entry, Know Your Meme user sebool112 uploaded the image to the Tom and Jerry entry gallery under the name Polish Jerry.^[10] sebool112 explained they had found the meme on the Polish site jbdz.com.pl, and translated it to English.^[11][12]

On January 30th, 2017, YouTuber FMF^[13] posted a video of Tom asking Jerry to have sexual intercourse with him and in response, Jerry makes the face. The post (shown below) received more than 93,000 views in less than one year.

On March 6th, 2017, a Polish Jerry Meme Generator^[14] was created. As of October 2017, there have been 600 posts using the picture (examples below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Searches for "khe berga" spiked during October, November and December of 2016 especially within Latinamerica. Searches for "polish jerry" increased almost exclusively in the US and Poland from 2017 onward, after sebool112's upload on December 2016.

External References