About

Weapons Run refers to a specific way of running with your arms raised halfway up your sides from the 2025 horror-thriller film Weapons. The run prominently features in the movie and its advertising and was popularized through memes in early August 2025, surrounding its release date. Some of the most popular memes use a screenshot from the movie showing a child running across the street, typically paired with text captions. On TikTok, the run inspired memes in which TikTokers film themselves doing the Weapons run under a variety of captions. According to the director, Zach Cregger, the rigid running posture takes inspiration from the infamous "The Terror of War" photograph from the Vietnam War.

Origin

On April 29th, 2025, the Warner Bros. YouTube^[1] channel posted a trailer for the movie Weapons, which was released on August 8th of that year. At the 1:26 timestamp, a clip of a child running across the street at night with his arms out at his sides, raised about halfway, plays.

The clip of the child running became one of the most prevalent clips from the movie, leading up to and following its release, also becoming a meme.

It is unclear who first posted it as a meme, but one of the earliest known examples is an OMW to the Liqa Sto meme posted by X^[2] user @luv2read13 on August 8th, 2025, garnering over 156,000 likes in roughly two weeks.

Meaning Behind Weapons Run

According to a July 16th, 2025, interview with Entertainment Weekly,^[12] Weapons director Zach Cregger said the children's rigid running posture with their arms extended to their sides took inspiration from "The Terror of War" (also known as the "Napalm Girl") photograph from the Vietnam War, noting:

"From the first moment, I was like, 'And they run like that. There's that terrible photo of that girl in Vietnam with the napalm burn. I think that image is so awful, and the way she's holding her arms out just killed me. I think there's something really upsetting about that posture. If I had to guess, that might be where the seed is from. I don't know. But there was no second-guessing that pose. I knew that they would run that way."

Spread

Memes about the run from Weapons continued to spread over the following days in mid-August 2025, with many using the same image of the child running across the street in image caption memes.

For example, on August 11th, 2025, Instagram^[3][4] pages sustopodcast and tracktalk.pod posted collections of memes using the image, garnering over 90 likes and 820 likes, respectively, in just over a week.

That same day, TikToker^[5] @tor.rence posted a video doing the run under the caption, "Justine's class at 2:17 AM on a random Wednesday morning," garnering over 10,000 views in the same span of time.

On August 15th, X^[6] user @just_a_worm25 quoted a post about Regina Hall and Anna Faris returning to Scary Movie 6, writing, "Watching Anna Faris do the Weapons run into a pole will fix me," garnering over 104,000 views in five days.

Later that day, X^[7] user @FinalDude78 posted the image of the child running, writing, "leaving work early on a Friday afternoon like," garnering over 59,000 likes in five days.

On August 16th, 2025, X^[8] user @raeromt posted the image, writing, "Realizing I can run while I’m drunk," garnering over 135,000 likes in four days. It was reposted by Instagram^[9] user comegetyourjuice on August 17th, garnering over 18,900 likes in three days. On August 18th, Mashable^[10] published an article about the meme.

On August 19th, TikToker^[11] @juicy.jacobb posted a video doing the run through a mall, garnering over 490,000 views in a day.

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References