Memes / Destiny 2

When a game runs as long as Destiny 2, a cavalcade of memes is perhaps inevitable.

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Please add entries in the following format if possible:

• The meme. [[labelnote:Explanation]]The explanation behind the meme, if necessary.[[/labelnote]] ^ExplanationLike this.
  • Further mutations and successor memes, if any.

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General

• Dave Samuel ^Explanation Bungie's current Art Director who became well known for having super enthusiastic appearances in Vidocs where he makes his own sound effects to describe something a guardian is doing. He's now become a main fixture of these videos and is so well loved by the community that he has his own emote in game with his sound effects.
• Mission-abandoningly gay ^Explanation Comes from this comic where one artist gives their interpretation of how Mara and Sjur met and eventually entered a relationship. The line "mission-abandoningly gay" instantly turned memetic and has seen use both to describe Sjur and in regards to situations in similar contexts. It has a similar energy to the "OH NO HE'S HOT" meme from Spongebob Squarepants.
• Crayon eaters ^Explanation In-story, Titans are known to be stalwart champions who use both their powers and their strength to smash through enemies and protect those weaker than them, while being capable of commanding legions, and being knowledgeable of battle tactics. Players, however, characterize them as just being the Dumb Muscle class that will eat crayons when they aren't punching everything to death. This one has received some backlash for deliberately ignoring all the Titans who are both smart and strong, like Saint-14, alongside Bungie seemingly leaning into it by not only making it an Ascended Meme in some posts, but also giving Titans punching-focused Supers in Beyond Light and Lightfall, making them feel uninspired and bland compared to Hunters and Warlocks.
• Telesto breaking everything. ^ExplanationTelesto is an exotic fusion rifle that has commonly been a problem child. Every single time Bungie tries to fix it, it only breaks the game again somewhere down the line, happening at least once per season. This has led to players joking that Telesto is sentient, and may in fact be the Final Shape that the Darkness espouses.
• We're listening ^ExplanationWhat most of the fandom considers as Bungie's stock answer to the many, many complaints against the game, as well as hardly following up on it.
• Destiny Killer ^ExplanationAny game that enters the same market as Destiny (looter shooter or live service game) and threaten to siphon off their playerbase will get hit with this tag, with the irony being that such games fail miserably trying to do so. Candidates include The Division, The Division 2, Anthem (2019), and Outriders. People will also mockingly joke that the ultimate Destiny killer will be Bungie itself. Seen a resurgence with the release of Diablo IV which many think will finally be able to go toe to toe with Destiny 2, despite the fact that they're completely different games that only share monetization models. It's similar to the older "WoW killer" meme that hovered around World of Warcraft for a time, only to fall out of favor as WoW also became overshadowed by its numerous flaws and questionable decisions in later expansions, driving substantial parts of the playerbase away.
• [X] will be make or break for Destiny 2. ^ExplanationA commonly used phrase to describe how each major expansion needs to be good enough to retain the playerbase. It's been so overused, that the community jokingly tags it almost anything Bungie puts out.
• Beware of Overdelivery! ^ExplanationA slide title taken from Bungie's GDC 2022 presentation on maintaining a live service game. It's been taken up by the community to mock Bungie's lack of innovation with Destiny 2, especially during Lightfall.
• I LOVE SIVA!!! ^ExplanationSIVA, from Rise of Iron, is a very popular antagonist and aesthetic, but it has never reappeared outside that expansion, causing it to become more of an Ensemble Dark Horse as the years go by. As a result, it's commonly joked that any mention of SIVA, nanites, or even the color red in a significant light will cause fans to begin frothing at the mouth for a potential return of the nano-plague. It's also become a bit of a Play-Along Meme, where such mentions are accompanied by the above phrase and red & black-colored shape emojis regardless of actual sentiment.
  • Bungie HATES Rise of Iron/SIVA^ExplanationServing as a contrast to the above, Bungie's snubbing of Rise of Iron during the preshow for The Final Shape Showcase, in conjunction with reprising Crota's End over Wrath of the Machine has led people to say that Bungie actually hates that particular expansion and wants to avoid it entirely.
• -45% Moment ^Explanation Following a massive wave of layoffs at Bungie due to them missing their projected revenue by 45%, any new paid content, either through Eververse or through the respective platform's store, was given this label (usually attached to a picture of CEO Pete Parsons), and was seen as a desperate cash grab to make up the lost revenue. The biggest offender being the Destiny 2 Starter Pack, which gave you three mediocre exotics and paltry amounts of desired materials for $15 and was widely condemned as being an incredibly predatory item geared to new players. The hatred was so intense that it was only available for a single day before being delisted.

