Why Did Jake Do That? / Jake Scream

About

Why Did Jake Do That? also known as Jake's Apple Pie Scream, refers to a humorous question asked about a scene in the Cartoon Network show Adventure Time in which the character Jake the Dog screams "No!" with an exaggerated face because Finn said he was going to eat all of Tree Trunks' apple pie. The scene became a meme on TikTok and YouTube, among other video platforms, where creators re-edited the scene in various ways, centering on a "blue comment" search query on TikTok that read "Why did Jake do that?" The meme was based on a precursor "blue comment" query called "Why did SpongeBob do that?" In late 2023, video creators resurfaced other clips from Adventure Time pairing them with the same question. Redraws of the scene also surfaced.

Origin

On April 12th, 2010, season 1, episode 4 of Adventure Time entitled "Tree Trunks" aired on Cartoon Network.^[1] In one scene, Tree Trunks calls for Finn and Jake to come eat apple pie to which Finn says to Jake, "I'm gonna eat it all before you even get there!" Jake then screams, "No!" with an exaggerated face. Jake screaming "No!" was uploaded to YouTube^[2] as early as January 28th, 2012, gaining roughly 190,500 views in 11 years (shown below).

In 2023, meme creators on TikTok resurfaced the clip, pairing it with the question, "Why did Jake do that?" The question was based on a prior meme about SpongeBob SquarePants in which creators asked, "Why did SpongeBob do that?" in reference to a scene where he hypnotized Mrs. Puff, originally posted by TikToker^[3] @iamgeeked on January 24th, 2023, gaining over 4.1 million plays and 661,100 likes in nine months (shown below). The video led to a series of repost screenshots^[4] with the question "Why did SpongeBob do that?"

On October 1st, 2023, TikToker^[5] @rip_anotherguyss earnestly captioned a video of Jake's death scene with, "Why did Jake do this?" gaining over 2.7 million plays and 230,800 likes in nine days. The question was then satirically used for the Jake screaming "No!" scene by TikToker^[6] @endercore19 later on October 1st, receiving roughly 372,500 plays and 35,600 likes in nine days (shown below).

The video used in the aforementioned TikTok video was originally uploaded by Instagram^[12] users @garbanzo_meatball and @vincentvlime2.0 on September 26th, 2023, which used the "Tails scream" from Sonic.exe. The original video received roughly 1,300 likes in one month (shown below).

The Instagram users uploaded similar videos with Jake's scream during the same timeframe in late September 2023.^[13][14]

Spread

Following the upload of the aforementioned video, others on the app started to use the scene and its correlating question in more meme videos. For instance, on October 4th, 2023, TikToker^[7] @lay0dakid posted a version that made the scene creepy, gaining roughly 96,300 plays and 4,900 likes in six days (shown below, left). On October 8th, TikToker^[8] @lord._duck captioned a scene from the episode Card Wars with the question, gaining roughly 180,100 plays and 36,500 likes in two days (shown below, right).

Going into October 2023, reposts of the "Why did Jake do that?" videos surfaced on YouTube.^[9] During the same timeframe, an art trend started to surface on TikTok via photo slideshows in which users drew the scene correlating with its audio. For instance, on October 8th, 2023, TikToker^[10] @overseeree redrew the scene, including the "Why did Jake do that?" related search, gaining roughly 285,400 plays and 51,400 likes in two days (photos shown below).

Similar photo slideshows surfaced on TikTok^[11] going into October 2023.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References