Today, we look at the first time that someone did the whole *Record Scratch* *Freeze Frame* “Yep, that’s me” in a movie or TV show.
In “When We First Met”, we spotlight the various characters, phrases, objects or events that eventually became notable parts of pop culture lore, like the first time that JJ said “Dy-no-MITE” or the first time that Fonzie made the jukebox at Arnold’s turn on and off by hitting it.
Here’s a fun one, in that the first time it was used was really in a meme ABOUT the concept. So yes, a meme about a concept was the first time that a concept was used. Isn’t that just the funniest thing?
You see, starting stories in media res, in the middle of a story, is a typical thing in both movies and films. Sunset Boulevard is probably the most famous example, as the film begins with the narrator of the film floating dead in a pool…
So anyways, lots of films and TV shows have done bits where the story flashes back after starting in media res. It is VERY COMMON.
In addition, it became RELATIVELY very common for TV shows and movies to do “Record scratches” with freeze frames, where the song gets cut off mid-tune (like a record scratch) and then the narrator would talk to the audience.
This happened frequently.
However, what DIDN’T happen was all of those things put together. A record scratch, freeze frame, and the narrator speaking to the audience telling them “how we got here.” Not in that specific mixture. A lot of stuff was SIMILAR or came CLOSE, but didn’t quite get there.
It was just a thing that people BELIEVED was a common trope. Therefore, when Seth Green came the closest to this being a “thing” in Robot Chicken Star Wars III in 2010, Green did it BELIEVING he was parodying an actual trope, when in reality, he was essentially becoming the first person to more or less DO the trope…
This, though, helped make people assume even MORE that it was an actual thing, because, again, Robot Chicken was actively parodying it! How could it NOT be a thing?
And so in stepped Brian Moore, who decided that he would just pay a voice actor to DO the thing, since he couldn’t actually find “the thing.”
Moore explains it in this TikTok video….
@lanewinfield Reply to @aurorasblog Nobody’s going to watch this entire thing, but here you go!
Okay, so people began to believe that Moore’s videos were sampling a line from a movie or a TV show instead of being an original line. Then lots of other people did their OWN videos, like this awesome Spider-Man one, all sampling the lines from Moore’s videos with his voice actor’s lines (again, they all thought they were sampling from an actual movie or TV show)…
Pretty funny stuff.
Someone asked me to do this on some social media platform. Feel to drop me a line at brian@poprefs.com to claim your credit for suggesting it!
If anyone else has a suggestion for a notable pop culture first that you’d like to see me spotlight, drop me a line at brian@poprefs.com
In medias res. Not “in media res.”
It is hilarious how a trope so heavily associated with classic films was actually retrofitted by modern internet culture. You still see this exact pacing all over short-form video today—anyone who watches creators parodying tropes across public tiktok stories knows that dramatic freeze-frame intro is alive and well. It is wild that the specific phrasing started as a meme making fun of the cliché rather than being a direct quote from a movie.
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The twist here is genuinely funny: the trope everyone assumes is a classic movie cliché was actually popularized by Brian Moore paying a voice actor to perform a line he couldn’t find in any real film. I also appreciate the distinction that in medias res and record-scratch freeze frames existed separately, but the specific narrator-to-camera combination didn’t. It makes the Robot Chicken parody in 2010 feel like an accidental origin point rather than a reference to something older.