Ascended Meme / Video Games

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• Age of Empires II: The Definitive Edition expansion added an achievement called Castle of Doubt, given for losing a Castle that was at least 95% through being built. It's named after an Age of Empires tournament player called DauT, who had a reputation for doing precisely that.
• Arknights:
  • The stage "Annihilation: Lungmen Downtown" has a Scripted Event where a squadron of Reunion's Airborne Soldiers touch down on the right side of the map, only for the last of them to land in a Bottomless Pit and plummet to his death. The fans took a liking to this poor unfortunate mook and dubbed him "Kevin". A later update would add "Operator Records" to the game; bonus story scenes to help flesh out the playable operators. One of them, set after the events of the main story, focuses on Ethan, a defector from Reunion, tracking down another former Reunion member by the name of Kevin. And just in case you thought it was a coincidence, Kevin's dialogue mentions his jetpack malfunctioning during the siege of Lungmen, causing him to fall right into a trash chute.
  • Episode 12 of Closure's Secret Files has Closure getting increasingly upset as she checks the clues gathered up in the Reception Room to find that they're all Clue 7, while Angelina^note who has a skill increasing the likelihood of finding Clue 7 smiles coyly in the background. This reflects a common gripe players have, that being how you always seem to find Clue 7 when you don't need it.
• Atari 50: The Anniversary Collection has an achievement for getting the "Where did you learn to fly?" message in Cybermorph.
• Baldur's Gate III: It become a meme to associate a popular Tumblr post that reads "Yes, I'm a gatekeeper and a hater. I'm also God's favourite princess and the most interesting girl in the world" with Shadowheart, given the character's demeanor and backstory, with Jennifer English even delivering the line in-character on Cameo. Come the release of Patch 5 and the Playable Epilogue, Shadowheart herself now recites the phrase in-universe, with the justification being that she was dared to recite the final mad ravings of a githyanki heretic publicly executed by Vlaakith LXXIV.
• Battletech:
  • The game acknowledges the "Steiner Scout Lance" meme from the tabletop game that spawned it. Basically, House Steiner loves big mechs, the bigger the better. However, in the minds of the fandom, this trait was Flanderized to the point that a lance of heavy mechs was jokingly referred to as a "Steiner Scout Lance". Cue a mission in the video game where you are called upon to take out a Steiner Scout Mech... which of course turns out to be an Atlas, the biggest and baddest mech in the game.
  • Within the fandom for the game itself Dekker, one of the starting Mauve Shirt MechWarriors, is regarded as a Doom Magnet for players tending to get his starting ultralight scout 'Mech blown up in no time flat, killing him. A common bit of player wisdom was that Dekker being still alive when you get the Cool Starship was a sign you understood the game pretty well. The final DLC acknowledged this officially by adding a hidden achievement for completing a campaign with Dekker still alive.
• The song Second Heaven from beatmania IIDX has the line "Somebody screeeeeeam!", which the Japanese fandom mondegreen'ed into "San-bai ice cream!" ("3-scoop ice cream!") A remix of the song appears in the Spin-Off game Sound Voltex Booth, and said remix's cover art depicts a character holding a 3-scoop ice cream cone.
• The Binding of Isaac:
  • The Bloat is something of a Memetic Scrappy among the fandom due to his sheer difficulty, to the point where "FUCK BLOAT" is a Running Gag among the game's Reddit community, resulting in an entire subreddit devoted to hating him. Much later, the DLC Afterbirth+ added a challenge called "April's Fool," which replaces every single boss with the Bloat among other things.
  • Certain items picked up infamy among the fandom, such as Bob's Brain^note for having the tendency to explode right near the player character and cause damage, Cursed Eye^note Changes basic tears to a charged shot where getting hit while charging results in teleporting out of the room; teleportation out of a room in this game also resets the health of every enemy, including bosses, and Curse of the Tower^note Taking damage spawns several "troll bombs" that automatically explode, likely causing even more damage. Edmund McMillen later Tweeted to a new player saying to grab these items, as they would "combo" and win the run. Two of the curated daily runs for the Afterbirth DLC, April 15th ("National That Sucks Day") and November 19th ("National 'Have a Bad Day' Day"), force-gives the player these exact items, among other things.
  • In the original game, the Monster Manual was accidentally spelled Monster Manuel. While this was fixed in Rebirth, referring to the item as "Monster Man-well" remained an in-joke in the community. In the Repentance expansion, picking up Monster Manual now has a small chance to display Monster Manuel as the name.
• BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle has an example that crosses with Self-Deprecation: While fans were excited when the debut trailer revealed the American-made web series RWBY would be in the game, they were much less pleased when Arc System Works revealed that out of the show's four protagonists, only Ruby and Weiss would be in the base game while their teammates Blake and Yang would be DLC. This lead to a lot of snark about "Team RW" ^note And more seriously, accusations that ArcSys was disrespecting the memory of the show's creator Monty Oum, who was a big fan of their games and said that Guilty Gear and BlazBlue had major influences on the art direction of RWBY. ArcSys made up for it by apologizing to the fans and making Blake and Yang available as free downloads (since it was too late in the process to put them into the base game), but they also acknowledged the backlash with a special post-battle victory quote where Ruby cheers "Don't mess with Team RWBY!" and Weiss adds "...Or at least Team RW" in an embarrassed tone of voice.
  • A meme developed where people would add the game's pre-fight scene ("You Can't Escape From Crossing Fate") and music to scenes of Crossovers between other media (like the Homer vs. Peter fight from the Family Guy/The Simpsons crossover episode). The official ArkSys Twitter account got in on this, combining it with the "Captain America PSA" meme from Spider-Man: Homecoming.
• S-I-S-I-G-A-M-I , SHISHIGAMI BANG BANG! Yes, a fan made lyrical declaration of Bang's manliness to the tune of his theme "Reppu" was so awesome, it made its way into BlazBlue Continuum Shift with the seiyuu for Bang singing it!
  • On the subject of Bang, he references the "Ice Car" meme in Calamity Trigger Reconstruction when dissuading his colleagues from fighting Jin.
  • You can choose from numerous NPC icons for your online profile in Chronophantasma. Hype Dog is one of them.
  • Chronophantasma also allows you to set the (◇)人(∵) emoticon on your D-Card.
• Blizzard Entertainment loves this trope.
  • World of Warcraft:
    • The Leeroy Jenkins video was honored in a card of the man in the World of Warcraft TCG, a figure in the collectible miniatures game, an achievement in Wrath of the Lich King with a title to go with it, a legendary card in Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, and finally appeared as an NPC in Warlords of Draenor, still going after the same piece of gear.
    • When Onyxia got revamped for 80, the new achievements included "More DOTs!" and "Many whelps! Handle it!", which are orders shouted to the heavens in the popular Onyxia Wipe Video. Onyxia also has a card in Hearthstone, one that spawns enough whelps to reach the minion limit. The Raid Leader card also has dialogue referencing the video.
    • This even got referenced in rival MMORPG EverQuest II. Some dinosaur mobs in that game have an ability called Tail Swipe, and if you examine the effect after getting hit by it, the description is "That's a 50 DKP minus!"
    • There's also Alamo, of "Alamo teechs u 2 play DURID!" fame, who also got a card named after him in the TCG. Similarly, Kralnor made several appearances, including his own card.
    • Thorim's introduction speech became memetic, specifically his way of saying "in the mountains". A later boss has a line to mock this when he kills a player.
      Tyrannus: "Perhaps you should've stayed... in the mountains!"
    • Kael'Thas' "Tempest Keep was merely a setback" greeting quickly became a meme for any recurring boss. When you encounter a whole trio of those in Icecrown Citadel (former blood elves, no less), Valanar, the boss of a Borean tundra quest, declares that "Naxxanar was merely a setback". In Cataclysm, the Hogger boss in the Stormwind Stockades also makes reference to this meme, yelling "Forest just setback!" on aggro. Maar in Starcraft II also says "Merely a temporary setback" after being defeated.
    • To lesser extent, Illidan's "YOU ARE NOT PREPARED!" If you talk to him in the past while wielding his signature legendary weapons, he will comment "You seem prepared." It's since more become more or less his catchphrase, despite Illidan initially only saying it once in World of Warcraft and never at all in Warcraft III. The battlemaster at Valhallas will also yell "YOU WERE NOT PREPARED!" if you wiped in one of the encounters. And, of course, Blizzard just had to reference it in Illidan's trailer for Legion:
      Illidan: Now... YOU! ARE! PREPARED!
    • Drahga Shadowburner yells "You should have come better prepared!" when killing players and "By fire be... burned!" when summoning adds.
    • Since Death Knights like to use a macro for Death Grip with a yell of GET OVER HERE!, they added that line for Nefarian's call for Death Knights where he copied that ability.
    • Hogger, a level 11 mob infamous for being hard to kill (because he was for many players the first elite mob they fought), was upgraded to a dungeon boss in Cataclysm. The quest that has you kill him apparently includes the line "No one can destroy him". He also makes appearances in Hearthstone as a tutorial boss and Legendary minion, and was even Promoted to Playable in Heroes of the Storm.
    • Ragnaros' infamous "Too soon! You have awakened me too soon!" line is used by Zepik the Gorloc Hunter, one of your Wolvar liaisons in Scholazar Basin. Zepik says other adventurers have told him stories of their exploits, which is how he heard the line (and some other well-known boss quotes).
    • The Ragnar-Os meme (a joke cover for a cereal themed after the raid boss Ragnaros) has been acknowledged by Blizzard with a raid achievement called "Ragnar-Os".
    • Gamon was sort of a reverse Hogger; famous for getting killed all the time for no reason (he was the only NPC in Orgrimmar to be attackable, and had to be weak to not cause trouble). Like Hogger, he got beefed up in Cataclysm... becoming a level 85 Elite that required a large group to kill. Gamon Took a Level in Badass after taking all those beatings... And as of the final patch of Mists, Gamon is now a level 90 elite with as much health as some raid bosses, has a voice actor and character, and was trained by and canonically lands the killing blow on General Nazgrim. Fans have managed to make a one-off NPC go from a joke to an actual lore character.
    • A level 80 orc hunter, Tednug, and his pet Scratchfever, wander the road between Orgrimmar and Razor Hill. They are characters in the player-written forum game You Awaken in Razor Hill. Tednug is a contraction of the character's actual name, Tednugent, presumably for copyright reasons.
    • Chuck Norris' Memetic Badass status was immortalized in a "What's your game?" television ad which states that World of Warcraft has over ten million players...because Chuck Norris allows them to live! He is seen giving roundhouse kicks to dozens of players, punching the Whale Shark^note which has millions of HP and requires a raid group to kill, OR kiting for 20-30 minutes in content-appropriate gear and fighting in the Barrens^note So-called "Barrens chat" consisted of a great deal of inane babble from bored players, with Chuck Norris Facts being one of the most prevalent running themes.
    • A running joke about paladins in vanilla was that their PvP strategy consisted solely of the "bubble-hearth" — popping Divine Shield (often called a "bubble" among the fandom) making them immune to damage and using their Hearthstone to teleport to safety. Blizzard later added the Glyph of Righteous Retreat, which lets them hearth in half the time when bubbled. (This was done specifically to allow bubble-hearthing, as the duration of Divine Shield had been reduced to be shorter than the cast time for the Hearthstone normally is.)
    • This gets referenced again in Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. In the prologue of Knights of the Frozen Throne, when overwhelmed by a Death Knight Jaina, upon his HP reaching 0, Tirion ends the fight by, you guessed it, bubble-hearthing. Heroes of the Storm also joins in on the joke, with Gazlowe remarking "You shoulda bubble-hearthed!" after killing a paladin and Yrel getting the ability to bubble-hearth as an endgame talent.
    • The Confession glyph causes players to "confess" pre-set lines, mostly things players should not do but often do such as annoying others with Leap of Faith.
    • In the first few years when leveling was a slow, difficult process it was common practice for players to celebrate by saying "Ding!" in the zone or guild chat. Bloodlord Mandokir gains a level when he kills players and has a chance of yelling "Ding!" For added amusement, that dungeon's final boss yells back "Ey! Gratz mon!"
    • Rhonin's "Citizens of Dalaran..." speech has been a source of frequent mockery by players for how often he says it (during Wrath it was quite rare, but later the quest could be done solo and it happened all the time). The Legion expansion, which brought Dalaran back as the main hub, gave this a nod: in an early cutscene, Khadgar shouts out a speech in Dalaran, opening with "Citizens of Azeroth!". Fortunately his speech is shorter than Rhonin's, and contained in the cutscene, so the only person who hears it is the one doing the quest. When the expac was in Beta, there were also plans for a new Dalaran-based reputation called the Citizens of Dalaran, though unfortunately it ended up being scrapped.
    • The "Chuck Norris facts" inspired memes about High Overlord Saurfang's legendary badassery have endured for years. In Legion prelaunch, Saurfang became the racial leader of the orcs, and as such is now the objective a PvP achievement for Alliance players. However, where other racial leader achievements call for the leader's death at the player's hands, Saurfang's achievement requires the player to "damage [him] until he humors you by pretending to die".
    • The Pandaren Nomi became infamous in Legion due to his work orders. He would take cooking ingredients and attempt to discover higher rank recipes for the player but usually returned nothing but burned food that was worthless. Blizzard eventually had him start producing Slightly Burnt Food (Rank 2). In a stress test event Nomi was renamed Firelord Nomi, buffed to raid boss levels, and given an array of fire attacks.
    • Nomi appears in Hearthstone where his card art depicts him holding a tray of burned food while a massive plume of fire erupts from a stove behind him. His special ability is summoning Greasefire Elementals.
    • After Mists of Pandaria, fans started speculating that Jaina Proudmoore has been replaced by a Dreadlord due to abruptly pulling a 180 personality from a compassionate peace lover into a Horde-hating warmonger, while justified, she sometimes go too far and becomes unrecognizable to her iconic personality, which was preserved in Heroes of the Storm. And eventually, that game gave Jaina a Dreadlord skin.
    • In the Eye of Azshara instance seagulls were generally agreed to be the most dangerous enemy due to their disorient ability causing tanks to lose aggro, allowing bosses to kill other players. The event banner for the Legion Dungeon events was eventually modified to show a player being attacked by seagulls while other players were fighting one of the bosses. The Brawler's Guild also saw the addition of "a Seagull", a large and very angry seagull boss with the "Fury of Gull'dan" buff.
