Lord Marquaad E
Part of a series on Deep Fried Memes. [View Related Entries]
About
Lord Marquaad E, also known as Lord Farquaad / Markiplier E, refers to a deep fried image of the face YouTube Let's Player Markiplier photoshopped onto the head of Lord Farquaad from Shrek with the letter "E" in impact font overlaying the image. Later edits posted the face over an image of Mark Zuckerberg's Congressional Hearings. The character was then edited in several templates referencing the absurdity of modern memes.
Origin
The image of Markiplier on Lord Farquaad's face was posted May 25th, 2015 by Twitter user and YouTuber Cyndago (shown below).[7]
The earliest known deep-fried, "E" post of the image came February 15th, 2018 on Tumblr blog photo-frier,[1] where it gained 728 notes (shown below).
Spread
The image began seeing further spread in April of 2018. On April 11th, the image was included in a Memes Then, Memes Now template in a post on /r/dankmemes,[2] where it gained 3,884 points (shown below, left). It was later posted to /r/me_irl,[4] where it gained over 7,000 points. An edit which placed the head onto Mark Zuckerberg's body was posted to /r/deepfriedmemes[3] on the 13th, gaining over 15,000 upvotes (shown below, right).
In the following weeks, the image was posted in various templates, often in templates commenting on the bizarreness of modern memes. For example, an /r/dankmemes post from April 23rd, 2018 included the image in the Why Is Millennial Humor So Weird? template, gaining over 23,000 points and greatly contributing to the spread of that template (shown below, left). On /r/dankmemes the same day, the image was posted in a type of I Bet There Will Be Flying Cars In the Future joke, gaining over 1,000 upvotes (shown below, right). The meme was inquired about in two /r/OutOfTheLoop[5][6] threads.
The meme was covered by The Daily Dot[8] on May 2nd, 2018. On May 26th, PewDiePie referenced the meme in a video that gained over 4.2 million views (shown below).
M and C
On June 6th, /r/dankmemes user thezerg505000[9] posted a picture of Markiplier's face photoshopped onto Mr. Incredible from The Incredibles with the letter "M," gaining over 6,700 points (shown below).
This was the first of a slew of jokes using the character. Some of the most popular include another post by thezerg505000 which paired the image with a fake headline, gaining over 7,000 points (shown below, left). User Mrgglock posted an image saying that there would eventually be enough letter memes to make "e=mc^2" in meme characters, gaining over 4,400 points (shown below, right).
The latter post inspired other users to attempt to start a Markiplier face meme with "C" (examples shown below).
Various Examples
Search Interest
External References
[1] Tumblr – photo-frier
[2] Reddit – /r/dankmemes
[3] Reddit – /r/deepfriedmemes (private community)
[5] Reddit – /r/OutOfTheLoop
[6] Reddit – /r/OutOftheLoop
[8] Daily Dot – The ‘E’ meme shows just how weird memes can get
[9] Reddit – Only the strongest meme can reproduce