Year 1 (Red War)

• "Fucking/Fuck You, Gary!" ^ExplanationGhaul, the leader of the Cabal invasion that destroyed the Tower, is misnamed Gary by Cayde-6 in the trailer. His attack was also responsible for destroying the three years' worth of loot the Guardians had accumulated, explaining why you can't carry old weapons and armor to Destiny 2.
• "FOR THE PUPPIES!!" ^explanationThe Titan in the live action trailer yells this at the top of his lungs when he rushes off to fight the Red Legion
• "Dammit, not her again!" and variations in it. ^{Mild Spoilers}The usual response among players of the first game when they hear Omnigul's trademark scream again on Titan, though she does not make an appearance.
• The Single Greatest Roast in Video Game History ^ExplanationWhen Ghaul interrogates the Speaker on how to gain the Traveler's favour, the Speaker utters a really savage and memorable comeback
• Vex Milk ^explanation Officially, the white liquid powering the Vex is called Radiolaria. However, Ghost calls it this while being launched across a waterfall of this stuff during The Inverted Spire strike, sometimes with complete joy. Naturally, fans took the joke and ran with it.
• Hawthorne's clan speech ^Explanation In a similar manner to Destiny 1's Cerberus Vae III copypasta, here we get Hawthorne's long-winded monologue when you turn in the Weekly Clan Challenge, unchanged up until it was removed in Season 13, by which point it became outdated by a whopping four years. ^{Full copypasta}"You just never quit, do you? Took out Ghaul. Woke up the Traveler. And now half of what I hear in the streets is how much you and your clan are making a difference. And that's why I started this whole clan thing in the first place. People are still waiting for the Vanguard to lead the way. But it's time for a change! And Guardians like you are making it happen. No pressure."
• Friendgame ^ExplanationIn a "This Week At Bungie" post, Deej concluded it by saying that the ultimate endgame loot of Destiny 2 is friendship. While meant to be a heartwarming thank you to the players, many took it as an insult and use it mockingly when discussing endgame content.
• Spendgame ^ExplanationWith the continuous stream of uproars over the unsatisfactory endgame content, someone found out that one of Bungie's job listings includes one specifically made to figure out how to best implement microtransactions in the game. This reinforces the notion that the endgame is practically all about Eververse and Bright Engrams.
• Two tokens and a blue!^ExplanationDuring the second Curse of Osiris stream, Deej said "I promised before that this will be the most rewarding Public Event" as the Event ended. The rewards were two Mercury Tokens and a Rare-quality (blue) Class Item. People say this to make fun of Destiny 2's reward system, because even with those rewards, it really is the most rewarding Public Event.
• Trials of the Beam/Laser Tag ^ExplanationThe First Trials of the Nine in Curse of Osiris that has been overrun with Prometheus Lens due to a combination of it being bugged and Xur selling it to prevent the cancellation of Trials.
• Seven Bright Dust! ^ExplanationWith the Dawning 2017 holiday event underway, it was discovered that dismantling the shaders provided by the event boxes only gave seven bright dust, a quantity that is so uselessly small (a single piece of armor costs about twelve hundred bright dust) that it was both insulting and hilarious. This was particularly exasperating, as only the versions from Eververse dismantled into Bright Dust, while shaders gained from other sources dismantled into Glimmer to prevent players from using them to farm for more Bright Dust. These two versions were kept in two separate stacks, clogging up players Inventory.
• Tess Avarice ^ExplanationA Fan Nickname for Tess Evereis that cropped up on the Destiny Subreddit in response to all the heavy-handed monetization of the game post-launch. A Redditor pointed out that "Everis" sounds a lot like "Avarice" and the community ran with it.
• #RemoveEververse ^explanationAfter the Dawning happened (which was replete with blatantly abusive microtransactions, going against the tradition of Christmas' generosity), the fandom decided that it had finally had enough of Tess Everis and began taking to the forums en masse to flood it with "Remove Eververse" or some variation on that
• "It's too hard to make content" and variations thereof ^ExplanationOne of the misconstrued quotes following a podcast which revealed that Destiny 2 was rebooted from the ground up a year and a half before actual release, which justified Rise of Iron being used as a placeholder expansion for Destiny 1 and explaining the many shortcomings this game has.
• Due to so much content being thrown overboard at release and mechanics being oversimplified, detractors have taken to referring to this game as the prequel to Destiny.
• "The Crucible is exciting to watch on Twitch!" and "Intrinsic joy" ^ExplanationOne of senior gameplay designer Jon Weisnewski's most widely known (or rather infamous) quotes projecting how he expected Destiny 2's PvP to be one of the most watched game modes on Twitch, building on Destiny 1's massive success with the live streaming service. Ironically, Destiny 2's views sunk very quickly below many other games (even non-trending ones), with many critics berating D2's Crucible for being boring to play or even watch. "Intrinsic joy" comes from Weisnewski's esoteric tweet about being satisfied with the current state of the Crucible, despite the fandom sharing a wildly different opinion of it.
• THAVIKS, THE REMOVED! ^ExplanationIn late May 2018, due to the sheer amount of quitting over the Exodus Crash strike (mostly because of the boss itself), Bungie decided to remove it from the Heroic Strikes playlist for the time being. Cue jokes bellowed in Variks's Large-Ham Announcer tone