    • In the Battle for Azeroth opening cinematic, a random troll shaman was shown using impresive fire and lightning magic against the Alliance. Fans latched on to this character and dubbed him "Zappyboi". The troll would be revealed as a minor lore character Zekhan who formed a close relationship with Saurfang. In the Shadows Rising novel, the loa Bwonsamdi calls Zekhan "Zappy Boy", to the troll's confusion.
  • Hearthstone:
    • The August 2015 patch modified the "Finding Opponent" wheel to include an entry named 'Roach Boy'. The developers added this in reference to a player who was subjected to especially extreme and unusual verbal abuse after a lucky win, who posted his experience in a massively popular Reddit thread.
    • After the reign of Patron Warrior, Grim Patron's infamous "EVERYONE, GET IN HERE!" quote was ascended three times. First, they added a chance for the Innkeeper to say the line upon opening the game. Shortly after, it became the name of the daily quest for playing three Tavern Brawls. In Rastakhan's Rumble, they added Arena Patron, which has a similar effect and quotes.
    • Mal'Ganis' entry quote "I am Mal'Ganis! I am eternal!" is often misheard as "I am a turtle!". When he was added to Heroes of the Storm, he was given two lines referencing this, including one where he practices his catchphrase a few times and accidentally says "I am a turtle!" for real, and another where he says he's not a turtle, he's actually a tortollan.
    • After the devs released Ice Rager, a strictly better version of the memetically useless Magma Rager, parts of the community — either jokingly or in earnest — cried Power Creep. Two sets later, Blizzard released Am'gam Rager, which has Magma Rager's stats in reverse and the flavour text "Peerc Rewop". Later on they released a class card called Shadow Rager, with the flavour text "WE WENT THERE."
    • 4 mana 7/7 is the derisive nickname given to the much-hated Flamewreathed Faceless, for being, well a a 7/7 for 4 mana. Blizzard paid homage to the card in the Galakrond's Awakening adventure when Dr. Boom unveils his greatest invention F.U.S.E, which is of course a 4 mana 7/7.
    • Boulderfist Ogre is a mostly unremarkable 6 mana 6/7 Vanilla Unit, but thanks to his memetic Flavour Text "ME HAVE GOOD STATS FOR THE COST", it became a huge in-joke that Boulderfist Ogre was the most powerful card in the game. When it came time to give a Diamond variant to Zephrys the Great (a card that uses Artificial Brilliance to give you "the perfect card"), the artwork shows him giving a Boulderfist Ogre.
  • Overwatch:
    • The fan community created "Gremlin D.Va", a Super-Deformed version of D.Va obsessed with Doritos and Mountain Dew, to poke fun at her career as a professional gamer. Blizzard eventually added a new taunt for D.Va in which she plays video games in her mech while eating and drinking Brand X Doritos and Mountain Dew, though without being Super-Deformed. So far it is the game's only emote of Legendary value/rarity. Additionally, Doritos can be seen around her grave on her Halloween victory pose.
    • Similarly, the "Dad: 76" meme, which portrays Soldier: 76 as a grumpy, overbearing Team Dad, has all but ascended. A Weekly Brawl which restricted character choice to only Soldier: 76 took place during the same week as Father's Day, his favorite sport was revealed to be golf during the Summer 2016 Olypmics event, and he has vocal taunts like "Young Punks! Get off my lawn!" and "I'm not your father!" He gets an extra interaction reprimanding Tracer to not be too hasty, with her replying with "Okay, dad." The 2017 Summer Games event gives him the Grillmaster: 76 skin, which turns him into a walking dad joke, right down to wearing socks with sandals. At this point, the ascended meme has became part of his character development.
    • The Halloween 2016 update gave Ana an emote where she gives out candy, referring to the "FRICK YES! Grandma candy" fan-comic which had been retweeted by the official Overwatch Twitter account, and of course nods to Ana's role as grandmother in the overarching "Overfamily" meme.
    • During the Sombra ARG, when players were still searching for clues, Jeff Kaplan said "All of the Sombra stuff goes over my head," which they took a little too literally and assumed it was a clue. After some investigating, a strange graphical artifact was discovered from the Dorado map's sky, and fans were scrambling to decode it, including one fan who made a suggestion to make music from it. Sadly, it turns out the "skycode" wasn't part of the ARG at all (it was most likely simply a graphical compression artifact). This digression seems to have caught on with the devs, who not only included it in Sombra's debut (during a Blip Vert meant to communicate her hacking the keynote presentation), but have given her a spray◊ (imgur link) and an emote (Reddit link). The latter of which appears to double as her "laughter" emote.
    • The Anniversary Event has ascended a bunch of fandom memes, including "Reinhardt, Reinhardt, REINHARDT!" (now available as a voiceline for Reinhardt), the Symmetra 'car wash' (referenced in one of her new voicelines) and the Reaper shrug (available as a spray, emote and victory pose).
    • "High Noon" has two ascended memes. The first one is when Cassidy/McCree announces that his ultimate is available. One of the lines that he says is "You know what time it is." The second one is from a datamined file before he revealed his real name, in which Mei asks him what time it is. Cassidy gets the hang of it pretty quick.
      Mei: Hey, McCree^note the criminal alias Cassidy was going by at the time, do you know what time it is?.
      Cassidy: Well, I'd say it's about— nah, I see what you're doin' there.
  • StarCraft:
    • In Starcraft II, "Terrible terrible damage" (a Verbal Tic-like line from the "Battle Reports") is not only a cheat code in game, but is also said by General Horace Warfield.
    • The Starcraft II Heart Of The Swarm launch ads have the tagline "The rush begins."
    • The promotional animation for Starcraft II Legacy Of The Void featured a probe (Protoss Worker Unit) warping in a pylon that allowed the reinforcements to arrive and change the tide of the battle. Fans quickly noticed this and started joking that the probe was the real hero of the battle. Fast forward to 2017, and said probe — now known as Probius — became a playable hero in Heroes of the Storm.
  • Diablo:
    • In the first game, there were cows outside the hub village that you could click on but otherwise not interact with. This led to crazy rumours about some secret the cows could unlock. The Secret Cow Level eventually showed up in Diablo II. That prompted a number of fan spoofs, including a secret bunny level in the hopes that they would show up in Diablo III (that game ended up getting Whimsyshire instead).
    • This was referenced in pretty much every Blizzard game since. In StarCraft, a cheat to skip a level instantly in campaign mode was "there is no cow level". In Hearthstone, you can access the Secret Cow Level through an Easter Egg during the Dark Wanderer tavern brawl. In WoW, they added a Secret Cow Level to celebrate Diablo's 20th anniversary.
  • Heroes of the Storm:
    • "6.5/10, no comeback mechanics" is based on an infamously shallow review of the game from IGN. Blizzard poked fun at it with the Arena brawl, which has someone in the audience holding a banner with the rating on it. They later added two purchasable banners showing the score with properly sarcastic flavour text. Also, alongside their usual yearly anniversary banners, they added a banner celebrating the game's sixth-and-a-half birthday.
    • Azmodan's Orb of Annihilation (which throws a giant fireball) is often compared to a basketball due to the way it flies, giving him the nickname Azmodunk. Then Azmodunk became an actual skin for the character.
    • The D.Va Confirmed meme. A teaser in April of 2017 showed flaming claw marks across a door in Hanamura. Speculation about the new hero was wild, with the most popular guess being Deathwing. However, the teaser was a complete Red Herring — the claw marks were Diablo's and the new hero was in fact D.Va. The fanbase still hasn't forgotten it, but Blizzard has poked fun at the meme a few times. In the Assault on Volskaya Foundry event, D.Va was given a skin that turns her into Deathwing. They eventually added the clawed door as a spray — with the name "D.Va Confirmed".
    • When Deathwing actually was added, they reused the clawed door again, although the meme worked to their advantage since most people just assumed it was something related to D.Va. Also, the appearance of one of Deathwing's abilities is based on the door◊.
    • Nova is an infamous Skill Gate Character and Low-Tier Letdown. When they added a bunch of Warchrome emojis, Nova's depicts her sitting in a trashcan, and has the shortcut :trashsniper:.

• In Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, one of Miriam's attacks is called Winestained. It involves throwing a wine glass at the enemy.
  • Similarly, one of the trailers for the game (announcing improvements to its graphics engine) consists of Koji Igarashi sitting on a throne reading bad reviews of the preview. Finally he stands up to declare that he'll prove to his detractors that he can do better... while dramatically throwing his wine glass to the floor.
• The advertising campaign for Call of Duty: Ghosts features one man working in an office while his co-worker repeatedly trash-talks him about the previous night's game, while suggestively dipping a teabag.
• A glitch in Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood involves a goat that hovers its way up a ladder, which spawned a viral video. "Ladder Goat" made an appearance as an Easter Egg in Call of Juarez: The Cartel (it's the title of a DVD you can find in one level, the finding of which nets you an achievement).
• Capcom Fighting Evolution canonizes an alternate version of Zangief named Zangyura, a name that first appeared in an infamous typo-ridden preview of Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting in the Japanese magazine Gamest.
• In City of Heroes, the Kill Skuls meme, originating from a pair of message board posts, has spawned a badge, in-game graffiti, and a Loading Screen tip.
  • "Ascendant who? Sorry, you have the wrong number."
  • Nemesis, the eternal mastermind and Xanatos Speed Chess player, is pegged by the playerbase as the source for many things, including substituting "It's a Nemesis plot" for A Wizard Did It. The game developers ascended the meme with two loading screen tips: "It's all a Nemesis plot." and "Not everything is a Nemesis plot."
  • After a particularly popular 2008 April Fools' Day new post, "Freem!" caught on, often with the image attached. A loading screen tip in the game now reads simply, "Freem!" The nickname for the development team after the team was cut by ~75% in 2006 also became "Freem Fifteen".
• Civilization:
  • In the first game, all civilizations had the same odds of deciding to use nukes. Gandhi in particular making such threats◊, erroneously believed to be more common than intended due to a nonexistent underflow error, became a meme for the sheer incongruity of it. In Civ V his "use of nukes" rating was set to 12 out of 10^note These traits are capped at 10, but they also vary randomly by up to 2 points in either direction each game, so setting the base value to 12 ensures it'll be 10 every time, while Civ VI gave him a tendency to draw the "Nuke-Loving" leader agenda, in honor of the "Nuclear Gandhi" characterization.
  • There was a comedy thread on a forum calling for giant death robots in Civ V. The Giant Death Robot is now an actual endgame unit in the latter.
  • In Civ IV, the practice of jacking up a city's culture output (usually via Great Artist) to quickly acquire territory (especially territory belonging to other civilizations) was dubbed "Culture Bombing" in the fandom. In Civ V, the Great Artist has a special ability named "Culture Bomb" which also expands the Civilization's territory. Civ VI uses the term in several civilizations' ability descriptions without even defining what it means.
  • In Civ V, whenever the player achieved cultural dominance over another civilization, that civilization's leader would say "Our people are buying your blue jeans and listening to your pop music". Naturally, in Civ VI the achievement for winning a cultural victory is called "Buying Your Blue Jeans and Listening to Your Pop Music".
  • Elizabeth I's frequency and insistence on trading with the player in Civ V turned the "Would you be interested in a trade agreement with England?" soundbite into a meme. When she was added as an alternate leader for England in Civ VI, the devs made no secret of giving her a leader agenda that would allow them to get that line into her new appearance as well^*She favours civilizations that send Trade Routes to her cities.
  • The Steam version of Civ VI has achievements for winning a game as each of the leaders. The one for Yongle of China is called "Live Yongle Reaction", after a macro that spread around of that phrase above Yongle's diplo screen expression with a polite smile looking straight at the player.
• Club Penguin:
  • There was once a rumor that standing in the Dojo for 30 minutes would turn your penguin into a ninja. Later, the introduction of the Card-Jitsu minigame (hosted in the Dojo, of course) let players actually become ninjas, and the DS game Elite Penguin Force has an NPC that asks about the rumor.
  • Another popular subject for rumors was tipping the Iceberg. One secret agent mission has Herbert mention that his attempt to escape from his home island on an iceberg went south when it tipped; you have the option of asking how it was possible.
    • And then, 12 years into the game's lifespan (not too long before it was shut down), this happened.
• During raocow's playthrough of an early build of Copy Kitty, he said "destroy the world" a lot, so much that the phrase became associated with the playthrough. Come the update for ver. 1.0, and "destroy the world" is an achievement in the game. In the final version, Raocow's given a special thanks in the credits with his catchphrase printed below his name.
• For a long time, there was a Secret Character who kept being datamined in Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, and amongst other things, people joked about it being a crate. Come the first post-GP update, and it turns out that that joke was actually accurate — the secret racer turned out to be the Iron Checkpoint Crate.
• Creepy Watson: The Return, made as a promo for a sequel to the game the original Creepy Watson video was made in, as a way of announcing the return of the "feature" of teleporting Watson as an option.
• Crusader Kings II:
  • The Sunset Invasion DLC's ahistorical Aztec invasion^note The Aztec Empire didn't exist until the very end of the game's timeline and no First Peoples cultures had shipbuilding technology sufficient to cross the Atlantic. led to wisecracks that the next DLC should include undead Vikings. Come The Old Gods and the Flavor Text for the "Viking" trait (gained by raiding as a Germanic pagan) includes a comment that tales are told of Player Character and his undead warriors.
  • The "secret bears" meme originated as a joke by Paradox's Darkrenown. Jade Dragon added an actual event where a female courtier turns out to have been a bear all along, somehow.
  • SsethTzeentach, in his review of the game, spoke of the series infamous incest by saying that you "turn your family tree into a family circle." Lo and behold in Crusader Kings III, it has a family tree system dynamic enough that it can model such depravity. As for the general memery about the game and incest that predated his video, they made it possible to acquire the Pure Blooded trait to carry on incesting without penalties once certain conditions are met.
• Crysis Remastered has "Can It Run Crysis?" as the highest possible setting in its graphics modes. High-end 2022 hardware struggles to get much higher than 30 FPS on "Can It Run Crysis?".
