About

Shocked Michael Jackson refers to a reaction image of Michael Jackson with his eyes and mouth agape. The image spread in the mid-2010s as a way to express surprise. It was revived in late 2018 in jokes pairing it with a snowclone reading "imagine getting jumped by X and one of them says Y."

Origin

The image of Michael Jackson began spreading in the mid-2010s. One of the earliest examples was posted March 25th, 2014 by Twitter user @TreMelvin, gaining over 340 retweets and 460 likes (shown below).





Spread

Over the following years, the image spread in jokes where people would use it to mean they were metaphorically killed by some form of content. For example, a November 6th, 2015ctweet by @sbstryker used the image in response to a claim Ariana Grande were the next Michael and Janet Jackson (shown below, left). A tweet by @DannyTanner from July 10th, 2016 gained over 600 retweets and 1,600 likes (shown below, right).





Imagine Getting Jumped

On November 8th, 2018, Redditor Gavinon posted a No Nut November joke that gained 27,000 points (shown below).





In mid-December of 2018, the image was revived in a series of jokes on Reddit paired with a snowclone reading "imagine getting jumped by X and one of them says Y." For example, a December 18th post by user embracetheevil gained over 14,000 points on /r/dankmemes (shown below, left). A December 19th post by user oneveryoriginalname gained over 3,700 points (shown below, right).





Various Examples





Search Interest

Know Your Meme Store

External References