The Ol' Spicy Keychain

About

The Ol’ Spicy Keychain is an exploitable image by illustrator and comic artist Will Laren. The image shows one person pranking the other by giving them the “spicy keychain”, meaning to heat another person’s keychain (or other belongings) using an oven. The original illustration has been parodied and reposted on many sites.

Origin

The original drawing was uploaded on November 9, 2010 on Will Laren’s blogspot.^[1] Similar to Laren’s other illustrations, it only features a dialogue by a single person, traditionally drawn and watercolored. It depicts a man crying to his brother who gave him the “ol’ spicy keychain”, much to his demise. The original image was also posted on Laren’s Tumblr^[2] and Flickr.^[3]

Spread

The earliest known spread of the image was on the sports imageboard (/sp/) of the website 4chan. An anonymous user sent an email to the creator, saying it became “sort of a meme” to the board. The user also sent Laren an image from the thread, which is a photoshopped version of the famous “Why Can’t I Hold All These Limes?” meme with the exploitable.^[4]

It further rose to popularity on Reddit when it was posted on /r/funny by Reddit user bjester on October 12, 2011 with 107 upvotes^[5], and on /r/WTF by mansizerooster on May 9, 2012 which was frontpaged, having 1159 upvotes. A definition of “Spicy Keychain” was also added on Urban Dictionary by attractivecryingman on December 16, 2011.^[7]