Web Video / Leeroy Jenkins Video

"Oh my god, he just ran in."

— WoW Player

Alright Tropers, I'm back, let's describe this. LEEROOOOOOOOYYY... JEEEEEENNNNKKKIIIINNSS!

The Leeroy Jenkins Video is a World of Warcraft video that was made in 2005 and posted in the WoW forum in a thread titled "UBRS (vid) ROOKERY OVERPOWERED! blue please", which jokingly presented the video in a serious context. It has since become an Internet phenomenon that has become a part of This Very Wiki in the form of a trope named in the titular character's honor. The video is a staged one, though the creators from the guild "PALS FOR LIFE" maintain that it was based on an actual incident.

In this video, a "PALS FOR LIFE" raid group is making plans for clearing out the Rookery area of the Upper Blackrock Spire, a ten-player raid instance in the Blackrock Mountain zone (the players are speaking to each other via voice over Internet). The area in question contains a large number of eggs being watched over by dragonspawn; if one gets too close to the eggs, they will hatch into baby dragons called Rookery Whelps, and if too many of them spawn, they can quickly overwhelm a group, which is why careful planning is needed to take the room on. The main reason the group are at the Rookery is because Leeroy, one of the two paladins of the group, needs a Devout Mantle, a piece of cloth armor that the others say will help him heal better, off Solakar Flamewreath, the Rookery's main boss.

As the group are making their plans to take on the boss, Leeroy's player is away from his keyboard heating up some fried chicken. The plan that they come up with involves gathering all the whelps into one spot so the mages (Ritter, Spiffy and Therien) can blast them all down with their Area of Effect attacks, while the warriors (Anfrony, Basphemy and Jamaal) use their shout skills to scatter them so that they don't have to fight too many of them at once, and the paladins (Chrisym and Leeroy) use their Divine Intervention ability on the mages to protect them while they AOE. ^note If you play World of Warcraft, and you notice some holes in this plan, just hold that thought for now. The group then asks Abduhl, one of the two rogues of the party, for a "number crunch," and he comes up with a "32.33 (repeating of course)" percentage of survival. To which Jamaal, who is the raid leader, replies, "Okay, that's a lot better than we usually do."

It is at this point that Leeroy returns. With no knowledge or regard to the plan that his group has just made and ready to kick ass, he charges blindly and solo into the Rookery with his now-famous warcry of "LEEROY JENKINS!" The group are at first a little stunned at Leeroy's move, but quickly rush in to save their errant comrade with a cry of "Stick to the plan!" But by this time, Leeroy has managed to Draw Aggro from nearly every mob in the room, and the party is quickly overwhelmed. Chrisym (and Leeroy behind-the-scenes) uses Divine Intervention on two of the mages, Spiffy and Therien, who soon find that they cannot use their crowd-clearing Area of Effect spells or other abilities because Divine Intervention won't let them ("I don't think you can cast with that shit on!"). Meanwhile, everyone else is dealing with the eggs respawning and dumping even more whelps upon them, and it isn't long before people start dying. Jamaal, the first to die to the whelps, is the first to blame Leeroy for what's happening ("God damn it, Leeroy!"), and this is quickly echoed by the others as Leeroy quietly cries, "It's not my fault!"

As the last party member falls, Jamaal asks if anyone has a Soulstone buff up, which would allow the party to resurrect and rejoin the instance. But no one has the buff because no one brought a Warlock (the only class capable of using the skill), meaning that the raid is pretty much finished. As the video draws to a close, Abduhl says, "Leeroy, you are just stupid as hell." Leeroy's response has become a Catchphrase in itself: "...At least I have chicken."

For more info on the vid, see the Warcraft Wiki article. For those who actually want to see the video, YouTube has you covered.

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Leeroy Jenkins provides examples of:

