"I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition." explanationCastiel identifying himself as the one who rescued Dean from Hell became memetic due to bizarrely sounding like the classic "I'm the one who brought you into this world" line that parents use when disappointed in their kid.
"Hey, assbutt!" explanationCastiel's bizarre attempt at a Pre-Asskicking One-Liner became very popular within the fandom, with many dubbing it one of his funniest lines.
"It seems this is going to involve…talking…to people."explanationAn extremely relatable quote from Castiel, with fans often using it describe being forced into social situations.
"FIGHT THE FAIRIES!" explanationA particularly amusing quote from Dean, from "Clap Your Hands if You Believe". Went memetic courtesy of Twitter, prompting some alarm from some members of the gay community, who didn't realize it was about actual fairies.
"Yesterday was Tuesday, right? But today is Tuesday too!" explanationAn animated gif of Sam from the "Groundhog Day" Loop Episode "Mystery Spot". On Tumblr, the first rule of the Supernatural fandom is that you reblog said gif every Tuesday.
Sam is a moose. And a cockblock. explanationThe first comes from a nickname Crowley gives him; the latter comes from his tendency to intrude on emotional moments between Dean and Cas.
The No Homo Intern is actually just Robbie/Orlando/Carver wearing a funny hat and moustache and he is doing everything in his power not to do his job.explanationThis is a complicated one. Essentially, someone made a joke that it's not like Supernatural has an intern whose entire job is to stop the show from getting too gay. It caught the fandom's imagination, and soon there were all kinds of headcanons about the No Homo Intern actually being one of the writers who seem to be most pro-Dean/Castiel, just dressed up in a funny disguise pretending to be someone different. Mythos ensued, and even one of the writers tweeted about it.
The producers' go-to excuse for any plot development the fans don't like, "The story demanded it." This has led to a lot of jokes about the scripts coming to life and pointing guns at the writers' heads demanding they be written a certain way. It got especially infamous when they tried to trot it out to justify Charlie's death in Season 10, as the road to that event was so blatantly contrived that even most of the people working on the show refuse to hide their contempt for it.
Around early 2019, the line "You've Yeed Your Last Haw" from "Frontierland" reached mainstream memetic status.
The longer the show runs, every announcement of a new season will inevitably be met with jokes begging the showrunners to allow the show die already, and how Supernatural has become as unkillable as Sam and Dean.
The show itself has become rather memetic on Tumblr, mainly due to the super-fandom known as Superwholock (Supernatural, Doctor Who and Sherlock). The other shows in the fandom gets this too, but none to the degree that Supernatural gets. This stems mostly from Superwholock more or less taking over the entire platform, jumping in with commentary and gifs on entirely unrelated content, all the while treating themselves way too seriously.
Supernatural has a GIF for everything.explanationRelated to the above, and unsurprising given the show is both a Long Runner and has broached just about every kind of plot possible. Expect popular posts on social media to get randomly hijacked by a shockingly appropriate GIF from the show, leading to many responses of such.
Destiel becoming canon happened at quite literally the worst possible time, while most of the world were completely preoccupied with the 2020 United States elections. The announcement came so out of nowhere that it quickly became a meme, not to mention it being such a blatant example of Bury Your GayscontextBasically, Castiel's deal with the Empty meant he would be Dragged Off to Hell if he ever felt a moment of happiness, and being able to confess to Dean in "Despair" was what put him over the edge that no one was able to take it seriously.
The timing with My Hero Academia's reveal that Dabi is a Todoroki, a Twitter artist being exposed for racist roleplaying and roleplaying Ted Bundy, System of a Down announcing a new album, the Bolivian president being attacked with dynamite, Vladimir Putin revealing that he may be resigning due to health concernsnote this ended up being fake, eventually culminating in Pennsylvania and Georgia going bluenote The electoral votes for the Democrat/Republican Party in those states going to the Democrats, otherwise known as blue, launched social media (mainly Twitter and Tumblr) into Disaster Dominoes the night before.
Finding out about any of these things (as well as rumors that Sherlock Season 5 was happening) through people reacting to Destiel becoming canon.
"I love you." "[insert news here]"explanationA mutation of the above, in which people will take the scene where Castiel confesses to Dean and edit it so that Dean is reacting by mentioning recent news, often leading to You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me! reactions when people realize that, yes, they're learning this news through Supernatural memes.
Some fans even coined the term "Destielputinelection", a reference to Superwholock (the Friendly Fandoms of Supernatural, Sherlock, and Doctor Who on Tumblr).
Fans of the show summing up "the Empty" as being "Super Hell" or "Turbo Hell" to people unfamiliar with the show, sometimes accompanied by a certain GIF from Spawnnote the infamous scene of Spawn and Cogliostro falling through Hell into Malebolgia's domain, also further made the whole situation more ridiculous-sounding.
Everything just got crazier when the Latin-American dub version of "Despair" released (around a week after the series' finale), and the confession scene had Dean reciprocate Castiel's confession. This sparked a new wave of outraged, confused, and delighted memes about how "Destiel is canon, but only in Spanish."
"Still beautiful, still Dean Winchester", a direction from the screenplay for "Despair" describing Castiel's Crush Filter towards Dean, took off due to a combination of its overtly romantic and hilarious-sounding, even Smitten Teenage Girl-esque tone which contrasted heavily with the more subdued ambiguous take that played out in the show proper, plus the extremely bizarre circumstances of its discoverynote Someone stole the script to "Despair" from the studio and leaked a portion of it that called for Castiel to express his attraction to Dean in a far more explicit manner, and featured a different, more elaborate response from Dean than was seen in the actual episode. Most suspected it to be doctored by shipping fanatics until a subsequent bizarre Twitter rant from one of the show's staff inadvertently confirmed it as real. This, combined with previous statements from Jensen Ackles about much of his response to the confession being trimmed, also had the effect of seemingly confirming that at least some of the accusations of Executive Meddling to tone down Castiel's confession and Dean's Ambiguously Bi vibes, which were then largely considered the Epileptic Trees ravings of Loony Fans, had some merit after all.
