All the best memes from the Paris Olympic Opening Ceremony

So, well, yeah, the 2024 Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony is a thing that… happened.

There was an upside Olympic flag. That Assasin’s Creed torchbearer. Lady Gaga singing entirely in French. A big Smurf-looking guy riding a plate of food who’s apparently the ‘Greek God of Dionysus’. Rain.

Oh, and Minions, which we guess are now canonically French. And more rain.

And that was only about halfway into it.

This was an opening ceremony that, after all, organisers promised would be one of the ‘most memorable moments in Olympic history’.

Even logistically, this was a different opening ceremony than usual, taking place outside the stadium where all the, well, the sport will actually happen tomorrow.

Instead, 205 delegations travelled down the river Seine on 85 barges, watched on by over 300,000 cheering, soggy, meme-making spectators.

But you know, any parallels to events, fictional or otherwise, are completely unintentional, we imagine, as some X users pointed out.

The same goes for the Olympics’s mysterious masked torchbearer, who would later discover that the Mona Lisa was stolen by the Minions. Yes, that is a sentence you just read.

The masked torchbearer, whose identity is never revealed, is said to be based on a raft of other cloaked figures in French culture. According to the guidance: Belphégor, the Iron Mask, the titular character from Phantom of the Opera, Fantomas, Arsène Lupin, and, of course, Ezio from Assassin’s Creed.

Lady Gaga, who lived in Paris as a student, also appeared behind a plumage of pink peacock feathers. In English, we call that an entrance.

She sang Renée Jeanmaire’s Mon Truc en Plumes. Sadly for non-French speaking Britons tuning in, she didn’t sing with subtitles.

Though, that didn’t stop them from absolutely loving every moment.

There was also just a lot of things which we, frankly, can barely struggle to put into words.

They included headless women dressed in red – à la Marie Antionette – bringing an end to a French rendition of Can You Hear the People Sing from the musical Les Misérables.

As well as the French heavy metal rockers, Gojira banging their heads from the balcony of the Court of Cassation, singing Ah! Ça Ira, which was popular during the French Revolution.

Oh and a big metal horse, created by Atelier Blam, meant to sybolise France’s creative spirit. That was our second guess.

And, before we forget, the athletes themselves trundling down the Seine in their boats.

But soon enough, there was just one person viewers wanted to see.

Céline Dion, who has been diagnosed with stiff person syndrome, wrapped up the ceremony by performing from under the Olympic rings glued to the front of the Eiffel Tower.

Well, what else do you expect from an Olympic Games held in France?

With tears in her eyes, Dion brought the opening ceremony to a close. A hot air balloon above her holding the Olympic flame, the Eiffel Tower shimmering in the distance, a world silenced by a spell-binding few hours.

Vive le France!

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