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Year 2 (Forsaken)

• "ULDREN SOV MUST DIE!^ExplanationIn the first story trailer for the "Forsaken" expansion, Uldren kills fan favorite character Cayde-6—with Cayde's own gun, no less!
• Cabal, again?! ^ExplanationThe first week of the Whisper of the Worm's discovery has been ladden with countless players waiting on Io's Loast Oasis region in hopes of spawning the Taken Blight public event, which is essential to activating the secret mission "The Whisper". However, due to the possibility of a Cabal Excavation public event taking place instead of the Taken Blight, many players became exasperated at the prospect of waiting for minutes, if not hours, on the Lost Oasis, only for the region to spawn a Cabal Excavation. The expression comes from Asher Mir's dialogue when said Cabal public event spawns, reflecting player frustration.
• Edge Transit Drops ^ExplanationObtaining the Edge Transit grenade launcher during Forsaken's first weeks has become a synonym for getting almost any piece of Forsaken gear, as players have noticed there's a ludicrously high chance that a Legendary Engram drop will turn out to be the Edge Transit if it ever decrypts into the power slot category.
• 24:02 ^ExplanationThe Last Wish raid is infamous for only having 2 fireteams complete it on the first day, i.e. a whopping twelve players in the entire world cleared it under 24 hours since the raid's launch. The third clear, comprised of Datto and his clan, fell 2 minutes short of the 24 hour mark. This unfortunate fact has become synonymous with pressing "F" among Destiny fans.
• “The helmet stayed on.” ^ExplanationA line from the infamous and hilarious lore entry for the Mark of the Great Hunt, in which it’s revealed that Mara Sov occasionally uses the wish-granting magic of Riven to make booty calls. With Lord Shaxx. The implication of the line, for those who don’t get it, is that Shaxx wore his armor while having sex with Mara.
• Just about everything related to Gambit, essentially replacing Variks and his Prison of Elders gig. No, really.
  • "All right, all right ,all right. Let's see what we got. [Enemy race] on the field!" ^ExplanationThe Drifter's opening quote for a Gambit match, which is often mutated into Mondegreens due to the catchiness of the first sentence.
  • DEATH HEALS PRIMEVAL ^ExplanationThe message that pops up when an invader kills you or your teammates while you are trying to kill your Primeval.
  • Meatball ^ExplanationFan name for the Ascendant Primeval Servitor due to its fleshy appearance.
  • "[Insert Drifter wisdom tidbit here]... Transmat firing!" ^ExplanationBefore a Gambit match, the Drifter always lets you in on some knowledge he acquired from the enemy race you're about to fight, shortly before transmatting you to the fight zone and giving you little time to process what he said. The fandom ran away with it and started making increasingly creative fake Drifter facts in the same formula.
  • By the time Joker's Wild launched, the Drifter has become such a Fountain of Memes that someone made a soundboard comprised of all his voicelines.
• [X] is the 15th wish! ^ExplanationThere is a total of 15 wish codes you can input on the Wishing Wall within the Last Wish raid, and the very last one is still unresolved even with the Black Armory expansion rolling around, leading people to craft crazy theories on obtaining that fabled 15th wish. Finally put to rest in Season of the Wish, which reveals that the code is for a wish to access the Pale Heart of the Traveler.
• When is [X] getting nerfed? ^ExplanationThe mocking question asked by fans following the barrage of nerfs to popular exotic weapons in the May 16th TWAB.

