Please don't list this on a work's page as a trope. Examples can go on the work's YMMV tab.
Watch It for the Meme
I see them shiver with antici... pation!
Just as Tropes Are Not Bad, neither are memesper se. True, they get old by the 9001st time they're played, but there's a reason they get played a thousand times and more. Who hasn't ever had some lulz with them?
There's the fanbase that has been ever since the beginning of the show, and there's the second wave that watches the show/plays the game/reads the book after exposure to the meme. It's not (most of the times) Viral Marketing, since it's fans rather than marketroids behind them. Think What's uuuup! vs All Your Base Are Belong to Us.
This is right before people endlessly repeating them makes it annoying and, ironically, may make you want to avoid it as much as possible. Related to I Read It For The Articles, Just Here for Godzilla, Come for the X, Stay for the Y. Spoiler marks are used in order to keep you from unneeded exposure.
Compare Bile Fascination, where people watch/play/listen to it for the crap quality.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
Watching Bleach or getting a Vocaloid for the Leek Spin; also looking for more music by Loituma.
Misao's dialogues set to Ievan Polkka have surely added to the fanbase of Lucky Star. Too bad there's not so much of Misao in the anime.
Speaking of Lucky Star, most people watch it for Konata (after hearing her Gourmet Race).
Or her Haruhi impressions, or the other Gourmet Races.
Let's be fair. Anybody who isn't watching it for at least one of the above reasons picked it up by accident.
Pokémon: So I herd u liek Mudkips (sic) macros, as well as Fuck yeah, Seaking!, let me show u my pokemans and endless memes involving Slowpoke.
Speaking of Pokémon, the Team Rocket motto just never gets old. Ever. Neither does Looks like Team Rocket's blasting off again....*PING!*
deviantART, in a misguided attempt at an April Fools' Day prank, changed every avatar on the site to a Mudkip with the legendary "So I Herd U Liek Mudkips" phrase going across the top on April 1, 2008. Reactions ranged from panic to rage to "That's not funny! Stop sucking!"
One of the "Why Am I Here" choices you can set for your profile is "To view pretty, pretty Mudkips."
There's also searching out clips of the original Japanese broadcast episodes you've already seen on Cartoon Network or DVD, for the "Sasuke can see you!" or "Good, Naruto, you look kind of cool" animation glitches.
Scanners is primarily remembered, and watched to this day, for the exploding head scene.
Many, many people watched There Will Be Blood because of the milkshake meme (it's right at the end, so the poor schlubs had to sit through the first 99% of this stunningly excellent film to get round to it, the poor bastards).
There are such "classics" as Animal House, or The Rocky Horror Picture Show, or Miracle on 34th Street. These are movies that if you haven't seen them, you're missing part of the zeitgeist. When someone says, "Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" and you correct them, you expose yourself as the Real Life version of a Noob. The only way to correct this is to go back and engage in remedial culture exposure.
Planet of the Apes: You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to Hell!
"Take your stinkin' paws off me, you damn dirty ape!"
The Silence of the Lambs. Hannibal Lector has some memorable lines himself, but a couple of Buffalo Bill's have more of that meme status:
"It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again!"
"It places the lotion in the basket"
"Would you fuck me? I'd fuck me. I'd fuck me hard."
Snakes on a Plane: "I have had it with these muthafucking snakes on this muthafucking plane!" It's been on ever before the movie comes out.
Hell, it was floating around the internet before it was even in the script. Which is how it got in the script. Just proves that not all blatant fanservice need be sexual.
Not to mention that the title was the only reason Samuel L. Jackson, and everyone else for that matter, was interested in the part at all.
In many ways the film is itself the film version of the meme rather than the other way around. Upon release actually watching the film itself was unnecessary and probably best avoided.
A Few Good Men - "You want answers?" "I want the TRUTH!" "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!"
On the subject of Jack Nicholson, Five Easy Pieces seems to be remembered nowadays almost exclusively for the diner sequence, namely "I want you to hold it between your knees."
Bah, I deride your truth-handling abilities! - Sideshow Bob
"You remind me of the babe." "What babe?" "The babe with the power." "What power?" "The power of Hoodoo." "Hoodoo?" "You do." "Do what?" "Remind me of the babe." "What babe?" And so on...
Both of which were averted in the actual movie. It was almost all Aldo's show, and Landa's. All but a taste of the badassness all happened offscreen or was implied. Tarantino you mad bastard. Shoshanna was a clear third runner up, but the fact her plan and Aldo's didn't intersect completely, and she got screwed by sheer bad luck skewered her contribution mildly. Also, BJ didn't seem very bear-y, at least to this troper, so he really has to wonder about that nickname...
