Fallon put Skyler Gisondo’s memes in front of Skyler Gisondo

Skyler Gisondo sat down with Jimmy Fallon and addressed the viral memes about himself. The Tonight Show posted a new clip asking whether any of the jokes are true. If you’re trying to work out what started all this, the premise is simple. People pair photos of Gisondo with strangely specific childhood scenarios and write as if his smile proves he lived every single one. The interview turns the game back on the people writing the captions. 👀

How the trampoline got here

USA TODAY traced one of the best-known examples to a 2022 post imagining Gisondo as the kid who could pull off a wild trampoline trick. In a September interview with Vanity Fair, he picked the trampoline joke as a favorite and said his trick days were over. Know Your Meme also traces the format through later waves of posts, including the renewed attention this fall.

So Fallon’s clip is a fresh installment in an older joke. It gives Gisondo a chance to react on camera to a running bit people had already seen him acknowledge online. The Tonight Show Reel showed about 159,400 likes when checked Wednesday morning Eastern. That figure belongs to the new clip.

Why the joke keeps getting rewritten

The useful thing about the template is how little it needs. One photo and a sentence about a book fair or a playground injury can summon a whole imaginary kid. USA TODAY documented both kinds of captions. The line lands when the detail feels specific enough to recognize and arbitrary enough that a photo couldn’t possibly tell you it happened.