Memes are off to a good start in 2021. With a flood of material to work with and armed with their Photoshop tools, meme makers have tackled a number of topics so far. Gamestop's bizarre stock situation brought on by Reddit day traders has been a target, but perhaps the biggest meme so far this year has been Bernie Sanders at President Biden's inauguration.
The Senator from Vermont attended the inauguration wearing his sensible winter coat, a pair of excellent mittens, and an expression that said "can we get back to sending out those $2000 COVID relief checks already?" The look instantly took off online, and soon fans were putting Bernie into all kinds of situations. That the Vermont Senator wound up in a number of video games as a result of this meme is no surprise.
The latest Bernie sighting comes courtesy of a mod that has replaced Jack Baker from Resident Evil 7 with Senator Sanders, seated on his steel folding chair and terrifying Ethan Winters at every turn. The clip shows Sanders chasing Ethan through the Baker house, breaking through walls while wielding a floating shovel the Senator must be controlling through telekinesis. Much like the SoulCalibur 6 mod that turned Bernie into a playable character, the murderous Resident Evil 7 Bernie is a hilarious sight to see, floating and hopping his way towards the player, smashing tables and busting through walls like the Kool-Aid Man.
To take the image of Senator Sanders and paste him into a different scene requires some level of creativity and basic skills with a photo-editing program, but to create a mod that inserts a new 3D model into a recent video game is real dedication to the meme. Even when not in the service of memes, the work that fans do to modify games is impressive. Recently, a fan showed off a fixed camera Resident Evil 7 mod, taking the latest entry in the franchise and marrying it to the style of the first games in the series. The result is something that has the feel of those classic RE games, right down to the awkward tank controls.
While it is hard to say how long the Bernie meme will last, as most internet phenomena vanish into the ether fairly quickly, but for the moment it does have staying power. Even Mortal Kombat creator Ed Boon got in on the meme action. It is not a surprise the image of Bernie took off, it is easy to throw him into any number of situations that work, but the level to which people have taken it is quite impressive.