About

You Shall Know the False Shepherd by His Mark refer to a series of memes based on a propaganda poster found in the 2013 video game BioShock Infinite. Online, the mark on the poster has been replaced with popular logos and recognizable images, such as the Twitter Blue checkmark.

Origin

On March 26th, 2013, first person shooter video game BioShock Infinite was released.^[1] In the first part of the game, protagonist Booker DeWitt encounters a propaganda poster warning against a "false shepherd," distinguished by his "AD" tattoo on the back side of their right hand, discovering that he has the very same tattoo (screenshot shown below).

Spread

On February 17th, 2014, Redditor sackboy198 posted the earliest discovered edit of the image, a Pokémon meme, with the post gaining 11 upvotes in the /r/twitchplayspokemon^[2] subreddit (shown below, left). In April 2015, during the Steam Workshop Paid Modding controversy, a version in which the tattoo was replaced with the Steam logo was widely circulated (shown below, right).^[3]

On May 26th, 2018, Twitter^[4] user @AurelianofRome shared a version of the meme about verified Twitter accounts (authorship unconfirmed). The image was widely spread through reposts in the following years; for example, on July 15th, 2020, Twitter^[5] user @JordanOloman made a repost that gained over 2,500 retweets and 10,500 likes in three years.

The format maintained its presence online in the early 2020s, often being used to make fun of groups of people distinguished by a single characteristic.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References