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Year 3 (Shadowkeep)

• Moon's haunted. ^ExplanationThe reveal trailer for Shadowkeep ostensibly makes use of the fear of the unknown as to what's lurking on the Moon, with ghastly apparitions of major enemies the player has defeated throughout the games. This revived a months-long NASA-related tweet which is hilariously similar to your eventual return on the Moon and quest to hunt down nightmares.
• Scooty Puff Jr ^ExplanationThe Solstice of Heroes event gave us the Micro Mini sparrow, which is half the size of a normal sparrow and makes your guardian look more like they're on a kiddie ride. Because of this, many people draw parallels to the similarly styled bike from Futurama.
• LET ME IN! LET ME IIIIINNNNNNN!!! / "Shadowqueue" ^ExplanationThe highly anticipated launch of Shadowkeep and New Light was plagued by servers being at capacity, leaving many players waiting helplessly to join the game while other, luckier players enjoyed it.
• Hey guys, where’d Cayde go? ^ExplanationThe Newbie Boom sparked by the game going free-to-play led to quite a few Kinderguardians playing through old campaigns to catch up on the story, wonder why Cayde-6 seems to disappear from the Tower afterwards (some even thinking it was a glitch), then finally play the Forsaken storyline and learn exactly where Cayde went.
• Energy Weapon: the Raid ^ExplanationThe Garden of Salvation raid is often mocked for its loot pool, which includes a chance at an Energy Weapon at every single encounter and no Heavy Weapon whatsoever. Given how Pinnacle rewards work, you can be unlucky enough to have nothing but Energy Weapons in one looted run, essentially ruining your progress towards the power cap for a given character on a bad week.
• I lived, bitch ^ExplanationSaint-14's return in Season Of Dawn cause a great many comparisons to this famous meme of a person thought dead turning out to be alive.
• "The most important thing was to do it right." / "It's important it doesn't go out half-baked." ^ExplanationA pair of much maligned quotes from the developer insight video on the return of the Trials of Osiris during Season of the Worthy. The developer intended for the pinnacle PvP mode to come out perfected, but it turned out to be little more than a power-enabled Elimination mode with extra loot and little incentive to get it, on top of an increasingly merciless skill creep that drives even seasoned players away from it, once again harkening back to Year 1 and a steep drop in the PvP player pool. Suddenly, those quotes are ironically repeated by disgruntled fans everytime Bungie screws something up in Trials, whether it's the prevalence of cheaters or error codes, or their hotfix for bugged rewards falling flat on its face. The quote eventually started spreading to the general feeling of Season of the Worthy being a lackluster season with lots of bugs and barebone content, or "half-baked" as the developers tried so hard to avoid.
• Doom Doritos ^ExplanationThe Pyramid ships, the first seen in Shadowkeep, and now in full force in Season of Arrivals, tend to be jokingly referred to with this due to being very triangular in shape, much like the snack chip, along with their dark and foreboding appearance.
• "Play your way"... as long as it's our way ^ExplanationYear 3 has been greatly criticized for forcefully pigeonholing players into a really narrow set of builds for tackling endgame content that includes the poorly-executed Champion system, despite Bungie's claim of far greater customization than ever before.

