The Story Behind The Original Photo Bomb

If you Google “the original photobomb,” the first search result is an image from a classic Seinfeld episode. In it, a charming family poses for a photo at the beach as Jason Alexander’s George Costanza, hovering awkwardly in the background, eyes them vindictively.

It’s an image every Seinfeld fan knows from “The Slicer,” which aired 20 years ago today on November 13, 1997. In the seventh episode of Season 9, George tries to airbrush himself out of his boss Kruger’s (Daniel von Bargen) family photo before he recognizes George as the dope who threw his kids’ boombox in the ocean. But even if you never watched Seinfeld, you’d know the photo; it’s resurfaced on social media again and again in the years since the NBC sitcom ended, gaining new life as a meme, and collectively remembered as pop culture’s first photobomb. But that photo has additional significance to my family: My brother is in it… read more >