The Hunger Games very quickly became a bonafide cultural phenomenon. It launched the career of Jennifer Lawrence into the stratosphere, and fans around the world found themselves falling in love with the character of Katniss Everdeen. Even more, fans found themselves immersed in the rich and sprawling world that Katniss lives in.
Part of what made the characters and story so popular is how iconic everyone was. It took no time at all for characters, dialogue, and moments from the story to become the stuff of classic memes.
In this way, both the book and movie adventures of Katniss have lived on long after most fans first experienced them.
Of course, not all memes are a celebration of how great Hunger Games is. Some serve to remind us about just how many things about this series don’t actually make sense. And once you see the memes, it actually changes how you view the series as a whole.
Is Katniss a resourceful hero, or someone who just can’t make up her mind? Is Gale simply the boy who got away, or is a scorned lover who will do anything to payback?
These questions and more will be going through your head after you check out the 25 Hilarious Memes That Show The Hunger Games Makes No Sense!
Fashion Trashing
Hunger Games is a beloved series of both books and movies. However, if we’re being honest, it shares tropes with many other “youth Dystopia” style stories out there.
This means that there needs to be some interesting ways for it to stand out from the competition. While the characters do a lot of this heavy lifting (for instance, there’s no other fictional character quite like Katniss Everdeen), one unexpected contender is the fashion.
To put it mildly: the fashion in The Hunger Games is utterly insane.
At first, we are only privy to what characters like Katniss, Peeta, and other inhabitants of poor districts wear. However, in the Capital, it seems like everyone is constantly trying to one-up each other when it comes to having a crazy fashion sense.
This meme elegantly points out just how crazy that is: in our own tragically normal world, Lady Gaga and her wild fashion stands out because few people would ever try to pull off that style.
In The Hunger Games, every rich person does, which forces us to ask: is your fashion really still special when literally everyone you know also dresses that way? This is yet another reason why they shouldn’t be wiping out their great fashion designers off willy nilly.
Bread-Crossed Lovers
Some people would argue that the very best stories are love stories. While we don’t necessarily subscribe to that theory, love is certainly at the heart of The Hunger Games.
Katniss Everdeen is presented with a choice between two suitors, Gale and Peeta. Much of the romantic drama throughout the books and movies concerns which one she really loves and how much of Peeta’s feelings for her are real versus how much is just a show he is putting on for those watching.
We eventually get the truth, though it comes with the worst timing ever.
Part of the tragedy of Peeta’s story is that he gets brainwashed by the Capital, so he’s forced to fight Katniss.
He eventually its that he does love her. Not only that, but his love is hardly recent: he has loved her for over a decade, going back to their days in the district as children.
This meme points out how silly his bad timing really is: if he had been honest about his feelings for her years ago, he could have sidestepped a lot of the drama that would happen later on to both of these characters and even their friends and family.
Carb Jokes? We’re Bread, Fam
As we said, much of the personal drama that Katniss has throughout this story concerns which of the dreamy beaus she is ultimately going to end up with. Exactly which one you were rooting for mostly comes down to how you reacted to the boys’ very different personalities.
Gale had brooding intensity and practicality on his side. As for Peeta, he had a lot of charm and some fairly esoteric baking skills. F
or better or for worse, his name even manages to reflect this, with “Peeta” being very evocative of the (quite yummy) pita bread.
And boy oh boy, did the internet have a field day with bread jokes about Peeta. It’s enough to completely change how you view this character and his relationship to Katniss and the others.
This meme rather ironically calls the internet out, as Peeta simultaneously criticizes those making puns and then eggs them on with yet another bread-based joke.
Unfortunately for Peeta, it doesn’t look like Hunger Games fans are going to part with their carb-filled humor anytime soon. However, hey, he should just be happy that we’re so productive. It would be more of a shame if all of us were just loafing around.
The Real Cake Boss
Speaking of Peeta, both Katniss and the audience was a bit worried about his survival in the first Hunger Games book and movie. Part of the cruelty of the lottery system in this story is that anyone could get selected.
Some, like Katniss, come with some skills (like with a bow and arrow) that are handy within the arena. Others, like Peeta, have some fairly useless skills that come from a lifetime of working with pastries.
Against all the odds, though, Peeta shows Katniss how his skill at doing things like decorating cakes actually helped him create elaborate camouflage.
What can we say? This is a pretty insane premise. We would take any bet that if you threw some of the various Cake Boss experts into the Hunger Games, they wouldn’t be able to perfectly blend into their surroundings based only on decorating skills.
This meme calls Peeta out for his very silly claim by not so subtly reminding us that cakes look nothing like trees. If decorating cakes helped Peeta make himself look like a tree, then he’s either been recently lying or delivering some very weird-looking cakes for all these years.
Face it, Peeta: we like you better when you keep your pastry hole closed.
A Tale As Old As...Gobstoppers?
One thing that always causes internet fights is discussion of just how original The Hunger Games actually is. On one hand, there is nothing quite like the unique tapestry of characters and events that this story weaves.
On the other hand, it’s hard not to see the influence of earlier works on this particular tale. Things like Battle Royale clearly played an influence on this story, and only you can decide if that hurts your enjoyment of this unique take on an old idea.
