Franklin and Chop

Submission 18,365

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About

Franklin and Chop is a piece of promotional artwork for Grand Theft Auto V (GTA 5) depicting the character Franklin holding his Rottweiler dog Chop on a chain leash. The artwork was released in 2012 shortly before the release of the video game. The artwork became the subject of photoshops as early as 2014. In 2018, a trend began where the faces of Franklin and Chop are replaced with new faces to convey one person owning or defeating another as an exploitable meme format.

Origin

On November 1st, 2012, Game Informer^[1] published a story about the pre-order items for GTA V, including images of two promotional posters for the game. One poster shows a stylized drawing of Franklin with a baseball bat over his shoulder holding his barking dog Chop on a chain leash (shown below).

It is unclear who first photoshopped the image of Franklin and Chop. The earliest known photoshop was posted to DeviantArt^[2] by Dieter777 on September 9th, 2014, and replaces Chop with an Imperial Walker from Star Wars (shown below).

Spread

On March 26th, 2016 Gamesao^[3] published a collection of art featuring a photoshop replacing Chop and Franklin with Doraemon characters.

In 2018, people began photoshopping the faces of various people onto Chop and Franklin to convey that one person (Franklin) owns the other (Chop). It is unclear who first did this. The earliest known version of the meme was posted by Twitter^[4] user @hewhowasliving on October 1st, 2018, in regards to a Formula 1 race, replacing Chop's head with racer Valtteri Bottas (shown below).

On February 16th, 2020, Twitter^[5] user @linsoaring posted a version of the meme under a tweet by the Director-General of the World Health Organization about a meeting between the WHO and China. The meme shows Chinese President Xi Jinping in place of Franklin, and the Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, as Chop (shown below). The meme was reposted to numerous future tweets^[6]^[7] by users related to the government and World Health Organization, including the @WHO and @StateDept accounts.

On March 9th, 2022, Twitter^[8] user @martialartsutd posted a version of the meme showing Real Madrid player Karim Benzema with Lionel Messi on a leash, gaining over 500 likes and 80 retweets in five months (shown below, left). On July 22nd, Twitter^[9] user @Stake_com_ posted a version of the meme to a post by iShowSpeed celebrating 10 million subscribers, showing Jake Lucky on a leash, who Speed blames for his ban from YouTube, gaining over 3,400 likes in a month (shown below, right). On July 23rd, Twitter^[10] user @cedk7898_ posted a version of the meme about FCB beating Chelsea Football Club, gaining over 1,500 likes in two weeks.