• During the presentation of Cyberpunk 2077 at E3 2019, an attendee shouted "You're breathtaking!" at Keanu Reeves, prompting him to respond "No, you're breathtaking!". When the achievement list for the game was accidentally revealed on GOG, it turned out that finding all of Johnny Silverhand's memorabilia nets you an achievement called "Breathtaking". Also, the game's Photo Mode allows the option to have V do a pose also called "Breathtaking" where they point their finger in the same fashion Keanu did.
• According to legend, DDRMAX2 originally had the correct title for Little Boy (Boy Oh Boy Mix) at the beta location test, but after a fansite's embarrassing typo of "Boy On Boy Mix" turned into a meme, Konami staff thought it was funny enough to insert the error into the game itself. In reality, this typo was actually made by the dance music label that DDR games used at the time.
• Dark Souls: Fans have long joked that it would be an utter nightmare, even by the standards of this game series, to have to fight Iron Knight Tarkus. Come Dark Souls III and there's Knight Slayer Tsorig, a hostile character wearing all of Tarkus's armor and his shield, and wielding one of the most powerful weapons in the game. At least it's an optional encounter.
• In Dead Rising, protagonist Frank West says he's "covered wars, y'know" when Jessie asks if he knows how to use a gun. This line is referenced in every game Frank appears in, and an achievement in Dead Rising 2 is called "He Hasn't Covered Wars...". It is also Frank's notebook description in Case West.
• In Deep Rock Galactic players have a fondness for spamming some voice lines, notably "Mushroom" (for xenofungus) and "We're Rich!" (for compressed gold). In Season 3 the developers put in some new voice lines where doing this enough will make Mission Control get annoyed and tell you to get on with the mission, as well as having Nemesis saying the lines as part of its' Schmuck Bait voice imitation.
• During the Spamton Sweepstakes held for one of Deltarune's anniversaries, one of the real-life prizes someone won was titled Spamton After Not Surviving. Another is titled "HOT MAMAS IN YOUR AREA REAL WINE GLASS 100%", which is most likely a nod to the ever-made-fun-of pop-up "Hot Singles In Your Area" ads.
• In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Adam Jensen says "I never asked for this" maybe once or twice, but according to the fanbase, it's all he ever says. In Mankind Divided, the Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels name the Harder Than Hard one-life mode "I Never Asked For This".
• The memetic "VICTIORE" spelling mistake from the French translation of Dicey Dungeons can be put back with an official mod after the error was corrected.
• "It's On Like Donkey Kong" is a phrase that's been popular since the 1980s, due to the original arcade game. Nintendo has since used the term multiple times in advertisements and merchandise and have even trademarked it. It has culminated in the title character using the phrase himself, including in Fortune Street and The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
• Doom contains a cheat code of IDSPISPOPD — a reference to a joke on Usenet before the game's release, that the next game should have a ridiculous title to avoid the capability for people to get hyped up over it. A suggestion was made for Smashing Pumpkins Into Small Piles of Putrid Debris.
  • The extremely 90s comic, being an absolute Fountain of Memes, would become referenced to hell and back in its post-meme status. Id spared no mercy in including a line from the comic in achievement lists for Doom II on Xbox Live, even including an achievement where you had to punch out a Cyberdemon's "huge guts" with your fists (except succeed this time). Following Doom (2016), it began to take life of its own, the phrase "Rip and Tear" appearing in the opening intro and as a song title, and by Doom Eternal, the phrase "Rip and Tear" is practically an Arc Word. One could argue the comic ascended beyond a meme and set the tone for the series as a whole.
  • Doom (2016) also contains an achievement named "Shoot It Until It Dies" for killing the Cyberdemon, a reference to the protip meme created by an administrator of the Doomworld Forums.
  • Just like John Stalvern in DOOM: Repercussions of Evil, the Doom Marine has become demonically terrifying to the demons themselves, and has been exposed to so much demonic power that he has indeed "become the demons".
  • Doom Eternal has a preorder bonus that gives the Revenant a skin that replaces its shoulder guns with trumpets, a reference to the DOOT◊ meme.
• A PlayDota forum user, CrimsonQueso, wrote a concise and hilarious guide to Leoric, the Skeleton King — in all caps. In DotA 2, Ostarion the Wraith King (Leoric reskinned and renamed) has several voice lines referencing the original guide, including this one (and caps-locked in in-game captions to boot):
  • (upon buying Divine Rapier, the highest damage item in the game) Oh, Rapier. NOW YOUR KING IS BALLING OUT OF CONTROL!
  • (on buying Armlet of Mordiggian) I NOW HAVE ALL THE SEXY.
  • (at the start of a match) I'LL HELP MY WEAK AND PUNY ALLIES WHERE I CAN.
• Ascending from the misspelling of Billy's name in the intro of Double Dragon 3, Double Dragon Neon features the Mistranslated Mutants Bimmy and Jammy, who are Evil Knockoffs of the Lee brothers.
  • There's also an achievement called "You Did What!?" whose flavor text says, "You got 50000 on Double Dragon!?", which is a reference to an infamous scene in the movie The Wizard where Fred Savage says both quotes after having left his character's brother alone at a Nintendo PlayChoice-10 arcade machine for a while.
• Dragon Age:
  • Players came up with a Fan Nickname for the "Murder Knife" used in the games for cutscene stabbings. In Dragon Age: Inquisition, the Inquisitor is required to forge a knife called the Murder Knife in order to be trained in the Assassin specialization.
  • If you pursue his romance, Iron Bull will refer to "riding the bull", referencing a hashtag used to express desire for Iron Bull as a romance option.
  • Morrigan is infamous for disapproving of everything, to the point that "Morrigan Disapproves" was an official t-shirt. When the final DLC for Inquisition added trials, optional features to make the game more challenging, one of them was "Fair Weather Friends", which doubles all approval losses. Its description is laid out in front of Morrigan's picture.
• In Dragon Ball Super, Android 17's actions in the Tournament of Power earned him the reputation of being the tournament's MVP among the western fandom. He then gets straight-up called "MVP" in the description of the English version of his trailer for Dragon Ball Fighter Z.
• Dragon Ball Xenoverse has an Ascended Fountain of Memes in the form of "Abridged Nappa" as a voice option for male created characters (with the original voice actor, to boot). The sequel added in Lanipator (Voice 15) doing his best Mr. Satan impression (complete with an overly loud "HI!!" greeting, mirroring Trunks' "Hey!" from the last game), and KaiserNeko (Voice 13) putting on a hilariously Camp Gay voice similar to Abridged Zarbon.
  • Several DBZ games have included Christopher Sabat recreating Vegeta's famous "Over 9000" quote (even though it was originally said by Brian Drummond).
• Dragon Nest has an interesting example. The Paladin has an ability that causes him to shout 'Goddess protect me!' when he uses it. The accent and speed with which the VA says it had many players hear it as 'GLADUS TEK MA!', which rapidly took on meme status in the community. When the game released achievements, the one given for specializing in the Paladin Job was called 'Gladus Tek What?'◊
• Dragon Quest IV: Kiryl's crippling Artificial Stupidity (Party members were A.I.-controlled in the original game, so he spammed useless insta-death spells rather than, say, heal the party) has become a Dragon Quest in-joke even among the makers. In subsequent appearances, Kiryl's Limit Break will feature him repeatedly failing to cast Whack with textboxes relating his failure until he gets so frustrated that he crushes the textboxes under heel and finally casting a successful Thwack.
• One of the one liners in Duke Nukem Forever is "I'm gonna kill you old style", referencing the infamous Ventrilo Harassment video where the admin threatens the Troll that she will do just that, to the confusion of everyone listening.
  • The Single Player DLC references the spamming of BALLSBALLSBALLSBALLS in the meme, when a Terminator-esque robot makes you repeat it in order for you to pass off as a Duke clone.
• The language learning app Duolingo briefly went viral due to the unintentionally threatening wording of the app's push notifications. While the push notifications were eventually rewritten to be more friendly and neutral, the app's marketing fully embraced into the Memetic Psychopath take on their mascot Duo, with several subsequent advertisments and merchandise featuring Duo threatening various people (to comedic effect).
• The Dwarf Fortress Help screen concludes its short explanation of Fortress Mode with "Losing is Fun!", a catchphrase originally coined by the forums regarding the game's difficulty and the tendency of forts to spontaneously go to hell (metaphorically or literally) for any number of reasons.
• In Dynasty Warriors 3, Yuan Shao gives you characters a stern warning in the battle against Dong Zhuo's forces: "Don't pursue Lu Bu". In Dynasty Warriors 7, you can earn an achievement for defeating Lu Bu in any game mode, entitled "OK, You CAN Pursue Lu Bu".
• Reggie's "My body is ready" meme from E3 conferences ended up ascending in a Fire Emblem game, of all things.
  • It even became his "phrase" when his home was available via SpotPass download in Animal Crossing: New Leaf. He also has a rec-room in the back of his house full of exercise equipment and (of course) a Wii Fit pad.
  • The reveal trailer for Mii Fighters in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U shows us that Reggie's body really was ready, as he squares off against Satoru Iwata.
  • The last trainer you face before entering the courtyard outside the Elite Four's compound in Pokémon X and Y also says, "My body is ready."
  • Very early on in Pokémon Sun and Moon, Professor Kukui says Reggie's phrase when ordering his Rockruff to use its moves on him.
• "Arrow in the Knee" is a playing card in The Elder Scrolls: Legends. A skeleton with an arrow in its knee is, fittingly, also prominent in the trailer for The Elder Scrolls Online's Greymoor Expansion, which takes place in Skyrim.
• Elite Dangerous:
  • At one point when the developer was about to make an announcement a Reddit user remarked that if the announcement was for planetary landings, he would eat a sock. Naturally the announcement was for planetary landings, and the community leapt on him demanding that a sock be eaten. Frontier Developments themselves stepped in and asked everyone to calm down, and for the user in question to not, in fact, eat a sock. This of course just generated more attention. A Reddit bot was created to notify the user every time a sock was mentioned, and it became a sustained running gag. This finally reached full ascension when Frontier announced that Elite: Dangerous Socks were available for sale on their storefront with the tagline "these socks are good enough to eat!", and featuring a picture of David Braben, founder of the company and creator of the original Elite, wearing a pair◊.
• Everybody Edits:
  • Users jokingly called original design of the Astronaut Smiley the "Fishbowl Astronaut" on the official forums when they petitioned for its return. The Staff brought it back as the Fishbowl Smiley.
  • The user "Cow" made a nonsensical forum post filled with mooing, which was quickly closed and got lots of user attention. Six days later, the Moodonna NPC block was added to the game's shop with a description imitating the style of the forum thread:
    moo moo moo moo moomoo
• At the beginning of Fallout: New Vegas, part of the character creation process involves a Rorschach inkblot test. One of the images looked, to a lot of players, like two bears with their paws raised as if high-fiving. Since that wasn't one of the options given, a fan mod added that as a potential answer. As a response to that, in the Honest Hearts DLC, taking the Wild Wasteland trait will add a tribal character to the Dead Horses' camp who is named "Two-Bears-High-Fiving".
  • Fallout and Fallout 2 had Deckard's gun from Blade Runner as a Shout-Out. The gun returns in New Vegas, but there it's simply called "That Gun", Word of God confirming that it was done because players would simply call it "that gun from Fallout and Fallout 2".
• The Nasuverse mobile game Fate/Grand Order canonized the "Sasaki Kojirou, SAVIOR OF FRANCE!" meme caused by the combination of the extreme ease with which he can be acquired and his absurd effectiveness against the dragons plaguing 100-Years-War-era France in the first section of the game past the tutorial (a quirk of the Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors in the game), by having him hanging out with legendary dragonslayers like Saint George during one of the holiday events.
  • Mash's Fan Nickname "Mashmallow" is canonized in the English-language translation for Okeanos.
  • As long as there have been English-speaking fans of Fate/stay night, there have been jokes about whether the Rider class or Riding skill involve "riding" a man. In Grand Order, Medb says that this is exactly her qualification for the class.
  • In general, official translations of Nasuverse material seem to like to insert variations on the phrase "People die if they are killed" into the dialogue. While this is a Japanese idiom, there are probably less literal and more natural ways to translate it, but everyone's already so familiar with the original memetic Fan Sub that nobody can resist.
    Jaguar Warrior: Hey, watch it! Servants die when they are killed, you know!
  • There is a meme in which Cu Chulainn makes fun of Scathach's age, tells her not to hurt her back, and gets stabbed in retaliation. The official release of Sengo Muramasa as a playable character gives Miyamoto Musashi a chatter line making fun of Muramasa's age, telling him not to hurt his back, and getting stabbed in retaliation.
    • A recent dialogue update for Cu Chulainn Caster has him make fun of Scathach's age, blaming the discrepancy between his rune magic and the magic she taught him on age-related memory problems, and getting stabbed in retaliation.
  • Events involving Ibaraki-doji will inevitably have a dialogue option comparing her to a banana, for her yellow color scheme. Her summer swimsuit version also eats a banana during her Noble Phantasm animation.
  • The first chapter of Grand Order was infamous for the huge numbers of wyverns that populated it and the player had to fight through (usually with someone saying "We've got wyverns" whenever another obligatory fight comes up. Whenever the game does a "retrospective"-style Nostalgia Level, you can bet there's going to be a whole bunch of wyverns in the first level, and the cast to comment on it.
    Fuuma Koutaro: Alright everyone... we've got wyverns!
    All Part 1 Servants: Aww, yeah!!
• Final Fantasy:
  • In The Final Fantasy Legend, a glitch made the Saw weapon work on enemies much stronger than the player, resulting in you being able to cut the final boss in half with a chainsaw, which became a meme. In Final Fantasy XIII, the Final Boss has no Contractual Boss Immunity to Vanille's "Death" ability, and Word of God states that this was done on purpose specifically to homage this.
  • In Final Fantasy IV, the original Super NES translation gave the meme "You Spoony Bard!" The line was so beloved that Squaresoft/Square-Enix kept it in all re-releases when the rest of the script was re-translated, and an Author Avatar of the developers in the DS version jokes about the line being kept when other terms were changed. The line has also appeared in a few other Final Fantasy games as a running joke.
