The 'Cause of Death: COVID' meme emerged during the height of the global pandemic as a form of dark humor and social skepticism regarding official mortality statistics. It typically depicts a scenario where a person dies from an obviously unrelated and dramatic event—such as a shark attack, skydiving accident, or freak lightning strike—only for the medical professional to list the official cause of death as COVID-19. This template gained massive traction on platforms like Reddit and X (formerly Twitter), serving as a vehicle for political commentary, satire about hospital reporting practices, or simply to mock the perceived absurdity of administrative data collection during a global crisis.