Memes / Morbius (2022)

#MorbiusSweep

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Please add entries in the following format:

• The meme. ^Explanation The explanation behind the meme.
  • Further mutations and successor memes, if any.

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• #MorbiusSweep^Explanation An ironic #EngineeredHashtag used to jokingly hype up the film as a record-breaking crowd pleaser as a Deconstructive Parody of the So Bad, It's Good mindset, often accompanied by obviously doctored images hyperbolically playing up the movie's critical and commercial success or gifs from the film with captions styled after various viral marketing memes (a-la "when guac is extra").
  • "FIRST MOVIE TO SELL ONE TRILLION TICKETS"^Explanation  Tying into the #MorbiusSweep meme above, a lot of people have begun ironically praising the film as the single greatest piece of media ever created, with it having a 203% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes and selling over a trillion tickets. In some cases, most of these are even implied to be people just rewatching the movie dozens upon dozens of times, even doing things such as selling their cars, getting mortgages on their houses and so on to afford more tickets.
  • "MORBILLION DOLLARS!"^Explanation  Spinning off of the above, some people go even farther and state the movie made so much money, a new number named after Morbius had to be invented.
    • Media news site CBR decided to actually calculate how much one Morbillion dollars was, finding that one Morbuck is equivalent to seventy million US dollars.
    • [X]-billion dollars has been used to apply to other infamous big-budget box office bombs that came after Morbius, such as The Flash or Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, or movies that actually crossed a billion dollars, like The Super Mario Bros. Movie or Barbie.
  • "I was aghast to find out it was based on a comic book. This is the truest height of cinema and even I cannot top it. A wise man admits when he is wrong and I was wrong, I apologize to all comic book movies." — Martin Scorsese^Explanation Shortly after the film's release, a fake quote circulated around the Internet claiming that Martin Scorsese, who considers superhero films as "theme park rides" and "not cinema", had retracted his thoughts after watching the film. It only escalated when Morbius actor Tyrese Gibson thought it was real and posted it on his Instagram. (He later deleted the post when he was informed it was fake.)
  • A related meme is to depict a fictional character as a huge Morbius fan and encouraging another character from their work to go see it, only to have an extremely negative (over)reaction to how bad it is, such as with Jesse Pinkman and Walter White or Queen and Susie.
  • With the news that Morbius would be returning to theatres to cash in on these memes, with the possibility of a sequel increasing, "fans" of the film have begun joking about how the hype surrounding the movie has Gone Horribly Right, giving popularity to a film which they only praised ironically.
  • After the second release of the movie to capitalize on these memes ended up losing even more money, ^note It made only $85K on Friday from 1,037 theaters. For perspective, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore made $100K that same day from only 625 theatres, while already being available on HBO Max. viewers have commented about the unique achievement of tricking Sony into making a movie bomb twice, or suggesting that they should attempt to get Sony to do this again or have this be a yearly ritual. A satirical Change.org petition to release it a third time was even made that claimed that fans "were all busy that weekend", managing to get 30,000 signatures as of this writing.
• "IT'S MORBIN' TIME."^Explanation A Character Catchphrase assigned to Morbius by fans, actually originating from a tweet by Rank10YGO, which is a play on words of "It's morphin' time" from Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. He doesn't actually say it in the film. It gained traction in May 2022 following the release of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, with many people joking that the film contained a Morbius cameo in which he says the line. It was even referenced by Jared Leto in this tweet. The meme would also go on to get permutations when used with other So Bad, It's Good works across 2022; even works legitimately considered to be good have variations on this meme. Considering how influential the original tweet has become on the ironic status of the film, it has since gone down in meme history as a single joke that essentially cost an international entertainment company millions of dollars.
  • the best part of Morbius was when he said "IT'S MORBIN' TIME" and morbed all over those guys^note A popular tweet riffing on this quote then turned into a Snowclone of its own that could be applied to just about any other fandom that had a one-syllable replacement name/term for "morb".
