About

*Record Scratch* *Freeze Frame* refers to a movie cliché in which a character is introduced by the sound of a vinyl record scratch followed by a freeze-frame, which is typically followed by a voice-over narration of the character explaining how they arrived in their current predicament. Many text-based posts and videos associated with the cliché involve the phrase, "Yep, that's me. You're probably wondering how I got into this situation …" and sometimes it's simply a photo with the accompanying caption, "Yup, that's me …" The format is also used in 4chan greentext stories, as well as parody videos that include a freeze frame of a video before something significant is about to happen (in a similar style to the To Be Continued meme) with a sound clip that says, "Yup, that's me …" accompanied by a cut of the song "Baba O'Riley" by The Who, followed by a montage of the preceding events.

Origin

The trope *Record Scratch* *Freeze Frame* can be found in many movies and is all-around a well-known cliché.

On December 19, 2010, "Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode III" aired, with the opening sketch having the first known instance of Record Scratch Freeze Frame that was accompanied by The Who song "Baba O'Riley." In the sketch, Emperor Palpatine is thrown into the death star's reactor by Darth Vader, and as he falls, the film stops and he reminisces about his past (seen below, left). This, along with the opening scene of "Premium Rush" (2012) popularized the use of the song in memes later on (seen below, right).

The first online occurrence is most likely 4chan around 2015: On June 13th, 2015, a /tv/ ^[1] (television and film) board user posted a mock film introductory sequence in which a record scratches, the frame freezes and a character begin discussing how they "got here" (shown below).

On January 19th, 2016, Twitter user @cbanks420lol posted a picture of a crucified Jesus Christ captioned with the "Yup, that's me…" joke (shown below). In the next week, other Twitter users posted similar tweets.^[2] This is most likely separate from the referenced 4chan threads.^[4]

On November 13th, 2016, Twitter user @freezeframebot posted the earliest usage of the "Yup, that's me." Baba O'Riley sound effect (shown below). The user himself claims he made the original .wav sound used in the memes. The sound effect soon spread to other platforms, including YouTube and Vine.

freeze frame pic.twitter.com/Y6bZjwuVKE

— Freeze Frame Bot (@freezeframebot) November 14, 2016

The now-defunct channel Mumkey Jones made a video sometime in 2018 titled "Munkey Jones Stops A School Shooting", with the phrase "Yup, that's me etc." appearing several times from different characters, with different explanations on how they got into the situation, also using the song. This is the origin of a separate audio clip that was also used in memes. (reupload shown below).^[3]

Spread

The YouTube channel Robthebig posted a few videos around November 2016, featuring scenes from various movies with "Yup, that's me. You're probably wondering…" as part of the title (however, the phrase isn't heard in the actual video). The video features quotes from the corresponding movie characters imposed on various scenes from the movies, all accompanied by "Baba O'Riley" (example seen below).^[5]

On November 10th, 2016, president-elect Donald Trump visited the Oval Office to talk to Barack Obama about foreign and domestic policy.^[6] Following their meeting, they met with reporters for a brief conference and photo opportunity. In one photo, a weary-looking Obama looks to the camera while shaking hands with Trump (shown below, left). That day, Twitter user @lifeincartoon^[7] posted the photo along with a "*Record scratch* *Freeze frame*" caption (shown below, right). Within 72 hours, the tweet gathered upwards of 300,000 likes and 171,400 retweets.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References