Due to the game's infamous nature and
Narmy moments, many memes were inevitably created.
Please add entries in the following format if possible:
- The meme. [[labelnote:Explanation]]The explanation behind the meme, if necessary.[[/labelnote]] Explanation Like this.
- Further mutations and successor memes, if any.
- "You fucked up my face." *gunshot* Explanation An infamous line said by Mitchell in the ending, now seen as more or less one of the best examples of the game's rather laughable attempts at being dark, badass and gritty.
- Thanks to the fan compilations, we got these lines:
- You lied to my face.
- You betrayed my face.
- You used my face.
- You fuck my face!
- You X'd my face.
- You fixed up my face. Explanation The M3SA build is seen as a significant improvement regarding the gameplay and story additions, somewhat redeeming the product a little bit.
- Mitch, please... I-I can explain. Explanation (spoilers) When Mitchell starts shooting Adam in the final cutscene, the latter starts pleading him for mercy with a voice that's far too calm for a man who was just shot in both the knee and stomach several times with a Hand Cannon.
- The ending cutscene itself has become memetic, considering the amount of narmtastic moments it has.
- Bitchell. Explanation The first letter of Mitchell's name is sometimes pronounced as 'B' in some scenes. This Fan Nickname goes well along with Mitchell's complete edginess.
- Michelle. Explanation One of Hunt Down the Freeman's community tags is Female Protagonist, when the protagonist is established as male. A small theory is that Mitchell (or if you will, Michelle) is a trans man who went through plastic operations around or before teens.
- "My mother's DEAD?!" Explanation While Colonel Cue is trying to get his men to volunteer for what's essentially a suicide mission, he's forced to pick one and says "If your mother was alive, she'd be proud of you." Cue (no pun intended) this Narmtastic line where the voice actor, Sky Williams, trails off into a high-pitched squeak rather than properly finish the sentence.
- "Larry, for god's sake, shut the fuck up!" Explanation When Mitchell and Larry activate an escape train for themselves and Colonel Cue's group, Nick comes running in - and suddenly flings this at Larry for a single utterance of saying they need to get out of there. Considering the awkward writing and acting of the character, most don't disagree.
- He's cursed! Explanation During Captain Roosevelt's speech to Mitchell about what his name may mean, Nick suddenly speaks this line about Mitchell out loud. Fans started using this line in regards to the game itself.
- No. God will stay away from this one. Explanation After the second Time Skip, Mitchell speaks this line in regards to hunting down Gordon Freeman during his Blasphemous Boast to Nick. Naturally, people were quick to start referring to the game as whole with this phrase.
- "DON'T buy Hunt Down The Freeman." Explanation Almost every reviewer who's reviewed the game has either put this in their titles, thumbnails or even stated themselves to not buy the game due to its problems. Others have also pointed out that its price is actually more than the original Half-Life, its sequel, and the remake, Black Mesa.
- "Hunt Down the Refund." Explanation A common quip from reviews and comments.
- game SUCKS i go to BED Explanation A rather hilarious steam review by Steam user Phyxia that later became a meme in the Half-Life Subreddit. According to the reviewer, he made it out of a lack of sleep after "it crashed twice and softlocked [his] PC.
" - WHERE'S GORDON!? WHERE IS THE FREEMAN!? Explanation A quote from the demo that's infamous for being filled to the brim with ham, making it very difficult to take the interrogation cutscene from which the line originated seriously.
- "Black Messah." Explanation A mispronunciation of Black Mesa from the G-Man's voice actor. This is often cited as one of the more noticeable examples of the voice acting's questionable quality (although the G-Man's voice actor is noted to be one of the better actors and, aside from that flub, imitates the G-Man quite well), as the G-Man always pronounces the term correctly in the official Half-Life games. "Operation Whiskey Freedom" eventually fixed the pronunciation.
- Colonel Cue and his Comedy Crew. Explanation In the midst of the life-or-death situation to get out of the city while the Seven Hour War is going on all around them, Colonel Cue and his troops are introduced with ridiculous accents and comedic moments that clash heavily with the atmosphere of the game, to the point that it's hard to take any of them seriously.
- "Looks guys..." Explanation (Typo'd) two words that often precede a lengthy rant noting that the game doesn't have to adhere to the franchise's style, copied from the devs' Discord, which is not only seen as shoddy damage control for the liberties taken in the presentation of the game in comparison to the series, but is felt to underline how thin-skinned the devs are.The full rant "Looks guys, we just wanna make a good game, I understand it s not TRADITIONAL half-life style, but that was the all point, showing that Half-Life universe also can be amazing on a different perspective with different style, so we can appreciate half-life not just what it is but also what it could be! Why can't we co-exist with other mods? So other people with different taste can also enjoy this. There is hundreds of amazing Half-Life mods that uses traditional style made by amazingly talented people, and I assume some of you are also one of these people. If people want to play that kind of mods, of course they can, but we wanted to create something different. We have over 60 people worked on this project some professionals, some amateurs. We all put love into this. We just wanna make a good game at the end of the day. So if you guys wanna criticize it that's fine and we do appreciate that. That's what we need, criticism, so we can improve ourselves on our project."
- The amount of comparisons to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain have been made by almost everyone. In fact, it's common for people to edit the song "Nuclear" into its trailers or just add the whole audio or music from other MGSV trailers due to how surprisingly fitting they are. Made even funnier by fact that Hideo Kojima is actually shown in credits in the "Special Thanks" section.
- "In Black Mesa, Men Become Demons."
- A Hideo Kojima Production.
- "Wow, the new Metal Gear Solid "X" looks great..."
- Node Graph Out of Date. Rebuilding... Explanation An error in the pathfinding AI leads to this showing up in almost every single level. Naturally, there are many jokes about it, which doesn't help the perception that the game was rushed out the door.
- #HL2_GameOver_Ally Explanation The developers neglected to add a localization string for when vital allies (such as Adam) die. Instead of the game showing the "ASSIGNMENT: TERMINATED" line from Half-Life 2, the game shows the internal tag instead. Becomes even more hilarious after Mitchell kills Adam for real in the final cutscene.
- "Fifty Thousand Dollars."Explanation This meme concerns popular Half-Life Let's Player Bolloxed, who purportedly sunk $50,000 in revenue into the game's development and was dissatisfied with its eventual state, only to be denied any compensation for it.
- President Keemstar. Explanation The President of the United States is voiced by Daniel Keem, otherwise known as Keemstar. Naturally, the bizarre casting choice led to jokes about Keemstar, mixing lines from Drama Alert in with the President's speech, or other jokes like it.
- What is up, American Nation? I'm your President, Killer Keemstar, Leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet's get riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight into the surrender!
- THE COMBINES ARE FUCKING NI***!
- Being invaded by Jake Paulers.
- What...the...fuck...?Explanation Mitchell's reaction during his hallucination near the end of the game has become rather memetic.
- "We uploaded the wrong version."Explanation Upon the game's buggy launch and predictably bad reaction, the dev team stated that they sent out an incomplete version of the game, which many players and reviewers had singled out as an incredibly obvious lie.
- "Where is our money, Berkan?"Explanation A blatant Take That! to the game's original director, Berkan Denizyaran, included in the M3SA versions of the game as a virtually unmissable set of graffiti art, courtesy of "Operation Whiskey Freedom", the members of which are rather righteously upset that they didn't get paid the money they were promised.
- Rick. Explanation In the credit section, the G-Man's voice actor is simply listed as "Rick", causing many people who are not familiar with the voice actor assuming he simply used an alias as if to not get any further involved with the game.