  • "Time to get Morbed, Scarlet Witch."^Explanation Another line many people jokingly claimed that Morbius says in his supposed Multiverse of Madness cameo, usually accompanied with a obviously-doctored still from Morbius (In the original scene, Morbius tests out his powers to quickly catch a red ball. With the fake caption of the aforementioned sentence being added, the context makes it look like Morbius is controlling Wanda's Chaos Magic instead).
  • "Stand back! I am beginning to morb!"^Explanation A meme that spawned from an edit of Denji and Makima's movie marathon scene in Chainsaw Man that replaced the movie being shown with a sloppily edited-in panel of Morbius saying the aforementioned line. The sheer absurdity of the edit ensured that the one-liner was quickly added to the pile of Morbius's alleged catchphrases that are never once said in the actual film.
  • Making puns with Morbius's name in general is a colossal meme.
  • It's become commonplace for people to jokingly make up things that never actually happened in the film, with the justification that since no one has actually seen it, no one can attest as to whether these details are true or not.
  • "He doesn't actually say 'It's Morbin' time' in the movie."^Explanation Similarly to the above joke, it's also a huge meme to ridicule people who try to disprove anything that people make up or try to point out that it's actually a bad movie, usually by superimposing what they say over a 3D nerd emoji.
  • "It's over, Anti-Morb!"^Explanation A line Morbius supposedly says to his fanmade arch-enemy.
  • Morb Orb^Explanation The aforementioned scene of Morbius holding the ball has also been presented as though the ball is some sort of weapon or the source of his powers, dubbed the "Morb Orb."
• Morbius? "More BS." ^Explanation  A play on words on the titular character's name. It's used by some informal critics describing the Trailers Always Lie nature of the Spider-Man tie-ins being almost non-existent in the final film.
• "Hope the food's better in this joint." ^{Explanation (Spoilers)} This is the first thing Adrian Toomes says after he is inexplicably dropped into the SSU. People have already begun mocking the line due to Adrian's nonchalance about his situation and the baffling context around it.
• "I'm not sure how I got here. Has to do with Spider-Man, I think." ^{Explanation (Spoilers)} Similar to the previous quote, this quote has been seen as a lazily written Hand Wave by Adrian, ignoring to explain why he doesn’t care that much about being transported into another universe. It has been compared to the now-infamous "Somehow, Palpatine returned" quote from The Rise of Skywalker.
• Jared Leto being in the worst Marvel and DC movies^Explanation Jared Leto, starring as the titular Marvel character, previously played as the Joker in Suicide Squad (2016), a DC property. With both films being poorly received by critics, viewers made jokes about Leto being involved in negatively reviewed Marvel and DC movies, with some calling it an achievement.
• "Morbius is definitely one of the movies of all time."
  • Hell, multiple other Trivially Obvious statements have spawned, such as how "the actors acted".
    • This obvious/sarcastic expression, along with the fake quotes jokes have also been applied to other pieces of media that were negatively received.
• The now-infamous scene of a detective completely misunderstanding how a litter box works^note He picks up the box and shakes it while calling for the cat, apparently under the assumption the cat will come running at the sound, and immediately assuming the cat is gone when this fails to work quickly became memed by the Internet, with many calling it the most inexplicable scene they'd ever seen in a film and some seeing it as perfectly representative of the film as a whole.
• full-1.webm ^Explanation In mid-2022, people on Discord suddenly began sharing the entirety of Morbius as a .webm with this title. This sudden onslaught has led to the film getting way more exposure and baffled numerous people due to it often being shared completely out of nowhere, with no context other than, "Hey guys wanna watch Morbius" or "IT'S MORBIN' TIME". Those who have been "caught" unaware of this have referred to it as "being Morbed" and will make it out to be either a traumatic experience where they were victimized or an enlightening one that has changed their lives for the better.
  • Livestreaming a pirated copy of the movie on repeat became very popular on Twitch, where multiple accounts began doing it, some of them amassing thousands of views before being shut down. The category this mostly occurred in was the category for Valve's Artifact, incidentally another much-maligned flop that barely anyone online has actually engaged with, and is mostly known as a meme.
  • As with Bee Movie and Shrek, converting the film to play in the most absurd format possible has become popular. Morbintime.wad allows one to watch the film inside of Doom.
