You can always count on St. Patrick’s Day for some good old green screen fun.
The Chicago, Ill. river gets dyed a festive bright green every year to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day every year, but this year the green screen potential did not go untapped.
Memes might not have been part of the masterplan for the city when they chose the perfect shade of bright shamrock green, but as soon as people online noticed that the bright shade of chartreuse was the ideal green screen match, Twitter users got busy switching things up.
Shenanigans ensued as people went to town, and their handiwork is pretty impressive. The transformative results have everything from a lava lake to the Avengers Endgame trailer.
The body of water became an internet star. Perhaps this is how we should celebrate holidays all the time — by affording the internet some lighthearted fun.
Take yourself to the St. Patrick’s Day river memes below.
Another on reddit imagined the river full of deadly wildfire, the volatile green liquid from Game of Thrones that the Alchemists’ Guild oversees.
Dying the river green is a time-honored Windy City tradition that dates all the way back to 1962. This year, police officer Tom Rowan did the honors of spreading the dye, to the delight of people in the city.
“The original Mayor Daley in the 1950s wanted to do something special, he wanted to dye the whole of Lake Michigan green. But it was just too huge to do. The next best thing was the Chicago River,” Rowan told CNN.
Going completely green is a two-boat operation. One boat churns, and the other dubbed the “Mixmaster” stirs it all up to spread it evenly.
Strangely enough, the dye is an orange powder concocted with a vegetable base that’s safe for the environment, but you’ll need more than the luck of the Irish to know what’s really in it.
“It’s like the Coca Cola recipe — we don’t tell anyone,” Rowan said.
