Memes / Final Fantasy XIV

Didn't you hear Yoshi-P? He said we're outta free trials! Scram!

Being a tank-bustingly popular online game, it's no surprise that Final Fantasy XIV has racked up quite the veritable list of memes over its runtime, enough to have its own standalone page from the main franchise's index.

When adding to this page, please write the meme, then add the explanation of the meme inside a labelnote titled "Explanation." Not everyone knows where a particular meme came from or how it's used, even if it's potholed.

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Please add entries in the following format:

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

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General/Meta/Other

• Minor Spelling Mistake ^Explanation A reaction-image type meme that evolved and is used outside of the fandom that shows a gif of the last scene from the Answers cinematic, Louisoux flinching and smiling as light from Bahamut's attack covers the screen, with the caption "Minor Spelling Mistake" on top. It's primarily used in response to someone making a typo and to exaggerate the gravity of the mistake.
• team b tho(ugh) ^ExplanationRefers to the phenomenon of how there always seems to be one alliance in the 24-person raids that is pants-on-head-stupid and is causing everyone else to wipe. Has an uncanny likelihood of being Alliance B, for some reason.
• loldrg^ExplanationDragoons in FFXIV have become a meme in and of themselves, since they have garnered a reputation for dying often in high level raids and trials. Square Enix has taken note of this reputation had have used a dead Dragoon as a gag in the trailer for 2.3 and the 16-Bit Titan fight video.
• [X] is a defensive ability. ^Explanation"Defensive ability" more typically refers to the various damage-reducing self-buff abilities tanks have, however, it is frequently pointed out that other abilities can indirectly reduce damage taken by tanks, from Holy (AOE damage+stun) to Sprint (spend less time running from pack to pack in large pulls) to literally any DPS ability used properly (killing the mobs faster means they have less time to damage the tank!)
  • [X] is a healing spell.^ExplanationAn evolution of the above, where obviously actual healing spells keep your team alive but some jokingly claim that healing spells also constitute any in-game actions which leave your health higher than it would be otherwise (e.g. using the morbol fruits during two of three Aurum Vale boss fights) or even anything so long as it helps you avoid death (e.g. kicking the Dragoon from your static raid group).
• "PS3 limitations" ^ExplanationWhat Square Enix said at times whenever fans ask for a new feature to be added to the game, since the PlayStation 3 simply couldn't match 2010 gaming PCs in performance. The response has generated a meme within the community and people will generally say the meme whenever someone suggests a new game feature. This is also sort of the "child" of an FFXI meme as well; "PS2 limitations" often came up as an excuse for why certain things didn't happen in that game. However, with the announcement of PlayStation 3 support being dropped by 4.0, many people have already upgraded the meme to "PS4 limitations", though most do it as a joke rather than being serious about it.
  • Server limitations ^ExplanationThe evolved version of the PS3 limitations meme after the devs cited many times that a lot of requested features like expanded inventory slots and greater character customization were held back by the strain on the servers.
  • Spaghetti code ^Explanation Another branch of the "X limitations" meme, brought up whenever there are features which can't be added due to a lot of legacy code still being used from 1.0.
  • Butt sliders^ExplanationAn oft-talked about request by the playerbase that continuously gets denied due to said spaghetti coding, caused by the apparent "nerf" in the size of butts from 1.0 to 2.0. In reality, the size difference is hardly noticeable, and bigger butts would cause awkward texture stretching to compensate. Despite this, people still clamor that the butts are significantly smaller than they were, and want customization options for them to make them bigger.
  • Square Enix is just a small indie company ^Explanation The more snarky take on the limitations issue, mainly mocking how Square can't improve the game due to the development staff being small compared to other MMO games.
• "Please look forward to it." ^ExplanationThis is something of a stock phrase for Square Enix directors and executives in general, and Yoshida tended to use it too, especially during ARR's development. The fan base tends to use the phrase to mock him whenever there's a problem in the game they don't like. The developers have actually picked up on this one, though, and like to turn it around again, attaching the phrase, with emphasis, to reveals or discussion of hotly-anticipated content.
  • Yoshida giving the middle finger.◊ ^ExplanationSelf-explanatory, with "Please look forward to it." shopped in to make it more condescending. Quickly discredited when it was revealed the image was an out-of-context screencap of Yoshida showing off a ring on his middle finger.
• Cash shop. ^ExplanationDue to the highly controversial implementation of the cash shop, a service where players can use real life money to buy vanity items, many people that are displeased with the feature will utter "cash shop" whenever someone asks for a feature to be put in the game; most people who use the phrase do it to snark at Square Enix as a form of protest.
