The Horse Plinko meme features a digital animation of a horse bouncing through a vertical board filled with pegs, resembling the game Plinko. In the sequence, the horse dramatically tumbles and ricochets off these pegs as it descends towards the bottom of the frame. This meme became especially popular for edits and variations across social media platforms, inviting creative interpretations and comedic modifications from users.
The concept for the Horse Plinko meme originated from academic work. On November 27th, 2017, a research paper titled 'ADMM ⊇ Projective Dynamics: Fast Simulation of General Constitutive Models' was published by a team from the University of Minnesota. The same day, Assistant Professor Rahul Narain shared a demonstration video on YouTube. This video, which was a collaborative effort by students George Brown and Matt Overby, featured several 3D animations including the notable sequence of a horse navigating through a Plinko-like peg arrangement to showcase real-time collisions. Subsequently, on December 2nd, 2017, this particular animation was turned into a GIF and posted on a Tumblr (now X) account dedicated to collecting GIFs, where it started to gain attention and popularity, setting the stage for its viral spread as a meme.[1]
Origin: 2021