Dearly departed gorilla Harambe has risen out of nowhere to become the best-known great ape of our time, but apparently it's not his family's first brush with fame. Esquire presented photos of Harambe's mother, Kayla, over the weekend, showing the female gorilla snapped alongside a crouching George W. Bush.

The images were rediscovered on Twitter earlier this month, and come from a private collection of of shots taken at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas — the place Harambe and his mother called home before the male gorilla was transplanted to Cincinnati. As well as shots taken with the future president, the archive also has pictures of Harambe as a baby, showing the animal he was, rather than the meme he became.

BREAKING: Here's a Photo of George W. Bush Posing with Harambe's Mom: https://t.co/GrcMJAVFz9 pic.twitter.com/6k6Z5vx2Hc — Esquire (@esquire) August 12, 2016

But more troubling is the implication that Bush knew about the majestic gorilla ahead of time, lending particular credence to the theory that he indeed did "do Harambe." Perhaps the future president felt slighted during his meeting with the majestic gorilla's mom, and orchestrated a plan to murder her offspring almost 20 years later? Maybe he spent the next decade finding a suitable baby and imprinting it with a burning desire to drop into the Cincinnati Zoo gorilla enclosure?

We may never know, but it's certainly possible — if wild and baseless internet conspiracy theories have taught us anything, it's that George W. Bush is a Machiavellian genius, capable of covering up his involvement in some of the biggest events in modern history.