The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Standoff

Submission 3,187

Part of a series on GIF Captions. [View Related Entries]

A pit bull, a hydrogen bomb, and a Tesla when they see a coughing baby

A skinwalker, a Wendigo, and an IFunny User when they find one last uneaten h-----

A Chinese restaurant owner, an animal rights activist, and a furry when there's a stray dog on the highway

Me and my friends when we take our medication. (We are seeing who will disappear)

me and the boys at the sleepover trying to figure out who's secretly gay here

View All 19 Images

About

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Standoff refers to a GIF of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly characters Blondie (Clint Eastwood), Tuco and Angel Eyes engaged in a Mexican standoff, staring each other down. Online, the GIF has been used as an exploitable in memes as users edit in additional characters (such as Side Eyeing Chloe), later gaining virality as source material for GIF captions.

Origin

On December 23rd, 1966, the spaghetti western film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly premiered.^[1] In one scene of the movie, the main trio of characters, Blondie (also called the Man with No Name), Tuco and Angel Eyes, engage in a three-way standoff, also known as the Mexican standoff, staring each other down (shown below).

Spread

As an Exploitable

The scene has been used as source material for memes since at least late 2013 when it was first combined with the GIF of Side Eyeing Chloe (shown below). The GIF was originally posted by an unknown user in the period between September 12th, 2013, and late December of that year. On December 30th, 2013, Know Your Meme^[2] admin James archived the GIF on the site.

On January 26th, 2014, an Imgur^[3] user uploaded an extended version of the GIF with multiple characters edited in, with the post accumulating over 18,000 points in nine years (shown below, left). More edited versions of the GIF were then posted in the following years. For example, a version with a clip of a cat edited in gained particularly notable spread (shown below, right).^[4]

In Caption Memes

The GIFs have been used as source material for GIF and video captions at least since June 2019. For example, on June 18th, 2019, Tenor^[5] user MBMadigan uploaded a GIF caption based on the cat version of the GIF (shown below, left). On November 1st, 2021, Redditor elch3w posted a GIF caption that received over 82,800 upvotes in the /r/memes^[6] subreddit in one year (shown below, right).

When you talk about something and it suddenly shows up as an ad on your timeline

My 4 brain cells trying to remember the name of the person I just met:

On August 26th, 2022, iFunny^[7] user Nimitz19 posted a meme based on the GIF that garnered over 2,600 smiles on the app in five months (shown below, left). The viral spread of the post triggered a period of active use of the GIF on iFunny, and later on Twitter, in the following months. For example, on August 26th, iFunny^[8] user M1_Garand posted a "schizoposting";https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/schizoposting meme that received over 760 smiles on the app in five months (shown below, right).