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Year 4 (Beyond Light)

• Insect-like chattering/wheezing^ExplanationVariks returns for Beyond Light, and has gained a habit of, well, chattering like an insect in his lines. The subtitles render his verbal tic as this. He also wheezes, though not as frequently.
• Due to a recently discovered issue, we have decided to remove [X] from the game. ^ExplanationBungie uses the above phrase when announcing an exotic or activity being disabled due to a bug, leading it to become a source of mockery. It got to a head during Beyond Light, where multiple exploits—chief amongst them the poorly-tested Stasis subclasses—resulted in several exotics and activities being temporarily disabled and Trials being canceled for a third of the season.
• "Grandmaster Nightfalls should be watchable" ^ExplanationIn the same vein as the Crucible being (un)fun to watch on Twitch, Bungie stressed that Grandmaster Nightfalls aren't about the loot, but a seasonal title and watchability instead. Considering most Grandmaster runs consist of exploiting the hell out of the various cheese spots for a given strike, they're very much unwatchable. Only a few exceptions like soloing the Grandmaster Nightfalls thrive on, and even then, the number of players able to achieve that can be counted on one hand.
• Status: Calamitous^ExplanationSaid by the Clovis AI during the Atraks-1 encounter in the Deep Stone Crypt raid. Due to difficulty in clearing the encounter on the initial release, players would hear this repeated every time they died, as though the Clovis AI was comentating on the status of the players' inability to progress.
• Atraks sus^Explanation Similar to ejecting crew members suspected of being an impostor, the fight with Atraks-1 in the Deep Stone Crypt involves opening the airlock and dumping out her copy essences before their timers run out and kill teammates while spawning a new Atraks-1 on their corpse.
• Zavala's answer to Caital/Excuse me? ^Explanation Following the opening cinematic for Season of the Chosen, one fan decided to remake the scene with Zavala threatening to sic the Young Wolf on Empress Caital. It gained so much traction within the community that Lance Reddick himself recorded it as Zavala. ^{Full copypasta (NSFW language)}Excuse me? One. Fucking. Guardian. Has been kicking your race's collective asses for 9 years. They kill gods for fun and turn them into guns for a meme. They genocide entire races for loot. They assassinated your last leader, cleaned out your daddy's ship while he wrote fanfiction about them and promptly fucked off to let you pick up the pieces. The only reason I didn't bring them here is because they casually began wielding the Darkness to clap ass in new ways. All I have to do to make them end you is to tell them you have a fancy new gun or that Eris can make you into one, so think about that before you tell us to bow to your sorry ass.
• Sunset Luke Smith ^ExplanationFollowing the implementation of "sunsetting," many fans were upset, either at the system as a whole, or the incredibly botched implementation. Luke Smith, being the Lead Director of Destiny 2 and the architect of the sunsetting system, received quite a bit of backlash over the whole affair. Then, after a controversial interview in which Luke Smith dscussed the idea of sunsetting or getting rid of Supers, sunsetting critics reached their Rage Breaking Point and began to openly demand that Luke Smith either step down as Lead Director or be fired. Ultimately he appears to have been Kicked Upstairs, and a new director has stepped in.
• Baby Fallen/Smallen/Tallen't ^ExplanationThe Season of the Splicer trailer has a Freeze-Frame Bonus shot of a Dreg presumably aligned with Mithrax carrying four Ugly Cute Eliksni hatchlings, three in their arm and one slung over the shoulder. Fans instantly fell in love, creating a massive amount of fanart in less than a day and inspiring Bungie to make an official plush of them. They have since become regular fixtures in the lower levels of the Tower as well, where you can see a pair of Eliksni (one of whom is carrying several hatchlings) puzzling over a vending machine.
• Season of the Synthwave / Acid Trip^ExplanationSeason of the Splicer's main plot involves delving into the Vex network, represented by geometrical shapes in trippy colors, while the weapons and gear have psychedelic color schemes. Naturally a lot of players began talking about the synthwave vibes the season had been giving off, as well as the Acid-Trip Dimension that the Vex network turns out to appear as.
• "Just Adapt." ^ExplanationAs the backlash towards Stasis grew among the PvP community, a contingent of Stasis users began to push back against the criticism, telling the stasis critics to "just adapt" to the presence of Stasis and learn how to counter it. Considering that one of the largest criticisms of stasis is that there isn't any kind of meaningful counter to it, Stasis critics found this suggestion utterly laughable and began to use "just adapt" to respond to any sort of complaint about the game.