  • Final Fantasy XIV has a very catchy music piece for the Rak'tika Greatwood area where a "LA HEE!" is shouted at the start of the song. Naturally, "LA HEE!" became everyone's catchphrase. In patch 5.2 one of the daily quests is named "La Hee" and the objective is to go to a specified spot and actually say "la hee" in the chat box.
    • Part of the lyrics to Omega's theme were commonly misheard as 'A chicken tender, ready to fry'. In an April Fools video parodying the Amazon Echo adverts, we see Omega playing that very part of the song as a woman is frying chicken in a pan.
    • Upon the class' reveal, many people joked that Reapers are just angry botanists, since that class also uses a scythe as their secondary gathering tool. Come the release of the class' lore, it turns out that the original generation of Reapers were in fact 'farmers', explaining why they use a scythe.
    • In 2020, Ross O' Donavan (a.k.a. RubberRoss, you might know him from Game Grumps) was randomly gifted a stack of 999 eggs in FFXIV, then proceeded to eat the entire stack while logging his progress on Twitter. This post became surprisingly viral, the point even Yoshi-P acknowledged it. Next year, he decided to take it even further and hosted a sub-a-thon where he eats an entire inventory full of eggs, over 147,000 eggs over the course of a week. His efforts would later be immortalized with the "Eat Egg" emote given out in the 2022 Hatching-tide seasonal event.
  • After Dissidia Final Fantasy came out, many jokes ensued about Exdeath's obsession with the VOID. Cue the prequel Dissidia 012, and numerous characters mocking Exdeath's obsession and working the word "void" into their pre-battle quotes to him.
    • A popular machinima for the first game called "Real Men" became popular not long after its release. Dissidia 012 brought us Kain Highwind, a famous Ensemble Dark Horse and Memetic Badass, as a playable character. He brought along this gem — "I'm about to show you pathetic mockeries the difference between you, and a real man!"
• Fire Emblem:
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening, "Are Roy and Marth in this game?" was a question so commonly asked by newbies to the series upon the release of a new game that it soon underwent Memetic Mutation. In Awakening, both Roy and Marth are available as DLC characters, meaning you finally can have both playable in the same game!
  • Ever since Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, fans have written joke support conversations with the silent and/or mean looking characters (usually Jaffar, Rath, and Karel) consisting of just "..." back and forth. When Fire Emblem Fates was localized, the local edgy and scarred looking ninja and a former assassin can support like this...
    • Later continued in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, where Dedue and Byleth's supports consist of "..."s back and forth. They do talk, but very little. Byleth even lampshades it.
      "You're a hard person to talk to."
  • One of Prince Ryoma's Fan Nickname is "Lobster Lord/Bro", due to his extremely Wild Hair and his red samurai armor. In the localized version of his supports with Orochi, she calls him "a lobster in a bad hair day".
  • Fire Emblem Heroes includes many different well-known characters in later patches. Many new characters are added for placing well in a popularity poll. Most characters are usually popular units from their games, but Dorcas is a character that made the poll list due to an infamous commercial for Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, that did a very poor job advertising the game. Likely at random, Dorcas was the name used for the unfortunate man who had his mutton poisoned (for laughs), which caused who is usually seen as a below-average unit to become a popular meme. In Heroes, two of his sayings reference said commercial. The first is the misleading "Trust no one" tagline, while the second mentions that he had some bad mutton recently, but is feeling better.
  • In Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, players often equipped Ike with a Hammer (effective against armored units) as an Easy Level Trick for his Duel Boss against the Black Knight. In Fire Emblem Engage, Ike's Emblem provides a Hammer as his first Engage Weapon.
• Five Nights at Freddy's:
  • In Five Nights at Freddy's 2, someone made a bogus Purple Freddy that they claimed appeared randomly in the office. Coincidentally, a real Purple Freddy showed up in Five Nights at Freddy's 3 within the mini-games between nights.
  • Five Nights at Freddy's 2 also referenced the "Are you ready for Freddy?" meme with a poster in the game depicting Freddy and co. with the caption "PARTY TIME! U READY?"
  • In Five Nights at Freddy's World, during the loading screen, all of the playable characters pop up with their own tagline. Phantom Chica's tagline says "Stop calling me a watermelon." Scott added this because of the textures of her burned head, it made her look like a watermelon.
  • A Running Gag in the "How to Make Five Nights at Freddy's Not Scary" video series is Chica being only capable of saying 'bawk' and 'pizza', even shouting the latter during her Jump Scare. Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach features a scene where Gregory and Freddy distract that game's Chica by ordering her pizza on an app conveniently open on a computer. Chica shouts 'pizza' three times in a similar inflection before jumpscaring the poor bot for her food.
  • One Dawko video has him yell in horror in response to a picture of Helpy's head edited onto a muscular man's body, with pictures of muscley versions of Helpy skyrocketing in popularity because of it. In Freddy in Space 3: Chica in Space, the Boss Battle of Meme Cavern is Buff Helpy.
• Two of the characters in Gears of War 3's multiplayer mode might occasionally belt out the line "Your mom is a classy lady!" upon scoring a kill.
• There was an Urban Legend of Zelda surrounding a fifth age in Myst. The realtime-3D remake added the Rime Age.
• Grand Theft Auto V: Sometimes, when switching over to Trevor, he'll be chasing random people on scooters with a scooter of his own while shouting: "We're scooter brothers! Scooter brothers, yeah!", which is a reference to Brad Simons' (4PP) most infamous video; literally almost every line in the video is repeated by Trevor.
  • The games have a reputation for outlandish sightings involving monsters or aliens. Rockstar seems to have noticed (much like they did with Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare and the Sasquatches), and have included Easter Eggs or more obvious signs of supernatural sightings.
  • Franklin and Lamar's actors would later reenact the infamous cutscene in which Lamar mocks Franklin. "The Contract" DLC, which has the two characters return, would have them do what is essentially an updated version of the cutscene.
• The English trailer for Guilty Gear X is infamous for its hilariously bad voice acting and animation. In one scene, Ky Kiske falls into a pit and reacting with a flat "Oh, no, I'm falling." This specific moment ascended in the English dub of -STRIVE-, in which Ky might blurt out "I'm falling!" when tripped by a low attack. Sean Chiplock (Ky's dub VA) confirmed that the reference was intentional.
• Many players heard the Headcrab Zombie's screams in Half-Life 2 as "YABBA! MY ICING!", which became a common joke among fans (the Zombie's screams are actually "Oh God, help! HELP ME!" played backwards). Valve referenced this in the SteamVR Home map Candy Emporium, which includes a poster and bottle for "Yabba"-brand icing.
• Halo:
  • Several random NPC lines throughout the franchise reference the original game's Elites' iconic "Wort wort wort!" line. It's one of the few lines that Elites will say in their own language even when they're speaking English.
    Reach Marine: Yeah, I got your "Wort wort wort" right here!
  • In one of the gameplay previews for Halo Infinite, an image of a Brute with a hilariously deadpan expression◊ went viral, and the players nicknamed him "Craig". In the released game, there's a tribute to Craig atop a tower (which pretends he's the frontrunner of a Brute rock band), and several lines reference him:
    Marine: I saw this one Brute ... weird look in his eyes, like really deadpan... you could tell he'd seen some shit. I wonder if he had a name? I almost want to call him like, you know, "Greg" or something...
    Glibnub: We gotta "Craig" out there? I keep hearing about some loser named Craig. Why the heck did you get all the attention? C'mon, the rest of us are just as cool, if not way cooler!
• One of the background students in Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery was often seen attempting (and failing) to cast Wingardium Leviosa on a feather. Fans gave him the nickname "Leviosa Kid" and often portrayed him as a Memetic Loser. The characters in-universe started referring to him as such too, until he eventually got a canon name: Levi Kidd.
• Heroes of Newerth: TOO BAD ITS ME BLACKSMITH was so popular that the developers used it for their pre-purchase advertisements on their website.
• Hitman:
  • Hitman fans simply know Allan as "the guy who simply doesn't add details". Originally an oversight in Hitman: Blood Money (a lobster crate's flavor text reading "Allan please add details"), but the joke kept returning as an easter egg in future games; Hitman: Absolution has it when you score 666 in the shooting range, and the World of Assassination Trilogy has it referenced on various post-it notes in many of its levels. It's even referenced in the HD remaster, the text being changed to "Any details yet, Allan?".
  • "Jack Please" was originally an in-forum joke, a Mondegreen Gag at the pronunciation of 47 saying "Check Please" in the Hitman (2016) Sapienza trailer. The waiter in question was later given the name "Jack Please" in Contracts Mode.
• Hiveswap: Pre-release, the fans had been in a constant debate over whether Xefros and Dammek's band was spelled "Grubbels" or "Grubbles" due to contrasting art on the OST. In-game, one of the things Joey can find is a note by Dammek angrily trying to pin down how to actually spell it. The game also has two Steam trading cards depicting the band, each named with a different spelling of the band name.
• In inFAMOUS, for some reason Cole was unable to climb over a normal metal fence, with many joking that it was his weakness. Come inFAMOUS 2 and you get an achievement for climbing over a fence called "Don't Fence Me In".
• Injustice: Gods Among Us references an old Cartoon Network ad by having one of Solomon Grundy's combos named "Want Pants Too".
• Due to the lengthy Sequel Gap between Kingdom Hearts II and Kingdom Hearts III being filled with side games, updated re-releases, and compilation titles, the fanbase started joking that Square Enix was actively delaying the third numbered installment as long as possible, with some claiming that it would never be released. When the game finally did release, the developers got in on the joke, with a title card for the game's first level reading Kingdom Hearts II.9, following the pattern of the previous compilation titles being numbered I.5, II.5, and II.8. The real Kingdom Hearts III title card shows up after the first level is completed.
  • In Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], The Reveal that Organization XIII was supposed to be made of vessels for Xehanort's heart spammed the "Everyone is Xehanort" meme. This meme reached its apex in the finale of Kingdom Hearts Union X, with the reveal that the player character is connected to Xehanort, which implies that all Kingdom Hearts Union X players are Xehanort.
• League of Legends:
  • A number of official champion skins started off as player ideas on the community forum. Examples include 'Surprise Party Fiddlesticks' and 'Brolaf'.
  • A long-running joke was that the curved yellow projectiles Soraka the Starchild launches from her staff are actually bananas. An update to the game eventually gave Soraka a new /joke line "Yes, that was a banana. No-one expects the banana." Taken further with the "Order of the Banana" skin released for April Fools' Day 2015.
  • A tongue-in-cheek strategy guide for the game, Pro as Heck Guide to Master Yi, prominently features the phrase "Get dunked!" When Vi, a later-introduced champion, uses her ultimate, which knocks the opponent into the air and slams them into the ground, one of the things she might say is... you guessed it, "Get dunked!" This is further taken with a Basketball-themed 'Dunkmaster' skin for Darius, whose ultimate is jumping high and slamming his axe to the enemy like a basket dunk for massive damage.
  • Pro-League of Legends player Michael "Imaqtpie" Santana is known for the phrase "Raise your dongers", which quickly became linked with Santana's favorite champion Heimerdinger. When Riot Games gave Heimerdinger a visual update, they also gave him a new attack quote: "Raise your what?".
  • YouTube LOL player CholeraNinja has a series called 'I'm bad at LOL', and in one of the episodes, he hilariously 'roleplays' Xin Zhao to the tune of Mulan's song "I'll Make A Man Out Of You". From that point on, fans linked the song to Xin Zhao and kept believing that he'll make a man out of the players. Riot didn't catch on gameplay-wise, but somewhere on Season 5, whenever Xin Zhao received an update by Riot, the explanation will contain lines from "I'll Make A Man Out Of You".
  • In one of the pre-video YouTube adverts for League, mid-way through the explanations of how there's a playable character for whatever role you like to play Teemo pops up with a speech bubble saying "Everyone loves me!"
  • A common and aggravating sight at one stage of League's lifespan was Brazilian players chosing Mordekaiser, declaring "Mordekaiser es numero uno HUEHUEHUEHUEHUE" and proceeding to troll the entire map. Although those days are mostly behind us, Riot still remembers them as Mordekaiser's Pentakill skin shows him as a heavy metal guitarist, with a guitar named "Numero Uno".
  • One of pre-VGU Pantheon's jokes was a Shout-Out to 300 spoofing the "WHAT IS YOUR PROFESSION" scene: "My profession!? You know, now that I think of it, I've always wanted to be a baker." Fans went wild in this, creating a Fanon and meme that Pantheon is an off-time baker if he's not kicking ass in the name of the art of war. Eventually at 2016, Riot released a set of food-themed skins, and one of them being Baker Pantheon. Dream achieved. (His rework ended up keeping the joke in some form, calling on the stars to bake a loaf he holds up in his hand.)
  • The Champion Teemo is considered so irritating that people likes to nickname him Satan. For Harrowing 2016, he gets the Little Devil Teemo Skin, turning him into a devil figure like Satan himself.
    • Taken a step further in the 2016 version of Doom Bots sub-mode: in this version, the Doom Bots are Little Devil Teemo's servants and their dark, unnatural abilities are all due to his curses and evil gifts. Fear The Teemoing — it is upon us.
  • At certain times during a game, some events are programmed to play in Summoner's Rift. Notably, at one point, a frog hops off a cliff. Fanon claims that the frog is trying to kill himself, and nicknamed him George the Suicidal Frog. During champion Neeko's trailer, she sees the frog and grabs it before it can hop off. It still does the minute she leaves.
  • Speaking of Neeko, upon her reveal people often joked about the similarity her name had with Nico Yazawa from Love Live! which would inevitably lead to "Neeko Neeko Nee" jokes. In Neeko's Champion Spotlight, Phreak ends up saying "Neeko Neeko Need" during her gameplay analysis as a nod to said meme.
  • Many people made jokes about Star Guardian Urgot, mostly due to the sheer tonal contrast between one of the darkest champions in the game and one of the brighter skinlines. After making a few references in skins like Star Guardian Ahri, they finally ended up releasing a cosplay-themed Pajama Guardian skin featuring Urgot in a Star Guardian-themed onesie as part of the April Fool's 2020 release.
  • The champion Sett has been compared to Dio Brando, in part because of him sharing a voice actor in Japanese with the vampire in question. His emote features him making the Kono Dio Da pose, and his Champion Spotlight saw him recreating the "you're approaching me?" scene with Pantheon.