The aforementioned Twitter rants confirming the script leak also spawned their own share of sub-memes, such as "New universes would be born in that very moment" and "Danglers", due to how strangely they sounded out of and even in context.
The sheer number of revelations and rumors (many which were Jossed, though a handful of which turned out to be true) about the production of the final season, including the confession scene in various dubs, has led to people commenting that "Destiel has gone canon at least four times."
"DEAN IS HOLDING BACK" "holding back a slur", an exchange on Twitter about how either the acting in the scene is either well done for a years-long friendship left hanging with a romantic confession or seems like the actors were uncomfortable with it out of homophobia but forced themselves through it.
November 5th has become 'Destiel Day' on the website Tumblr and has become an annual celebration.
The show's finale spawned some memes as well:
Jokes about the Winchesters' car getting into Heaven while Castiel has to stay in what memes have coined "super/turbo hell" (although it's stated that he made it into Heaven after all, somehow).
This in turn led to jokes about Dean never having gotten the Tetanus vaccine, which then led to jokes about him being an anti-vaxxer.
Sam's Blurry Wife. In the finale, it's revealed that Sam got married and had a son but we only barely see the wife in distance. Fans has been joking about her being a random woman who walked on set or even being a male character (like Gabriel) wearing a dress and a wig.
Dead Kansas.ExplanationThe original plan for the finale, until COVID-19 Pandemic forced them to change it, was to have the actual members of the band (whose current members are all still alive at the time the finale was supposed to take place) play "Carry On My Wayward Son" for the now-dead Dean as he was surrounded by a throng of various other dead characters from the show in Heaven. The implications of this were not lost on many, to the point that some joked that Sam, Jack, or some other character murdered them as a favor to Dean.
"every week i log on and unwillingly learn new things about supernatural"explanationThe controversy surrounding "Despair" and "Carry On" propelled the fandom's daily output on Tumblr to heights not seen since the site's SuperWhoLock days. This response basically sums up one of the reactions towards this by non-fans on the website (the other being general amusement).
Related to the above, Destiel in general having become an inadvertent Unconventional Learning Experience for other information not related to Supernatural. Some examples can be seen here and here.
Supernatural Season 16ExplanationA number of behind-the-scenes reveals and other events involving the show's cast, beginning from November 5th and continuing past the show's actual Grand Finale, have proven to be so hilarious, memetic, and entertaining in their own right that fans jokingly consider them to make up a 16th season of the show.
Misha Collins x Bill Clinton sex scandalExplanationNot long after the series ended, fans discovered an old article written by Castiel's actor in defense of Monica Lewinsky, stemming from his own experiences as an intern for Clinton. Fans also found out multipletweetsfrom Collins jokingly implying he wanted to sleep with Clinton himself. The utter absurdity of the entire situation, on top of several other US presidents and other politicians having become tied to the show via Destiel confession memes, led to his name trending on Twitter, as well as an outpouring of edits of scenes and dialogue from the show portraying Castiel as in love with Bill Clinton.
"Seven minutes of incest" ExplanationStems from a tweet after the finale aired pointing out how quickly Sam died in Season 2's "All Hell Breaks Loose" (almost instantly, with Dean doing all of the talking) compared to Dean's death in the series finale "Carry On" (where he spends seven minutes talking to Sam about how important he is to him before finally kicking the bucket), and generally disparaging the finale for the perceived Incest Subtext. Wincest shippers have since taken to the phrase in earnest and used it unironically.
Supernatural Prequel MeltdownExplanationOn June 24th Jensen AcklesannouncedThe Winchesters, a prequel about John and Mary's life together, leading to a frenzy of memes comparable to the airing of "Despair" on November 5th. Common topics included wondering who the hell the show was even fornote John Winchester is also one of the most Base Breaking Characters on the show, and a whole show about him would put large swathes of the original show's audience off. Also, being a prequel, Dean, Sam, and Castiel would not be appearing, nor would the vast majority of any other beloved characters whom fans watched the show for (although since angels can canonically travel through time, some fans have made Epileptic Trees for several of them still appearing anyway)., bafflement after the failure of previous attempts at spinoffs like "Wayward Sisters" which had more unanimous approval, the ridiculousness of announcing a prequel so soon after the show had just finished, and most bizarrely of all, that Jared Padaleckiwas somehow not notified of any of this ahead of time despite being part of the show's foundation since the very start, having only heard of its existence via Twitter.
"Gutted"/"Et tu Brute?"/"Trully" ExplanationOn top of the bizarreness of not having been told about the show beforehand, the fact that Padalecki chose to publicly tweet about it instead of discussing it more privately, became its own sort of meme fodder, with fans quickly seizing on said tweets to make all kinds of jokes about a supposed Ackles-Padalecki Twitter feud and parodying his phrasing from said tweets. Fans also discovered that he posted another now-deleted angry tweet◊ against one of the prequel's writers, and the incredibly dramatic language including a typo made that tweet even riper for parodying.
"holding back a slur", an exchange on Twitter about how either the acting in the scene is either well done for a years-long friendship left hanging with a romantic confession or seems like the actors were uncomfortable with it out of homophobia but forced themselves through it.
