The Rock's Pancakes

About

The Rock's Pancakes refers to a viral photograph of actor and retired professional wrestler Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson next to a tall tower of pancakes. Often used in articles about Johnson and his cheat days, the photograph gained viral popularity as an exploitable source material for memes and redraws in June 2021.

Origin

In September 2012, actor and professional wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson tweeted^[1] a photograph of himself sitting next to a serving of 12 pancakes, stacked in a tower, holding a fork and a knife in his hands. In the tweet, Johnson wrote about taking a cheat day from his normal diet, calling his cheat days "legendary." The post received over 6,200 retweets and 5,800 likes in nine years (shown below, left).

On March 4th, 2014, Johnson reposted a cropped version of the image to his Instagram^[2] page, where it gained over 364,000 likes in seven years (shown below, right).

Spread

In the following years, the image was used in multiple articles about Johnson's diet and his cheat days.^[4]

On August 5th, 2017, ShitpostBot 5000 user Snippy115 added^[5] the earliest discovered photoshop of the image, created by an unknown author, in which the pancakes had been replaced with a viral image of SpongeBob SquarePants character Gary (shown below). In the following years, multiple viral reposts of the image were made on various sites.^[6]

Prior to March 2021, the image saw occasional use as exploitable, with users replacing pancakes with various foods and objects. For example, on January 20th, 2018, Twitter^[7] user @BigSaucy94 posted a Tide PODS meme that gained 60 retweets and nearly 1,000 likes in three years (shown below, left). On November 12th, 2019, Instagram^[8] page theburgerpriest posted an edit that gained over 2,300 likes in two years (shown below, right).

Prior to March 25th, 2021, during the popularity of I Hate the Antichrist memes that exploited a conspiracy theory about the United Nations, an unknown user posted a version of the meme in which a blue UN helmet had been photoshopped onto Johnson's head, with a bottle of corn syrup edited instead of the pancakes. On March 25th, iFunny^[9] user Fredistair_ made the earliest discovered repost of the image (shown below, left).

On April 7th, iFunny^[10] user bn3543 posted an edit of that image, replacing the writing on the bottle to "Cum." The post (shown below, center) was featured on the app and received over 11,600 smiles in three months. On April 8th, Redditor hornmelon posted a captioned version of the I Hate the Antichrist meme to the /r/okbuddyretard^[11] subreddit, where it received over 6,300 upvotes in three months (shown below, right).

In the following days, more edits of the image were posted in /r/okbuddyretard.^[12][13]

On June 11th, 2021, Twitter^[14] page TheFunny_mp4 reposted a Normal Pills edit of the image created by an unknown author, with the post gaining over 2,200 retweets and 25,800 likes (shown below).

The post was followed by a spike in usage of the format, with viral edits and redraws posted by users on Twitter and other platforms in the following weeks.

Recipe

On August 17th, 2016, Johnson posted a video recipe for his pancakes that received over 3.7 million views and 666,000 likes on Instagram^[3] in five years (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References