Think, Mark

The image without a caption

The picture shows an orange sunset sky and a rocky slope. On the left, a hero in a red suit with white shoulders and a mustache kneels, his suit and gloves spattered with red. He presses the fingers of both hands to his temples, his mouth is open and his brows are knitted. On the right lies a young man in a yellow-and-blue suit, his face covered in blood, in a lifeless pose.

The drawing is in a cartoon style, and the contrast between bright colors and the heavy scene is part of the effect. The image without a caption does not show what the hero is saying; the words “Think, Mark” are added by viewers and are known from the episode itself.

The first season finale

The animated series Invincible, based on the comic by Robert Kirkman, premiered on Amazon Prime Video. The frame comes from episode eight of the first season, “Where I Really Come From”. Sources disagree on the episode's release date: one encyclopedia gives 29 April 2021, a reference on internet culture gives 30 April, which may be due to time zones.

Omni-Man is voiced by J. K. Simmons, and Mark Grayson, the Invincible, by Steven Yeun. Omni-Man is the father and the strongest superhero on the planet, and in this episode it emerges that he had been hiding a terrible truth. In the fight with his son, the father says that the son is fighting so he can watch his loved ones die, and asks him to think: the line carries reproach and despair at once.

How the meme gained momentum

According to a meme reference, jokes appeared right after the episode aired. One of the first popular adaptations was a tweet on 1 May 2021 that gathered more than 22 thousand likes. By 2 May artists had begun redrawing the scene with characters from other works, for example a man in the Half-Life suit.

The format snowballed: “Think, Mark” is placed in front of any topic, and the text sounds like a tired parent who cannot believe a child fails to grasp the obvious.

How the joke works

The mechanics rest on a contrast of scale. The scene is very heavy, while the thing it asks you to “think” about is usually minor. The father demands that you think not about the fate of the world but about why you could not close a browser tab or put the keys back where they belong.

The second part of the joke is role assignment. One character is always “clever and exhausted”, the other “battered and clueless”. Whoever writes the caption decides who gets which role, and that is what creates the comedy.

Caption examples

Above Omni-Man: “I did it for you last week.” Above the fallen hero: “But it was only blinking.” This variant draws on the everyday misunderstanding between two people.

“You saved your password in notes under the title ‘password’. Think.” The role of the father goes to the one who explains the obvious.

“The cat that knocked a mug off the table, and me.” The fallen Mark's position is given to the owner, who can no longer change anything.

A version without further text: just “Think” next to the frame, and the viewer fills in the context.

Tips for use

The template suits jokes about an argument in which one side considers the mistake obvious. It works worse for soft, warm topics: the scene is too grim. Remember that the frame contains violence, so do not use it in texts about real tragedies.