Checked it with multiple reverse image search engines, and I can’t find it anywhere before 2021. It was posted that time related to the other drive-by meme, I guess someone saw the new meme, and remembered Malcolm had a very similar scene 15 year earlier, searched the episode and made the screenshot.
2005 was before these kind of labeled reaction memes even existed. Know Your Meme has 3 Malcolm memes documented, all of them started to spread more than a decade after they aired:
I lived through the ancient times, I was there, the MITM one came well before.
I seem to recall a gif version too, with Malcolm and his mom reacting in split screen
Checked it with multiple reverse image search engines, and I can’t find it anywhere before 2021. It was posted that time related to the other drive-by meme, I guess someone saw the new meme, and remembered Malcolm had a very similar scene 15 year earlier, searched the episode and made the screenshot.
2005 was before these kind of labeled reaction memes even existed. Know Your Meme has 3 Malcolm memes documented, all of them started to spread more than a decade after they aired:
So even if this scene was used as a gif before 2021, its usage as a meme should came after the Umbrella Academy version was known