Exploding Knees

About

Exploding Knees is a photoshopped advertisement which depicts a young boy playing with a wireless Nintendo joystick and explosions erupting from his knee caps.

Origin

According to the tech news blog Geekosystem,^[4] a Nintendo apparel ad was run by the company Homer’s in 1994, featuring a young boy wearing a Super Mario hat and a Nintendo sweater while playing with a wireless joystick (shown below, left). On August 9th, 2007, a photoshopped version of the Nintendo advertisement was posted to a thread in the /b/ (random board) on 4chan,^[9] which included explosions superimposed over the child’s knees with the caption “Exploding Knees” (shown below, right).

Spread

On January 24th, 2010, YouTuber xXUltraSushiXx uploaded a video featuring the exploding knees image macro, accompanied by a looped audio file of a text-to-speech voice narrating “Maik is pro in Sonic games, but just because he’s gay” for 10 minutes (shown below).

On August 4th, 2011, DeviantArtist^[2] Valenmere uploaded an illustration titled “Exploding Knees,” featuring several renditions of the Nintendo ad (shown below, left). On September 5th, a Facebook^[10] page titled “Help Raise Awareness of Exploding Knee’s Syndrome” was launched. On November 30th, a T-shirt with the Exploding Knees image macro printed on the front was put up for sale on the online retailer Red Bubble^[3] (shown below, middle). On December 5th, Canvas^[7] user darkexecutor posted a photoshopped image of professional golfer Tiger Woods with exploding knees (shown below, right).

On April 6th, 2012, the Internet news blog Unreality Mag^[5] highlighted the original 1994 ad, which was subsequently reblogged by the tech news sites Geekosystem^[4] and Geeks Are Sexy^[6] within the next week. On October 1st, an anonymous 4chan^[8] user mentioned exploding knees while listing several of the imageboard’s older memes.