About
Eye Rolling Robert Downey Jr. refers to an “animated gif”: of actor Robert Downey Jr. rolling his eyes in contempt with his arms crossed. It became a “reaction image”: used to express annoyance on the internet, either in the form of gif animations or image macros.
Origin
In the 2012 Blockbuster film The Avengers, a scene involves Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr.), reacts to the fact that Captain America (played by Chris Evans) candidly exclaimed that he understood the referenceNick Fury (played by Samuel L. Jackson) uttered by crossing his arms and rolling his eyes in contempt (shown below, left). A cropped-up version was soon posted online (shown below, right).
Spread
On its own, the animation was mainly used as a reaction face on various boards and forums a pink-out still image was uploaded to “Meme Generator”: on March 29th, 2013, titled “Robert Downey Junior face”[1], accumulating to over 14 000 parodies and ranking #486 on the site, as of May 2016.
The same image was reposted to Imgflip, leading to more than 130 pages of parodies[2], as part of the The Face You Make meme.
Various Examples
External References
[1]Meme Generator – Robert Downey Junior face
[2]Imgflip – Face You Make Robert Downey Jr