Pack it up, pack it in, Batman Begin

The Batman Begin meme is a popular copypasta and meme image macro that went viral in August 2024 actor Michael Caine posted a tweet quoting his character Alfred from Batman Begins…except when he included the title of the movie, he forgot to include the “s” on “Begins.” He ended up writing “Batman Begin” instead, which people on the internet have found highly entertaining and has fueled inspiration for many memes.

Where did the ‘Batman Begin’ meme come from?

‘Batman Begin’ meme arose from a post by actor Michael Caine on X (formerly known as Twitter) on August 19th, 2024. In the tweet, Caine wrote in an almost haiku-like fashion, “Why do we fall? / So we can learn to pick ourselves up. / Batman Begin”

People on X took note of his misspelling of the 2005 movie, in which he played fan-favorite butler, Alfred Pennyworth, who has been depicted as Bruce Wayne’s surrogate father figure and confidante. The tweet has amassed over 238K likes and nearly 40K retweets and quote-retweets in a little over a week.

Batman Begin

People couldn’t resist the “sh*tpost” quality, as one netizen called it, of Michael Caine’s accidental typo and it went viral across X in a variety of formats.

The simplest form of playing with this meme is to remove the “s” from a movie or TV show title, which people immediately did with The Dark Knight Rises, or, to be true to the meme, ‘The Dark Knight Rise.’

@RetroBlastUS used a classic four-panel comic format, taking freeze frames from Batman Begins of the actor’s iconic line, with one small edit paying homage to his tweet. The text on the meme reads, “Why do we fall, sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.” Bruce replies, “You still haven’t given up on me?” And Alfred’s next line is replaced with, “Batman begin.” 

That tweet gained 2.7K likes and over 100 retweets since it was posted on August 19th, 2024, in response to Caine’s original tweet.

On August 20th, 2024, @ChrisEamesUK edited a clip of the original scene so that Michael Caine, rather than saying the original ending to his line, can be heard saying, “Batman, begin.”

In the tweet, he wrote, “batman begin official trailer just dropped.” It has been liked over 39K times and retweeted over 3.4K times. Eames added in a follow-up tweet that people should “donate to a bat sanctuary of your choosing if you enjoyed this.”

And then again on August 20th, @Murdoink shared a clip from the Injustice video game, in which the voiceover by chance says, “Batman begin.” right before the players start the game.

As one person noted, Batman immediately gets clocked as the game begins. So perhaps Batman End would be more appropriate in this case.

Meme examples

More Batman memes:

• What ‘He’s sart of like an evil porson’ has to do with Barry Keoghan and Sabrina Carpenter
• This ‘most unpopular opinion about Batman’ meme makes light of the dark franchise
• Batman in a robe has never been more relatable