Peace Was Never An Option

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I wouldn't say I need a magnetic goose, but I'd feel a lot better if I had one.

Day 15 - Sunday History Save Load Auto Prefs Hide Apollo Peace was never even a consideration, not with so much left for those in power yet to gain. Instead, each side pursued alternative means to shore up their numbers and ensure the perpetuity of their conflict.

"I told you mother f------ peace wasn't an option."

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Navy 'Doomsday' plane built to withstand nuclear attack grounded after striking single bird Jessica Schladebeck - New York Daily News peace was never an option

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About

"Peace Was Never An Option" is a memorable quote spoken by the fictional character Erik Lehnsherr, better known as the villain Magneto, as played by Michael Fassbender in the movie X-Men: First Class.

Origin

On February 10 2011, 20th Century Fox released the first trailer for X-Men: First Class, which was viewed over 15 million times on YouTube.^[1]

Towards the end of the trailer, the following piece of dialogue is spoken:

[Charles Xavier]: Listen to me very carefully, my friend: killing Shaw will not bring you peace.
[Erik Lehnsherr]: Peace was never an option.

Spread

The line, as well as Fassbender's overall performance, were considered by critics to be one of the strong points of First Class; in an article on the popular blog Comics Alliance, David Brothers considered the line to be a crucial key to understanding Magneto's character in the film.^[4] The line is a quote often used by fans when making references to Magneto.

The first use as a caption for an image macro happened two years after the release. An image of a cockatiel atop a tank toy captioned with the line was posted to the meme aggregator MemeCenter in 2013, where it gained over 3,000 likes.^[3]

Untitled Goose Versions

On September 24th, 2019, Twitter user @erkshnrt posted an image of the Goose from the Untitled Goose Game standing on a handle of an axe, captioned with the quote (shown below, left).^[6] The post received over 8,100 retweets and 19,000 likes in two weeks and referenced a popular "Peace Was Never an Option" reaction image of a white chicken standing on an axe handle (shown below, right).

On September 28th, 2019, Twitter user @CampbellxEmma tweeted another image of the Goose holding a butter knife in its beak, based on a close-up of a promotional image for the game,^[7] captioned with the quote.^[8] The tweet received over 20,600 retweets and 71,600 likes in one week (shown below, left). In the following days, multiple users on Twitter used both images as reactions.^[9]^[10] On October 2nd, 2019, Redditor Happinss-Noise posted a meme based on the image to /r/dankmemes subreddit,^[11] where it gained over 43,000 upvotes in five days (shown below, right), prompting popularity of the format on Reddit in the following days.