About

No Lo Sé Rick, Parece Falso or I Don’t Know Rick, Looks Fake to Me refers to a catchphrase and reaction image macro featuring Chumlee and Rick Harrison from the reality show Pawn Stars, used to express doubt or disbelief about claims, events or headlines that seem suspicious or seem too good to be true.

Origin

On January 21st, 2013, episode 19 “Funny Money” of the 7th season of Pawn Stars was aired.^[1] In one of its scenes, Chumlee and Rick take a look at a scissor katar brought in by a customer, and Chumlee starts playing with the artifact while joking about how Edward Scissorhands uses it to prune bushes (shown below). Contrary to popular belief, the phrase was never said by any character throughout the series, and thus the meme caused a Mandela Effect among many Hispanic fans of the series.

On December 16th, 2016, the Facebook page Plantillas para tus momos^[2] posted a blank template of the meme, but the earliest available example of its use was reuploaded to Dopl3r^[3] on December 19th, with the caption “When the prettiest girl of the class asks you out :v” and the watermark @AahcSelccth (shown below).

Spread

On December 20th, 2016 the template began spreading to other Spanish-speaking sites, such as Facebook,^[4] Taringa!^[5] and Memedroid^[6] (examples shown below, from left to right).

On December 24th, 2016, Colombian influencer Nicolás Arrieta^[7] posted to Facebook a screenshot of one of his tweets in which he uses the reaction image with the caption "When they say Merry Christmas to me and I have to say Merry Christmas back" (shown below, left). The post gathered over 24,000 reactions and was shared over 3,800 times in four years.

On February 21st, 2018, the Facebook page Memes de Ciencias Sociales^[8] posted the meme accompanied by a photo of a fake parent note excusing a student for skipping class due to being sick (shown below, right). The image got over 5,900 reactions and 1,400 comments, and was shared over 19,000 times as of December 2020.

Catchphrase

The phrase "No lo sé, Rick" also became widely popular without the image in Spanish-speaking countries, appearing in captions or titles of various posts, clips and memes ever since December 2016. Outside social media, the phrase even made it into many headlines and articles from Hispanic news sites and online magazines, such as Rock&Pop,^[9] El País,^[10] UltimaHora^[11] and El Mundo.^[12]

The English version of the phrase first appeared without the template on February 28th, 2017, according a Ballmemes post.^[13] However, it didn't see much traction until some years later. On August 18th, 2019, Imgur user therefreezingupinbuffalostuckintheircars^[14] posted a Bottlecap Challenge video with the title "I don't know Rick… it looks fake" (shown below, left). Similarly, on March, 13th, 2020, a parody video of Rick Harrison and a customer bargaining for toilet paper (shown below, right) was posted to 9GAG. ^[15]

Chumlee's TikTok video

On July 24th, 2020, Chumlee^[16] posted a video to TikTok in which he examines a The Simpsons figurine and concludes his review with the quote "I don't know Rick, it looks fake" (shown below). The post reached over 1.7 million views and 124,200 likes in less than 5 months.

Template

Various examples

Search Interest

Search queries for both "No lo se rick parece falso" and "No lo se rick" date back to December 16-18th, 2016, and peak on May and July 2017 respectively. Searches for the shortened version of the phrase "no lo se rick" increased in volume again between late 2018 and early 2019. Searches for the Portuguese version of the phrase have slighty increased since early 2017. The English translation "I don't know rick looks fake" hasn't showed significant increase as of December 2020.

External References