Undertaker Entering Arena

About

Undertaker Entering Arena, also known as "Wrestler Entering Arena," is an exploitable image macro series depicting WWE wrestler The Undertaker emerging from a flaming coffin with a surprised Randy Orton gawking underneath. It’s typically used as an object labeling macro to show shock and awe from a caption placed on The Undertaker’s emergence in the top frame with a response below overlaid on Orton’s face.

Origin

The original clip used in the meme comes from the WWE’s “Survivor Series,” which took place on November 27th, 2005. In the scene (featured below), Orton can be seen celebrating his victory in the event with his friends, family and other participants, when suddenly the lights go out and a bell tolls--signaling The Undertaker’s surprise emergence. Hooded figures then enter the arena while carrying a casket before placing it upright towards Orton and the ring. Lightning unexpectedly strikes the casket, setting it ablaze as The Undertaker emerges with his signature, intimidating glare. While this is going on, Orton can be seen reacting to the arrival with his mouth open in shock and fear. As The Undertaker enters the ring, he attacks many of the wrestlers in his path while Orton and his dad, Bob "Cowboy" Orton, flee from the arena.

The meme itself dates back to sometime in 2018, though exact origins are unknown. In a blog post from an unknown user to the site estebanvarillas.blogspot.com^[1], published on November 27th, 2018, they speculate about the origin and post the earliest example of the template.

Spread

The meme spread in 2018 and 2019 to various social media platforms where users continued to create new versions with captions. In a Facebook^[2] post on December 1st, 2018, to the page Memes desde Marte, one of the oldest examples can be seen with 249 likes, 15 comments and 195 shares.

Twitter also saw usage of the format in 2019, and an example was tweeted by user ArathGG on August 12th in regards to the 2019 Super Smash Con (shown below). The tweet was liked 170 times and retweeted 31 times.

Another version uploaded to Facebook^[3] features Ultra Instinct Shaggy and was posted on January 30th, 2019, to the Lord shaggy. page, receiving 45 likes and 27 shares.

Eventually, the format appeared on Reddit in 2019 and 2020, where it began to see increased use on a number of various subs. Redditor^[4] KillerShark8 posted a Dragon Ball variant on November 15th, 2019, to the r/Dragonballsuper subreddit, which was upvoted nearly 2,000 times.

On January 31st, 2020, Redditor Headed2Valhalla uploaded a meme (seen below) to r/memes and received two Reddit awards, over 33,400 upvotes and 175 comments.

The format then found its way to the r/MemeTemplatesOfficial sub on February 2nd, 2020, when Redditor^[5] Electromass requested the template under the title “Wrestler entering arena.” The post was commented on by many users who also linked the blank template, and it was upvoted over 9,000 times.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References