About

Running Kingpin refers to a blurry image of the 2018 animated superhero film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse character Kingpin running towards the camera. Online, the image has been circulated as a reaction in reference to situations in which individuals are being literally or metaphorically chased, used in a similar manner to Running Officer Earl memes.

Origin

On December 14th, 2018, animated superhero film "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" premiered in the United States.^[1] In one scene of the film, character Kingpin runs towards main protagonist Miles Morales along the side of a building suspended in the air (clip shown below)

Spread

Before March 25th, 2019, an unknown user created a meme based on the still image, posting it with the caption "Blow Job" (shown below). On March 25th, Instagram user meme.reposting made the earliest available repost of the image, with the post gaining over 80 likes in two months.^[2]

In the following months, the image has been reposted by multiple Instagram accounts, including notable reposts by users 52blunts^[3] and full_random_memes.^[4] On April 5th, Instagram user obamaworship posted another still from the scene captioned "me on my way to commit way crimes".^[5]

On May 27th, 2019, Redditor Fuelz_Tron used the cropped version of the image in a meme posted to /r/dankmemes subreddit,^[6] with the post gaining over 32,800 upvotes in nine days.

In the following days, the image gained significant popularity on Reddit and Instagram, with notable examples posted in /r/dankmemes,^[7] /r/memes^[8] and other communities.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References