Gru's Plan

Gru's Plan uses four frames from Despicable Me (2010). In the film, Gru pitches his plan to steal the moon, only to discover that his adopted daughters slipped a drawing of him on the toilet into the presentation.

On March 9, 2018, Redditor FieldMarshalSixDans posted the earliest preserved four-panel meme version to r/DeepFriedMemes. A same-day r/MemeEconomy repost by dankbob_memepants_ put the structure in front of a wider template-hunting audience.

The format moved unusually fast. By March 11, edits about daylight saving time, education and history were collecting thousands of votes across r/memes and r/dankmemes. On March 12, a recursive “Gruception” edit and Pawaaar-'s animated r/me_irl version showed that the joke could survive both still-image and GIF forms.

The visual grammar then stabilized: panels one and two build confidence, panel three reveals the bad consequence, and panel four repeats it while Gru finally looks back. Character swaps, longer presentations and deliberately literal anti-memes kept the format reusable long after its first Reddit week.

The repeated third step is a tiny comic delay. Readers spot the mistake before Gru does, then the same text lands again as his realization.

Use it for plans with an obvious blind spot, unintended consequences or a decision that sounded smart until its final step.