What do UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter Luigi Mangione and My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way have in common, and why is it 9/11? The many answers to this question involve the 9/11 domino effect theory and meme, as well as Fifty Shades of Grey, Twilight, and Dakota Johnson helping bring about the end of The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
Joke theories regarding domino effects begat from 9/11 became a meme format in 2020, according to a Snopes report, and after Mangione’s alleged Spotify account was discovered shortly after his arrest on Dec. 9, 2024, references to the Gerard Way—9/11—Twilight domino effect meme began to resurface.
9/11, Gerard Way, and Twilight
My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way explained how witnessing the fall of the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2021, led him to start the band in a 2019 interview with Newsweek.
“One of the biggest reasons I started My Chemical Romance was because I was one of the people to witness 9/11 in New York City,” he said. “That felt like the end of the world. It felt like the apocalypse … Since then, I’ve continued to think about what we would do at the end of the world if we knew we only had a little time left.”
Years after Way formed MCR, Stephenie Meyer would name the band as part of her inspiration to write the Twilight series during an Entertainment Weekly interview. Specifically, how their music helped her develop Jacob’s character.
Other links have been made from 9/11 to notable pop culture history, including E.L. James allegedly adapting Fifty Shades of Grey from a Twilight fanfic and Dakota Johnson‘s resulting fame from the film ending The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
In 2012, James revealed in an ABC interview that reading the Twilight novels “flipped this switch” in her head. After Johnson was cast as the star in the film adaptation in 2019, she went on DeGeneres‘ show where she called the talk show host out for lying after she had chastised the actress for not offering an invitation to her birthday party.
“Actually, no, that’s not the truth, Ellen,” said Johnson (iconically) after DeGeneres quipped, “How was the party? I wasn’t invited.”
“Ask everybody. Ask Jonathan, your producer,” continued the actress.
The online backlash that followed, as the theory goes, contributed to DeGeneres’ downfall.
Or, as TikToker @trajesty summed it up: “Gerard Way watched the Twin Towers fall on 9/11, which inspired him to start My Chemical Romance, which was one of the largest inspirations behind Stephenie Meyer writing the Twilight series. Twilight was one of the inspirations behind E. L. James writing 50 Shades of Grey. This was turned into a film series, starring Dakota Johnson, which led to her being on talk shows like Ellen. That led to the groundbreaking ‘Actually, that’s not the truth, Ellen.’”
The 9/11 to Luigi Mangione pipeline
Along comes Mangione, the 26-year-old who shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan and became something of a folk hero to the many millions of people across political lines who have been burned by their health insurance.
Once police revealed his name, the race to dig up Mangione’s social accounts was on. By Monday, Twitter accounts started publishing similarly formatted claims that his Spotify account had been located and that it was dominated by a certain type of music. One of the most viral of these posts used MCR for what is likely just a joke that is becoming its own meme.
“A Spotify account owned by the UnitedHealthcare CEO assassin suspect Luigi Mangione has been identified,” the post by @SOTSPodcast reads. “While activity on the account is minimal, he did have one playlist including the entire discography of My Chemical Romance.”
Did 9/11 cause Luigi Mangione to shoot Brian Thompson?
No. No credible reports linking a Spotify account to Mangione exist.
According to excerpts from the (alleged and unconfirmed at the time of writing) handwritten manifesto that police found on Mangione after his arrest, the primary motive for the murder was the broken U.S. private health insurance system and the many barriers it creates to care.
Luigi Mangione becomes a part of the 9/11 Domino Effect literary canon
Factual accuracy rarely gets in the way of a phenomenon growing into a popular meme; the jokes around the connections to these figures and 9/11 are consolidating on Twitter at a rapid pace.
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