What Happened To Him meme

10 images

The original 'What Happened to Him?' template featuring the recognizable 3D stick figure stock imagery used as a setup for the meme's punchline format.
An early Harry Potter–based 'What Happened to Him?' variant using the Deathly Hallows Part 2 King's Cross scene, captioned with the Pizza Hut slogan joke.
A remix of the Harry Potter 'What Happened to Him?' format mocking Reddit's downvote culture as the cause of Voldemort's ruined state.
A 'What Happened to Him?' variant playing on the Disney.com parental permission gate as the fatal misdeed.
A widely shared iteration of the format using religious/conservative moralizing as the punchline for Voldemort's condition.
The Spider-Man variant of the format uses the dying Uncle Ben scene, here delivering a joke about 5G conspiracy theories.
An Uncle Ben edition of the meme referencing the sneakerhead trope of being robbed for Nike Foamposite shoes.
An Uncle Ben variant blaming Taco Bell's short-lived crispy chicken wings for the character's demise, with text cropped at the frame edge.
An edgy Uncle Ben iteration of the format joking about non-binary pronouns as the cause of death.
A variant of the original stretcher template joking about the modern habit of watching YouTube during meals.

History

"What Happened to Him?" is a recurring meme caption format where a character asks about someone's dying or sickly appearance and gets an anticlimactic answer about a modern annoyance instead of a real cause. The archetype started in early 2020 with the Dead Baby Voldemort format and hit peak virality in June 2022 through the @HappenedToHim Twitter account, which crossed 118,000 followers in a week.

Origin

The archetype started on January 28, 2020, when a Redditor named hin2u posted a three-panel meme based on Harry Potter finding Voldemort as a skinless, dying creature in Deathly Hallows Part 2, with an Out Pizza the Hut joke as the punchline; the post pulled over 40,000 likes within two years[7]. The Dead Baby Voldemort template quickly turned into a recaption format, with users swapping in their own absurd reasons for Voldemort's dying state.

Platform: Reddit (source) / Twitter (viral spread)
Creator: hin2u (Reddit)
Date: 2020

Overview

"What Happened to Him?" is a recurring meme caption used in image macros where a character asks about someone's sickly or dying condition, only to receive a punchline that swaps a life-threatening cause for something mundane and painfully relatable[6]. The format built its identity by pairing visually distressing scenes with anticlimactic answers involving internet trends, awkward social interactions, or modern digital anxieties. Recognizable versions pull from a stock photo of two stretcher-bearers or from well-known movie deathbed scenes, then swap the punchline for jokes about Squid Game, YouTube habits, or the pressure of replying to a text message[1].

How It Spread

On April 16, 2020, iFunny user Ricky_frotpb rebuilt the joke with a 2002 Spider-Man screencap of Peter Parker discovering his shot Uncle Ben, captioned "Uncle Ben What Happened?" over a 5G speed punchline, and it picked up over 34,800 smiles on iFunny plus 13,600 upvotes after a same-day repost to r/raimimemes[5]. The stock-image version appeared on December 21, 2021, when Instagram user notmadewithmematic posted two faceless figures carrying a third on a stretcher with the reply "He ate without youtube"[4]. That image blew up after Twitter user @internetsession reposted it on December 31 and pulled roughly 686,000 likes before the tweet was deleted[2].

Twitter user @nopeifyaltalt's May 6, 2022 version, with an unconfirmed authorship note, pulled over 277,700 likes in about a month[3]. On June 16, 2022, the gimmick account @HappenedToHim launched and its first meme drew over 16,500 likes in a week[1]. A same-day repost with the "he had to come up with a response to 'lol'" punchline hit over 522,000 likes, and the account cleared 118,000 followers within seven days of launching[1].

How to Use

Creators typically pair a distressing image, such as the stretcher stock photo or a movie deathbed scene, with a two-line dialogue where one figure asks "what happened to him?" and the other answers with an anticlimactic punchline tied to a niche internet frustration or shitpost joke[1].

Frequently Asked Questions

What is What Happened To Him?

It is a recurring meme caption where a character asks about someone's dying appearance, only for the answer to be a mundane or painfully relatable modern annoyance like "he had to come up with a response to 'lol'"[1].

Where did What Happened To Him come from?

The archetype started on January 28, 2020 with Redditor hin2u's Dead Baby Voldemort three-panel post based on a Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 scene[7].

What does What Happened To Him mean?

The setup implies a serious cause of injury or death, then the punchline delivers something trivial, awkward, or digitally cringe rather than a real medical explanation[1].

How do you use What Happened To Him?

Pick a distressing image of a dying character, then answer the "what happened to him?" question with an anticlimactic punchline tied to a niche internet frustration or shitpost joke[1].

Is What Happened To Him still popular?

The format peaked in mid-2022 after the launch of the @HappenedToHim Twitter account, which passed 118,000 followers in the week following its June 16, 2022 debut[1].