What are the 'crucified Minion' memes that have taken over TikTok?

Have you seen a crucified minion meme lately in your social media feeds? It has become quite common on TikTok and a little bit on Instagram as well. Minions are cute little animatedcreatures we have been loving for years now. They speak an odd language, walk weirdly, look like a yellow capsule dressed up, and have different physical features, and yet have managed to capture the hearts of millions of people worldwide, especially children.

Minion memes are common, but showing a minion crucified is new. The widespread meme shows a minion dying on the cross with a thorn crown on its head. The Minion memes have apparently been strewn across social media by Christian influencers. Almost every video made with the meme has the exact same script.

Minions were made popular by the Despicable Me franchise. The influencers seem to be leveraging minions to gain the attention of the youth scrolling through social media, and then using the moment to talk about Jesus.

The TikToks start off the videos by claiming that the crucified Minion photo was accidentally created by an animator who was “messing around one day”. Then they tell the viewer, “a Minion didn't die for you. A Minion didn't pay the price of sin for you and me that we deserve. But Jesus did.”

“Jesus loves you,” they say at the end of the video.

Another video has a woman saying, "If you love Minions, don’t scroll." “Right above me is a picture of a minion washing another minion’s feet,” the woman named Kalkidan Radford, says. “But we both know a minion never did that. But let me tell you who did: Jesus.”

The videos have repetitive content and look eerie because of that. This also led commentators to wonder if the “Dead Internet Theory” was to blame for it. Some of them believe that bots were pushing the trend by creating, sharing and commenting on the videos.

Who started the ‘Crucified Minion’ memes?

The first post was reportedly made by TikTok pastor @pastorjoshpan, in May, and this triggered several more such memes by other users. The crucified Minion photo looks like it was made using AI, but it actually goes back a few years and owes its origin to digital artist Américo Cruz. In 2021, he posted a 3D rendering of a Minion on a cross on Facebook.

The Minion memes are now attracting satirical responses in the form of videos and comments. TikTokers are also mocking videos explaining the memes, with several of them using phrases such as “a Minion didn’t die for you", from the original video to make fun of them.

Right now, the trend seems like a whole Generative AI project, with chatbots filling up the feeds. However, the simple explanation seems to be that Christian influences are using Minions to get people interested in their content.