  • Mogstation.^ExplanationThe original name for the online store, which most players still refer to it by even after the name was moved to account services and the online store was separated from it (meaning you no longer have to log in just to peruse the store).
• Skybear. ^{Explanation (spoilers)}The result of an amusing glitch in a certain zone at the launch of Heavensward involved a glitched polar bear becoming stuck in mid-air. Players began to treat this glitched bear as a deity, going so far as to ask for it to be added as everything from a new mount, to a new Primal. This becomes more hilarious when you find out that this is exactly how Primals are created in the context of the story. Now a Hilarious in Hindsight moment when it was announced that all of the tank exclusive mounts would be able to fly, which includes the Warrior's bear mount.
• [X] should be able to fly! ^ExplanationSome old mounts, such as Fenrir and the Magitek Armor, were highly requested to be given flight capabilities for Heavensward zones. Some of the aforesaid mounts were given flight; as a result, there will be at least someone once a week asking for another mount to be able to fly. Has since become a Discredited Meme due to all but the most basic of mounts being capable of flight.
• Glamour is the true endgame! ^Explanation Said mostly as a joke by the community when it comes to vanity items like gear and decoration. Due to how insanely difficult it can be to find or make certain vanity items, many players treat it on par with hardcore raiding.
• Derplander. ^{Explanation (spoilers)}The Fan Nickname for the game's poster boy (officially known as the "Meteor Survivor") and the player stand-in. Early versions of the game had a Hyur Midlander that had a creepy look on his face in the CG cutscenes/trailers that made him look quite funny. Despite the fact that the rendering was vastly improved since then, many to this day still call him Derplander. While he's only seen in the game's promotional material, where he is used as the representation of the player character, 3.1 introduced the Warrior of Darkness named Ardbert, who is based on and was believed by many to be Derplander. However, this didn't end up being the case as Derplander is still used as the game's poster boy, even in the expansions where Ardbert doesn't or shouldn't be able to appear in. Both of them also appear together in some of the promotional material for Shadowbringers, as a nod to the reveal that Ardbert is the player character's Alternate Self.
  • Daddylander ^{Explanation (mild spoilers)} The Shadowbringers trailers shows the Warrior of Light/Darkness looking a bit older and scruffy looking, causing fans of both genders falling head over heels for his new rugged look.
  • Chadlander ^{Explanation (mild spoilers)} In the Dawntrail trailer the Warrior of Light looks noticeably cleaned up from his scruffier look in the past, having trimmed his stubble and underwent an Expository Hairstyle Change, and even cracks a smile for the first time in a long time. He also looks suspiciously close to the Gigachad meme with his hair slicked back.
• Popotoes. ^ExplanationAn evolved meme from Final Fantasy XI's Tarutaru punting where the shortfolk Lalafell race are mocked by comparing them to potatoes.
• Giraffes. ^ExplanationElezen are sometimes referred to as "giraffes" in the community. While Elezen have pointy elf ears, they also have very long necks compared to a Hyur, which brought about this meme.
• In order to be a real ninja, maybe you should work out a bit more. ^ExplanationA comment by Yoshida at a Fan Fest costume contest, directed at a rather overweight cosplayer dressed up as a ninja. Yoshi still awarded him 3rd place in the contest.
• Troll doors. ^ExplanationThe Aquapolis, Lost Canals of Uznair, Dungeon of Lyhe Ghiah, and Excitatron 6000 are treasure filled dungeons where the only way to progress is to pick one of two doors and hope it's the right one. The game will very frequently bring the barrier down, shake a bit, and then rise up as the door opens. And sometimes the barrier may come down completely and sound the alarm, only for rainbow lights to appear and the door opens anyway.
  • Troll roulette. ^ExplanationRefers to the "Shifting" treasure portals, which is the roulette cousin to the treasure portals above. They have their own flavor of trolling, by making the marker randomly stop where it lands on, or shift one to two spaces over. Then just when you think you'd be ejected out by an atomos or its equivalents, divine intervention may save you from an early end of your run.
• Filthy casuals. ^ExplanationWhile not unique to XIV, there's a Vocal Minority of "Stop Having Fun" Guys that will loudly voice their displeasure with the game's direction being catered to "casual" players or towards anyone that is not "hardcore" enough. Such players say that anyone who doesn't devote an obscene amount of time to the game and/or doesn't play only the most difficult content are not "real" players. As such, people mock the elitist mindset and even proclaim themselves as a casual, just to provoke this vocal minority of players even further.
