Epic Handshake

Origin

The shot is from Predator, released in 1987. Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) greets Dillon (Carl Weathers) with a line of macho affection — “Dillon! You son of a…” — and the two men clasp hands in an arm-wrestling grip, biceps flexed, forearms filling the frame.

The composition is almost purpose-built for object-labeling. Two arms enter from opposite sides, they are clearly distinguishable, and they meet at a single point in the centre. Two things, one connection, no ambiguity.

What it means / how it’s used

Epic Handshake is a visual Venn diagram. Each arm gets a label — two things that are usually opposed, or that have nothing obvious in common — and the clasped hands are labelled with what unites them.

Its uses:

• Two rival groups and the one thing they agree on.
• Two unrelated fields sharing a technique or problem.
• Two opposing arguments reaching the same conclusion.
• Two competitors with the same flaw.

The format’s rhetorical value is that it makes a claim about hidden common ground, which is a genuinely useful thing to be able to say in one image. It also plays well when the shared point is trivial — two bitter enemies united by a mutual hatred of the same minor inconvenience.

How it spread

The scene circulated as a standalone clip long before it became a template. A live-action tribute uploaded to YouTube on August 25, 2007 took over 370,000 views across six years, and a 1980s-music remix posted on September 28, 2008 took 195,000+ views over five years.

The object-labeled format arrived a decade later. The earliest documented version was posted to Twitter on May 14, 2018, taking more than 3,500 retweets and 14,000 likes over five months. The format trended across meme communities through July 2018, with roundup listicles appearing by July 26, 2018.

It then made an unusual jump. In April 2019, TikTok users adopted the handshake as a performed gesture, filming themselves recreating the grip; one sound built around it was used in over 14,000 posts. Few image-macro formats successfully convert into physical trends, and fewer still do it a year after peaking as images.

Its anime counterpart, the Madara and Hashirama handshake, emerged in parallel and dominates in anime and gaming communities, while this version remains the general-purpose default.

Notable examples & variations

• Two-label-plus-handshake constructions across every subject imaginable.
• Versions adding third and fourth hands for multi-party agreement.
• TikTok recreations of the physical handshake.
• The Naruto variant, used interchangeably in many communities.
• Versions where the shared trait is something both parties would deny.

Legacy / cultural impact

Epic Handshake is one of the internet’s core rhetorical templates — a format used to make an argument rather than a joke. It appears constantly in technical, academic, and political discussion, where “these two opposed things actually share this” is a recurring claim.

Its longevity is remarkable given the source: a two-second greeting between two action stars in a 1987 sci-fi film, which has now spent longer as a meme than Predator spent as a current release.