About

Scared Patrick refers to an exploitable template from the Spongebob Squarepants episode "Hall Monitor." In the template, Patrick Star is being interviewed by police, who show him something which scares him, leading to an exaggerated reaction.

Origin

The image comes from the Spongebob Squarepants episode "Hall Monitor,"^[1] which aired August 28th, 1999 (shown below).

On April 24th, 2017, the template image was posted to /r/dankmemes by ariambe,^[4] gaining over 3,000 points (shown below).

Spread

It grew into a popular format on /r/dankmemes on April 25th, 2017. One of the earliest, most popular variations, posted by RoznosicielCiast,^[2] used the template in a similar way to Sleeping Shaq (shown below). The post gained over 1,500 points in one day.

Following RoznosicielCiast's post, dozens more variations were posted to /r/dankmemes with various objects or phrases causing Patrick to scream. RoznosicielCiast's post was copied to /r/MemeEconomy,^[3] where commenters were split on its potential staying power. User Eikkaaaaa wrote "This meme is a great investment because it is extremely versatile. I can see it becoming popular in the meme market in near future, and thefore (sic) being a solid investment for some quick profit." User tardcrusher commented that the meme was simply a variation on other, similar templates, writing "Topics will be low effort and cover the following jokes: Holocaust, 🅱️, upvotes, school shooting, pedophilia, mods are gay, 2 genders, and possibly cancer. Once the punchline of these jokes have been copied and pasted from another meme onto this format it will most likely become old and stale."

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References