By All Accounts It Doesn’t Make Sense

About

“By All Accounts, It Doesn’t Make Sense” is a memorable quote uttered by the character Kronk from the 2000 animated film The Emperor’s New Groove, depicting Kronk pointing out a plothole in the movie’s scenario. In memes, the screenshot of this scene has been used as an exploitable image macro and as the model for redraws to present similar illogical situations.

Origin

The Emperor’s New Groove was released by Disney Studios on December 10th, 2000. Near the climax of the story, the antagonists Yzma and Kronk manage to reach their lab before the heroes can, but when asked, they find themselves unable to rationally explain how they could achieve such a feat (seen below). This is emphasized by Kronk unrolling a map out of seemingly nowhere to show just how much this course of events doesn’t make sense, in a display of meta-humor and fourth-wall-breaking with a subverted take on the “Travelling At The Speed Of Plot” trope.

The exact first use of the scene being used as a meme format is unknown, but one of the earliest examples comes from a post on August 28th, 2014, by Tumblr user Not the Disney You’re Looking For, who published an edited GIF with a recursion tunnel effect on the image, gathering more than 520,000 notes in roughly six years (shown below).

Spread

On November 11th, 2016, following Donald Trump’s election, Twitter user fleebites posted a redraw featuring Trump as Kronk and Mike Pence as Yzma, receiving more than 11,200 likes and 7,500 retweets in roughly four years (shown below, left). On March 30th, 2018, the Facebook page Destiny 2 Memes shared a version referencing the game Destiny 2 as another example (shown below, right).

The quote had a lot of mileage in the Reddit community, being used both as a template, a redraw inspiration and a title for new threads. On the /r/ShitPostCrusaders subreddit on August 26th, 2019, a redraw with Risotto Nero from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure featured instead of Kronk gathered more than 26,700 points (97% upvoted) and more than 400 comments in six months (seen below, left). One week later, on the /r/dankmemes sub, a picture discussing Kronk memes was posted, which gained more than 76,900 points (94% upvoted) and more than 300 comments in six months (seen below, right).

On December 24th, 2019, Twitter user RJ Pierce tweeted their own take on the meme with Star Wars IX: The Rise Of Skywalker’s scenario, gaining more than 11,100 likes and 2,500 retweets in 10 months.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

Know Your Meme Store

External References