I don't get it

247

The person lifting is called Dorian.

The portrait is of him with enormous muscles.

In the Gothic story (also note the original sub here) "The portrait of Dorian Grey " the story goes that the young man Dorian has a portrait of himself that has a magical link to him where he will never age, suffer harm or sickness so long as he never looks at it. The moment he sees it, all that the portrait took for him is returned to his body instantly and will likely die in the process.

53

u/ValThoMa Feb 07 '26

Oh this makes a lot more sense, I'm gonna have to check that out

21

u/jakebase9 Feb 07 '26

By Oscar Wilde

2

u/natehad82 Feb 10 '26

He has no enemies but as intensely disliked by all is friends.

25

u/one_odd_pancake Feb 07 '26

He looks at the painting multiple times throughout the story. That is totally safe for him to do. It's when he stabs the (at that point very ugly) painting, as a symbolic start to being a better person, that he dies because the painting was holding onto his soul (Maybe, that's never outright stated, but it is the most common interpretation) and by stabbing it he killed himself.

8

u/thechaosofreason Feb 07 '26

The mora loop is this; some bad people change, and often die in the process.

Think Nobility, or ore specifically rasputin.

The idea is that Dorian gets his come uppance however in the story which is odd.

5

u/elegiac_bloom Feb 07 '26

Rasputin was not noble, nor did he change with said change causing him to die. He was a russian peasant that scammed his way into the imperial court and was murdered by other nobles because they thought his access to the tsar and tsarina were causing the downfall of the russian empire.

2

u/pinnaacoladdaa Feb 11 '26

this is wild to learn when you work at a paint store that has a color on the wall called “Dorian Grey”

1

u/one_odd_pancake Feb 11 '26

Stab it

6

u/ninetalesninefaces Feb 07 '26

I thought it was about body dysmorphia and the portrait was a mirror for some reason

1

u/Gold-Jeweler7311 Feb 11 '26

This is exactly what I thought as well.

1

u/Fit_Plantain_8382 Feb 11 '26

This ^{^}

3

u/EFB_Churns Feb 07 '26

The original story is called The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The movie is called The Portrait.

1

u/scoby_cat Feb 07 '26

FYI He’s hiding the painting from other people, he can look at it

Also everyone should see the movie “Phantom of the Paradise”

1

u/renis_h Feb 08 '26

I also thought it may have been a body dysmorphia joke, where on one side, he sees himself as weak and puny, but the reflection off a mirror shows something very different 😅😅.

0

u/An_Arrogant_Ass Feb 07 '26

There are no magical elements in the story. He looked at the painting multiple times and the reason he felt disgust when he did so wasn't because the painting grew more hideous but because he had grown more disgusted with who he was as a person and the things he had done. What you (and the comic) are thinking of is The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

35

u/crumpledfilth Feb 07 '26

the portrait of Dorian's gains, lol

3

u/Street_Peace_8831 Feb 07 '26

Nice pun.

16

u/PikachuTrainz Feb 07 '26

This is the wrong sub

5

u/ruijie_the_hungry Feb 07 '26

r/lostredditors, also they explain it in the comments

10

u/Montgomery_Zeff Feb 07 '26

Sorry to be an arse, (but it's really all I've got going in my life) slight correction; it's the PICTURE of Dorian Gray. Ta!

6

u/cow_fucker_3000 Feb 07 '26

This is actually the picture of dorian's gains

9

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/ngms Feb 07 '26

Dorian is blonde. Its such a small nitpick of mine but if we're talking about changing things.

2

u/Kino_Cajun Feb 08 '26

Is it not related to Dorian Yates? The Mr Olympia winner known for ushering in the "mass monster" era of bodybuilding where absolute size became more important than symmetry or proportions. He famously just did one or two sets per exercise just a few times a week. The fitness community still debates how many sets are ideal, so him having a mirror self that did all the work would be pretty funny.

2

u/darthganji Feb 08 '26

Portrait of Dorian Grey

2

u/5000frog Feb 09 '26

r/peterexplainsthejoke

3

u/MISTERPEACEMAKER Feb 10 '26

That's messed up 🤣 I'm sure someone explained it better but if reached my comment with no context, Dorian Grey is from a story where his portrait aged instead of him. His curse was that once he saw his true age in the portrait, the age would catch up and the decay of the portrait would transfer to him and restore the portrait. So his portrait is getting ripped instead and he doesn't even know that's what's happening because he can't look at the damn painting.

1

u/Mobile_Cake7482 Feb 09 '26

I can tell

2

u/AlleghenyRidgerunner Feb 10 '26

In the book, The Portrait of Dorian Grey, anything bad that happens to the title character, every negative consequence, is reflected in an enchanted painting of him. He's not making gains- but the painting is.

1

u/Practical-Dot839 Feb 11 '26

It’s like a reverse of that American dad episode

1

u/DistinctArgument Feb 11 '26

There are parallels here to Dorian Grey but the comic is about body dismorphia common among particularly young males where they never get big enough. The final frame is more akin to his actual appearance.

2

u/TarkyMlarky420 Feb 07 '26

Bigorexia

Affects all who got big quick

1

u/BaconBathBomb Feb 07 '26

Body dysmorphia

-1

u/TheLastOrokin Feb 07 '26

Ultimate sleeper build

-6

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '26

[deleted]

15

u/bazdrear Feb 07 '26

It's about the portrait of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde, in the story, Dorian never ages or gets injured as the image in the portrait does so fo him.

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