Morton is a diverse community — ranging from anime lovers to sports enthusiasts to car experts, and there are so many great memories made here at Morton: some positive, like a sports team making state, and some negative, like fights in the hall or cafeteria. Anything can happen at this school, and to show us the humor and the great moments has always been “Unusual Morton Images.”
 

The “Unusual Morton Images” page has been re-interpreted yearly through class graduates. The page gained a lot of eyes and attention during “Unusual Morton Images 4” which was run by graduates of Class of 2020 on Facebook. Some of the highlights of this page were “The Avengers endgame main stairway fight scene,” “The 4.5k Bread Special” and the reminiscent farewell, “The Final Meme,” which was a rewind of all the memes of the year, and the final and last post of the page on Facebook.
 

Many figured COVID killed the “Unusual Images” tradition – when no one was at school.  But, on a cold December in 2020, something would bless our Instagram feed. Coming from the shadows arose a new “Unusual Morton Images.” The first ever post by new Morton “Images” stated, “I miss the spicy chicken sandwich.” The post turned heads, made a cold winter feel warm, and brought back the Morton spirit we all needed.  The post received a ton of likes and everyone was excited to see the memes roll in again.

Throughout online learning, the page dropped a lot of funny original content and submissions from fans to keep the Morton meme spirit alive. The page averaged around 200 likes until they dropped a throwback post to when some girl in heels-sucker punched another girl by the Morton main gym with Minecraft sound effects. The page continued to drop premium original content, even recreating some of the most memorable fights in Minecraft. Some of their most creative posts made Principal Gamboa a meme and school treasure. When he’s not running the greatest school known to man, he’s usually chilling in quahog in the background of a Family Guy episode or enjoying his beautiful honeymoon with Barack Obama, as captured by UMI.  

This was only the beginning for the “Unusual Morton Images” page. They had big aspirations for this page, and it was not hard to see, not only would they do submissions, but their original content was something to watch, something different, and something to turn heads. For example, remember the Scoob Doom special? The clips show parts of the Doom game with audio of Scooby saying “Get to class” as the game blasts demons into nothing. One of the most mysterious theories the page put light on was the origins of a 5th floor — a conspiracy theory that actually made a lot of sense. 

All in all, “Unusual Morton Images” is quite honestly the people’s champ. Unusual Morton Images cherishes the idea a the kid who just makes dumb jokes for people to enjoy and be proud of Morton East.  

Pony Express News (PEN) had an opportunity to interview the man behind the page and this is how it went. 

PEN: What is your favorite thing about running this page? 

UMI: “My favorite thing is making OC for the page. It takes time making them and it’s satisfying to see the finished product.”  

PEN: Which piece of original content would you say you most proud of? 

UMI: “I am really proud of the 5th floor mini documentary. I spent 5 hours storyboarding, writing, voicing, getting all the images needed, editing and making sure it all fits in one minute.”  

PEN: Do you get help for large projects or is it usually a one-man job? 

UMI: “ Sometimes it’s a one man job, other times it’s a group project.” 

PEN: Morton Unusual Images has gotten bigger than even the school itself; how do you feel about the recent surge in popularity the page has received? 

UMI: “ Considering we are half the follower count of the original UMI, I say I’m pretty proud of that. Kids from other schools sometimes message the page saying they love our content. As for the recent popularity surge, if you see our older posts from 2020/early 2021 you can see we’ve been working hard for a long time now.” 

PEN: From your first every post did you see the page growing this much when you dropped the post? 

UMI: “Not at all. The page took until April 25th to hit 1,000 followers and we stayed at 1,110 over the summer into 21-22 year. We exploded when real submissions could be submitted. I Honestly didn’t know it’d reach this far. I Just wanted incoming students new to east ( and the district as a whole) to feel the same magic I felt when I first discovered the OG UMI late into my freshman year.” 

PEN: Was it difficult to get content over the quarantine year?  

UMI: Yeah, it was very difficult to get content during e-learning. I say we struggled so much in putting out anything because nothing ever happened in the school. We had to create our own stuff. When hybrid hit, it was easier but still difficult. Some of our staples around that time were bathroom compilations and flyers on the walls. The bathroom was a safe have for the page because people could take pictures and do stupid sh*t.  

PEN: This page is amazing for people coming into Morton and it especially captures that essence of the original UMI while still being its own thing, how much of an inspiration was the original page to you? And have you guys ever been in the talks? 

UMI: The Og page mainly posted “cursed” Morton images. I try to capture that chaotic cursed image type in the submissions compilations. I have to admit though, we have slipped a couple of times when we burnt out on posting submissions. A lot of their OC work was derivative of other things, an example of it being the Sethical bread bank video where they put Scooby, Gamboa, and the horse mask dude in place of Sethical’s characters. But it’s the characters they used that we continue to use. The Og page for me, boils down to kids having stupid fun in school and taking photos and that’s the heart of this UMI too. And yeah I’ve talked to two of the former admins, one of them more so than the other. This page was used to be named “Morton_imgs” before I got the blessing from one of those formers admins to use the “Unusual Morton Images name.” 

PEN: last question, what are the future plans for the page if you can disclose?  

UMI: “soon.”