• Stop trying to make this game like FF11!/This game should be more like FF11! ^ExplanationTwo completely polarizing opinions on how Final Fantasy XIV should be. Whenever anyone brings up FFXI or even suggests ideas based on the game, others will come in demanding that FFXIV shouldn't copy off of its predecessor.
• Drama tanks. ^Explanation A fan term that describes tank players in a negative manner due to some tanks getting upset, angry, and/or passive-aggressive when other players in the party don't play the way they want them to. Healers sometimes fall into this as well, but tanks tend to get it the worst.
• Balmung/Gilgamesh. ^ExplanationA usually insulting term (usually in the form of "Of course they're from Balmung/Gilgamesh") towards players from the Balmung or Gilgamesh servers due to those two servers being the most populated for North American players, thus there's a higher chance of something absurd happening there from the Vocal Minority. This later became a common refrain on lower-population servers such as Coeurl with the release of Stormblood, alongside which the developers provided enormous incentives for the aforementioned players to transfer their characters... from Balmung and Gilgamesh.
• ERP in the Quicksand. ^ExplanationA term used to mock Balmung players for the absurd amount of erotic roleplaying found in the Quicksand, which is a tavern in Ul'dah and is highly populated by role players (both regular and erotic roleplaying). Most people, both jokingly and seriously, avoid going to the Quicksand because of very open ERP that goes on, if not simply the huge congestion of players brought because of it. Hydaelyn help you if you're a new/uninformed Balmung player who picked Ul'dah as their starting city...
• AIDS/Eorzea AIDS. ^ExplanationFan term to describe the Pox status effect in the Palace of the Dead, which is inflicted by Mimics. It's called AIDS by the players due to the effect lasting 10 minutes if you don't have the Pomander of Purity to cure it immediately. If you get Pox, you're gonna be stuck with it for a while and suffer from constant damage, weaker attacks, and natural HP regeneration being disabled.
• Man cats/cat boys. ^ExplanationFan term describing the male Miqo'te.
• Ear wiggles ^ExplanationRefers to the animations that causes the Miqo'te ears to twitch, flick, etc. during said animation. The most famous example is the male Miqo'te's /joy emote, which is cited as the main charm point to play as one.
• Sprouts ^ExplanationThe fan term for new players. The term comes from such players having a small two-leafed plant icon next to their name which designates them as newbies.
• You don't pay my sub! ^ExplanationShort for "you don't pay for my subscription". This is said as a retort by players who get criticized over their playstyle. In other words, the player is saying that they can play however they want because they pay for their own right to be in the game. While sometimes justifiable, the meme is that "you don't pay my sub" is treated as a response to any criticism at all, including playing intentionally bad in dungeons/raids or being a troll. People making fun of such players will thus use the phrase to mock these players and their mindset.
• Delete Monk. ^ExplanationThroughout the Heavensward content cycle, the Monk job has been pushed out of the "preferred" raid composition due to its lack of raid utility compared to other DPS jobs, and their own damage capabilities not making up the difference. The news that the Samurai job being introduced in Stormblood would use the same armor as Monk led some to preemptively declare that Monk was being made entirely redundant altogether, with some people saying the above phrase either in sincerity or to mock those that were.
• Delete Summoner. ^ExplanationSimilar reasons to Monk where Summoners are being pushed out of the raiding scene due to their perceived low DPS compared to other jobs, and the rebalances for the job in Stormblood only made the players angrier. Patch 4.1 finally brought drastic changes to how Summoner worked in a way that made players satisfied... only for changes in Shadowbringers to start the whole cycle all over again.
  • Summoner is a new job every expansion.^ExplanationSummoner being reworked to hells and back every time a new expansion drops is practically a Running Gag. Less cynical players see this as a good thing, as it makes them hyped for their favorite class all over again, especially with the Serial Escalation that ensued after Demi-Bahamut happened.
• Edge/Edgy Knight ^ExplanationFan Nickname for the Dark Knight, which lightheartedly jokes about the job quest mentors telling you to harness the power of the abyss.
• Green and Blue DPS. ^Explanation With DPS in general being a huge focus in fights, especially in harder content where there are DPS checks, many players expect tanks and healers to keep up in their damage output. DPS jobs normally have a red icon in the party list. Many have joked that tanks and healers are just blue and green DPS respectively.