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Year 5 (The Witch Queen)

• Moon's STILL Haunted. ^ExplanationThe reveal that the Season of the Haunted would involve the nightmares on the Moon again, revived the meme from the Shadowkeep days.
• Season of Therapy ^ExplanationWith the storyline of Season of the Haunted being noted as a huge analogy for real-world methods of recovering from trauma told through the sociopathic Nightmares, the therapy jokes write themselves.
• Festival of the Bugs ^ExplanationSimilar to "Festival of the Cost" from Destiny 1, the 2022 Festival of the Lost has been christened with this unflattering sobriquet. The main issue is the presence of two serious bugs in the event. The first one of whuch is preventing players from being able to progress past step 2 in the Seasonal Questline. The other one is a bug where if you kill 10 Headless Ones in a Huanted Lost Sector, the game will bug and stop spawning enemies and won't spawn the boss for 60-90 seconds. The last one is particularly annoyng because it was present in the 2021 Festival of the Lost, and serves to underscore just how much of a copy-paste the 2022 Festival is compared to the 2021 Festival (aside from one new Haunted Sector and a few voice lines from Eido, the event is more-or-less a 1-1 repeat of the 2021 iteraton).
• The latest (arc/episode/chapter) of the Destiny 2 anime looks amazing.^ExplanationThe Japanese trailers for the game and even just Japanese gameplay in general are invariably hit with English comments gushing about how much the dub sounds like an anime every time a new official upload drops. It's so prevalent that it's the reason an exploit which allows players to change audio language but not text language was discovered.
• The Big Damn Kiss at the end of Season of Plunder, which caused Osiris and Saint-14's relationship to graduate from Homoerotic Subtext to a more overt romance, saw much rejoicing from fans in this manner.
• Nezcafe/Nezpresso/Neztea^{Explanation (spoilers)}At the end of Season of Plunder, Mithrax concentrates the Darkness in Nezarec's corpse into a cup of tea to wake up Osiris. It Makes Sense in Context (also doubling as a Call-Back to the last time the lore directly mentioned his romantic relationship with Saint-14), but the absurdity of the premise on paper has led to this less-than-flattering nickname for the whole ordeal.
• I don't remember this part of Cyberpunk 2077/Ratatouille/Kamen Rider Double.^ExplanationAll three works, which involve a weaker/weakened Smart Guy controlling the body of a more-physically able person in some manner, have been used to summarize Moss-2's Ensemble Dark Horse status after his debut in Season of the Seraph due to a similar ability he has with his Ghost.
• War crimes ^ExplanationAt one point in the Seraph Shield mission, we fake surrender to get a group of House Salvation Eliksni to take us aboard their ship, whereupon we reveal our trickery and kill them all. Players were quick to point out that this is called perfidy and is very much against the Geneva Convention, which would make our Guardian a war criminal (if the Geneva Convention - or Geneva itself, for that matter - still existed in the far future of Destiny).
• Load-bearing Blues ^Explanation January 24, 2023 saw the removal of blue engram drops once a player hit the soft Power cap. However, the same date this was implemented saw a whole slew of technical issues suddenly appear across the game, causing some to joke that the blue engrams may have been integral to the game's code.
• Good Boy Protocol/Can we keep the dog?^ExplanationAfter a scavenger hunt across the system, the players were able to find a robot dog nicknamed Archie that would then take up residence in the HELM. Archies adorable design, along with the ability to pet it (the game even gives the players a way to display publicly how many times they've "activated the Good Boy Protocol") has led to people loving it immensely. At the same time, players began to worry that they would be gone when the seasonal content was removed from the HELM come Lightfall, with some even joking that they'd stop playing if Bungie took Archie away. This led to Bungie giving Archie a permanent home in the Tower during Year 6.
• I found the Traveler!^ExplanationThe finale of Season of the Seraph shows the Traveler leaving the Last City and rising up into low Earth orbit; in the aftermath, it has been removed from the skybox in the game's social space, the Tower. While many people expressed how distressing it is to see it gone, some remembered that there are several switches in the Tower that each spawn a colorful ball for players to bounce between each other - including one painted to look like the Traveler. This led to screenshots of people posing with the Traveler ball and either claiming it's the real deal or joking about finding a low-budget replacement.