  • Pingu was a gag champion concept literally designed to be absurdly OP. In Teamfight Tactics, the "mascot" is the Pengu Featherknight, essentially the closest thing to Pingu possible without actually being Pingu. After a Bait-and-Switch, they ended up recreating the concept word for word as part of a 2020 April Fool's Day joke.
  • Nunu and Willump Bot, already based on an old piece of community content *before* the Nunu rework, take this far — referencing not only the original Nunu Bot, but pretty much every ancient League meme out there (and quite a few modern ones as well). Multiple references to the aforementioned Pro as Heck Guide to Master Yi were included.
  • Really, if you look at the community's memes in general, most have been referenced *somewhere* in League's history (even in something as small as patch note quotes.)
• Left 4 Dead 2 made a nod to Coach's love for cheeseburgers in The Passing DLC. In the first safe room, Rochelle may start to brainstorm on how to motivate the rest of the survivors and one of the ideas she comes up with is telling Coach that there is a cheeseburger museum in New Orleans.
• The The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening Switch remake demonstrates the new Chamber Dungeon Level Editor with a sample area that is heart-shaped and titled "Fill Up Your Hearts", directly referencing an infamous remix of Zelda's main theme by The Rabbit Joint.
• LEGO Adaptation Games:
  • LEGO Marvel Superheroes:
    • A cutscene involving Doctor Octopus crashing through the Daily Bugle offices has JJ shouting "Parker! Do your job!"
    • The dev team apparently have fond memories of classic Marvel vs. Capcom games, because Iron Man also makes reference to his "superior tech".
  • In LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, Robin says "I thought Batman could breathe in space!", referencing the Shortpacked! strip and Trope Namer Batman Can Breathe in Space.
  • LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga offers an achievement, "Shoot First", for killing your teammate Greedo while playing as Han Solo on the Mos Eisley level. This references the "Han Shot First" meme that sprung up after the Special Edition Orwellian Retconned their confrontation into Greedo shooting first.
  • LEGO The Lord of the Rings: When you get to Rohan, you can interact with Legolas to make him say "They're taking the Hobbits to Isengard!". If you do it repeatedly, he will eventually say "The Hobbits the Hobbits the Hobbits the Hobbits to Isengard! To Isengard!" in a direct reference to this memetic remix.
• In Looney Tunes: World of Mayhem, one of the characters they added to the game in April of 2021 was Big Chungus, who grew into memetic status in 2018.
• Madden NFL 12's "Put da team on my back" acheivement, which requires catching a 99-yard touchdown pass as then-Packers wide receiver Greg Jennings, references an infamous YouTube clip of Madden 11 in which Jennings makes that play with a broken leg.
  • Another one is Gus Johnson's controversial line "HE'S GOT GETTIN' AWAY FROM THE COPS SPEED" line is in Madden 12.
• Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games is the example of an ascended meme manifesting itself as an entire sub-franchise. Before the series was even considered to be a thing, the internet was flooded with thousands of Super Mario Bros/Sonic The Hedgehog crossover fan works. Either with the two universes teaming up or duking it out, that is not even mentioning the famous Console Wars of The '90s, helmed by both franchises, which shaped the gaming industry as we know it.
• In Mario Kart 8, characters would give a Death Glare as they passed opponents. In particular, a short clip of Luigi, driving the Mach 8 kart and giving one as he passed Waluigi after taking the latter out with a green shell, became the Luigi Death Stare meme. Nintendo has wholeheartedly embraced it, referencing it multiple times in promoting various Mario Kart titles. Reaches a new level in Mario Kart Tour — not only was Luigi's addition to the game made with a splash panel of him giving the Death Stare while driving the Mach 8, but his in-race driver icon (used when he's hit, he hits someone else, or he's approaching behind the player) is of him giving the Death Stare, notable when nearly every other racer is depicted happy and/or excited in theirs.
• The Hawkeye Initiative is a Tumblr page devoted to putting the hero Hawkeye in various, unlikely, feminine poses (thus highlighting their absurdity, or anatomical impossibility). One of the updates for the game Marvel: Avengers Alliance had an update called "Hawkeye's Initiative", which, while didn't give him the ability to pose like a female superhero, gave him some better stats and abilities.
• In Marvel vs. Capcom 3, when Deadpool defeats Magneto, he yells out "I JUST BEAT MAG-FREAKIN'-NETO! WHERE YO' CURLEH MUSTACHE AT?" Additionally, both Magneto and Sentinel have their MAHVEL BAYBEE schemes as alternate costumes. In the press releases, Magneto was referred to as "still Pringles", by Seth Killian himself. All of this started with this commentary of Marvel vs. Capcom 2.
  • IFC Yipes, the man responsible for the aforementioned MAHVEL, BAYBEE!, seems to have gotten in on the act, hosting his own tournament for MvC3 named after his memetic Curleh Mustache line. For added measure, he's sometimes seen wearing a curly mustache while commentating matches.
  • Quite a few lines in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 reference the community from the vanilla version, such as Deadpool's victory quote against Spider-Man talking about Wesker (who was originally revealed alongside Spider-Man) cribbing off of Spidey's Maximum Spider with his "Maximum Wesker" (the Fan Nickname for his Phantom Dance hyper).
  • Trish also lampshades her resemblance to Dante's mother Eva, and even mocks Dante's infamous memetic line, "I should have been the one to fill your dark soul with light!"
  • One of Frank West's win quotes references how he's covered wars. You can unlock a profile title referencing it as well, and both Zero and Captain America have character interactions referring to it when fighting Frank.
  • Jill Valentine's character profile mentions her 'masterful unlocking abilities'.
• Speaking of Deadpool, he ended up hijacking the Midnight Suns Twitter account during which he "leaked" the lineup of the game's season pass. In the tweet that revealed Morbius, he flat out states "It's Morbin' Time!", a meme that originated from the audience reactions to the So Bad, It's Good Morbius film.
• Mass Effect:
  • Blasto, the first hanar Spectre. Started as a joke made by one of the devs in response to questions regarding new companions in Mass Effect 2. Ended up having a movie made about him, complete with the line:
    Blasto: This one does not remember if its heat sink is over-capacity. It wonders if the criminal scum considers itself fortunate.
    • Leads to a hilarious scene in the third game's Citadel DLC, where Shepard and Javik are shanghaied into acting in a Blasto movie, which goes rapidly south after Shepard gets into an argument about the accuracy of the film with the director and Javik attacks their vorcha actor.
  • The term "quad" as slang for krogan testicles (they have four). Used where humans would say "pair", as in, "You've got a quad, Shepard." Originated on the forums, appeared everywhere in Mass Effect 2.
  • Many, many memes originating in Mass Effect 2 are lampooned in Mass Effect 3, most notably Garrus' love of calibrations and Shepard's horribly bad dancing.
  "I'm Garrus Vakarian, and this is now my FAVORITE spot on the Citadel!"
  • In the third game, there is a mission where the jellyfish-like Hanar ambassador is revealed to be a spy for the Reapers. At the denouement, Shepard will chew out the ambassador, using a popular line from Mass Effect:
  Shepard: YOU BIG STUPID JELLYFISH!
  • "Your Joker-pilot insists I call myself 'Prothy the Prothean'. I insisted he allow me to throw him out the airlock."
  • Niftu Cal, the drugged Volus "Biotic God" from the second game, is heavily referenced in the description of the Volus Adept character in the multiplayer mode of Mass Effect 3. The gold-level biotic challenge is also called "Biotic God" and uses a biotic Volus as its icon.
  • The phrase "assuming direct control", memorably used by Harbinger in 2 and a popular line with the fanbase, made it into a Codex entry in 3.
  • The Citadel DLC pretty much exists for referencing as many fandom memes as possible.
  Javik: Where is the airlock, so that I may throw you out of it?
  Shepard: Do I really sound like that? (a bit later) Maybe it's I should go. I should go. I should go.
  Garrus: I don't suppose you need anything around here... calibrated? Yeah, okay, maybe I should stop saying that word, but only if Liara stops saying "By the goddess."
  "Shepard." "Grunt." "Shepard!" "Wrex." "Commander Shepard." "Shepard, Shepard, Shepard." "Wrex, Grunt..."
  • A couple of varren in the Citadel DLC are named "Kroger" and "Nice Beans", references to the Bioware According To Mom tumblr's names for krogan and Garrus (the latter started with Saren being mutilated into "sour beans" and kind of went weird from there).
  • The central area of the Citadel DLC features several ambient conversations between off-duty soldiers; every single conversation is based entirely on real community discussions about the multiplayer mode.
• While the developers were answering questions regarding the new gameplay features of the then-upcoming Max Payne 2 on the 3DRealms forum, one user asked, "What about moving?" No one knows what he meant, but it became a meme fast enough for a bit recorded for the game involving two mobsters.
  "But what about moving?"
  "What about moving? You put one foot infronta the other."
  • Further expanding on Remedy instances: a running fan joke was that in the first Max Payne, character model and writer Sam Lake had what was labelled a "constipated scowl" for the character's face. The first game after the Max Payne series, horror thriller Alan Wake, has Lake appear in a cameo on a in-game TV segment where he "does the scowl" when the host requests it. This was then compounded in a cross-series reference in Quantum Break, which gives Lake yet another cameo wherein he does the same face again.
• Mega Man Maker:
  • Heat Ladder was a meme for Mega Man Maker's fandom, and it was eventually added in 1.5.
  • The flavor text for MM3 Wily 1 Water is "This revolutionary water tile makes illegal mods obsolete." It referenced Fanduber, the infamous troll of the Mega Man Maker Forums, and his infamous distaste of game mods, which he once believed were "illegar"^note the infamous typo was corrected in the ingame description of the tile, even though the game maker WreckingPrograms were okay with them. The incident is not even brought up on the official Wiki for some reason.
  • The Music Changer item was a meme for a while, before finally being added in 1.7.
• Metroid Dread ends up ascending the meme of mistaking Samus Aran for the titular Metroid species. Due to the injection of Metroid DNA she received in Metroid Fusion, Samus ends up mutating into a true (albeit humanoid) Metroid, making her the last Metroid in existence. And also she can crawl.
• An Argentinian "news" network took a sarcastic suggestion on mixed drink recommendations of Grog (followed by an XD, which any internet user would realize means it is a joke) using The Long List from of its possible ingredients out of The Secret of Monkey Island as how to make it, as something teenagers were actually drinking. Tales of Monkey Island's fifth part includes the "Grog XD" drink featured in a Grog Machine.
  Guybrush: "Grog XD". Heh, it must be that new high energy Grog that all the kids drink these days!
• Monster Hunter:
  • Deviljho from Monster Hunter 3 (Tri) is often called or compared to a pickle in fandom, due to how it looks◊. When the monster debuted in Monster Hunter: World, it was accompanied by a number of pickle puns. For example, an event involving a particularly strong Deviljho, which was available for a limited amount of time, was called "Relish the Moment".
  • The Melynx are a race of mischievous, sentient cats which will attempt to steal a player's items in the middle of a hunt. They also LOVE Felvine. Melynx will prioritize stealing the herb first if a player has any in their inventory, and they will be drawn towards Felvine smoke bombs. This lead to the fan theory that Felvine is used as a recreational drug by Melynx (and their Felyne cousins), akin to catnip or marijuana. In Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, the localization team snuck a reference◊ to this theory into one of the Courier Felyne's quotes.
    Courier: Lazy days like today make me want to hit the Felvine...
  • Just being Monster Hunter: Rise was to receive its Expansion Pack, a meme was circulating wondering whether the pass-for-humans-if-you-squint Wyverian race actually lay eggs, thanks to some (deliberate mis-)interpretation of a number of plot beats in Rise. When Sunbreak released in English, Minoto reacts to being put on the spot by commenting "No, I couldn't! I'd lay an egg!" While this is an archaic way of expressing anxiety, the ambiguity had to be intentional.
• In Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin, the Plesioth has an attack called Hyperspace Tackle, which involves it creating a shockwave by performing a hipcheck, a loving reference to the Plesioth's infamous Hitbox Dissonance-laden hipcheck attack. Additionally, "Hyperspace Tackle" is the Fan Nickname the Japanese playerbase had for the hipcheck.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • Probably the most famous of these is Ermac. A counter in MK1's option menu, right under "Reptile Battles," listed the number of "Ermacs" — short for "error macros" — that have appeared, leading players to speculate about the existence of a hidden fighter named "Ermac." Mortal Kombat II deliberately fueled similar speculation by showing a counter for "Kano Transformations," which never happened in that game. When Ultimate MK3 was released, Ermac was made into an unlockable character. He's made frequent appearances since then.
  • In Mortal Kombat 3, Nightwolf's Friendship has him transforming into Raiden and saying "I've never seen a Kano transformation," which was a memetic response to rumors that Shang Tsung could do that in Mortal Kombat 2 (again, blame the arcade audit counters).
  • Mortal Kombat 9 is said to be dedicated partially to bringing as many of these Epileptic Trees to life, including but not limited to: Skarlet, "feeding the trees" in the Living Forest (an Urban Legend of Zelda until it first became possible in Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks) and "nudealities" (in the form of Mileena's secret third outfit).
• In the crossover fighter Multi Versus, Shaggy supposedly ate a magic crystal that he thought was candy, which gave him muscles and some Dragon Ball Z-esque ki-like abilities. In other words, Ultra Instinct Shaggy is canon in this universe. When asked about it during San Diego Comic-Con 2022, the game's director Tony Huynh has confirmed this to be the case, and even tied it back to the Logo Joke of Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms.
• My Little Pony: Fighting Is Magic: Bionic Farm became a minor meme since Applejack's VA for the game said it at the end of her audition piece. That said, it's now one of the things she says in-game when using Summer Rambo.
• The Nancy Drew games have Nancy say "It's locked" in such a deadpan tone a lot of players thought it was hilarious. So naturally, Her Interactive has made sure to include the voice clip in every game, and even has some in-game advertisements making fun of locked doors.
• NBA 2k and NBA Live Mobile have released player cards of Brian "the White Mamba" Scalabrine, with high stats (90 and 93, respectively). The latter is part of the "Fan Favorites" suite of players.