• Healers should only heal! ^ExplanationA never-ending facet of the Broken Base is whether or not healers should just heal or throw in some DPS. People mocking healers tend to post images (such as this one◊) of Sylphie, the girl from the Conjurer quest that only wanted to heal.
• Scholar is a DPS job. ^ExplanationFor much of their life in the game, Scholars have been a healing class with a surprisingly robust toolkit for dealing damage and a pet to help with healing. As a result, players had joked about it being a DPS class in disguise. Said jokes naturally died down after Shadowbringers made it a more focused healer.
• Healers adjust! ^ExplanationA phrase associated with players who refuse to move when targeted by AOE attacks so that they can maximize their damage output, instead demanding that healers stop what they're doing and focus just on healing such players. While sometimes used seriously, the phrase is mostly used as a way to mock the mindset of people who blame everybody but themselves for a poor performance.
  • HP's for winners ^ExplanationJokingly said by tanks who are able to take a lot of hits that the other roles can't, especially when players of said roles fail mechanics that cause lots of damage.
• One Punch Manticore ^ExplanationOne of the consumable items you can get in the Palace of the Dead is a Pomander of Rage, which temporarily turns you into a manticore that can kill anything in one hit.
• Ver-[unrelated skill] ^ExplanationThe Red Mage's skills consist of existing spells from the Black Mage and White Mage, with a "Ver-" prefix added to it. This has led to jokes at how to create new skills for the Red Mage, simply by adding "Ver-" to the beginning of the skill name, with examples like "Verhuton", "Verdreadwyrm Trance", or "Verfell Cleave"...
  • In general, a lot of verposts about Red Mages seem to verhave them randomly inserting the "Ver" prefix as something of a ver-bal tic
  • Rez Mage ^ExplanationA slang term for the Red Mage, owing to their Dualcast skill letting them cast a second spell instantly after a first - including Verraise. While all mage jobs have access to Swiftcast to let them instant-cast a spell of choice (which is the preferred method to cast any revival spell, all of which have long cast times), Dualcast can be triggered at will rather than on a timer, which makes the Red Mage the single best source of revival in any duty above Level 64.
  • Red mage flashbang / Verflashbang^ExplanationWhile the Red Mage's Limit Break "Vermillion Scourge" is cool, it's also incredibly bright to look at, trumping even the White Mage's "Holy" in intensity and, unlike Holy, its intensity isn't reduced by setting Party/Others' effects to "Limited" or "Off".
  • LB theft^ExplanationDue to "Vermillion Scourge"'s animation, Red Mages are notorious for stealing the Limit Break, which leads to eye-rolls from the inconvenienced party members. Can also extend to Alisaie, who is programmed to pop hers at earliest convenience.
• {Hellfrog Medium} ^ExplanationBefore Stormblood, typing H-E-L-L-Tab into chat would bring up the auto-translate for {Hello!}. After Stormblood dropped, this brought up the newly-added skill "Hellfrog Medium", resulting in a lot of players saying it seemingly out of nowhere at the beginning of dungeons. Since Endwalker, "Hell's Egress" has taken the top spot of auto-translate. Damn You, Muscle Memory!
• ARF til you bARF. ^ExplanationThe Aetherochemical Research Facility has the distinction of being the only dungeon to grant 150 Tomestones of Poetics on clear, making it by far the fastest way to farm them for your Infinity Minus One Gear.
  • POTD until you get PTSD. ^ExplanationAnother play on acronyms, this time involving the Palace of the Dead, which is considered the fastest way to get from Level 50 to 60. But grinding the same dungeon over and over becomes mind-numbingly boring, hence the meme.
• Glamour Toilets. ^ExplanationDuring the Letter from the Producer XL Part 1 livestream, players were introduced to the revamping of the Glamour system. One of those things was a special place to hold saved Glamours called a "Glamour Commode". Immediately, people began making fun of the name as, in other areas of the world, a "commode" is commonly referred to as a "toilet". It was for exactly this reason that it was then renamed the Glamour Dresser, but by that time it was too late to stop the memes.
• HRT available from Mog Station ^ExplanationThe "Fantasia" potion allows players to fully redo character creation, including swapping their gender from male to female or vice versa. It's advertised with a stock image of a male Midlander Hyur becoming a female Seeker of the Sun Miqo'te. Between this and preexisting memes comparing trans women to catgirls, the game's LGBT Fanbase naturally took notice of these potions.
• Chocobo Satchel? I think you mean [X]. ^ExplanationWith the introduction of the Chocobo Satchel, players have decided to use this for a vast number of other things, most notably a tacklebox for their Fishing.
