A train hitting a school bus
Where it came from
This meme format emerged around 2010-2012 from scenes of Pixar's Cars movies, particularly featuring the character Rusty who resembles a train.
The meme shows a train approaching and hitting a school bus in a deliberately absurd and comedic way. It's basically used to represent an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, or to show something chaotic and unexpected happening. The humor comes from the surreal violence of the scenario and how over-the-top it is — like when you're trying to explain why something bad happened and you just go with the most ridiculous version. People use it to caption situations where there's a collision of ideas, plans failing spectacularly, or just general chaos. It's the kind of meme that's funny because it's so dumb and unexpected, fitting perfectly with the absurdist humor that was popular in early 2010s meme culture.
Search interest, over time
↳ data courtesy of google trends