However, there were some other unique influences as well.
This silly meme reminds us that there is a long and cinematic history of children being pitted against each other while slowly getting eliminated. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has a simple premise that these children have all won the opportunity to tour Wonka’s fantastic factory.
However, we eventually find out that this was all a strange ruse for him to discover which child was worthy enough to be his successor.
Meanwhile, those unworthy kids keep disappearing in increasingly bizarre ways, and despite Wonka’s assurances, we never do see them again. Maybe President Snow had to institute a lottery because everyone got wise to the old “golden ticket” scheme?
Not Even a Nice Place to Visit
Part of what makes stories like The Hunger Games so fun is that they are filled with great world-building.
It’s tough enough to tell a great story that is set in our own world. However, when you’re creating worlds of fantasy or sci-fi, it’s quite a bit more challenging because you must create a convincing world full of details, locations, fantastic characters, and more.
When the world building is good, fans typically fantasize about visiting the fictional area: Lord of the Rings fans, for instance, wish they could see the elves, while Harry Potter fans hope they might someday get a letter from Hogwarts.
This meme points out that Hunger Games fans are not at all like that. This is mostly a function of the story being a Dystopia: while both Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter have some scary moments, they are filled with enough hope and happiness that visiting there seems like a fun and good idea.
Hunger Games, however, is a brutal hellscape where the closest thing to a happy ending is still going to involve lots of destruction. We’re happy just peeking into that world— no visits are necessary for us, but thanks for the invite!
Fear the Beard
In many ways, the most controversial thing about any film adaptation of a beloved book is how it visualizes the characters.
This is because to book lovers, the ability to get a perfect picture in their heads of what a character looks like is a large part of the fun. If the movie’s vision doesn’t align with the imagined one, then it can instantly change how the fan sees the movie.
With the character Seneca, it was a bit of a mixed bag: he looked fantastic. However, he was the face that launched a thousand memes.
In a futuristic sci-fi Dystopia, it seemed like Seneca’s beard was the weirdest and most unlikely thing of all.
That’s exactly what this meme does: helps us to see how utterly insane this character’s facial foliage really is. In many ways, the beard already has “gotten” us: long after the credits rolled on the final movie, we are still haunted by the perfect symmetry of this beard from the first movie.
To the young men who are hoping to replicate this look to woo their own Katniss Everdeen off her feet... good luck. Or shall we say, may the odds be ever in your favor.
When Snow Falls
Earlier, we discussed how great Hunger Games was when it came to world-building. Details great and small all added together to create a world that really made sense.
However, there was a pretty notable exception to this: the actual games themselves! On paper, the whole purpose of these games is for the rich Capital to put the various districts in their place and assert the power of President Snow and his people.
In reality, it helped set the stage for Katniss to lead a revolution and tear the entire thing down.
This meme is here to ask the real question: how the hell did Snow not see this coming? When it comes to using your power to influence people, it basically comes down to offering rewards or offering punishments.
Even a child can see that the districts gain far less than they lose: their children are wiped out every single year, and if they are really lucky, only one child es away while the other gets the reward of not starving and perishing.
It’s an absurd system that basically guarantees rebellion. Hell, America rebelled over lack of representation: “systematically wiping out children” is much more of an inducement to a revolution than that.
Games Fiction
Pulp Fiction is a cinematic classic for many reasons. One of the big ones is that the characters are unforgettable: their interactions about everything from god to fast food are absolutely scintillating.
Also, in an early scene between hitmen Jules and Vincent, they discuss how the same thing can have funny names in different places.
For instance, what America would call a “Big Mac,” would call a “Royale with cheese.” So, what does this have to do with Hunger Games? It turns out there is a lot in a name.
Earlier, we mentioned Battle Royale. This was a book by Koushun Takami that was later turned into a movie. The book predates Hunger Games by only nine years and it focuses on (you guessed it) a Dystopian future in which a cruel government forces young people to fight and hurt one another as a way of maintaining control.
Sound familiar? Fans have been comparing Hunger Games and Battle Royale since the first Games book came out, and this meme is pretty hilariously pointing out that no matter how you slice that “cheese,” Battle Royale came out well before Katniss ever picked up a bow to take on President Snow.
Class Traitor Karma
On a very basic level, Hunger Games is a story about the “haves” and the “have nots.” The denizens of the Capital are definitely the “haves,” and we see them flaunt their extravagant wealth through fashion, food, and everything in-between.
The districts are the “have nots,” as they must toil in labor and squalor in order to appease the wealthy. The weird exception to this, though, is District One. They are wealthy and relatively “buddy buddy” with the Capital, but they still have to send people to compete in the Games. That’s where things get weird.
In this district, they actually glamorize the Games, to the point where people train all year in hopes of being chosen to fight.
This meme points out a weird irony in the idea of this training: characters like Katniss are able to safely hide from these characters by climbing a tree. Why, exactly, could these characters not climb a tree?
It’s easy to assume that Katniss (a hunter) could outclimb someone from the fancypants district. But if people from this district train all year in hopes of competing, one would think basic skills like “climb a tree” would be at the top of the list.
