Have you heard about Henry Cavill's moustache? If you spend your time finding memes and liking tweets in your spare time like me, you probably have. If not, you're probably wondering why in the hell you should give a damn about Superman's facial hair. But there's a strange and pretty hilarious story behind it that has had the internet obsessed for months.
Whether you liked them or not, the recent DC superhero movies haven't been doing so well. First Man of Steel, where Cavill debuted his version of Clark Kent, caused a bit of controversy with its hero's seeming disregard for mass destruction. Then, Batman V Superman received a very mixed reception, followed up by their answer to The Avengers: the Justice League.
While the Justice League pre-date the Avengers by a long time in the comics, they had some catching up to do in the movies, but the movie woefully underperformed at the box office. In fact, one of the most memorable things to come out of it was Henry Cavill's moustache - or, his lack of one.
The actor signed on for a role in the upcoming Mission: Impossible: Fallout, but reshoots for Justice League overlapped with this filming. As he had grown a moustache for his spy role, he was required to shave it off to be Superman once more - but Paramount didn't want him to. Eventually, Warner Bros were forced to accept this and ended up spending millions on CGI to remove the moustache.
While they might have thought it was a great idea, the internet relentlessly made fun of the decision for months, especially with how it turned out.
Pretty much everyone got on his case, including Ryan Reynolds. In typical Deadpool fashion, the merc-with-a-mouth dropped a reference to the moustache incident in the trailer for the superhero sequel. Even the director, Zack Snyder, mocked the CGI moustache removal:
Not done there, the internet even mixed in one of 2017's other popular memes - the distracted boyfriend. When memes like this collide, hilarity ensues:
But now the time has come for Cavill to say goodbye to his moustache, which the internet has now dubbed 'Kingstache' (for some reason). Luckily, the actor has a great sense of humor with all the attention his facial hair has received, recently posting an Instagram video captioned "#ShavedButNotForgotten".
"I know, it's hard to recognize me without the Kingstache," he says in the video. "Sometimes I even have trouble recognizing myself."
"It's hard for me to admit... this is not CGI. He's really gone," he adds, before the video goes into a hilarious loving montage of his memories with the infamous Kingstache.
It's been months of funny tweets, hilarious memes, and mocking posts, but the moustache-gate saga has finally come to a close. But like Cavill says, it may be shaved - but it is not forgotten.