Joker Gets Hit by a Car

What the frame shows and where it comes from

The picture shows a blurred city street and a yellow taxi, and above its roof and windshield, in motion, is a figure in a red suit with dark gloves. The blur emphasizes the speed of the impact, and the silhouette looks almost drawn.

The frame is taken from the trailer for the film “Joker” starring Joaquin Phoenix, which came out in April 2019. In the scene, the hero appears in the frame and gets hit by a taxi. The earliest known version of the meme with this frame appeared on Reddit on April 8, 2019. The film itself hit cinemas in October 2019; by then the meme was already known, and after the premiere it became widely popular.

How the meme works

Usually the meme is built from two parts. The top panel shows something good or calm, for example “I got good grades,” and the bottom panel shows this frame with a caption about the consequence. Usually only the bottom frame is kept, so the top part has to be invented by the author. The sharp change of mood is conveyed through physics: a light stride gives way to an impact, and the user reads this as a fall from the heavens back down to earth.

The frame works for jokes about failure after success, about false expectations, and about things that arrive from a direction you never expected. It can't be assumed that the meme says anything about the film hero's story: the captions don't rely on the plot and can refer to any everyday occasion.

Caption examples

Top panel: “Finally finished everything and went to bed to rest.” Bottom: “Message from the boss: one more small thing.”

Top: “I bought a ticket for the cheapest date.” Bottom: “Weather forecast for that date.”

Top: “The workday is over, nothing is on fire.” Bottom: “Notification about an urgent email with no subject.”

Top: “Tonight I'm definitely going to bed on time.” Bottom: “My brain at 1 a.m. with a list of memories.”

Why the frame is universal

The figure in red is bright and recognizable, and the face isn't visible, so it's easy to put yourself in its place. The yellow taxi adds humor: an ordinary city object turns out to be the cause of a catastrophe. The joke doesn't require knowing the film; it's enough to see that a person was walking along and then got hit.

The meme stays harmless as long as the jokes are about everyday matters. If you caption it under real accidents or other people's misfortunes, it stops being funny.

How to use the template

Keep the top caption calm and good-natured, and the bottom one short and unexpected. The closer the bottom phrase is to an everyday trifle, the stronger the contrast. An approach also works well when the top panel promises too much: the more confident the start, the more painful the taxi hit looks, and the more readily the viewer smiles. Extra explanations kill the speed of the joke, so it's best to stick to one line per panel.

If you need a single reaction without a top panel, the caption on the frame can be written as “and then suddenly…,” naming the cause of the failure.