Snakes on a Plane
| Snakes on a Plane |
|---|
|
| Original YTMND: Snakes. On a plane. |
| by Underscore1 |
| August 25, 2005 |
| Worthy spinoffs: |
| Used Music: |
|
- Enough is enough! I've had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!
- – Agent Neville Flynn
Snakes on a Plane is a 2006 movie staring Samuel L. Jackson. It is about an agent who must take a key witness to a murder on a flight across the Pacific. In an attempt to take down the plane, the witness's enemy unleashes a crate full of snakes during the flight. After it's announcement in 2005, it became a major internet meme.
Internet Meme
The Snakes on a Plane fad began almost a year after the motion picture was announced. Various YTMNDs popped up early to parody the title. The popularity quickly went around the Internet and became a popular meme. Fake promotional artwork, trailers, and songs were made and circulated across various internet communities including YTMND.
In late March 2006, it was annouced that the movie would undergo a few days of reshooting to add new scenes to up it's rating from PG-13 to R. Eventually, it was revealed that Samuel L. Jackson would have a line similar to that from his past movies such as Pulp Fiction. The phrase eventually became a fad, and even more sites popped up.
The fad reached new limits during early April, when a YTMND by Mightyhog revealed a hidden easter egg among the lyrics in the song "It's The End of the World (And I Feel Fine)" by R.E.M.:
- That's great. It starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane. [1]
The site gained massive popularity for the find, and the song "It's The End Of The World" was included on YTMND Soundtrack Volume 11.
The amount of "Snakes on a Plane" continued to increase up to the movie's release. Despite it's poor performance at the box office, a lot of ytmnd'ers enjoyed Snakes on a Plane. The theme song "Snakes on a Plane (Bring It)" by Cobra Starship was used in some of the later sites and was included on Volume 13 of the YTMND Soundtrack.
Merchandise
Several independent T-shirt manufacturers have made T-shirts with graphics illustrating various humorous representations of "Snakes on a plane":
- One depicts a frontal exterior view of a plane cockpit. The pilot and copilot, viewed through the windows, are depicted to be snakes.
- Another uses vintage road signs to formulate "Snakes + Plane = Snakes on a Plane".
- A third, with a cartoon representation of Samuel L. Jackson's character from the Star Wars series Mace Windu cutting down snakes with a lightsaber. This design was pulled, presumably for copyright reasons.
Fan Contest
The makers of the Snakes on a Plane movie started a fan contest where people voted for their favorite fan of the movie. [2] Max, registered as a fan, received over 60,000 votes — well exceeding any other registered fan. As a result, he won a promotional movie poster, hat, T-shirt, and CD soundtrack of the film. Purportedly, Max was invited to a private screening of the movie with 100 friends. Max said to YTMND in a recent news post: "I seem to be kicking ass. For those of you in the nyc area hit me up as there will likely be spots open at the screening."
On August 8, Max put up a new news statement saying "As many of you know, they removed me from the SoaP contest because someone votehacked under my name to intentionally get me disqualified. I emailed the company and they said they'd reinstate me yesterday. Other than that I don't know, so stop asking me." Max's name was eventually re-added.
Title
With creative uses of capital letters and bold or italic text, the title has been manipulated to reflect surprise, horror, or absurdity, among other things.
The meme is often interspersed with images of Samuel L. Jackson reprising his role as Mace Windu and quoting lines from both the Star Wars series and Pulp Fiction (both prominently featuring Jackson).
The slang form "SoaP" has been used in place of "shit happens" or "oh well, what'cha gonna do?". The phrase "Snakes On a Plane" has been used on Internet forums as to indicate that a given topic is nonsensical.
TV Edit
Snakes on a Plane made its cable television debut in 2009 on the network FX. In addition to other edits necessary to conform to FCC standards, the famous line was changed to "I have had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday-to-Friday plane". MrSinistar chronicled this edit with the site CENSOREDTMND: SNAKES ON A PLANE on April 25th, 2009.