• "HAVE SEX"/Milo Dancing ^Explanation A very random scene of Milo dancing to "EKSE" by Off the Meds, which became infamous for its lyrics, which are almost entirely in Zulu apart from mentions of the band name and "have sex!" The verses additionally contain the lines "Bhuti ma yenza yenza/Bhuti ma veza veza/Bhuti ma Thenga thenga/Bhuti ma spenda spenda," which are commonly misheard as "poop my pants." The dance scene became a popular subject for parodies and edits as a result of its odd nature, with "have sex" and "poop my pants" typically being quoted in reference to it.
• When speculation of Sony greenlighting a sequel began floating around, people started making mock titles for a Morbius sequel, including Morbius 2: It's Morbin' Time (which was referenced by Jared Leto), 2 Fast 2 Morbius, and Morbius 2: More Bius, More Problems.
• The Morbius Twitch streams have evolved their own language akin to the sorts of callouts one would find at a screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
  • "1:07:15": the callout for the timestamp of the infamous "Have Sex" scene. A massive ASCII Art block of the words "HAVE SEX" is also frequently seen during this moment.
  • HaveSex is frequently spammed as one word, similar to PogChamp or BibleThump
  • "morbpls" whenever someone wants to see Morbius morb.
  • MAICULL: Whenever Milo or Nicolas call out Michael's name, as both have fairly strong British accents and Milo gets rather... enthusiastic with it later in the film.
  • "No CG" is called out any time a special effect or action scene happens, jokingly implying that the scenes were done practically and referencing Jared Leto's infamous penchant for Method Acting.
  • "Stinky Pinky" when Morbius breaks the money counterfeiters' fingers.
  • "Intriguing" is spammed during The Stinger to mock Morbius's nonplussed reaction.
• As parody of a general trend of "How long could you survive without x?" memes, there has been a proliferation of "How long could you/the world survive without Morbius" or something similar, often claiming that people would die after a few days because of starving due to lack of Morbius-themed popcorn.
• "My doctor diagnosed me as Morbiusly a beast" ^Explanation Memes about Morbius fans being diagnosed with morbid obesity by their doctor, and being so obsessed with the film that they misinterpret the "morbid" part of their condition as a reference to the film.
• "To bats, it's lethal. To humans, it's deadly."^Explanation Michael describes the anticoagulent that he uses to kill Milo is this manner. The actual line is "Deadly to bats, fatal to humans," but is often written as the former.
• Kevin Feige destroyed the Sony-verse ^{Explanation (Spoilers)} In Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Reed Richards explains that if an individual from one universe stays in another universe for too long, one or more universes may be destroyed. Given how Vulture appears to be stuck in the Sonyverse without a way back home, many fans have jokingly said that Kevin Feige essentially doomed the Sonyverse into destruction by allowing Sony to use Vulture to stay in their universe.
• Fun Facts About Morbius. ^Explanation A promo short by Sony advertising the movie listed 4 facts about the character, and each of them have become memetic, with two of them getting the biggest amount of attention.
  • #1: He is a Marvel legend. ^Explanation Often referenced in all caps (HE IS A MARVEL LEGEND), this is the most referenced out of the four.
  • #2: He's super fit. ^Explanation Like in the video, posters usually follow this one up with Michael's quote "Pilates helps."
  • #3: He needs to consume blood to live. ^Explanation Not as popular as the others, though.
  • #4: He is not Venom. ^Explanation Comes after Michael jokingly says "I am Venom" to a money counterfeiter he attacks. The second most popular fun fact, often used as a direct follow-up to #1 above. And sometimes in all caps (HE IS NOT VENOM).
• The fact that Sony rereleased the movie, despite bombing the first time while DC decided to shelve their Batgirl film is often noted by fans, referring to Sony as the chad and DC and Warner Bros. as Virgins in this context.
• Thirty Seconds to Morb. ^Explanation Morbius memes are sometimes referenced in the YouTube comments for music videos from Jared Leto's Thirty Seconds to Mars. For example, one of the top comments in "The Kill (Bury Me)" as of November 2022 is "This is one of the songs of all time", following the Trivially Obvious routine.
• Morbius has a higher score than Secret Invasion^Explanation On Rotten Tomatoes, Morbius has a 15% critics' score while the latter's finale "Home" has the even lower 7%. Considering Morbius's infamy on the Internet, with its "fanbase" being nearly entirely ironic, people have joked how the day has finally come that an MCU work is genuinely considered worse than Morbius. Of course, this meme is ignoring that Secret Invasion as a whole has the much better 55% critics' score.

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