• Ascended Meme:
  • Leeroy has been referenced several times in WoW's history, and in Warlords of Draenor, you can help the character (voiced by the man himself!) finally get his devout shoulders. Said quest involves him cooking chicken and encouraging you to formulate a plan that is "mathematically flawless!" during a time limit, after which he charges in and draws every enemy you haven't killed yet (with serious Stylistic Suck with his voice acting, as it sounds like it did in the actual video).^note Since he's still Level 60 in a Level 100 dungeon, he dies in one hit, hence ruining your chance at acquiring him as a follower and forcing you to try again the next run.
  • He also appears in Hearthstone, as a Glass Cannon paladin who does high damage but only has two life points, and spawns with two whelps on the opponent's side that the opponent can use to take him out unless the user has a countermeasure (like one or more taunters) in place.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Leeroy jumps in sword swinging.
• Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: Look closely and you can see Leeroy making a break for the door.^note This is so he can cast Divine Intervention off screen, so he still dies anyway.
• Battle Cry: "LEEROY JENKINS!"
• The Berserker: Leeroy, again, for charging in without a thought.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Leeroy definitely has the mindset of one, being eager to rush into the fight while loudly screaming his own name as a battle cry.
• Breakout Character: Leeroy himself. Not only has he become a meme and a synonym for overt recklessness, he has become an actual part of Warcraft lore, appearing as a character in World of Warcraft, its affiliated trading card game, and Hearthstone.
• Catchphrase: "LEEROY JENKINS!" and "At least I have chicken."
• Complexity Addiction: The guild as a whole appears to prefer making battle plans that are more complicated than necessary... and also completely stupid.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • The most famous example: Leeroy thoughtlessly charging through the Rookery, a dungeon where careful movement is essential.
  • Jamaal's plan to scatter the whelps fails because he apparently forgot to simply read the description of Divine Intervention. Instead, he essentially sacrificed two tanks in order to completely take their mages out of the fight.
• Disaster Dominoes: The raid in a nutshell following Leeroy's dramatic entrance, since him running in and aggro-ing everything quickly brings a lot of heat down on the party. It bears repeating that PALS FOR LIFE were going to fail miserably no matter what they did.
• Failed a Spot Check: Once again, out of the ten people in the raid group, not a single one realizes that Divine Intervention will prevent the mages from doing anything. One of them even asks for a Divine Intervention, and after getting one, immediately starts complaining that he can't move or cast spells and asking whether he's lagging. It isn't until 30 seconds later that they finally get the picture.
• Failure Is the Only Option: As noted above, the party was doomed anyway by their own plan, even before Leeroy gets everyone killed.
• Hope Spot: As it becomes abundantly clear that they will not be surviving this, Jamaal asks if the guild at least has a Soulstone up that can salvage the situation. Then someone reveals that they didn't even bring a warlock.^note Which, of course, is another thing PALS FOR LIFE got wrong in the video — if you wipe at the beginning of a dungeon, you'd be better off just resurrecting the old-fashioned way and trying again than wasting a Soulstone cooldown, which is best saved for the boss at the end so you don't have to walk through a bunch of respawning mobs.
• If My Calculations Are Correct: Spoofed with Abduhl's number crunch, which has no real math to back it up.
• I Like Those Odds: Jamaal, after being told the party's chances of survival. He notes that the odds are better than usual, which says a lot considering that Abduhl estimates (at best) a 32.33 (repeating, of course) percent chance of survival.
• Impossible Mission Collapse: As soon as Leeroy returns to his keyboard, the group's carefully constructed plan goes down the tubes in an instant. Possibly a subversion if you consider that the plan wouldn't have worked anyway even if Leeroy hadn't gone off.
• Incoming Ham: The moment Leeroy cuts into Jamaal's speech, you know something's about to go down.
  Leeroy Jenkins: All right, chums, I'm back! Let's do this!
• In-Universe Factoid Failure: The team's "plan" involves shielding their mages with Divine Intervention while they cast crowd-clearing AOE spells on the whelps. There are two big problems with this. First, the paladin who casts Divine Intervention immediately dies, taking a character who can tank and heal out of the fight, which is made worse by the fact that Leeroy and Chrysm are the only members of the party who can actually heal aside from Ctidalwave, the only priest of the party. The second is that Divine Intervention isn't just a shield; it locks the target out of combat entirely, meaning they can't cast any spells, affect enemies at all, or even move. In addition, the other part of The Plan (involving fear rotation on the part of the warriors) isn't very useful in the Rookery due to the respawning eggs, only keeping the whelps off them for a few seconds before dumping even more of them onto the party. Finally, a complex plan for clearing the whelps is totally unnecessary to begin with since any competent team wouldn't have that many whelps to deal with in the first place, due to the whelps only spawning if you walk on the eggs.
