About

PTSD Chihuahua, also known as Chihuahua Vietnam War Flashbacks, is a reaction image depicting a dog staring off into the distance with a double exposure of photos from the Vietnam War overlaid on top of the image. The photo is typically used to reference something that evokes tragic or negative memories from past events, either from the perspective of the dog itself or the subject in the caption. The image is also frequently edited to add additional objects to the collage for more relevance to a specific event, thing or time period referenced in the caption. This meme also uses the same image found in other War Flashback Parodies.

Origin

The two photos used in the PTSD Chihuahua meme consist of a double exposure with a scared chihuahua and a photo taken during the Vietnam War. The war photo (shown below) is the same one used in other similar War Flashback Parody memes, but the original image of the dog is unknown. The watermark “@doggonews” appears to come from a now-deleted social media account that no longer exists, though they were likely the original creator since it appears in nearly every instance of the meme.

The earliest instance of the two photos being combined into one as a meme comes from a post on February 20th, 2017, by Redditor^[1] Matt70655 to the r/funny sub, where it received over 3,600 upvotes. The post (seen below) uses the title, “Don't use a vacuum near puppers.”

Spread

Shortly after on February 20th, 2017, Redditor^[2] Jordan311R then used the image as a format to create a meme (shown below). This meme, which received over 2,000 upvotes on the r/NamFlashbacks subreddit, was then spread around the internet and reposted to several different places.

On June 4th, 2017, Redditor^[3] Jordan311R posted another variant of the meme (seen below) to the r/NamFlashbacks sub with a different caption, which was upvoted over 1,200 times, and the bottom text, “Henlo darkness my old friend.”

Redditor^[4] kaiboy2205 can be seen posting another example to the r/me_irl sub on July 12th, 2019. This post (shown below) uses a commonly seen theme within the meme where the “PTSD” stems from future children asking their parents about memes or other forms of internet culture. The meme received over 11,500 upvotes.

On August 27th, 2019, Redditor^[5] l19simpl received over 111,000 upvotes, 778 comments and several Reddit awards for their take on the meme, which was posted to the r/dankmemes sub (seen below).

The image itself can also be used simply as a reaction to “triggering” events as a reply to posts around the web. One such example comes from 9GAG^[6] user arj555 on December 28th, 2019. In a post depicting a man as a gorilla, arj555 can be seen remembering Harambe and then placing the image underneath to reflect their PTSD from the event (shown below).

On March 24th, 2020, Twitter^[7] user m3aruf tweeted a photoshopped version of the meme with Purell to reference the events of the coronavirus pandemic. The tweet (seen below) received over 459,000 likes and 130,000 retweets.

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References