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Year 6 (Lightfall)

• Mpreg Calus^ExplanationThe Collector's Edition reveals Cabal are a weird halfway between marsupials and Mr. Seahorse, where the mother still gives birth but the father rears and gives milk to them in a pouch. We learn of this through Emperor Calus, and fans quickly took to making fun of how hilariously gross the mental imagery is, especially after Caiatl's Vanguard report takes a detour to describe Calus's nipples in detail.
• "Your guy's holding the fist on the cover of the game" & "Core Fantasy" ^ExplanationExcerpts from a direct quote by Lead Combat Systems Designer Kevin Yanes in response to the negative feedback on the Titan's new Berserker subclass bringing with it another melee based super. People were quick to point out the absurdity of it by showcasing promotional material where the Titan is always wielding a weapon or super of some sort, giving the impression off that Bungie has forgotten what the Titan's core fantasy is. ^{Full Quote}“Titan mains, we love you. We do. But remember that we try to reinforce your core fantasy. And at some point, your guy's holding the fist on the cover of the game."
• "What's Gambit?"^ExplanationFollowing the very lengthy State of the Game post by Director Joe Blackburn, players noticed the very conspicuous lack of any mention of any changes, reworks, or new content with regards to Gambit, which has not seen any new maps since Season of the Drifter in year 2, and hasn't gotten any signifigant reworks since Season of the Hunt in Year 4. Players have been begging Bungie for some kind of a Gambit refresh for quite some time, so the total lack of mention in a massive State of the Game post was seen as a portent of a very empty year for Gambit, and players began to joke that Bungie has completely forgotten about the playlist.
• Nimbus thirst^ExplanationThe ViDoc two weeks before launch gave more spotlight to the new character getting introduced in Lightfall, Nimbus - a bare-chested, twelve-feet-tall, hoverboard-surfing warrior. Almost immediately, people began to show intense appreciation for their design and make self-deprecating jokes about falling for them at first sight.
• What's the Veil?^{Lightfall Campaign Spoilers}The Veil was a major driving force behind the Lightfall campaign even though what, excactly, the Veil is or why the Witness wants it is never explained in any sort of detail, at least not in the campaign itself. The glaring omission of an explanation for one of the most important aspects of the campaign story has led to no shartage of memes of players sacrastically saying things like "Of boy, I can't wait to learn what the Veil is" or "Wow, that explanation about the Veil was amazing!"
• Grapple Flying^ExplanationStrand's most novel feature, the grapple, can attach to anything - and that includes enemies, other players, and even projectiles - and will not detach by itself until the player either reaches the grapple point or loses line of sight to the grapple point. Cue an outpouring of videos where people abuse the physics engine to either spin forever with other players, or grapple their own rockets to fly absurd distances at ludicrous speeds.
• Neomuna Civil News^ExplanationAmidst activites in Neomuna, occasionally you will have a newscaster by the name of Jisu Calerondo chiming in about various happenings in the city, from interviews with other characters to giving his opinions on what the Guardians are up to. It quickly became memetic whenever Jisu announced himself in such a way, especially with how he gives vibes of J. Jonah Jameson of Spider-Man fame.
• Jesus Colorado^ExplanationAs a lot of people either don't know or cannot remember how to spell Jisu Calerondo, this particular mondegreen rose in popularity.
• Edgelord Nezarec^{Root of Nightmares spoilers}Nezarec, the "Final God of Pain", has become more and more prominent over the years, culminating in being the final boss of the Root of Nightmares raid. Between his unrelenting love of pain and suffering and the hammy dialogue he loves to use, players have started to crack jokes about how he's such a blatant edgelord in the setting that it loops back around to being genuinely charming.
• Starfire Protocol evading nerfs ^ExplanationStarfire Protocol is an exotic chest piece for Warlocks that has been top-tier for an incredibly long time due to being Simple, yet Awesome and allowing Solar Warlocks to become grenade-spamming machines. In spite of this, the exotic has not been nerfed, reworked, or rebalanced in quite some time, and was even indirectly buffed in Lightfall when Ember of Resolve was introduced, fixing the lack of surviveability that was the only real weakness of this build. After Bungie released a list fo exotics that would be disabled in the Root of Nightmares raid for being too overpowered, and Starfire Protocol somehow didn't make the list, the exotic began to gain a reputation for its ability to evade balance passes, and, when combined with Bungie never releasing an ornament for it in spite of it being in the game since Vanilla D2, has led some to joke that bungie has totally forgotten about it altogether.
