Green Goblin Smacks Spider-Man on the Head

About

Green Goblin Smacks Spider-Man on the Head refers to a clip of the Marvel Comics villain Green Goblin smacking Spider-Man on the back of his head in the 2002 film Spider-Man. In January 2024, a GIF of the moment achieved popularity as source material for caption memes.

Origin

On May 3rd, 2002, the Marvel superhero film Spider-Man, starring Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker / Spider-Man and Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborn / Green Goblin, premiered in the United States.^[1] In one scene of the film, Green Goblin kidnaps Spider-Man and tries to convince him to join his side. During the scene, Green Goblin sits next to the disoriented Spider-Man, lightly smacking him on the back of the head as he walks up to him (scene shown below; smack at 2:20 mark).

Here's the real truth. There are eight million people in this city, and those teeming masses exist for the sole purpose of lifting the few exceptional people onto their shoulders. You, me – we're exceptional.

On January 24th, 2024, X^[2] / Twitter account @TheCinesthetic uploaded a GIF of Green Goblin smacking Spider-Man, with the post garnering over 15,000 reposts and 116,000 likes in one day.

Spread

Later on January 24th, 2024, X^[3] user @troythedesigner quote posted the GIF, commenting "smacked him on the back of his head like he was lil bro 😂😂" The post (shown below) garnered over 9,200 reposts and 106,000 likes in one day.

More GIF caption memes using the GIF went viral on X^[4] / Twitter in the following hours. For example, a January 24th post by X user @ItsJust__C garnered over 20,000 reposts and 155,000 likes in one day (shown below, left). A same-day post by user @KingMurphyMedia garnered over 3,600 reposts and 20,000 likes on X^[5] in one day (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References