About

Chicken Run is a stop motion comedy drama film about anthropomorphic chickens planning to escape from a Yorkshire chicken farm in 1950s England. In December 2016, image macros referencing the film began widely circulating within ironic meme communities on Reddit and Facebook.

History

On June 23rd, 2000, the film Chicken Run was released in theaters, in which the protagonist chickens Rocky and Ginger rally other chickens to escape a farm to avoid being killed and sold as food. The film was released to critical acclaim and grossed over $224 million in sales as the highest-grossing stop motion film of all time.

Online Presence

On March 16th, 2012, Tumblr^[5] user ialexdiamond posted two animated GIFs from the film, garnering more than 660,000 notes over the next five years (shown below). On March 31st, a page for Chicken Run was created on TV Tropes.^[7]

On February 6th, 2015, YouTuber Coopergal33 posted a scene from Chicken Run dubbed with the 2005 pop song "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap (shown below).

On March 30th, the Ginger the Chicken Facebook page posted a "Can We Listen to Something Else" image macro referencing the Chicken Run soundtrack (shown below, left). On April 17th, the "Chicken Run Memes" Facebook^[1] page was launched. On August 29th, the Ginger the Chicken Facebook^[6] page shared a "Totally Looks Like" image comparing Anthony Weiner to a chicken from Chicken Run (shown below, right).

On December 19th, 2016, Redditor Billy_Crumpets^[2] posted a screenshot of a YouTube video titled "10 Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True" with a scene from Chicken Run edited into the video frame to /r/me_irl^[3] (shown below). Within 24 hours, the post garnered upwards of 37,200 votes (90% upvoted) and 180 comments. That day, Redditor GreatBayRowing submitted a post titled "Chicken Run Memes Rising! Buy! Buy! Buy!" to /r/MemeEconomy /r/MemeEconomy.^[4]

On December 20th, 2016, BuzzFeed published a listicle titled "Hilarious Chicken Run Memes That Will Leave you Laughing." That day, Redditor jmr123456 submitted a post lamenting that the memes had "been discovered by BuzzFeed" to /r/MemeEconomy.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References