Life imitates art, and art imitates … bizarre Taylor Swift memes from the early 2010s. In a recent interview with Insider, director Taika Waititi revealed that one of the most memorable parts of his new film Thor: Love and Thunder — the constantly screaming goats who lead the god of thunder’s flying “chariot” — was actually inspired by an old, mega viral meme featuring the pop star’s “I Knew You Were Trouble.”
If you’ve already seen the newest edition to the standalone Marvel franchise, then the goats really need no explanation. But for those who haven’t yet made it out to theaters: After a successful life-saving mission at the beginning of the movie, Thor is gifted with a pair of goats that have one hilariously annoying defect.
“They were never meant to be screaming,” Waititi explained of the creatures, who provide comic relief multiple times throughout the two-hour film starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, and Christian Bale. “The goats were always going to be in there because they are in the comics, but we didn’t know how they would sound. Then someone in post-production found this meme of a Taylor Swift song that has screaming goats in it.”
“I didn’t even know that existed,” he added. “So I hear the screaming goats and I just felt it was awesome. A lot of people think it’s me screaming. It’s not.”
The meme in question first popped up back in 2013, when someone infamously spliced the “All Too Well” singer’s “I Knew You Were Trouble” music video with clips of a goat standing behind a fence and shrieking at the top of its lungs. After Swift sings the lyric “Now I’m lying on the cold hard ground,” the first word (“Oh!”) of the song’s chorus typically follows, but in the meme, it’s replaced with impeccable timing by the goat’s wail.
“I think one of the vendors that was making the CG goats, they just added the Taylor Swift song ‘I Knew You Were Trouble,’ but the fan-made one with the goat sounds,” Waititi continued. “We just thought it was so funny. So it was just a shot of how the CG creatures were coming along, it wasn’t meant for the film or anything, it was just an update. And the screams were freakin’ awesome.”
Waititi also recently revealed that the film’s Guns N’ Roses-filled soundtrack was originally supposed to include some of Kate Bush’s music as well, but that idea didn’t pan out, though Stranger Things‘ made notable use of her 1985 track “Running Up That Hill” in season four’s first collection of episodes, which arrived May 27.
“I love that show, but as someone who feels a real ownership of Kate Bush music … I’m really annoyed!” the director joked in another interview. “Before Stranger Things! Yeah, there were a bunch of Kate Bush songs I wanted to have in there.”