• Neptunia's Top Nep hat: what started as Adam's Top Gun hat — a black baseball cap with "Top Gun" in white letters — on Workaholics was first adopted by 4chan as the Top Lel hat and eventually spread to the Neptunia fanbase, where it became the Top Nep hat. The hat has since been featured in official 4komas drawn by Tsunako (character designer for the Neptunia series) herself and has even been Defictionalized as official merchandise.
• Nintendo:
  • This tweet from Nintendo's official Twitter account (which is dedicated to competitive play for games like Super Smash Bros. and Splatoon) references the infamous "Yoshi Committed Tax Fraud" meme.
  • After Doug Bowser joined Nintendo of America, he was shown in a tweet thanking the community for their support. Just behind him, slightly out of focus, are Mario and Luigi plush toys, tied up with the cord of a Nintendo GameCube controller.
  • When Doug Bowser was appointed president of Nintendo of America following Reggie Fils-Amie's retirement, many people cracked wise about the obvious. Come E3 2019's Nintendo Direct, this happened.
    Yoshiaki Koizumi: Are you... related?
    Doug Bowser: No, but we get that a lot.
  • This tweet from Reggie Fils-Amie references the "I've gotta get back to playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf on my Nintendo 3DS" meme that was spawned by the man himself.
• During Nintendo's Nintendo 3DS conference at E3, they acknowledged the surprising popularity of the Non-Specific Action Figure (including his Facebook page created by a fan) who appeared in the Miiverse video shown at Nintendo Direct the day before E3 started.
• Notebook Wars: A highly upvoted comment in the second game said "When I bought the Laser, I was pumped thinking I'd get some glowing red line of awesomeness, instead I got a gun that shoots uncooked hot dogs.", joking how it's not a straight up laser but just laser shots. The third game fixed it, with the upgrade description mentioning that "Now its [sic] real laser awesomeness!!"
• OMORI: A popular Game-Breaker strategy in the fan community is the Kel Nuke strat: Equip Kel with the Chicken Ball, make him Ecstatic, give him Coffee and make him use Flex and Run n' Gun: He'll deal thousands of damage and he can One-Hit Kill almost anything. The console-exclusive Boss Rush challenge has copies of your party use that strategy on you.
• The Oregon Trail (2021) has an achievement entitled "You have died of dysentery".
• The Paper Mario series often gets flack for the modern games using nothing but the same Toad model for NPCs. Paper Mario: The Origami King addresses this and turns it into a plot point. The antagonist of the game, King Olly, was created by a Toad craftsman, but ran away from home after finding a message on the back of his head that he mistook for an insult. But because every Toad had the same face, he kept seeing his creator no matter where he went, and his anger built up until he became the tyrant he is during the rest of the game.
• In Path of Exile, a minor unique enemy named Kuduku, the False God has been an in-joke to the community as a literal Random Number God. Earning Kuduku's favor includes "sacrificing" a (crappy) unique item in front him and pray that he will bless you on your efforts to six-link an item. In the Prophecy league, one of the prophecies requires you to kill Kuduku who is assisted by Kadaka, the Goddess of Luck, which rewards you with Orbs of Fusing that are used for linking items.
• One of the possible name for multiplayer bots in Perfect Dark Zero is "Wallguy", referencing a meme spawned from an infamous pre-release screenshot of the game◊ and the arguing it caused on several video game forums.
• The Play Station Vita remake of Persona 4, The Golden, has the character Marie commenting on how beefsteak should be shortened to "Fsteak."
  • Dojima's memetic line "Shut up, Adachi" also originated in the Hiimdaisy parody, and was included word for word in a new Golden event scene where he offers his scooter to the protagonist while Adachi's present.
  • Adachi's memetic line "Bitches and whores" (which originated from a fan-edit of a Rise hentai doujinshi) was actually used by him in The Anime of the Game, in a plot-centric piece of dialogue no less.
  • Also, "Cabbage Adachi" has become an Ascended Meme (the nickname arose in the Japanese fandom after a throwaway line in the game where Adachi mentions he only has enough money to buy cabbage). In one episode of the anime, he's seen shopping at Junes pushing a trolley full of nothing but cabbage.
    • And it's referenced in his title in Persona 4: Arena.
  • The Anime of the Game also tweaks the earlier dialogue in Kanji's arc. Originally, Chie just referred Kanji as 'strange', but in the dub, Chie instead slipped out 'gay'. Kanji's surprise at this line ("Did you say 'gay'?") ends up very close to the oft-quoted Hiimdaisy line: "You sayin' I like dudes!?"
• Persona 4: Arena added a secret achievement for using your Reversal Burst (ie. your combo-escape mechanic) only for the opponent to block it. It's titled 'Nice Burst!', a continuous recurring gag of P4U streamer Milpy.
• In Persona 5, Goro Akechi is memetically associated with pancakes due to his reaction to Morgana's mention of a pancake-shaped building outing him as a Persona user as early as June. In the Updated Re-release, Persona 5 Royal, when he rejoins the party for the third semester, he has a couple of Mementos skits where he grumbles that he doesn't want to hear the word "pancakes" for a long, long time.
• In Planescape: Torment, if you have Morte and Fall-From-Grace in your party, it's possible to hear a random banter where Morte sheepishly admits he's "the Head of Vecna" and then changes the subject to a highly amused Grace. This is referencing a memetic story from the tabletop game about a particular stupid party of players who nearly wiped themselves out over a fictitious "Head of Vecna" artefact their Dungeon Master faked them out with. See, Greyhawk has the Hand and Eye of Vecna as real artefacts, but both items only work for a user willing to cut their hand off/gouge their eye out and install the undead appendage in its place...
• In PlanetSide 2, Terran Republic players would often exclaim "PRAISE MALORN, BUFF THE CARV!" after winning control of a facility. On Malorn's last day working for Sony Online Enterainment, he buffed the CARV.
  Loyal weapons engineers have corrected this [unacceptable levels of inaccuracy] with a minor improvement to the horizontal control of the venerable T9 CARV unification platform
  • The New Conglomerates' Gauss SAW weapon was often referred to as the 'God SAW' by the fandom due to its' ability to eliminate a large number of players before reloading. When Auraxium weapons were introduced (rewarded for getting large numbers of kills with different weapons of the same type), the New Conglomerates' Auraxium LMG was called the NC6A GODSAW. It didn't live up to the name, at first.
• Pokémon:
  • One of the oldest and most infamous rumors in Pokémon Red and Blue was that checking the truck next to the S.S. Anne before it departs (only possible through going to Fuchsia City and getting Surf before coming here to get Cut, which causes the ship to leave) would trigger an encounter with Mew, or any number of other things. In Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, if you manage to do this you'll find a Lava Cookie, which while normally only obtainable in Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald, can also be bought from the merchant if the player has enabled the Hoenn trade links. The truck returns again in Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!, much easier to find since you can access the dock after the S.S. Anne leaves, this time with a Revive on the dock that respawns every day.
  • In Pokémon Black and White 2 the developers referenced the "Youngster who likes shorts" meme◊ with a girl who likes her dress because it is comfy and easy to wear◊. ^note While Youngsters have similar lines in other games, tbe Japanese name of the Trainer Class is "Shorts Youngster", making it less of an Ascended Meme and more of an intentional part of their characterization. Another Youngster saying the exact same line is a Call-Back. On the other hand, this girl is of the Lady Trainer Class, so giving her a snowclone of the same quote is absolutely a reference to the meme.
  • A subtle one in Pokémon X and Y: Inspect the back rooms of your character's house and you will see that Game Freak has finally included a bed for your mother, in response to years of fan comments about how she presumably sleeps on the table since your house only has one bed (yours).
  • Implied in Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire: the French translation of Brawly's pre-battle dialogue has him say he trained his mind by "staring at a Helix Fossil for days and days".
  • Another example has an NPC ask the player if they like Pokémon. After answering yes a couple of times, she will give you a Poké Doll, in reference to the "so i herd u liek mudkipz" meme.
  • Since 2014, fans have been drawing fanart of what Pokémon would look like if there were different subspecies or breeds. Two years later, a similar concept was officially introduced for Pokémon Sun and Moon.
  • A long-standing joke among fans is how Snorlax's sprites/models, when ordered by generation, make it appear like it's trying to stand up. It finally accomplished this feat in Gen 6... and, come Gen 7, it gains (via an exclusive Z-Move) the ability to jump to an extreme height, then slam on the opposing Pokémon. Looks like standing up gave it a little too much power. This is actually referenced in an official trailer for the game.
  • In Pokémon Sun and Moon, one of the possible comments for Poké Finder photos is "7.8/10, too much water", referencing the infamous line from the IGN review of Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire.
  • Hiker David became (in)famous among players of Pokémon Sun and Moon for unexpectedly crashing Kiawe's trial (though Kiawe later tells you it was intentional). Not only does he get a larger role in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon (including Kiawe nominating David as his successor), but you get a mask of a Hiker (suggested to be of David specifically, as it has his dumb grin from when he crashes the trial) for the Alola Photo Club.
  • An interesting example that crosses over with Nerf. When the Moody ability (randomly sharply raises one stat and lowers another every turn) was first introduced in Gen 5, it was quickly banned by Smogon for being able to raise Accuracy or Evasion. Starting with Pokémon Sword and Shield, Moody can no longer raise Accuracy or Evasion.^note However, this didn't prevent it from being banned from OU due to its luck-based and constant stat boosts being deemed uncompetitive. It's no longer banned from Ubers, however.
  • It's rumored that the infamous "PIKACHU! THE HORN!" moment from the anime led to Rhyhorn and Rhydon (and later on Rhyperior) all getting the Lightning Rod ability in the third generation. Unlike in the anime, they retain their immunity to electric attacks. In fact, as of Generation V, Lightning Rod nullifies Electric attacks. In the same generation, Pikachu's hidden ability is Lightning Rod.
  • Game Freak seems to be aware of Gardevoir's reputation on the internet, and have attempted to capitalize on it. First was its Mega Evolution in Gen VI, which turned its chest plate into an actual chest, then the Gen VII anime having a hallucinating Meowth romantically dream of Gardevoir (alongside Lopunny and Glaceon), and finally, Gen VIII giving the entire Ralts line Human-Like as their secondary Egg Group.
  • In Pokémon Platinum, it is very common for players to form a party using their starter, Staraptor, Luxray, Lucario, Togekiss, the evolution for the gift Eevee, and Bibarel. In the animated short Bidoof's Big Stand, at the 4:20 mark it shows that the focus trainer's team uses these exact Pokémon (sans Staraptor and Bibarel is unevolved).
  • Pokémon GO:
    • In their update notes, Niantic (the developer) put "Minor Text Fixes" as one of the things they changed. Players who felt Niantic should be spending time fixing other problems with the game made this a meme to mock them. In the v1.3.1 patch, Niantic made sure to mention "No Text Fixes" in their notes.
    • After one too many hatted-Pikachu events, the community decided that what the game really needed was Party Hat Weedle. Presumably because its horn looks kind of like a party hat. For the 2020 New Year's event, they finally got their wish... sort of. (It's Wurmple instead of Weedle, but they're both caterpillars with similar names.)
  • In Pokémon Legends: Arceus, the first Alpha Pokémon you encounter is a Kricketune, whose cry is rendered as the memetic "De-le-le wooooooooooop!" The game also acknowledges the meme of Bidoof, Shinx, and Starly being on every Sinnoh playthrough team by specifically forcing you to catch those three Pokémon. The quest giver for one of the sidequests in the game tells you about a Mr. Mime in the village and how he finds it creepy, much like what a lot of fans feel about the species.
  • In the leadup to Pokémon Sword and Shield, there were widespread memes dreading the idea of Scorbunny being the fourth Fire-type Starter to evolve into a Fighting-type once fans noticed its sports theme, (which didn't end up happening, it stays pure Fire-type as a Cinderace). Then Pokémon Scarlet and Violet includes Cinderace as a Raid Event boss... Terastalized into a Fighting-type.
  • Pachirisu is seen performing Follow Me in both Pokkén Tournament and Pokémon Café Mix, referencing Se Jun Park's infamous 2014 Pokémon World Championship team.
• Portal 2:
  • VG Cats made a strip about a turret being used as a babysitter for a baby. Promotional material for Portal 2 shows that Aperture indeed marketed their turrets to families to protect their kids.
  • The "The cake is a lie" meme and the numerous references to cake in Portal meant that Valve Software, reluctant as they were, just couldn't get away without including at least one reference to cake in Portal 2, which came in the form of a sign on the fake door leading to the battle with GLaDOS: "GLaDOS Emergency Shutdown and Cake Dispenser. Keep Unlocked."
  • The incident when GLaDOS gets attached to a potato battery got dubbed "PotatOS" by the fans. The official soundtrack album Portal 2: Songs to Test By ended up with a track titled "PotatOS Lament". The developer commentary also refers to potato GLaDOS by this name.
• Near the beginning of [PROTOTYPE 2], Alex Mercer karate kicks a helicopter in a cutscene.
• Punch-Out!!: "Hey Mac baby, I'm going to go for a ride on your bike!" For those not in the know, it's referring to the YTMND fad "Nigga Stole My Bike", where Doc Louis riding along on a bicycle while Little Mac trains is reinterpreted as Little Mac chasing after Doc.
• The Pure Pwnage episode that introduced the character of FPS Doug had him repeatedly shouting "Boom, headshot!" while playing Counter-Strike. This quickly became a meme, and was used for pictures of headshots (and not the ones where you take pictures of people). And, in Call of Duty games from Modern Warfare 2 onwards, your reward for killing someone with a headshot in multiplayer is a medal named "Boom, headshot".
  • In the Meet the Sniper promo video for Team Fortress 2 (made by the same company that made Counter-Strike), we open with a closeup of the sniper poking a bobblehead and muttering, "Boom, headshot." Cue title card.
• One very popular GIF made by the community of Ragnarok Online features an Alchemist ordering her Cart reveal a massive cannon and firing a powerful shot. Fast forward many years later, the Geneticist class (the final evolution of Alchemist) gets a skill called Cart Cannon, which is particularly baffling because almost every Geneticist skill is either about making potions or using plants to attack, while the skill would make far more sense for the Mechanic class.
