Memes / Dwarf Fortress

DWARF FORTRESS
Like the internet you will die under a mountain of cats

• X cancels Y, interrupted by Z. ^Explanation An Interrupting Meme, based on how dwarfs can easily be interrupted from whatever they are doing by wild animals. Or goblins, or more Fun stuff.
  • X cancels Clean Self: Too insane.^Explanation While insane dwarves trying to clean themselves only to visibly cancel the effort used to happen, the main source was dwarven babies attempting to initiate the task, only for the game to cancel the effort since babies aren't supposed to do that, and somehow misreading it as them being too insane rather than too young. Babies, having nothing to do, spammed this effort a lot, and it stuck from repetition
• DEM DORFS MAN. DEM FUCKIN' DORFS.
• LMAO! 2CAT!!!1 ^Explanation From a 4chan MS Paint comic. Before the changes to breeding mechanics in 0.40.19, cats were known as Explosive Breeders that quickly turn into pests and drop framerates like a stone.
• WELCOME TO FUCKING BOATMURDERED! HOPE YOU LIKE MIASMA! ^Explanation Boatmurdered was a popular Let's Play with had contributions from many people, that due to epically poor management became a spectacular Wretched Hive, then a steaming crater.
  • This meme can also be done in the way "Welcome to fucking X, hope you like Y"
• In some versions of the game, some creatures briefly ended up too overpowered, with carp and giant sponge (see below) being the most prominent example.
  • "Without a nervous system, all they can feel is ANGER." ^explanation A popular description of Giant Sponges, the carp of version 0.34. They have no limbs or organs, so they're nearly unkillable, but their size lets them destroy dwarfs without any effort on their parts.
    • I think I made fish too hardcore ^Explanation Word of God as to the Carp, which could once shred dwarfs into pieces with little effort.
• Magma has achieved memetic status as an all-solving force on the Bay12 forums. Any question and any problem may be solved by magma.
• This is a wiki edit. All craftstropership is of the highest quality. This object is adorned with bands of fancruft and menaces with spikes of flame. ^Explanation The format the game uses for item descriptions. "All craft(X)ship is of the highest quality" and "menaces with spikes of (material)" are especially common.
• "You look like a mighty warrior." "I'm FOUR!"^Explanation The response you get in Adventure mode if you ask a child what their profession is.
• Footkerchief is the search engine.^Explanation Footkerchief is a Fandom VIP on the game's official forum who's famous for being able to find if basically any question someone asks has been answered by Toady somewhere before.
• "It was inevitable."^Explanation In adventure mode of version 0.40 this comes up very frequently when overhearing NPCs talking to each other. Specifically, this is the commentary they give about every single death or attack of someone or something that has ever happened in the game world. However as of version 0.42 most important (and some slightly less important) creatures get more complex reactions (to the rejoicing of the fanbase)
• Losing is Fun.^Explanation The unofficial tagline of the game, thanks to its punishing learning curve and many, many ways to die.
  • This has extended to the word "fun" itself, which is used as a Deadly Euphemism for something that will probably cause mayhem for the player.
• Despite not having any real preference for clothing, it's become common wisdom that dwarves will go through ANYTHING to pick up a sock. Goblin sieges, undead, literal Hell? Yup.
  • It gets even weirder when monsters decide to pick up said socks as their weapons. Being bashed to death with a sock is a peculiar way to go◊
• Just about everything worth doing or reading on the forums will, inevitably, be surrounded by !!double exclamation points!! at some point. This is how the game indicates things which are on fire.
  • Sometimes the quality or wear markers will be used, as in +quality marker+ or xXwear markerXx.
• The canonical generic dwarven name, Urist McProfession (Urist McMiner, Urist McMarksdwarf, Urist McRavingLoony...) is well-known on the forums.
  • This has extended to Urists being used as a generic unit for certain game-specific measurements: temperature measurements are in degrees Urist, and the length dimension of one tile being one Urist.
• Microcline seems to have become some sort of memetic mineral, due to being obscure in geology terms, rather useless aside from basic rock uses, weirdly abundant in separate pockets that make sure you get the announcement multiple times, and the exact same bright sky blue color as Adamantine (a color shared only by these two minerals and ice), which saves decoration-minded fort overseers a lot of pain.
  You have struck Microcline!