Wonder no more - BJ Novak didn't play Donnie Donowitz, aka The Bear Jew. Eli Roth did. Novak played Utivich, who is the last man standing with Aldo at the end of the movie.
Only people with insufficient pop cultural knowledge would assume that BJ and the Bear were the same person.
If you want to cross off the most memes on your list for a single source, Monty Python's Flying Circus is probably your best bet. The show will give you "spam, spam, spam, spam," "this is an ex-parrot," "nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition," "nudge nudge wink wink say no more," "I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay," "My Hovercraft is Full of Eels," "Burma!" and possibly some others you've been struggling with. Of the films, Life of Brian will give you "the People's Front of Judea," "what have the Romans ever done for us," "Blessed Are the Cheesemakers, "he's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy!" and "I'm Brian and so's my wife!" Holy Grail will give you swallows and coconuts, "Not Quite Dead," "Unexplained Recovery," "help help I'm being repressed," "your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries," the killer rabbit, and "Ni!" Meaning of Life, oddly, probably won't give you anything, unless you've encountered "every sperm is sacred." Even so, you ought to be satisfied.
Meaning of Life does have Mr Creosote and the "wafer-thin mint".
"Fuck off, I'm full!"
Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving, and revolving at nine hundred miles an hour...
Watching the video for "Never Gonna Give You Up" just because people keep trying to make you.
Going to a Dragonforce concert because of the one song of theirs in Guitar Hero. These days this seems to be a considerable portion of their listeners, or at least people who talk about them publicly.
Listening to Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek" for "mmm whatcha say". Made mainstream by by its use in The O.C. episode "The Dearly Beloved", the SNL parody "The Shooting" thereof, and the "Dear Sister" recursive parodies on video sharing sites. Then made old meme by Jason Derulo's "Whatcha Say" that samples mainly the memetastic bits.
Benny Hill chasing (or being chased by) women to the tune of "Yakety Sax".
Watching the music video for Stick Stickly by Attack Attack! to see the guitarist's "Crabcore" stance.
Getting Erasure's greatest hits because you played Robot Unicorn Attack and—Always I wanna be with you and make believe with you and live in harmony harmony OH LOVE~◊
Also, sometimes it draws attention to the material even when viewers of said YTP may have seen the material elsewhere. For example, some might have seen ads involving Billy Mays without particularly paying much attention to them, and started paying closer attention to such ads after their being parodied in YTP.
Becoming a Troper just so you can edit this website and adding your examples.
In Linkara's review of All-Star Batman & Robin, he introduces the part involving the line "I'm the Goddamn Batman" by saying: "And here it is. The moment of truth. The moment everyone remembers this comic for." After he reads the line, he says, "Ladies and gentlemen... we have... an Internet meme!!"
He later posted a video saying that he would not review any more non-terrible comics merely so people could hear him recite a meme.
Zero Wing is one of the most downloaded games on emulation sites, despite the actual gameplay being very average (but still workable for the genre).
Your Mileage May Vary. Others may have been introduced to it because of the meme, but enjoyed its actual style (especially the music) once they got into it.
Let's not forget about the classic "Snake? Snake! SNAAKE!"
Playing World of Warcraft, stemming entirely from exposure to Leeroy Jenkins! Or, failing that, because your friends haven't been seen in public for weeks.
Restarting Castlevania Symphony Of The Night just to learn once more about the true nature of humanity.
"WHAT IS A MAN?! [glass shatters] A miserable little pile of secrets!"
Eversion, for the increasingly horrible universe the game is set in.
Relatedly, DeceasedCrab's Let's Play of the game for the phrase "Stop your cheery lies!"
You probably wouldn't expect Kingdom Hearts to have something like this, but it does. Got it memorized? No, the second game is for TOTALLY OWNING YOU LAMERS.
Sengoku Basara. Not only did many people watch the anime solely for Date Masamune's Gratuitous English and Motorhorse, many people went on to play the games simply so they could hear more.
Sinistar is old, difficult and annoying to play but returned to for the "RUN, HOWARD" and the "BEWARE: I LIVE."
Zork: Would any contemporary gamer even consider trying some antiquated, text-only interactive adventure game, if not for the chance to be eaten by a grue?
The 1967 Spider-Man cartoon has seen a surge in popularity, after it was realized that its bizarre, exaggerated animation made for great reaction images.
The Super Mario World cartoon. Six words and a sound: "That's Mama Luigi to you, Mario! *Wheeze*"
The Dover Boys: A classic cartoon I never heard of! I'll watch it! NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW! (It even led to a meme for the above! Confound those ponies, they drive me to drink!)
Disney's Robin Hood attracts a lot of its latter-day audience because it originated the Hamsterdance tune.