• Talk shit, get hit. ^ExplanationA form of Laser-Guided Karma. If you poke fun at a fellow player or mock the ease of a raid tier battle, you're likely to be immediately damaged if not killed outright seconds later by some mechanic.
• Goddamn Allagans/Ascians! ^{Explanation (spoilers)}Generally speaking, a lot of the game's problems can be tracked back to the Abusive Precursors that were the Allagans, or the Ascians who tend to be the Man Behind the Man. Whenever a new threat appears, people inevitably pre-emptively call that either of these groups will be responsible for the current strife. Further elaborated on/played with when it turns out an Ascian was responsible for the Allagan Empire. Even further played on when a major Allagan is revealed to be an Ascian themselves, one indirectly responsible for a cataclysmic series of events.
• Shark Fin Soup ^ExplanationA user on the official forums created a thread in response to the then newly added Shark Fin Soup item, complaining about the developers encouraging the act of people in real life cutting the fins off a shark. This resulted in mostly everyone mocking the person for A) not actually researching the issue and B) not reading the item description in game where it says the rest of the shark is used as meat for other soup recipes, thus there isn't any act of simply just obtaining the fin and leaving the shark to die.
• GCBTW ^ExplanationAn initialism which means "great community, by the way". It's intended as a snarky response, usually by people who complain about the toxicity in the game's community, especially because XIV is said to have one of the more friendly MMO communities in general. The initialism is also said by others as a dig at others (usually new players) that like to express how great the community is ad nauseum.
• GET IN LOSERS. WE'RE GOING PRIMAL HUNTING. ^ExplanationDuring the Paris Fan Fest 2019, it was revealed that XIV would get their own collab with Final Fantasy XV with one of the prizes being Noctis' car as a four-person mount. Ironically, by the time the actual event went live, it had become a Discredited Meme.
• Square Enix hates Casters.^Explanation A joke made by players who main Casters about how Square Enix makes fights that rely on so many mechanics that force them to stop casting to dodge, causing some to lose their rotation or run the risk of failing to heal someone. Often said by players jokingly, as Casters are very strong when they're able to get spells out.
• NIGHTMARE! ^Explanation During an interview, a fan asked Yoshida if the dev team would make "classic" servers so people could play 1.0 like how World of Warcraft did with their game. "NIGHTMARE!" was Yoshida's reply, which turned into a meme from how enthusiastically he said it.
• BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD LILY! ^ExplanationWith the Shadowbringers expansion, White Mage gains a new spell called Afflatus Misery, usable when they build three charges of Blood Lily by healing with their Afflatus Solace or Afflatus Rapture spells. At 900 potency on its main target (later buffed to 1240) and a slow falloff in groups, it's the most damaging spell in White Mage's arsenal. Needless to say, it became quite a hit, with many players adapting the Khornate battlecry from Warhammer 40K.
  • Weaponized salt. ^Explanation A joke on how White Mage players weaponized all their frustrations and anger for being shat on in Stormblood.
  • Revenge of the White Mage ^ExplanationFor the previous expansions prior to Shadowbringers, the White Mage was often mocked and dismissed as a Skill Gate Character in favor of the Scholar and Astrologian, who were basically staples in every raid and trial party. Come Shadowbringers, with the noticeable nerfs and reworks to Scholar's and Astrologian's skillset, as well as the buffs and reworks to the White Mage's skillset, long-time White Mage players have finally gotten their chance to sit at the top of the healing tier list.
  • Now you know how White Mage feels.^ExplanationA phrase used to mock the more vocal complainers of Scholar's current state in Shadowbringers, pointing out that the Scholar has been a very powerful and significant staple in parties ever since A Realm Reborn, and that with the nerfs, now they know how White Mage players have felt for basically every expansion.
  • (PVP) WHM Supremacy^ExplanationIn PVP, the White Mage has become infamous for being a borderline Game-Breaker, thanks to having the best utility of all the healers (Dia amplifies the enemy's damage received), the widest healing range for easy assists (Afflatus Rapture), and having high damage output (Assize and Afflatus Misery). While 6.1 overhauled its kit, it still has a ludicrous amount of utility in Crystalline Conflict, especially when it comes to the Stun-inflicting Afflatus Purgation.
  • White mage flashbang ^ExplanationA nickname for the White Mage's Holy spell as it explodes in a bright flash, makes a loud sound, and stuns enemies. It's particularly flash-bangy when multiple White Mages are firing their Holies off at once.
