Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at Sunday’s Oscars ceremony is all the internet can talk about this week. And, just as you’d expect, it hasn’t taken long for the controversial moment to be memed beyond all recognition. Various takes on The Slap have gone viral on social media, but the latest doing the rounds has got to be the weirdest one yet, as it reimagines the moment as a DreamWorks animated crossover.
As created by @VRLolathon, this viral video replaces Rock and Smith with the characters they played in mid-00s animated movies — Rock’s Marty the zebra from the Madagascar franchise and Smith’s shark-slaying fish from Shark Tale who, and this could not be more perfect, is named Oscar. Check out the wild meme below:
As well as being hilarious, this animated remixing of the moment is bizarrely much more sinister than the live-action version. The way Oscar slowly marches up to Marty on his fins, while looking furious, definitely gives off “uncanny valley” vibes. It also feels like a throwback to that time Shrek and Donkey and Mike and Sully from Monsters Inc. competed at the 2002 Academy Awards.
Twitter can’t stop laughing about it, but it’s still yet to be determined if Smith will face any serious repercussions for his actions. While Rock has announced he won’t be pressing charges, the Academy has confirmed it is launching an investigation into the incident that will take weeks to unfold.
At the very least, Smith’s reputation has taken a hit amongst his peers, as various famous faces have blasted him for his violent response to Rock’s offensive joke at his wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s expense, including Jim Carrey, Zoë Kravitz, and even the real Richard Williams. Others, meanwhile, have jumped to the King Richard star’s defense — like, unsurprisingly, his own mom — and Smith has publicly apologized for his emotional outburst.