• Soon after the release of Rainbow Six Siege, the Spetsnaz operator Fuze become infamous on the Hostage game mode, due to his explosive cluster charges easily killing the hostage when used by unskilled or unobservant players. Two years later this reputation was acknowledged in the bio for the operator Ying:
  In her official report of 2004, Siu mentions a disagreement between herself and Kessikbayev,^note Fuze who she stated "had a complete disregard for civilian lives," which made him a "questionable asset."
• Red Dead Redemption had a well-publicized glitch where the game would occasionally spawn animals with human bodies, which resulted in moments like cowboys flying through the sky like birds or the infamous "Donkey Lady". Red Dead Redemption II features an Easter Egg where you can find the skeletal remains of the Donkey Lady hooked up to a millstone in a certain location in the game.
• Resident Evil
  • After the release of the Resident Evil 2 remake, a video of Mr. X chasing the player to the tune of "X Gon Give It To Ya" rapidly went memetic. So how did the developers announce the release of DLC costumes resembling the characters' looks in the original? "Knock knock open up the door, it's real!"
  • One of the most memorable moments of Resident Evil 5 is the famous boulder-punching incident. This gets referenced in Resident Evil Village when Heisenberg refers to Chris as "that boulder-punching asshole". This also applies to the Japanese script, where he calls Chris "that gorilla", an Affectionate Nickname given to Chris in reference to the same scene. This even goes for Chris' Guest Fighter inclusion in Fortnite, as his skin's item description dubs him a "boulder enthusiast".
  • For over 20 years, fans of Resident Evil 2 made jokes on how the police station have no bathrooms. When Resident Evil 2 (Remake) was shown, one of the first things shown was a pair of bathrooms as one of the new locations added in the police station. Just to make it funnier, the bathroom you can access has an overflowing toilet and on top of it is a First-Aid Spray.
• One Robot Arena 2 tournament held on popular fansite Gametechmods included an entry named "Spinner from the west" (SFTW), that quickly became infamous as one of the worst robots the site had ever seen and was turned into a running joke by the community. When Robot Arena 3 was released, it included a Joke Character named The Lone Saw that was an exact replica of SFTW, albeit with a different paintjob.
• With Rock Band having such a massive backlog of available music to play, some gamers are noticing a trend in Rock Band's tracklist, namely that Harmonix seems insistent on adding as much music from bands that Dave Grohl has been involved with (Foo Fighters, Nirvana, Them Crooked Vultures, Tenacious D et al.) as possible, giving the game the nickname Dave Grohl Band. Rock Band 3 acknowledged this by having the achievement "Dave Grohl Band", for playing any five songs from bands featuring Dave Grohl.
• A NeoGAF user named Feep attended E3 and wrote a post praising Scribblenauts for its extensive word list, ending with "I FUCKING TRAVELED THROUGH TIME AND JUMPED ON A DINOSAUR AND USED IT TO KILL MOTHERFUCKING ROBOT ZOMBIES." The developers included both Feep and Post 217 (the number of said post) in the game (as a robot zombie and a picture of the described event that acts as a nuke, respectively). There is also an official wallpaper◊ detailing the event.
• One of the most infamous bosses in Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne was Mot, who could potentially spam Beast Eye, Makakaja, and Megidolaon — and infamously, unlike every other enemy with Beast Eye, Mot was on a pure A.I. Roulette and could use it any number of times a turn. In Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, DLC adds an expansion to the Brutal Bonus Level where you can fight Mots with a variation of the same three skills. Also, in Shin Megami Tensei Liberation: Dx2, Mot is a gacha-exclusive demon with Megidolaon and a unique passive that automatically gives the team the Extra Turn at the start of every other turn.
  • The PAL version of Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne featured an out of place seal promoting Dante from Devil May Cry having a cameo. This seal became a popular meme with edits onto other covers. In 2021, with the incoming release of Nocturne's HD Remaster, Sega put out an HD render of the famous "Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series" seal for all to use.
• In The Sims, people found the Video Game Cruelty Potential amusing, and the fact that Sims could be killed off in improbable ways (like drowning because they couldn't climb out of a pool with no ladder) became something the game was known for. In The Sims 2, pre-made character Brandi Broke lost her husband in "a suspicious pool-ladder accident."
  • Another Cruelty Potential reference appears in The Sims 3, where one of the charities Good sims can donate to is "The Walled-Off Sims Society".
• Skullgirls is loaded with these. If it was a meme within the fighting game community, then chances are that it's referenced somewhere in the game.
  • The most blatant example, on the other hand, is definitely the meme referenced by both the announcer of the game and by one of the achievements: "REAL SOVIET DAMAGE!" ^note For those not in the know, Skullgirls' lead developer, Mike "Mike Z" Zaimont, was one of the professional gamers Arc System Works hired to make official strategy video for BlazBlue. Mike Z decided to have a little fun and make his video while speaking in a hilarious Large Ham Russian accent, promoting the superiority of communism over capitalist America. The quote above is one of the most memetic lines of the entire video. Further ascending is that future DLC included Mike Z as REAL SOVIET ANNOUNCER.
  • "Republican Double for DLC!" started as an in-joke from the game's voice actors, and quickly began circling the internet. Now, thanks to the Indiegogo fundraiser reaching $250,000, Republican Double actually is a DLC voice-pack for Double.
  • Robo-Fortune as well: she started off as a gag by Ms. Fortune's VA Kimlinh Tran, then became an option for a voice-pack like Republican Double before being upgraded to a full-blown character, with her own story mode, stage, and theme music!
  • Fukua was originally an April Fools Day version of protagonist Filia, made to mock Street Fighter IV's infamous reveal of its final DLC character Decapre; a clone of existing character Cammy White. Fukua received so much positive support and feedback that she's now a permanent fixture in the game.
  • Blink and you'll miss it, but if you pause and take a look at Umbrella's face in her grab whiff animation, she has a very particular expression◊ on her face.
• In April 1st of 2016 SMITE released a video called "Manticore, the Forgotten Blight". It gathered over 2 million views, with many fans either joking it's a reveal for the next god, or unironically wanting a playable manticore added in the game. In 2023 this officially happened, as part of the game's big 10 year anniversary an original character named Martichoras was released and joined SMITE's huge roster of playable mythological characters.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • The Tails Doll fandom seems to be shaping into this. Originally a one-shot playable villain in Sonic R, the fans turned him into the subject of countless Creepypastas. The devs then released a rather... dark remix of the song memetically associated with Tails Doll.
  • Shadow the Hedgehog was known for its Narmy lines, and perhaps the biggest one was "Where's that DAMN fourth Chaos Emerald?!" In a nod to this, Sonic Generations has him holding that damn fourth Chaos Emerald.
  • Ever since Aaron Webber took over Sonic's social media accounts in 2014, he's been dedicated to ascending as many memes as possible, including Sanic, Sonichu, appending "& Knuckles" to the end of things, and various memetic phrases such as "Get a load of this!" When fans started coming up with new memes — such as a humorous-looking smear frame in the Sonic Mania intro — Webber started turning those into Ascended Memes as well.
  • Sonic Mania
    • The game has an unlockable "& Knuckles" mode, which makes Knuckles the character that's following the playable character, like Tails. The best part is, this works even when that playable character is Knuckles!
    • The message you get when you unlock this mode also references another of Knuckles's memes: "Knock Knock! & Knuckles mode is now unlocked!"
    • Edit Mode being referred to by its Fan Nickname, Debug Mode.
    • The special stage in which you get that damn fourth Chaos Emerald is That One Level.
  • Sonic Forces now features a Sanic shirt.
  • Sonic has never been known by the original Sonic Team members as "Mr. Needlemouse", but instead simply as Mr. Hedgehog. That was a fan mistranslating the “Mr. ハリネズミ” on one of Naoto Ooshima's sketches for Sonic's design word by word but it stuck, leading to the nickname being used in official media multiple times. In 2021, an annoyed Yuji Naka finally realized this upon taking Sega's promotional trivia test about their games.
  • The third episode of Sonic Frontiers: Speed Strats made references to two of the game's memes: Surprise Squid ^note  A sudden jump cut to the Squid's Boss Subtitles when it comes into range and Cyberspace Level 1-2. ^note  Infamous for being That One Level and a case of Early Game Hell
• The SOUND VOLTEX song "BRAIN POWER" had become a meme, especially on Twitch, thanks to a frequently-seen transcription of its quote unquote "chorus" of chopped up vocal samples. The song was removed from the game in 2017 when its exclusivity with Konami lapsed by request of the artist, but that just made it a free agent ready to appear on a different game. That game? Neon FM, which gave the song a special background (featuring the fan-made "lyric video" for it) and note design that directly references the meme.
• Splatoon:
  • Due to the thoroughly Narmtastic North American TV commercial for the first game, "You're a kid! You're a squid!" ended up being something of a Memetic Mutation catchphrase for the game's English-speaking fans. It wasn't long before Splatoon 1 saw an update add a reference to it in Callie and Marie's stage announcement banter:
  Callie: Being here makes me feel like a kid!
  Marie: Really? I feel more like a squid.
  • In the first game, "squidbagging" (rapidly changing back and forth between squid and humanoid form) was a common taunt. In Splatoon 2's single-player campaign, enemy Octolings will occasionally do it (However, one could argue it's more like "octobagging" in their case). In Octo Expansion, Agent 3 will also do this if they manage to splat you.
  • "Always Booyah Back!" ^note A piece of fandom etiquette stating that if a teammate hits the "Booyah" button, you're supposed to respond with your own. became one of these upon the addition of the Booyah Bomb special, which charges up faster via the player and their teammates spamming the "Booyah" command.
  • "I wish humans were real" is an unsubtle reference to the infamous "i wish squids were real" Miiverse post.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom: The Rehydrated Updated Re-release adds a drawing of Primitive Sponge in a cave, in the same pose as the meme he is associated with that popped up in-between the original game and its remaster. Most of the game's idle animations for SpongeBob and Patrick are taken from popular memes, such as mocking sponge and their surprised poses from the movie.
• Spyro the Dragon: Toys for Bob has acknowledged the infamous "trouble with the trolley, eh?" line in regard to the infamous trolley sidequest in the Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! level, Breeze Harbor. Upon beating the sidequest in the Spyro Reignited Trilogy, you'll get the "Trouble No More" achievement/trophy.
• Star Trek Online: During the two-year anniversary event, you could ask Q Junior where Captain Sulu was.^explanationMemetic Mutation from the constant requests from new players how to find him, due to poor wording of the mission directions. He would complain about your use of an ancient meme.
  • The phrase "KURLAND HERE", said by Captain James Kurland during the mission "Boldly They Rode" has reached this level as, during the fifth anniversary event, Q Junior will pop in if you visit Deep Space 9 and ask "Is Kurland there?"
  • A bug once made Deep Space K-7 disappear from the game map and it was jokingly said that Klingons hid it with a cloak. When it came back, you can find a gathering of Starfleet officers interrogating a Klingon on how he did it.
• "Sheng Long" originated in a mistranslation of Ryu's Victory Quote in the Street Fighter II arcade game.^note "Sheng Long" is the Chinese reading of the Shoryu in Shoryuken. The legend was elaborated on by an April Fools' joke created by Electronic Gaming Monthly in 1992, which alleged that he was the unlockable True Final Boss of the game. The manual of the SNES version actually named Sheng Long as Ryu and Ken's master, and though that ended up in Canon Discontinuity like most manuals of the time, the legend of Sheng Long would be confirmed in all but name. In 1994, Akuma, brother to Ryu and Ken's master, was introduced in Super Street Fighter II Turbo as the True Final Boss, with an unlocking procedure and red fireball attack recalling EGM's idea of Sheng Long. Finally, in 2008, Gouken, Ryu and Ken's master himself, was confirmed for Street Fighter IV, and fans were astonished to find that Gouken had every single move that Sheng Long was stated to have. "You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance", indeed!
  • You even get a special title for beating the first challenge with Gouken that says "Also Known as Sheng Long"
  • And one of his Super win quotes is, obviously, "You must defeat me to stand a chance!"
  • And in Super Street Fighter IV, Ken makes a peculiar reference to the Ken Flowchart◊ in his new win quote.
    • British-based gaming magazine Ngamer also had an article on the 3DS version of SSFIV with the strapline "Now witness flowchart Ken in 3D!"
  • On the Street Fighter V Character Encyclopedia website, there was a Shadaloo Combat Research Institute profile for Sheng Long as an April Fools' Day joke.
  • And finally, Street Fighter 6 adds Sheng Long as a real character in the game. He's an Optional Boss you unlock after beating World Tour mode, and boy does he live up to his reputation.
  • Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition has Evo Moment #37 as a challenge.
    • The very end of the Heroes and Heralds trailer for Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 also uses it.
    • The move that capped off Evo Moment #37 was Ken's Shippu Jinraikyaku. In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, it's Ken's Final Smash if he's right up in his opponent's face... and he strikes his parry pose just before unleashing it.
    • In Street Fighter V, Chun Li's Houyokusen deals 37 hits if unblocked.
  • A certain DLC costume for Ryu in the fifth game instantly gained traction amongst fans due to his attractive looks. He gained the Fan Nickname "Hot Ryu" however Capcom didn't seem to have intentionally made him a Mr. Fanservice character and was confused on the reaction. A few weeks later and it seems they've grown to accept the idea. There is a special edition of the game exclusive to Japan that comes with both Ryu and Chun-Li's alternate costumes, as well as a new box cover that features both of these "hot" costumes prominently. What's it called? "The Hot Package."
    • One of the first things revealed in Street Fighter 6 was Ryu having the shirtless, bearded look from "Hot Ryu", which is equal parts and a response to fandom reception and a prospective idea for the last game during development.
  • Another one for the fifth game: How does Bison respond with the sight of his minions fighting each other to death? "This is delicious entertainment!"
  • A common joke made about Ken's haggard redesign in Street Fighter 6 was that it was a result of him blowing his money on cryptocurrency. Its official prequel comic's first issue confirmed that Ken had indeed invested in cryptocurrency.
  • Shortly before the launch of SF6, Luke's voice actor Aleks Le uploaded a parody of the "Ryu from Streets™" video, complete with perfectly mocapped imitations of Ryu's original moves.
• Street Fighter X Tekken is rife with these. One of Balrog's win screen quotes has him clear up that his line back in SFIV was "MY FIGHT MONEY!", not "MY BIKE MONEY!"
