For obvious reasons, The Godfather franchise is a treasure trove for the meme culture. The family drama, the gore, the thrilling scheming, the assassination plots, everything in the series is just the perfect kind of extra.
And though there have been plenty of The Godfather memes scattered on our timelines, now is a good time to recall some of the most relevant ones, which are pretty pertinent to 2020 and its culture. Here are some of the most relevant The Godfather memes which you cannot afford to miss.
Orange Is The New Dangerous
This meme is actually based on a widely noticed theory about the deaths in The Godfather series. Fans have noticed that the oranges seem to be around whenever death makes an appearance in the films.
When Vito gets shot in the street, he's buying oranges and when he ultimately dies at the very end, he is peeling an orange, which he actually uses to make funny faces at his grandson. This meme of Barry Allen posing next to Oliver Queen’s grave in The Arrow may just be the most relevant meme of this year.
Boomer Diaries
It goes without saying that The Godfather upholds some rather problematic tropes, which the fandom has dismissed as being culturally rooted. But the newer millennial and Gen-Z fandom of the movie has made an effort to call out the sexist aspects of the series.
Vito Corleone was not misogynistic but made sure that women had no place in his business. Michael noticeably upheld his father’s views and did not let the women in his life be a part of his profession.
No One Saw It Coming
This may be the most profound meme to describe 2020 accurately. Last year no one had any clue how messy the upcoming year is going to get because of the Corona Virus This meme represents the unwitting moment when one doesn’t know something really bad is going to happen to them.
This still is from the first The Godfather movie where Michael’s first wife Apollonia is learning how to drive in Sicily and Michael watches on, unaware that the car is rigged with a bomb and it will blow up in he next ew seconds claiming Apollonia’s life.
We Know Who To Blame
To be fair, the Star Wars fandom unanimously agrees that Solo: A Star Wars Story didn’t need to be made. In fact, of all the vital mysteries and histories Star Wars needs to explain, Han Solo’s origin is not one of them.
A major reason would be Han Solo’s irrelevance as a sci-fi hero for the millennials, to put it simply no one really asked to know Solo’s origin story. And considering George Lucas is the king of origin stories and Han Solo is his creation, it’s safe to say he would be disgruntled at how the film panned out and at the audience's reaction.
Where’s Luca?
In The Godfather novels, Luca Brasi is the brutal and unyielding henchman and personal enforcer for the Corleone family. In fact, his character was designed to be so ruthless that even Brasi’s boss the Godfather was quite unnerved by him.
In the film, Luca was meant out to be tough and scary but was nowhere nearly as lethal as Mario Puzo had written him out to be. A major issue would be the screen time, Brasi just never got enough time on screen to unravel how dangerous he is, and it’s something the fans have often complained about.
Dang It Denise
This was easily the sauciest meme from last year and was thus widely utilized by Twitter-verse as a weapon of choice. The meme originated from The View host Meghan McCain’s reply to political commentator Denise McAllister’s criticism of Meghan’s talk show.
McAllister wrote on Twitter, "Can someone explain to me the purpose of The View?" She also called the show a roundtable of delusional hosts 'ricocheting ignorance and lack of emotional regulation.' To which Meghan shaded her by reminding her of their personal history.
Fredo The Sufferer
The Godfather fandom has to agree that Fredo was the most overlooked Corleone kid. Vito treated each of his kids differently, he had big dreams for Michael and fulfilled all of Connie’s wishes. But when it came to Sonny and Fredo, things were messy. Vito wanted Sonny to handle the family business after him, but wanted to keep Michael away so he could have a respectable life.
Vito had no plans for Fredo at all, and he wasn’t even interested in exploring his full potential. So, when Fredo finally tries to make his own way by going against his family, it only makes sense because his own family always made him feel inadequate.
Repeat Value
The Godfather series, especially the first installment will probably never lose its repeat value. Very few literary adaptations have found such an incredible cinematic treatment in Hollywood and it’s one of the few films one can watch over and over again.
The second and third films of the series, however, do not seem to have this trait. The second film serves well as an origin story of Vito but the third film really does the franchise a disservice and is generally assumed to the weakest installment.
The Meme Of The Season
This may be the ultimate quarantine meme because now that the dalgona and DIY phase is over and people are frustrated with the stagnancy, it’s the best time to leave all the stress, anger, and bad vibes and just move towards whatever makes us happy. It could be a cannoli, or a donut or something plant-based.
The original quote in the film was used under a quite gruesome context and was obviously connected to a murder, but there’s no harm in recycling it now that it’s so relevant.
Sheer Atrocity
The food atrocity memes are Reddit’s darlings as people love seeing pictures of unlikely foods paired together, like cereal and ketchup and noodles with fruit, etc.
‘Look how they massacred my boy’ is one of the most famous lines from The Godfather series, not just because it seems to have found so much significance in meme culture, but also because it is one of the few moments in the film when Don Corleone broke down and gave way to his emotions after his eldest son Sonny was murdered.