About

Sundowner is one of the primary antagonists in the action hack and slash videogame Metal Gear Rising: Revengance, being the leader of the terrorist group Desperado Enforcement LLC. Online, Sundowner is widely used as a reaction image for his memorable and somewhat goofy facial expresions, and associated to a series of catchphrases from the game, most prominently "I'm Fucking Invincible!".

Origin

On February 19th, 2013, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was released in North America for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles. In the game's main campaign, the player controls the cyborg mercenary Raiden, who eventually must fight the mercenary Sundowner.^[3] Prior to the boss battle, a cut scene is shown featuring a conversation between the two characters, where Sundowner words some phrases like “The Good Old Days Right After 9/11”, "Kids Are Cruel" or "I Keep in Touch With My Inner Kid" (shown below, left). During the battle, Sundowner would deploy an explosive shield, sometimes while shouting "I'm Fucking Invincible" (shown below, right).

Spread

On February 6th, 2013, prior to the game's release, a thread on 4chan's videogame board /v/ featured an edited version of Constanza.jpg with Sundowner's face.^[1] During the following days, Sundowner close-ups started being used by /v/ users, being called a "reaction face goldmine" by some of them.^[5][6]

On January 20th, 2014, YouTuber Lt. Eddy uploaded a video titled "[SFM] MGS – Sundowner visits Raiden", featuring a Source Filmmaker animation with Sundowner and Raiden, gaining over 36,000 views in less than two years. On May 27th, 2014, youtuber Santa Havelyn uploaded a video titled "Sundowner Plays Dark Souls II", featuring a character with a similar appearance to Sundowner in the video game Dark Souls 2 while mixing the footage with voice lines from Revengeance, gathering over 74,000 views in the following year. September 20th, 2014, a 8chan dedicated to Sundowner posting and discussion was created.^[4] Along with this, Sundowner has also gained a following on sites like 4chan^[2] and Tumblr.^[7]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References