The format comes from the Mr Incredible Becoming Canny meme, based on Bob Parr from Pixar's The Incredibles, which was flipped in late 2021 into Becoming Uncanny versions showing the same character in increasingly traumatised and distorted phases. The template spread through Reddit, YouTube and TikTok as a way to rank how disturbing a topic, memory or situation becomes. Short audio versions then circulated as WhatsApp audios and in meme edits, where the uncanny phase became shorthand for dread, trauma and dark humour without needing the full image sequence.