  • Also in the same game, if the voice is set in English, M. Bison's taunts literally becomes him saying the famous line from the movie: "But for Me, It Was Tuesday". And also, one of his win screen quotes is similar to the one from the cartoon, which he also delivers to Chun-li: "I killed my father too, and you don't hear me complaining about it!"
• There is a cheat code in Street Fighter X Mega Man that allows Guile's theme to override whatever stage song you're in, since "it goes with everything."
• Super Mario Maker:
  • One very popular level style was to give Mario a Fire Flower and a Koopa Clown Car and have him fly through a screen full of enemies, creating a level not unlike a scrolling shooter. The devs noticed and loved the idea, so they created the SMM-exclusive Fire Koopa Clown Car, which is a Koopa Clown Car with the build-in ability to shoot fireballs, specifically to support this level archetype.
  • One of the most infamous complaints about the original game was the significant lack of slopes. One of the first new features shown in Super Mario Maker 2's announcement trailer was a series of slopes, with Mario sliding down and running up them. This is escalated even further by the fact that the game's internal project name was indeed "slope".
  • One of the most popular levels in the first game was Kiavik's "Super Mario vs Mecha Bowzilla", where Mario haves to run away from a mecha made of cannons and other items piloted by Bowser Jr. and eventually destroying it. Remakes of that level have been showcased in commercials for the 3DS version of the first game and in the trailers for the sequel.
• Photoshopping Kamina's Triangle Shades onto someone automatically makes them more badass. In Super Robot Wars Z2, you can get Kamina's shades as an item, which gives you +20 starting morale.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U features two online battle options, named "For Fun" and "For Glory". When playing For Glory, all matches are No Items, Final Destination. (All characters remain available, so no Fox Only.)
  • In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Snake's codec conversation regarding Captain Falcon is basically HAL Laboratory lampshading the popularity of the "Falcon... PUNCH!" by having even Snake and Otacon say that they've been dying for an excuse to say it themselves.
    • This tradition is continued in the next Smash Bros. game with some of the Palutena's Guidance conversations; for instance, when discussing Samus, the conversation covers her I Am Not Shazam status, as well as Link's and Pit's.
  • After "We like Ike!" went memetic from Brawl, Nintendo's official UK Twitter feed (them again) posted a screenshot of Ike being apparently eaten by a stage hazard monster in the fourth game with the phrase "Somebody likes Ike".
  • Ryu's reveal trailer references the Sheng Long meme mentioned above by having him say that actual, properly translated version of the line. Apart from replacing "Sheng Long" with "my Shoryuken", the rest of the wording is identical to the memetic version.
  • When Villager from Animal Crossing was announced, they spawned a meme where they became a violent, Memetic Psychopath axe murderer. When Bayonetta was revealed as a newcomer, official art made to coincide with that showed Villager on the 'evil' side of the screen (though strangely Lil Mac and Charizard were also on it).
  • After well over a decade of memes about him being too big for Smash, the heavily-demanded Ridley was finally confirmed for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate at E3 2018 with the tagline "Ridley hits the big time!" His Palutena's Guidance segment also starts with Pit shouting "RIDLEY CONFIRMED!"
  • The overused "No Items. Fox Only. Final Destination" meme goes full circle with Ultimate actually bothering to show a clip of Fox all alone in Final Destination.
  • Thanks to the dubious reception of Metroid: Other M, jokes about Samus and the baby the baby the baby the baby are common. Then, in Joker's Classic Mode, you get to fight Samus and Dark Samus. The Persona music they chose for this particular fight? Mass Destruction.^ExplanationThe song is famous to Persona fans for repeating the word "baby".
  • Ladies and gentlemen, behold! For the entire Smash roster is now in for a bad time.
  • In the reveal Trailer for Byleth, after getting his ass handed to him by several sword fighters, Sothis quips "too many swordsman, are there?", a reference to a popular meme/fandom complaint that the game has too many characters that used swords.
• Super Star Wars: One of the achievements in the 2016 PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita versions is, of course, "Han Shot First" which requires Han Solo to kill one of the many Greedo enemies in the Cantina level. Somehow. Bear in mind, you need to beat the Cantina to unlock Han in the first place so the only way this can be done is via cheating.
• Surgeon Simulator 2013 has a number of nods to popular Let's Plays in the Steam Edition's achievements. Amongst them are "Shh I Doctor Now.", which is based off a picture of the doctor putting a finger where the patient's mouth is, "Like A Wild Animal", based off the popular "Rage Quit" segment with Rooster Teeth where Gavin slaps all the items off and Michael calls him that, and "Like A Wet Paper Towel", another RT nod, where Gavin, in his excitement, flings the replacement heart away and Michael snaps at him in disbelief.
  • The achievement "It's in! It's in I Tell You!" comes from a Let's Play by PewDiePie. The achievement requires you to play the Heart Transplant level, remove all the organs from the patient, put the heart in upside down and let the patient die, referencing PewDiePie accidentally putting the heart in upside down and not having time to fix it, while exclaiming "It's in! It's fucking in! It's in I tell you!". The Pewdsball organ and achievement is also named after PewDiePie.
• In Tales of Destiny 2, Barbatos Goetia had a specific counter to every trick the player tried, most notably items. He'd immediately throw a spell at you whilst the usual arte tag at the top (which normally displayed an arte's name) would simply display Barbatos shouting "Don't use items against me!" Since items would be commonly used against hard bosses, Barbatos would drain player's stock fast leading to the joke that he REALLY hated item users. Then when he appears as a superboss in the remake of the first Tales of Destiny and from that point onward, he ends up getting that reaction as a special Mystic Arte with its own animation (at the expense of his spells and specific reacting to everything else.)
• Team Fortress 2 is a gold mine of ascended memes:
  • Ever since the commercial for Shamwow! become popular on the internet, people have been comparing Vince Offer to the Scout. As of one update to the game, The Scout's in-game dialogue includes no less than 3 quotes from the commercial. "No other class gonna do that!" Even the website made to chronicle the update makes a Shamwow! reference or two.
  • The "FYI I Am A Medic" Medic achievement is named after the "FYI I Am A Spy" spray and associated YouTube video.
    • The Spy update also gave us the "FYI I Am A Spy" achievement which is unlocked by killing an enemy Medic that has just healed you.
  • The Spy update announcement, in the form of a mail-order catalog, featured an item called the "Crab walking kit". This is a reference to an in-game bug which causes the spy to walk very strangely when certain conditions are met, and is a common pastime amongst spies not about their backstabbing business.
    • In the webcomic, theSpy wears a Louis Crabbemarché suit, mangled French for crab-walk.
  • Also with the Spy update comes as a new taunt for the spy's cigarette case that pops up randomly and has him pose like a crab and snap his hands like claws.
    • The Sandvich; fans had been suggesting its incorporation into the game since its first appearance in "Meet the Scout".
    • Although it should be noted that they like to hide upcoming items in "Meet the..." videos. (See also: The Pyro is carrying his flare gun in Meet the Sniper, released before the Pyro update came out.)
  • Then, of course, there's the disembodied voice of the announcer. Disembodied, that is until a fan drew her. And then it became official. (They even hired that specific fan to draw her!)
  • The Fan Nickname "crocket" (a rocket that rolls a Critical Hit, infamous for being especially devastating) is referenced by a Soldier achievement ("Crockets are such BS" for randomly firing two in a row) and a Heavy achievement ("Crock Block", for surviving a a direct hit from one, which is only possible when at full normal health or overhealed).
  • The term "Demoknight" (a Demoman that uses unlockable weapons to focus on melee attacks) is referenced by an item set called "One Thousand and One Demoknights".
    • One of the Special Robots in Mann vs Machine Mode is known as the "Demoknight", and like the Demoknight, wields both an Eyelander and a shield.
  • Several bot names are this, such as Mentlegen and CRITRAWKETS.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge: The achievement for getting a 250-hit combo is called "Cowabunga It Is", referencing a rather infamous image macro of Mikey.
• Back when Tekken 3 hit arcades, there were rumors of a Devil version of Jin. Jin transforms into this form in his PSX ending, and Devil Jin became a fully-realized character in Tekken 5.
  • Because many people had a hard time pronouncing his name, a popular fan nickname for Hwoarang was "Bob" (short for "Boy on Bike"). Come Tekken 6, and a character actually named Bob made his franchise debut.
  • Before the release of Tekken 7, one of the new characters announced for the game's roster was Lucky Chloe, a cutesy cat-themed pop idol. The United States fanbase of the series, for the most part, utterly loathed Chloe and were extremely vocal in their dislike of her. The pushback from American fans over this character reached such levels that the game's writers implemented it into her story; in-universe, Lucky Chloe is a popular popstar all over the world... except for the U.S., which hates her.
• In the "Haunted by Memories" trailer for Teppen, the sole voiceline not provided by the narrator is from Zero as the death of Iris is referenced, with Zero bellowing his iconically memetic lamentation: "WHAT AM I FIGHTING FOR?!?!", as delivered by his current VA, Johnny Yong Bosch, for his first time.
• Total War: Warhammer: In the early versions of the game, the Norscan Tribes were limited to a highly neutered version of the Warriors of Chaos army roster, having access only to a small number of basic units. Consequently, the AI tended to Zerg Rush the player with horde after horde of only one or two types of cheap Mooks well into the late game. Further, only two Norscan factions — the Skaeling and the Varg — were present before the large Chaos invasion in the late game, and because faction leaders cannot be killed permanently their leaders would be the faces of Norsca until the invasion. This resulted in the leader of the Varg, Surtha Ek, becoming infamous in the fandom for leading endless chariot armies against player factions, becoming known to the fanbase as Surtha Ek, the Lord of Chariots. Once Norsca was implemented as a full and independent faction, the developers kept Surtha Ek and canonized his love of chariots, giving him a unique trait to boost the effectiveness of chariots in his army and the chance to boost this by defeating the Tomb King faction leader Settra (who in turn gets a boost to his own chariots by defeating Surtha Ek). This was expanded on when the leader of the High Elf faction of Tiranoc was renamed to Surthara Bel-Kec and was given her own version of Surtha's previously-unique rule when players noticed her own penchant for chariot-heavy armies.
  • Norsca should get an exceptional mention, as unlike the other factions that have been transferred from the tabletop (and all of them qualify already), Norsca was made from the ground up for this game. Do you want to ravage the Old World with an army of ripped barbarian warriors, bloodthirsty berserkers, demonic werewolves, trolls, giants and woolly mammoths? Of course you do. You can even reject Archaeon's We Can Rule Together and kick that foolish Tin Tyrant's tail to become the new Everchosen..
  • One of Karl Franz's lines, "Summon the Elector Counts!", has become quite popular among the fandom. When the Empire received their rework in The Hunter and the Beast, the new Elector Count system has a button that says the exact phrase.
• Many Touhou doujin artists portrayed Utsuho Reiuji's encased arm as an Arm Cannon after her first appearance, but it was never actually used that way. However, come Hisoutensoku, Utsuho is shown using it in that exact way.
  • In the fangame Riverbed Soul Saver, one boss (Ruri) is depicted upside-down and completely covered with power-weakening seals, yet she's the Wake-Up Call Boss anyway. Fans joked that she could be the Phantasm boss if her seals were removed and she was fighting seriously. Come a later update, the game actually added a Phantasm stage, with a right-side-up sealless Ruri. Though she's only the midboss, albeit a very challenging midboss.
• Throughout the Uncharted series, one of the main criticisms of the story has been the rather large gap between Nathan Drake's characterization as a fairly-lighthearted, snarky and rogueish Adventure Archaeologist, and the sheer amount of people he guns down, sometimes in cold blood. The most-often used five-dollar word for this gap in critical articles and forum posts is "ludonarrative dissonance". In Uncharted 4, Naughty Dog has apparently taken this criticism to heart, as the gameplay encourages more stealth and avoidance, and enemies are much more clear-cut bad guys. However, if you manage to kill 1000 enemies (which takes either several playthroughs or active grinding), you unlock a trophy. Its name? Ludonarrative Dissonance.
• Unleash the Light:
  • If you go to Pearl's equipment menu, one of her quotes is "Hmm? What's this about a bird mom?", a reference to the popular Fan Nickname for her. invoked
  • One of items you can pick up that is used for Garnet is a pastel blue-and-red colored Cotton Candy Keytar, a reference to her Fan Nickname "Cotton Candy Garnet" (her form when Ruby and Sapphire first fused). invoked
  • One of Pearl's quotes while using Precision Strike is "Let me introduce you to... Bad Pearl!", a reference to another popular Fan Nickname for her rebel persona in "Last One Out of Beach City". invoked
• Since Warhammer 40,000 values Rule of Cool above all else (besides grim darkness), you get pictures like this one, which became a meme when it was captioned "Drive me closer! I want to hit them with my sword!" Dawn of War II: Retribution references several WH40K memes, and if you send a Commissar into a Chimera APC, that's exactly what he says.
  • It gets even better. One piece of wargear you can get for the Commissar is apparently the very sword that appears in the picture.
  • When the Dynamic Entry meme was adapted to 40k, they used a Tau Crisis Suit◊ for it. When the devs added the Tau Commander (in a crisis suit) DLC, an achievement was added for killing enemies by jumping on them with the Jet Pack. Guess what it was called.
• Hideki Kamiya of PlatinumGames is so well-known for frequently blocking users on Twitter that The Wonderful 101: Remastered's Kickstarter campaign included getting blocked by him on Twitter as an optional reward to its backers.
• In World of Tanks, the TOG II* premium heavy tank is widely called the HMS TOG II* (or just HMS TOG), with a TOG platoon called the "Royal Navy". Jokes are made that the 800ton behemoth would be better suited for the sister game World of Warships. So for April Fools' Day 2016, the console version of World of Tanks added a temporary event where TOGs mounted on tugboat hulls fought on an ocean map. And the HMS TOG II* nickname is used in official announcements.
• After the widespread memes about how Xbox Series X is shaped like a fridge, Microsoft announced the creation of an XBOX Series X-shaped fridge, through a giveaway event on Twitter. This was then followed by a minifridge in the same style, and available to purchase.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links has a Skill called "Super Strength!" Naturally, it's only useable by Tristan.
• The description for the Yusei pack in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds Tag Force 5 asks if you're into crustaceans, referencing his Fan Nickname of "crabhead".

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