You must gather your party before venturing forth. Explanation
An annoying message with an even more annoying voiceclip that plays, often multiple times, whenever you attempt to have one party member leave an area and the rest of the party isn't close enough.
Shepard endorsing a store became a massive, highly exploitable snowclone. By this point, Shepard has a favourite something on everything, often several.
The player has never seen a quarian without a helmet on—the first time Tali takes hers off, the camera cuts away, and fans decided to supplement for themselves.The amount of foresight displayed by whoever wrote the "photoshopped face" is uncanny
Tali's Hips Explanation
Tali has some impressive Hartman Hips, and it is mandatory to mention them whenever she is talked about.
The Council are desperate to conceal all evidence of the Reapers, this line from the Turian Councilor is used to summarise their mentality.
We have dismissed that claim. Explanation
The unexpected exploitive properties of the subsequent quote have gotten to the point where the Turian Councilor can dismiss just about any claim anyone's ever made.
Garrus is impressed.Explanation
If you land a headshot while Garrus is with you, he will occasionally comment "Impressive!" in an overly enthusiastic fashion
. Fans took this and ran with it.]]
He says it again in ME 3 when you blow up a door with a Cerberus fighter.
Thane, on the other hand, is excellent. And one hell of a drug.Explanation
If you try to romance Thane, and have the infamous "Sex Talk," with Mordin, he will reveal that Drell (like Thane) secrete chemicals from their skins that, if ingested, cause hallucinations in humans.
Garrus says this whenever the player wants to talk to him when he has no conversations at that point. It becomes common practice to check up on characters after completing an important mission to see whether they have anything new to say but Garrus' events do not trigger for a relatively long time, so the player hears this phrase a lot.
Shepard seems to have a tendency to start conversations and then abruptly excuse him/herself. People are beginning to suspect it's being done on purpose... Part of the problem is that the skip dialog button is the same as the select dialog button, and the dialog wheel doesn't always wait for the person to stop talking before showing up, often resulting in unanticipated dialog choices.
Fans created several Spectres they wanted to appear in Mass Effect 2, Blasto being one of them. Then the actual game contained previews for an in-universe film staring Blasto that is one huge Dirty Harry/Blaxploitation parody. The third game went even further, with a good ten minutes of audio from a Blasto movie available for players to listen to.
An STD normally found only in varren, also known as "fishdogs," somehow made its way onto the Normandy. General consensus in the community is that Kelly Chambers is the infection vector.
Don't Fuck With Aria. Explanation
Overly-hammed-up Precision F-Strike. Despite being something of a Forced Meme, it's caught on with the community and made Aria a fan favorite.
This page isn't wearing Heavy Armor; I cancelled my preorder. Explanation
A mockery of some of the Fan Dumb's criticism of Ashley's ME3 outfit, which consists of a Spectre uniform similar to the one Tela Vasir wore in LotSB, rather than the Phoenix armor she's worn in the last two games. It turned out that she also had a heavy armor option (though of a different style than in the previous games).
Now we have to spend all day computing pi because Joker plugged in the overlord. Explanation
A reference to Joker's reply to EDI when a spoilery event happens.
Also, EDI's response "That was a joke."
"I WILL DESTROY YOU!" Explanation
Human mooks in Mass Effect 1 had a very limited sound set, and talked constantly. In Mass Effect 2, this was improved, and the mentally unstable squad member Jack was given one of their lines as a shout-out... by Mass Effect 3, people are teasing her about overusing it, too.
Several locations in the series let you "dance," which means vaguely moving side to side while waving your arms pitifully. Later games give NPCs a variety of upgraded animations... but not Shepard, who might be good at every possible human pursuit except dancing. It's even lampshaded in-game by other characters.
Jacob? Who's he? Explanation
Poor Jacob Taylor from ME2, an Unlucky Everydude is by far the least cared-about character in the fandom; not quite The Scrappy, but only because nobody hates him any more than anybody likes him. Despite being around from the beginning of his game and being the only male human Love Interest in it, just try to find any fan art or fan fiction featuring this guy.
That big muscular guy. Isn't his name BLAST HARDCHEESE? Explanation
James Vega, the new human squad member for Mass Effect 3, is a bit more buff than the other male PCs, resulting in a whole lot of references to the Mystery Science Theater 3000 take on Space Mutiny. See also: Punch Rockgroin, Slap Bulkhead, Butch Deadlift, Flint Ironstag, Bob Johnson...
Youtube captions + videos with Reapers talking = memes.
DING DONG BANNU
Kai Leng: Cereal Killer. Explanation
Kai Leng, one of the main antagonists in the third game, was first seen in a series of novels. One of these novels, Deception, was infamous for its poor writing and massive amounts of narm. The most famous of which is probably the scene where Kai Leng sneaks into Anderson's apartment, bugs it, and then stays for a few more minutes to steal Anderson's cereal and eat it right there.
During Mass Effect 3, after a certain mission Tali will head to the bar and get completely smashed, insisting her straw be referred to with more technical terminology. And she seems to have so much fun with it.
In that same vein, "I f*cking love steak" and Garrus's Damn whore
Anderson was born in London. Explanation
Anderson mentioned twice to Shepard that he was born in London. The second time was infamous for its awkwardness. His lack of a distinctive accent even though other characters in the setting has them also made the whole thing more jarring.
With Mass Effect 3 lacking any sort of Final Boss fight, the fandom has seized on the last foe Shepard faces, a random marauder
(turian husk) which pops out of nowhere near the portal leading to the Citadel. The "shields" part comes from the fact that marauders have Energy Shields, which appears directly under their name; combine them and you get Marauder Shields. A really popular interpretation is that he meant no harm to Shepard, and was trying to save Shepard from the game's memetically awful endings. Ditto the Three Husketeers.]]
SPACE MAGIC. Explanation
Used mockingly as an "explanation" for how the endings are possible, as many fans view them as nonsensical. The "Synthesis" ending especially.
Most consider the ending so bad that anything is better.
LOTS OF SPECULATION FROM EVERYONE! Explanation
After the Mass effect 3 final hours app revealed a design note that was built around this phrase people have begun using Bioware's apparent desire for speculation as an "explanation" for the sheer volume of plotholes in the ending.
Artistic Integrity. Explanation
The reason given by Bioware for the Extended Cut DLC merely expanding on the existing ending, rather than creating a new one from scratch as many fans had hoped. Unamused fans wasted no time tearing that statement apart, with some even finding an old Seinfeld clip bashing the idea. Now this term is used whenever someone discovers an obvious glitch or new plothole in the game's ending.
Quickly becoming a meme on the Bioware forums, in reaction to Anders' behavior late in the game.
For a short while around the time of the demo prologue, The Order Dictates was a Dragon Age II meme. Why are Isabela's boobs so large? THE ORDER DICTATES!
Comes from a leaked 90-minute video of early beta footage. Around the 29:30 mark is a scene with a Jedi being injected with a sedative that renders him unconscious, despite the fact that Jedi are generally trained to resist poisons. There's also the fact that the Jedi is standing completely still and not offering any resistance as all this is happening. Additionally the graphics were of less-than-stellar quality. Comes from /v/.
