Waffle Falling Over / Waffled

About

Waffle Falling Over, also known as Waffled, is a YouTube video of a slice of waffle bread falling on a stovetop. Despite its monotonous and even anticlimactic nature, or perhaps precisely because of it, the video quickly spawned a handful of remixes and parodies upon being discovered via Reddit on September 9th, 2013. Years later, in early 2023, the video saw a resurgence in memetic usage when YouTubers placed characters beneath the waffle to show them getting crushed by it, referred to as getting "Waffled."

Origin

The original clip, simply titled "Waffle Falling Over," was uploaded as part of an ongoing documentary project by YouTuber^[1] Schnooleheletteletto on August 14th, 2013. However, the video largely remained under the radar until it was linked to Reddit^[2] on September 9th. In the following 48 hours, the YouTube video garnered more than 630,000 views and at least 8,600 likes. Over the course of 10 years, it gained roughly 12 million views and 582,000 likes (shown below).

Prior to the viral takeoff of "Waffle Falling Over," Schnooleheletteletto^[7] had uploaded a handful of similar videos in which various food items are shown succumbing to gravity (shown below).

Spread

That same day, September 9th, 2013, YouTuber^[8] kazoodac (formerly known as Andrew Czudak) uploaded a response video titled "Waffle Falling Over V2," in which an exploitable cutout of Surprised Patrick from SpongeBob SquarePants is revealed behind the fallen waffle (shown below). The video accrued more than 156,000 views in the next 48 hours. Over the course of ten years, it gained roughly 338,800 views and 2,400 likes (shown below).

A handful of other remixes and parody videos^[3] also followed suit with additional sound and visual effects, with some instances cleverly edited to poke fun at the overused tropes associated with specific TV series and movies, including Breaking Bad, LOST, The Sopranos and even Michael Bay films. On September 10th, Mashable^[5] picked up on the emerging remix fad in a post titled "Chomp on the New 'Waffle Falling Over' Meme," and by the next day, numerous parody examples had been highlighted on BuzzFeed^[6] and BoingBoing.^[4]

Waffled / 2023 Resurgence

On March 20th, 2023, YouTubers began posting videos with the waffle falling over, creating a new trend called getting "waffled" in which characters were placed beneath the waffle to get crushed by it, similar to YouTuber^[8] kazoodac's 2013 video. On March 20th, two YouTubers posted "waffled" videos. For instance, YouTuber^[9] Shura posted a video titled "Ehehehe… Hahahah… AHHAHAHAHAH! *Waffled*" in which the character Specter from Arknights was inserted, gaining roughly 1.2 million views and 72,000 likes in two months (shown below, left). YouTuber^[10] Michiruchii Ch. also posted a video on March 20th called, "kufufu *waffled*" in which Asagi Mutsuki from Blue Archive was inserted, gaining roughly 231,000 views and 10,000 likes in two months (shown below, right).

The "waffled" trend continued into May 2023, earning various iterations from other YouTubers.^[11][12]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References