  • Ended up becoming Hilarious in Hindsight in a post about exotic armor tuning for Season of the Deep, where Starfire Protocol was nerfed in a way that, while still decently strong in its own right, no longer was obscenely gamebreaking, allowing other Warlock exotics a chance to shine. Indeed, as soon as Deep launched, Starfire Protocol was almost instantly dropped in favor of other exotics like Sunbracers.
• He's just so beefy^ExplanationWhen Amanda accidentally shoots Crow in a cutscene, the Ghost excuses her by saying she mistook him for one of the Cabal. Crow (who is about a quarter of the size of a regular Cabal) sarcastically replies that it's an easy mistake to make and adds "I'm just so beefy". Players took to using the phrase to describe several characters, including Crow himself (in an ironic fashion given he has a regular fit build) and Nezarec (who is Acrofatic).
• Me and the Fireteam looking for Natural Causes^ExplanationFollowing the death of Lance Reddick on March 17th, 2023 of Natural Causes, many players mourned Zavala's VA by way of memes. A popular one was Guardians setting out to find "Natural Causes" and deal with them the same way Uldren Sov was dealt with after Cayde-6 was killed.
• Bad Ahamkara ^Explanation Lightfall saw the introduction of a new Bad Juju ornament, in a bundle titled as such. Players were very quick to make the connection with Bad Dragon, an online sex toy retailer.
• Glock 'n Balls ^Explanation The fan given name for the Mykel's Reverence sidearm from the Root of Nightmares Raid for the... strangely shaped counterweight under the barrel.
  • Similar jokes have been made about the other weapons in the raid, given their model shapes. The heavy grenade launcher Koraxis' Distress gets it the most.
  • Not even the armor is safe as the Warlocks' Bond of Detestation quickly earned the name "Bondussy" due to its appearance under certain shaders. This one, however, did catch Bungie's eye and they patched it three weeks after the raid went live so it looks more like an eye of some sort.
• Hive Mommy Xivu ^Explanation Over the years, as Xivu Arath became more prominent, a portion of the fandom got more and more blatant with their lust for the Hive God of War. It amplified tenfold in Season of the Deep when she began to speak for the first time, then in Season of the Witch where we get a clear image of her before and after she became Hive, making it far easier to visualize her.
  • Similarly is Eris Morn's Hive God form in Season of the Witch, where the thirst became very noticeable, especially with her new Large Ham Blood Knight demeanor in that form.
• AIAT ^Explanation The word "aiat" is a Hive phrase that is similar to "hallelujah" or "amen", meaning: "That which is said, must be so". It naturally saw an increase in usage among the player base now that Eris is using it regularly.
• Following the announcement that Keith David would be taking over as the voice of Zavala following Lance Reddick's passing, a veritable flood of memes surged through the Destiny community.
  • RAMIREZ! Protect the Traveler!
  • The Voice in the Darkness must be silenced.
• THEY SUNSET SUNSETTING!^ExplanationOn April 25th, 2024, Bungie revealed that all Sunset weapons were going to be un-sunset and that weapons which were previously capped at the Power Floor would have their power levels uncapped. Celebrations ensued over the highly divisive practice being retired.
• Datto Must Die!^ExplanationFollowing the above, jokes immediately began circulating about Datto, who had done multiple videos with other Destiny content creators where he encouraged them to clean out their vaults by dismantling old, sunset god roll weapons, and how all those creators (as well as anyone else who had dismantled sunset weapons on his advice) would be out for blood as revenge for Datto encouraging them to dismantle their god rolls.

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Year 7 (The Final Shape)

• The Final Sell/Sale/Straw ^Explanation With growing dissatisfaction with Bungie's handling of Destiny, many have taken to renaming the finale of the Light and Dark Saga to match player morale with many saying they'll buy the expansion just to see the end and finally leave altogether.
• Back against the wall Bungie is Best Bungie ^Explanation In an inversion to the above, many expressed optimism when the gameplay trailer for the exapansion dropped and revealed some very juicy details (namely the new customizable Prismatic subclass and the Dread, the first new enemy faction in five years), leading to jokes about how Bungie pulled out their A-game once it became apparent the fate of the game and the company were on the line.
• Lore Accurate Guardians. ^Explanation Upon seeing the reveal of the Prismatic class, which can use all Guardian Powers in tandem including Light and Darkness powers at the same time, fans proclaimed that players had finally reached the level of the Guardians in the lore. Humorously, Prismatic actually exceeds the powers of lore-accurate Guardians, as there are no instances in the lore of the Guardians seamlessly shifting between the Light and the Darkness.