About

"Tell Me, Do You Bleed?" is a memorable quote from the teaser trailer for the upcoming 2016 DC Comics live-action superhero film Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, in which Batman taunts the seemingly invincible alien Superman with the rhetorical question, insinuating that he too is mortal.

Origin

On April 16th, 2015, Warner Bros. Pictures released the teaser trailer for the upcoming crossover film Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, in which Batman (played by Ben Affleck) asks Superman (played by Henry Cavill) if he is capable of bleeding when hurt (shown below).

Batman: "Tell me, do you bleed?"
Batman: "You will."

Spread

That day, the Cantinho do Caio Facebook^[3] page posted a comic in which Batman asks Wonder Woman if she bleeds, to which she responds "Sure. Five days a month" (shown below, left). The following day, Redditor future_room reposted the comic to the /r/funny^[2] subreddit. Over the next four months, the Facebook post gained over 670 likes and the Reddit post received more than 4,400 votes (91% upvoted). On April 17th, a Facebook^[5] page titled "Tell me, Do You Bleed? You Will" was launched. On April 20th, artist Bobby Rubio^[6] tweeted an illustration of Batman offering Superman a band-aid while asking "Tell me… do you bleed?" (shown below, right). On April 22nd, Imgur^[7] user CosmicForward reposted Rubio's illustration.

On April 24th, a post was submitted on 4chan featuring a thumbnail image of Batman with the phrase "Do you bleed?", followed by a photo of actress Scarlet Johansson with the caption "Once a month…" (shown below). That day, a screenshot of the thread was posted to the /r/4chan^[4] subreddit, where the top comment referred to it as a "shitpost".

Various Examples

External References