About

The Government Wants Him Killed On Sight refers to an image macro meme featuring a picture of an orangutan wearing a hat and a blue suit. The meme was popularized in late 2020, later turned into an exploitable format in which X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit users replaced the orangutan with popular characters or animals.

Origin

On September 20th, 2020, the Facebook^[1] meme page Memes With An Overall Lack Of Context uploaded the earliest known version of the image featuring an orangutan wearing a hat and a blue suit accompanied by the headline "The government wants him killed on sight." The post (seen below) amassed more than 779 likes and 316 reposts in four years.

Spread

Over the following years, different variations of the meme were made using the same headline, often adding animals or cute characters over the orangutan with a hat picture. For example, on October 13th, 2022, X^[2] meme page @literallymecats replaced the orangutan with an image of a kitty (seen below), which amassed over 5,300 likes and 600 reposts in two years.

On September 28th, 2024, X^[3] user @KindaHagi shared a funny interaction after they sent the "The government wants him killed on sight" meme to a friend. The post (seen below) received roughly 40,000 likes and 1,200 reposts in a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References