Morpheus what if i told you

Matrix Morpheus is an advice animal image macro series featuring a screen capture of the fictional character Morpheus (played by Lawrence Fishburne) from The Matrix franchise. The captions typically follow a two line format with the first line reading "What if I Told You," followed by a revelation that often belittles futile or petty behavior, in a similar vein to the advice animal characters Conspiracy Keanu and Sudden Clarity Clarence.

The truth behind the misquoted line from The Matrix, which begins with "What if I told you...", and has gone on to become a famous meme.

 Morpheus what if i told you

As you know, the expression "what if I told you" came from The Matrix. But what if I told you it didn't? First off, Morpheus never said that phrase in any of the films. The phrase was more common than "bad feeling about this" beforehand, but only really gained popularity at about the same time, although long before The Matrix. I'm not familiar enough with pop culture to know any famous use of the phrase around the time Star Wars came out, so was there any such use that suddenly kickstarted the phrase's popularity, or was it natural? 

How is it possible that a line from The Matrix never actually existed? The line begins "What if I told you," and it's believed to have been spoken by Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne). It has even become part of the zeitgeist, repurposed into a popular joke meme. In reality, though, that line was never actually said in the film. So how did fans end up believing it was?

Fans believe "What if I told you" was said by Morpheus when he was explaining the Matrix to Neo (Keanu Reeves). The line would have helped kick off Morpheus' monologue about how everything in the Matrix is a construct meant to distract Neo from the brutal reality he is simply a slave to machines actually running the world in a distant, post-apocalyptic future. The monologue precedes a moment that really does happen in the film: Morpheus offering Neo the choice between the blue pill, which would make him forget their conversation and let him carry on with his life, and the red pill, which would permanently open his eyes and free him from the Matrix. What's interesting is that Morpheus' "What if I told you" line was never actually spoken and instead has become an infamously misquoted line from the film.

Per KnowYourMeme, chances are good the "What if I told you" line was merely a reworded take on Morpheus' actual dialogue in the scene: "Do you want to know what 'it' is?". This makes sense considering a meme thrives on brevity and clarity as it reshapes pop culture into a digestible, humorous piece of content. Additionally, the idea of putting "What if I told you" at the top of a meme as a way of jokily revealing a truth about the world similar to the way Morpheus does with Neo has a nicer, clearer ring to it than the line "Do you want to know what 'it' is?".

While the line “What if I told you” was never heard in any of the Matrix films, it thought to be a paraphrased interpretation of a scene from The Matrix in which Morpheus informs the protagonist Neo (played by Keanu Reeves) that he lives in is a computer simulation (shown below, left). A different screen capture used in many of the image macros comes from a scene in which Morpheus warns Neo about the artificial intelligence programs known as "Agents"

 On March 27th, 2012, Redditor matthewkol186 submitted a Matrix Morpheus image macro with the caption "What if I told you / the side with the USB symbol will always be the top side" which received over 620 up votes and 35 comments prior to being archived. On the following day, Redditor lindyhop411 submitted an image macro titled "Why I could never take Morpheus seriously" to the /r/AdviceAnimals subreddit, which featured a screen capture of Lawrence Fishburn as the character Cowboy Curtis in the children's television show Pee Wee's Playhouse (shown below, right). Prior to being archived, the post received over 8,000 up votes and 200 comments. As of December 28th, 2012, the Quick meme page for "Matrix Morpheus" has received over 33,000 submissions.

On December 14th, 2018, the security news blog Trend Micro published an article titled "Criminals Use Malicious Memes That Communicate With Malware," which reported that a type of remote access trojan (RAT) malware was using Matrix Morpheus memes posted to Twitter in order to hide "/print" commands (shown below).

As fans have gone on to rewatch The Matrix over the years, they've noticed the "What if I told you" quote is actually not mentioned in the movie. Various discussions have allowed people to confer over the line's existence with many swearing it was included in the theatrical run of the film but has since disappeared from versions of the film cut for broadcast purposes or DVD/Blu-Ray releases.

But the fact is, this isn't the first time that famous quotes have been altered in fans' minds over time and eventually used in public incorrectly. It's quite common for people to get famous movie quotes wrong. One of the biggest instances of this is Darth Vader being misquoted when he told Luke that he's his father. As we now see, the truth about the "What if I told you" line is neither supernatural nor is it a glitch in the Matrix. In reality, it's a simple case of lines blurring together into an infamously misquoted line which has found a second life in the world of memes.