The grunt became Tim Allen's signature sound as Tim Taylor, the accident-prone host of the 1990s sitcom Home Improvement, where he used it to react to tools, mishaps and baffling situations. The vocalization was repeated so often it became inseparable from the character and later lived on in reruns, remixes and meme edits. Online, creators lifted the short clip from the show and began using it as a standalone reaction for confusion and failure, long after the series ended in 1999.