Jason Momoa Sneaks Up on Henry Cavill

Origin: a red carpet in London¶

The image is a still photograph, taken on August 3, 2016 at the European premiere of Suicide Squad at the Odeon Leicester Square in London. Know Your Meme credits the shot to photographer Richard Young.

Neither man is in Suicide Squad. Jason Momoa and Henry Cavill attended in support of the film as fellow Justice League cast members — Momoa as Aquaman, Cavill as Superman. In the frame Cavill stands in the foreground in a double-breasted suit, facing the cameras and apparently unaware; behind him Momoa, in a T-shirt and a heavy wallet chain, is crouched low with arms spread and fingers clawed, creeping forward.

No ambush actually followed. Contemporary reports from the carpet describe Momoa greeting Cavill with a bear hug — the photo captures the wind-up to a friendly hello, frozen at its most theatrical.

An eighteen-month delay¶

The picture did not become a meme in 2016. The earliest documented object-labelled version appeared on a Facebook page on December 31, 2017, drawing 1,400 reactions and 450 shares. From there it accelerated:

• January 23, 2018 — posted to r/photoshopbattles.
• April 2018 — an Imgur version took 3,700 points and 164,000 views in under a month.
• April 26, 2018 — a Twitter post carried it to roughly 71,000 retweets and 220,000 likes.

That lag is typical of photographs that become templates. The image was funny in 2016 but not yet useful; it needed a labelling convention before it could carry other people’s jokes.

Meaning and usage¶

The composition does all the work. One figure faces forward, oblivious; one approaches from behind, exaggeratedly stealthy. Add labels and it becomes anything creeping up on anyone.

• Labelling the crouching figure as a deadline, a bill, Monday, or a consequence catching up.
• Object-label edits casting the pair as two competing products, teams or franchises.
• Straightforward “me lurking” reactions with no labels at all.

A recurring variant places a mustache in Momoa’s hands — a reference to the facial hair Cavill grew for Mission: Impossible - Fallout that had to be digitally removed during Justice League reshoots, one of the more widely mocked visual-effects stories of 2017.

Why it stayed friendly¶

Most sneaking-up templates carry an implied threat; Undertaker Standing Behind AJ Styles works precisely because the lurking figure is menacing. This one does not, and the difference is visible in the picture. Momoa’s crouch is comic rather than predatory, the pose is far too broad to be a real ambush, and the two men are obviously friends. As a result the template gets used for mildly inconvenient things — chores, emails, the end of a weekend — rather than genuine dread.

Legacy¶

Neither actor has publicly commented on the meme, and it has never needed them to. It endures because it solves a specific labelling problem better than almost anything else: a clean two-subject frame, unambiguous body language, and enough negative space to caption. Eight years on from the premiere it is still one of the standard object-label templates for something approaching from behind, and it is entirely detached from the film that put both men on that carpet in the first place.