Ravi Kishan Owns His Meme Era: ‘Al Pacino to SRK, Michael Jackson’ Are All Part of His Unfiltered Energy

Ravi Kishan has spent more than three decades building an acting career across Bhojpuri and Hindi cinema, television and streaming. Yet in 2026, a younger audience has discovered another version of him—one that fits into a reel, reaction video or meme template.

Old interviews have resurfaced. His English one-liners have been clipped and remixed. His expressions have become reaction memes. Musical performances have travelled far beyond their original context.

And Kishan appears to be enjoying the joke rather than fighting it.

Asked about his sudden status as an internet meme favourite, the actor-politician has repeatedly argued that the personality viewers are seeing online isn't something he has manufactured for social media.

In a recent conversation with News18, Kishan summed it up simply:

“I enjoy this because this is me!”

He then offered an even more colourful explanation for his seemingly inexhaustible energy, listing influences ranging from Al Pacino and Amitabh Bachchan to Balraj Sahni, Shah Rukh Khan, Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley.

The line inevitably became another viral Ravi Kishan moment.

But beneath the humour, it also explains why his current meme phase feels different from a conventional celebrity social-media campaign.

Ravi Kishan says he isn't planning these viral moments

Kishan's explanation becomes more revealing when his comments are read beyond the headline quote.

Speaking about his unpredictable interviews and public appearances, he said he doesn't prepare lines with the intention of creating viral clips.

He isn't, according to his account, deliberately adding theatricality or deciding beforehand how he will speak.

Instead, Kishan described his words and mannerisms as spontaneous responses to whatever is happening around him.

That claim is consistent with what he has said in separate interviews.

Speaking to Hindustan Times about his newfound meme fame, Kishan boiled the phenomenon down to another typically compact line:

“I don’t do it… it happens, brother!”

He credited Gen Z with embracing him and described the attention as affection rather than something he needed to resist.

In another interview with News9 Digital, Kishan said he had never chased virality and connected his current popularity with remaining authentic.

Three interviews, then, point towards essentially the same explanation.

Ravi Kishan doesn't believe he became a meme because he learned how to perform for the internet. He believes the internet finally discovered how Ravi Kishan has always performed.

Why ‘Money Follows My Brother’ became bigger than one clip

One of the most widely circulated examples comes from Kishan's appearance on Raj Shamani's podcast.

A discussion about choosing between recognition and money produced a wonderfully unpredictable English response that included the now-familiar “money follows” formulation.

The clip became detached from the longer conversation and developed a second life as meme material.

That process is important to understanding Kishan's internet resurgence.

Many of his viral moments aren't newly created content.

Social-media users have been digging through older interviews, performances and appearances, isolating expressive moments and placing them into entirely new contexts. The Indian Express noted how the phenomenon expanded after a few clips gained traction, leading users to search for more material from his past.

That gives Kishan an unusually deep archive for meme culture to work with.

He doesn't need to produce a new catchphrase every week.

There are decades of Ravi Kishan already waiting online.

‘Koteshwaray’ gave the meme wave another push

His musical performances have become part of the trend too.

Kishan's spirited rendition of “Koteshwaray Shiv Koteshwaray” circulated widely, giving meme creators another source of clips and reactions. Both The Indian Express and NDTV identified the performance as one of the moments contributing to his current internet visibility.

The appeal isn't necessarily about technical musical performance.

It is Kishan's complete commitment to the moment.

There is very little visible irony in the original performance. The humour emerges when internet users recontextualise that intensity.

That distinction matters.

Kishan isn't necessarily performing a joke.

The meme is created afterwards.

His old catchphrase proves this personality predates Instagram

Perhaps the best evidence for Kishan's argument that none of this is newly manufactured comes from his own past.

While explaining his personality to News18, he pointed back to a line associated with him for roughly two decades:

“Zindagi jhandwa, phir bhi ghamandwa.”

His point was straightforward: the eccentric phrasing, theatrical delivery and willingness to say memorable things did not begin when meme pages discovered him.

The platforms changed.

The Ravi Kishan persona did not.

A line that once survived through television clips, movie dialogue and word of mouth can now become a reaction video within hours.

That technological change has effectively made Kishan's longstanding performance style newly compatible with internet culture.

Gen Z is discovering a different Ravi Kishan

There is another reason the meme phase matters.

