About

Unpopular Opinion Swords, also known as Flynn Surrounded by Swords, is a reaction image and an object-labeling meme featuring a frame from the 2010 Disney animated fantasy film Tangled. The shot sees the character Flynn with a number of swords pointing to his neck as he looks unfazed and comfortable. Online, some use the image as a prompt to engage with people and their unpopular opinions.

Origin

On November 24th, 2010, Disney released the film Tangled in the United States.^[1] In the film, the character Flynn is apprehended by a group at a bar, who points a number of swords at him as he appears unphased (clip below).

On March 30th, 2015, 9GAG ^[2] user shared a screenshot of the scene. They captioned the image, "This should replace that stupid penguin as the new unpopular opinion meme." The post received more than 36,000 points and 425 comments in less than six years (shown below).

On October 11th, 2016, Imgur^[6] user reapeatalifetime posted one of the earliest memes based on the image, with the post receiving over 940 points and 39,800 views in three years (shown below, left). The meme combined the image with another Unpopular Opinion format, Unpopular Opinion Guns.

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Spread

In August 2020, people on Twitter adopted the image to express unpopular opinions. On August 24th, Twitter^[3] user @Balmo1603 tweeted one of the earliest, writing "Piper es la peor waifu" (shown below, left).

Over the next month, people continued to post the image. On September 26th, 2020, Twitter^[4] @exhaustcd tweeted the image with the caption, "drop a food take that gets this type of reaction." The tweet received more than 18,000 retweets and 7,100 likes in less than one week (shown below, center).

The following day, on September 27th, 2020, Twitter^[5] user @wordsborn tweeted the image as a prompt: "what book opinion will get you in this situation?" The post received more than 3,800 retweets and 1,500 likes in less than three days (shown below, right).

Related Memes

Unpopular Opinion Guns

Unpopular Opinion Guns, also known as John Wick Surrounded By Guns, refers to a series of memes, fan art and tributes based on a promotional posted for John Wick: Chapter Two film in which 20 men are aiming weapons at the head of the main protagonist John Wick, portrayed by Keanu Reeves. In the following years, the image has been used as an exploitable and object labeling meme, with Unpopular Opinion versions gaining popularity on iFunny, /r/okbuddyretard subreddit and Twitter in late September 2019.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References