I Didn’t Hear No Bell

About

I Didn’t Hear No Bell refers to an image macro from the television show South Park. The line is spoken by Randy Marsh. It is used comedically to show when an already weakened individual or group is unwilling to give up in the face of overwhelming odds of failure. It is sometimes used with an image of Sylvester Stallone as Rocky instead, as the South Park line is a Rocky V reference. It is used similarly Oh I’m Sorry, I Thought This Was America (which also comes from the same South Park episode) and “I can do this all day,” said by Captain America.

Origin

The line originally comes from Rocky V released in 1990. The line is uttered by Rocky Balboa, played by Sylvester Stallone, as he rises to his feet to defeat an opponent.

On April 6th, 2005, an episode of South Park titled “The Losing Edge” aired on Comedy Central. The episode features the South Park kids at a baseball game. During the final game, Randy Marsh, father of Stan Marsh, is cheering for the team and trash-talking the opposing team, at which points he starts fighting “Bat Dad,” initially losing until finally saying the line ‘I didn’t hear no bell’ and going on to defeat Bat Dad (shown below). The entire sequence is homage/parody of the Rocky V scene.

Spread

The first recorded use of the line and image as a meme was a moshpit meme posted by Nik Nocturnal to the Facebook page Memes of the Heavy Metal on October 10th, 2018.

From there it has been used a great deal by r/Historymemes to comment upon underdogs in historic battles. For example, on January 3rd, 2020, Redditor cyrilkhourey-02 posted an example about Andrew Jackson, gaining over 500 points (shown below, left). On April 23rd, user The Cheerful Cynic posted a World War I variation, gaining over 300 points (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

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External References