For different generations, Ravi Kishan means different things.

For Bhojpuri audiences, he has long been one of the industry's most recognisable stars.

Hindi-film audiences know him through a wide range of supporting and character roles.

Television viewers remember his reality-show appearances.

More recently, streaming audiences have seen another side of his acting.

A younger social-media audience, however, may first encounter Ravi Kishan as the man saying “money follows,” singing intensely or delivering an unexpected phrase in an interview.

Kishan himself has recognised that generational shift.

Speaking to Hindustan Times, he said he felt Gen Z had accepted him as one of their own and framed the meme attention as love rather than ridicule.

That is a significant response because celebrity meme cycles can easily become adversarial.

The person being memed may feel mocked.

Kishan has largely chosen the opposite strategy.

He is participating in the joke.

He is even recreating the memes now

The distinction between accidental meme and deliberate participation is already beginning to blur.

After his mannerisms and dance movements became widely circulated online, Kishan started acknowledging and recreating some of them himself.

More recently, he recreated one of his viral dance movements with paparazzi, with Mirzapur actors Divyenndu and Ali Fazal joining the moment.

He has also been reported performing his viral step with his daughter and treating the meme phenomenon as something capable of making people smile rather than an embarrassment he wants removed from the internet.

That marks an interesting transition.

The original moments may have been accidental.

The actor now knows exactly what audiences recognise.

Instead of distancing himself from that version of Ravi Kishan, he is leaning into it.

Even the ‘Gucci walk’ became part of the Ravi Kishan universe

The meme cycle has continued producing new material.

A sideways walk by Kishan during a public appearance generated another round of jokes, including comparisons to a “locked pigeon.”

Kishan subsequently explained the circumstances behind the unusual movement while once again taking the humour surrounding him in stride.

That episode illustrates how self-sustaining the phenomenon has become.

Once somebody becomes a recognised meme personality, audiences begin watching ordinary appearances differently.

A facial expression that might previously have gone unnoticed becomes a reaction GIF.

A dance step becomes a template.

An unusual sentence becomes an audio trend.

And an awkward walk becomes another instalment in an ongoing online character.

Meme Ravi Kishan and actor Ravi Kishan now exist together

The meme wave could easily obscure the fact that Kishan remains an active performer.

But it may also work in the opposite direction.

Internet visibility can introduce an established actor to viewers who weren't following his earlier career.

The challenge is whether audiences subsequently move from the meme to the work.

That question becomes especially relevant as Kishan continues appearing in mainstream films and high-profile projects.

What social media has effectively created is another layer of his public identity.

There is Ravi Kishan the Bhojpuri superstar.

Ravi Kishan the Hindi-film character actor.

Ravi Kishan the politician.

And now Ravi Kishan the endlessly reusable internet reaction.

They increasingly coexist.

The Celebrity Hour Take

Ravi Kishan's current meme phase works because it breaks one of the usual rules of celebrity internet culture.

Normally, once a public figure realises something about them has gone viral, the temptation is to recreate it.

Again.

And again.

Eventually, spontaneity becomes content strategy.

Kishan's advantage is that his archive existed long before the strategy did.

The exaggerated expressions, linguistic improvisations, dramatic pauses, unexpected English and complete commitment to whatever he happens to be doing are visible across years of footage.

Social media didn't invent those characteristics.

It simply developed a format perfectly suited to recycling them.

That is why his comment about Al Pacino, Amitabh Bachchan, Balraj Sahni, Shah Rukh Khan, Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley is more revealing than it initially sounds.

It is obviously funny.

But it is also Ravi Kishan describing his public persona as a collision of influences rather than a carefully polished celebrity identity.

His response to becoming a meme may ultimately be even smarter.

He isn't demanding that audiences laugh with him rather than at him.

He is simply joining the laughter.

And once the person at the centre of a meme starts enjoying it too, the relationship between celebrity and internet audience changes.

The meme stops being something happening to Ravi Kishan.

It becomes another part of being Ravi Kishan.

Sources & Verification

This report was independently prepared from Ravi Kishan's recent comments about his meme popularity as documented from his News18 conversation, alongside separate interviews with Hindustan Times and News9 Digital. Contemporary reporting from The Indian Express, NDTV and other established publications was used to cross-check the viral clips and broader timeline.