About

Heaven Stairway Incident refers to a doomsday hoax that originated as an offshoot of the Cover Yourself In Oil meme. In the original joke, the trollface character notes that oil floats in water, says wait for it to rain, also notes that human skin is covered in oil, then posts a creepy image marking the "Heaven Stairway Incident" that takes place in May of 2021 which shows humans rising towards the sky because of the oil on their skin. The final panel was taken out of context and reposted across Reddit, where it confused people who weren't in on the joke.

The meme spawned the Trollface Incidents meme format.

Origin

On November 27th, 2020, Twitter user @ebola_granola^[1] posted a Cover Yourself In Oil meme in which the fourth panel marked an event to take place in May of 2021 called "The Heaven Stairway Incident," in which people rose towards the sky due to the oil on their skin. The tweet gained over 800 retweets and 3,800 likes (shown below).

Spread

In the following days, the final panel of the image was taken out of context and reposted on social media, confusing others who weren't aware of the joke. A 4chan thread posted November 28th, 2020 in /x/^[2] found users befuddled on the picture's origin. On November 29th, Redditor 8174u2ychq87ruh17 posted the picture in /r/CatastrophicFailure^[3] with a creepypasta-esque backstory slyly nodding to the picture's origin, gaining over 450 points before the post was removed by moderators (shown below, top). On November 30th, YouTuber tangy posted a video featuring the image and creepy music, gaining over 12,000 views in three days (shown below, bottom).

The phrase "May 2021 Heaven Stairway Incident" became a copypasta in Reddit's /r/196 subreddit, leading the phrase to be inquired about on /r/OutOfTheLoop.^[4]

Search Interest

External References