The Green Goblin Is Calling Mask meme comes from a scene in 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home where Norman Osborn (played by Willem Dafoe) confronts his villain mask, which is trying to turn him evil again. Osborn’s conversations with the Green Goblin mask are an outward expression of the inner turmoil he experiences between his villainous persona and his desire to be a good guy.
The exchange became a common reaction meme, often paired with captions about abandoning toxic people or bad habits.
Meme basics:
- Meme Creator: Unknown
- Meme Type: Reaction
- First Appearance: October 2022
- Origin Source: YouTube
- Peak Popularity: August 2024
The Green Goblin mask meme and Spider-Man: No Way Home
In the 2021 film, based on the Marvel Comics characters, Norman Osborne tries to fight the urge to return to his alter ego. In one scene, he begs the Green Goblin Mask to leave him alone. The mask taunts him, calling him a coward and telling him he can’t run from his true self.
It taunts him to the point that he picks up a rock and breaks the mask, which can be heard still cackling as he walks away.
Spread and other variations
The 2021 Green Goblin Maske meme mirrors a similar moment experienced by Dafoe’s character Osborn in the original Spider-Man movie in Sam Raimi’s trilogy in 2002.
Both mask moments have been the subject of memes that began appearing online in late 2021 and early 2022.
In 2021, memes featuring the original Spider-Man scene started to go viral as people discussed the new film. It wasn’t until the following year that the more recent Green Goblin Mask scene appeared on TikTok and YouTube.
Other variations of the meme don’t feature the scene itself, but talk about things that “call out to me like the Green Goblin Mask.”
Meme examples
More Spider-Man memes:
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- Meme History: Spider-Man Pointing, a meme fifty years in the making
- How a low-budget Spider-Man cartoon became the internet’s favorite meme
- How ‘I’m something of a scientist myself’ became the most iconic line from ‘Spider-Man’
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