The 'How Are You Not Dead?' meme is taken from a scene in the 2020 live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie. In the scene, Tom Wachowski (played by James Marsden) asks Sonic how he survived a dangerous explosion, to which Sonic shrugs and replies, 'I have no idea!' The template gained massive popularity for its versatility in describing situations where something or someone survives despite all odds, logic, or safety protocols. It is frequently used in the tech community to describe legacy code, in history memes to describe resilient figures, or in gaming to highlight a player's improbable victory with one health point left.