• Karma Houdini: Leeroy runs back out the door after drawing aggro from all the monsters, slipping past his group to safety.^note Though behind the scenes, Leeroy uses Divine Intervention on one of the mages, which involves killing himself.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: PALS FOR LIFE devises a terrible plan that'd probably be just as effective as Leeroy's mindless charging had he not decided to attack as soon as he got back from heating up his chicken, as it kills two healer/tanks and makes two of the party's three AOEs unable to attack as the enemies cut through the rest of the party before finishing them off when their Divine Interventions wear off.
• Large Ham: LEEROY JENKINS!!!!!
• Leeroy Jenkins:invoked The Trope Namer for one who charges forward and ruins plans. That said, the plan would've ruined itself without his help.
• The Load: Everyone in the guild clearly sees Leeroy as this. The disastrous fight in the Rookery is blamed entirely on him, the entire reason they attempt it in the first place even though it frequently gives them trouble is to get some loot for him, and dialogue implies he's always been a Leeroy Jenkins. Subverted in that the whole guild is just as incompetent as Leeroy. They're just not aware of it.
• Ludicrous Precision: Abduhl's "number crunch" cites a "32.33 (repeating of course)" percent chance of surviving the Rookery run.
• Mission Briefing: They're in the middle of one when Leeroy decides it's a good time to have a trope named after him.
• Never My Fault:
  • Those who blame Leeroy for the whole thing see his cry of "It's not my fault!" as this.
  • On the other side of the coin, Jamaal repeatedly chastises Leeroy and blames the entire mess on him, even though the plan he came up was doomed from the start.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • "Stick to the plan, chums, stick to the—!" The heavy breathing sound on the mic that follows comes off like a Record Needle Scratch.
  • Later on, someone realizes why casting Divine Intervention on the mages was a terrible idea: "I don't think you can cast with that shit on!"
• Oh, No... Not Again!: One of the members of the clan says something that implies this is not the first time that Leeroy has pulled a stunt like this.
  "Why do you do this shit, Leeroy?!"
• The Paladin: Leeroy and Chrisym are in this class; warriors who can cast Divine Intervention.
• The Plan: The first half of the video is PALS FOR LIFE describing their intricate plan for dealing with the eggs of the Rookery; a session which Leeroy is absent from and cares nothing about.
• Poe's Law: Many people miss a lot of the non-Leeroy-related parody in the video (namely the stupidity of PALS FOR LIFE's plan), which requires some World of Warcraft knowledge to fully appreciate while Leeroys are a common occurrence in just about every multiplayer game ever. As such, it's often mistaken for a real incident, though most WoW players are in on the joke because no high-level raid would be composed solely of players that dumb.
• Say My Name: Come on everybody: LEEROOOOY JEEENNNKIIINS!
• A Simple Plan: Part of the point and humor of the video is that PALS FOR LIFE's plan is too complicated and too stupid to work.
• The Smart Guy: The guild apparently sees Abduhl as this, since he's so good at math that he can calculate their odds of success. Where he draws his calculations from is anyone's guess.
• Spanner in the Works: Leeroy ruins the guild's carefully made plan by running in with his now famous battle cry.
• Stupid Sacrifice:
  • The way Divine Intervention actually works makes Leeroy's and Chrisym's use of it literally worse than just dying. In a nutshell it is: kill your paladins so your mages are unable to AoE or anything else.
  • The rest of the group's choosing to intervene also does more harm than good, since if they had not followed Leeroy into the room, none of them would have died and they could have revived Leeroy (or not) at their leisure. An experienced raid group knows better than to pull without the raid leader's say-so, and to let anyone who tries it die.
• Stunned Silence: There's a stunned two-second pause as everyone absorbs Leeroy's idiotic move.
• This Is Gonna Suck:
  • Early on, someone reminds Jamaal that Leeroy is the one that needs a piece of loot from the Rookery, which is why they're doing this in the first place:
    Jamaal: [Sighs] Christ...
  • [Beat] "Oh my God, he just ran in..." [another beat] "Save him!" Things snowball from there.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Everybody. PALS FOR LIFE's plan would have gotten everyone killed in the first place; Leeroy simply sped up the process by running in without knowing or caring about the plan. Of course, the entire raid decides to run in and try to save him rather than do the sensible thing by letting Leeroy die from his own stupidity.
  • The filming party member just spends his whole time in the room drawing as much aggro as humanly possible and then dragging it back onto the rest of the party.
• Total Party Kill: The whelps and other mobs kill everyone except Leeroy Jenkins himself. He manages to "kite" the whelps into his team and slip out the door, but returns to cast Divine Intervention. Spiffy and Therien, shielded by Leeroy's and Chrisym's Divine Intervention spells, are the true survivors.
• Unbuilt Trope: Most references to the video involve a stupid character who ruins a carefully laid plan. But part of the humor of the video is that the plan was also really stupid and would have gotten them killed anyways — Leeroy only hastened their defeat.
• Zerg Rush: Leeroy's charge draws in a veritable cloud of dragon whelps that quickly overwhelms the team. The whelps spawn from eggs that only hatch if stepped on, so it probably doesn't help that the player filming the whole thing spends all of his time doing exactly that.

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"...At least I have chicken."