Handshake Between Madara and Hashirama

Origin

The frame comes from Naruto Shippuden, season 17, episode 369, “My True Dream,” which aired on July 24, 2014. In a flashback, Madara Uchiha and Hashirama Senju — leaders of two clans that had been at war for generations — clasp hands to seal an alliance. The moment is meant to be historic: two sworn enemies agreeing on one thing.

That is precisely what makes it a template. The image is a visual Venn diagram: two distinct parties, one point of contact.

The format is the anime counterpart to the older Epic Handshake meme, taken from the 1987 film Predator, in which Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch and Carl Weathers’ Dillon clasp arms. Both memes do the same job; the Naruto version became dominant in anime and gaming communities, while the Predator version stayed the general-purpose default.

What it means / how it’s used

The two characters get labelled with two things that are usually opposed, and the handshake itself gets labelled with what they nonetheless agree on.

Typical uses:

• Two rival fanbases and the one opinion they share.
• Two political or cultural camps united by a mundane preference.
• Two competing products and a flaw they both have.
• Two enemies in a story who want the same outcome for different reasons.

The three-label structure carries an implicit argument — that beneath a visible conflict there is common ground, which is often funnier when the common ground is trivial.

How it spread

Object-labeled versions circulated as early as September 26, 2018, when a Twitter user posted a version labelling the two characters as PlayStation and Xbox — a perfect fit, since console rivalry is exactly the kind of conflict the format resolves.

The format was standardised on June 6, 2020, when a Redditor posted a clean template — the two labelled characters above, a red-tinted closeup of the clasped hands below — to r/MemeTemplatesOfficial, taking over 8,000 upvotes. That two-tier layout is the version almost everyone uses today, and its arrival marks the point where the meme became a standard tool rather than an occasional joke.

Its adoption tracked the broader mainstreaming of Naruto references. By 2020, the series had a large enough audience that its imagery could be used in general meme communities without explanation.

Notable examples & variations

• The standard two-label-plus-handshake structure.
• Versions adding a third or fourth hand for multi-party agreement.
• The Predator Epic Handshake as a direct substitute.
• Edits swapping in characters from other franchises.
• Reversed jokes where the shared point is something both parties would deny.

Legacy / cultural impact

The handshake format — in both its Naruto and Predator forms — has become one of the internet’s core rhetorical templates, because it expresses something arguments constantly need: these two opposed things actually agree here.

The Naruto version’s rise is also a marker of how thoroughly anime imagery entered general meme vocabulary during the late 2010s. A frame from a 2014 episode of a long-running shōnen series is now used routinely by people who have never watched it, in contexts entirely unrelated to the show.