Soldier of Christ Why Art Thou Hidden / The Demon of Babylon Disguises Himself

About

Soldier of Christ Why Art Thou Hidden, continued The Demon of Babylon Disguises Himself With the Coat of the Righteous, refers to an altered, four-panel, Cereal Guy rage comic that shows a blurry figure who's revealed to be something else when un-blurred. The catchphrase references a passage from the Bible about Satan and his demons disguising themselves as servants of righteousness. The exploitable meme became prominent due to AI art made with Stable Diffusion that could generate visually parallel but differently constructed versions of notable memes and image macros (a prime example being AI Anime Girls as Creepypasta Images).

Origin

On January 9th, 2023, the Facebook^[1] page Retardposting posted a Cereal Guy meme in which Cereal Guy asked a blurry photo, "Soldier of Christ, why art thou hidden?" The blurry image appeared to be Trollface or Trollge, but when revealed, it was an AI-generated anime girl, originally posted to Reddit's /r/NovelAi^[2] subreddit four days prior. Cereal Guy then said, "The Demon of Babylon disguises himself with the coat of the righteous," in reference to passages from the Bible.^[3] Over the course of three months, the post gained roughly 3,700 reactions (shown below).

Spread

The meme was soon reposted to Reddit's /r/196^[4] subreddit where it gained roughly 4,500 upvotes in three months. On January 23rd, 2023, Instagram^[5] user @le_zozzler posted the first discovered variation of the meme, showing the Garfield character Nermal being colored like Garfield and earning over 700 likes in three months (shown below).

Going into April 2023, two Peter Griffin variations surfaced online. The first was uploaded by Instagram^[6] user @dwoink.v2 on January 31st, 2023, gaining over 350 likes in three months (shown below, left). The other was posted by iFunnyer^[7] @Toe_Sucker on February 4th, 2023, gaining roughly 5,100 smiles in two months (shown below, right).

On February 28th, 2023, TikToker^[8] @lightfootactor uploaded a voiceover of the aforementioned Peter Griffin meme, gaining roughly 11,100 plays and 1,800 likes in one month (shown below).

More variations appeared on Twitter^[9] and Tumblr^[10] going into mid-2023.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References