About

Unnecessary Explosions refers to GIFs or videos which have been edited to include an exaggerated explosion effect in a situation where such an explosion had obviously not occurred.

Origin

On February 8th, 2010, YouTuber Sindri Johannsson^[11] uploaded a video titled "If Michael Bay Directed the Super Bowl" which featured Super Bowl footage with an explosion edited in. As of September 2014, the video has gained over 120,000 views.

On September 8th, YouTuber Rosarioproductions1^[8] uploaded a video titled "Unnecessary Explosions" which featured video clips with exaggerated explosions edited into them. As of September 2014, the video has gained over 400 views.

Spread

On April 17th, 2013, Redditor wildman50 submitted an animated GIF of a skateboarder landing a trick with a giant explosion titled "Skateboarding: directed by Michael Bay" to the /r/funny^[4] subreddit, gathering upwards of 3,400 up votes and 120 comments prior to being archived (shown below, left). On October 4th, Redditor ArcherJF posted an animated GIF featuring scenes from the 1997 period drama film Titanic edited with explosions titled "Titanic, as directed by Michael Bay" to /r/gifs,^[5] accumulating over 5,400 up votes and 75 comments in four months (shown below, middle). On February 15th, 2014, Redditor HowIChrgeLazer submitted a GIF of two bees colliding into a giant explosion titled "So I heard Michael Bay is getting into nature documentaries" to /r/gifs,^[6] garnering more than 2,400 up votes and 25 comments in the next 10 days (shown below, right).

On May 22, 2013, YouTuber AHarperFilms^[9] uploaded a video titled "Extremely Unnecessary Explosions" (Short Comedy)." As of September 2014, the video has gained over 500 views.

On August 4th, 2014, Reddit user jerip123 posted an Imgur album to the r/funny^[1] subreddit titled "Unnecessary Explosions" which features GIFs edited to include exaggerated explosions. Within 48 hours the thread gained over 3,000 points and over 800 comments. The same day the Tumblr blog TastefullyOffensive^[7] posted a collection of the GIFs. Within 24 hours the post gained over 25,000 notes. On August 4th, Elite Daily^[4] published a round-up of unnecessary explosion GIFs titled "When You Add Unnecessary Explosions To Funny GIFs, They Become Even Better." The GIFs were covered the same day by Heavy^[5] and Pleated Jeans.^[6] The following day UpRoxx^[3] published a roundup titled "Meme Watch: Unnecessary Explosions Added To GIFs Make Everything More Rad."

Notable Examples

Exploding Actresses

Exploding Actresses is a series of videos and animated GIFs by digital artist Simone Rovellini, featuring scenes from famous films which have been edited to make a character's head explode. On June 16th, 2013, the "Exploding Actresses" Tumblr^[2] blog was launched, with the first post highlighting an animated GIF of a scene from the 1959 musical The Sound of Music edited with Julie Andrews' head exploding (shown below).

Search Interest

External References