• Retainer theft. ^ExplanationRetainers can be sent out on 'Quick Exploration' ventures, which have them return with random items. And we do mean "random". This include common items like fish, fruit, or vegetables, or armour and weapons that could be purchased at low-level markets. But a Quick Exploration can also yield rare items like Savage-tier armour and weapons, rare clothing dyes, excessively large furniture, and occasionally the walls of an entire house. One type of retainer even acts as though they're interrupted in the middle of a heist when they're summoned. This has led to jokes that the retainers are just grabbing whatever they can find in the hopes of appeasing the players.
• BDSM set ^ExplanationRefers to the Hard Leather equipment and the Subligar, early game (and Stripperific) equipment for melee classes, which fans described as something that came from a BDSM club. Plenty of players see this as a rite of passage when it comes to early-game armor.
• Please no Mora. ^ExplanationThe Momora Mora is a common low-value fish found in the Southern Strait of Merlthor in Ocean Fishing. Due to it sharing bait with rarer catches like the Sabaton and the Spectral Discus, including Mooched fish, plenty of fishers curse it for being the annoying Zonk of that spot. It doesn't help that because it is a large fish, fishers who do catch it will get animation locked for 5 seconds. Eventually acknowledged for its infamy in 5.4 in the form of a minion, lampshading the common reaction in its flavor text.
• Bot or Roe? ^ExplanationGil-farming Real Money Trade bots usually use random strings of characters for their names. Sea Wolf Roegadyn naming conventions tend towards The Unpronouncable and can, at a glance, look like random keysmashes. Thus, it can be difficult to tell the difference if one doesn't know the trick.
• Burger King Crown ^ExplanationAn insulting nickname for the Mentor icons, which all feature a crown. The icon is so named because Mentors are notorious for being unhelpful and rude towards the new players that they're supposed to be helping. The requirements to become a Mentor are relatively easy to get with enough playtime, and anyone who meets the Mentor requirements can become one, leading to a lot of veteran players who act smug about their status. The Mentor role is thus perceived to have the same value as the paper crowns distributed by the fast food restaurant Burger King, in that anyone can get one and it makes people feel special without having to do anything.
• Danger bongos ^ExplanationThere are sixteen different chat sound effects that can be used as the notification noise for a chat channel, or in chat macros to draw attention to a message, most of which are noises used in previous Final Fantasy titles. Sound effect number 6 is an incredibly out-of-place drum riff, making it one of the most attention-grabbing options for "there is a mechanic happening" macros. As such, it's commonly used by players in even low-level raids to use the sound when something bad is about to happen, leading to the sound being associated with danger, hence "danger bongos".
• Smooth Rock ^ExplanationAfter patch 5.4, the playerbase noticed a strangely low-resolution rock in the Central Shroud, which they quickly dubbed the 'smooth rock'. The rock became an odd "tourist attraction" and general source of amusement before it was patched out in a later hotfix, with even the official Twitter getting in on the fun.
• Critically-acclaimed MMO FFXIV with a free trial that goes up to level 60 with unlimited playtime, and includes the award-winning expansion Heavensward. ^ExplanationCurrently, the game allows players to play for free all the way up to level 60, allowing for them to experience A Realm Reborn and Heavensward with no subscription. When Square-Enix released video advertisements that emphasized the fact, players quickly turned it into a meme, often bringing it up as a Non Sequitur in unrelated conversations.
  • "Don't play critically-acclaimed MMO Final Fantasy XIV" / "There is no free trial." ^ExplanationWith the launch of Endwalker and the ensuing nightmarish login queues and errors, people started (partly) jokingly discouraging others from playing the game so that they could log in faster. Eventually Square-Enix actually shut down new sales and free trials to curb the Demand Overload, driving the meme into overdrive.
  • Yoshi-P: Suffering From Success. ^ExplanationOn December 16, 2021, the Demand Overload for the game was so intense that the developers pulled all copies of the game from sale, both digital and physical. They also stopped letting in free trial players except for non-peak hours, and stopped all advertising. A lot of people started to make jokes about how popular the game is that they had to take such a drastic measure, usually accompanied by this image of Yoshi-P edited onto the cover of DJ Khaled's album, aptly titled Suffering from Success.
  • Please play something else, we're begging you ^ExplanationShortly after the former announcement, a Steam sale went up for several Square Enix games, notably not including Final Fantasy XIV. A day later, a "Return Home to Vana'diel" campaign was launched for Final Fantasy XI. Even though the latter is an annual campaign, the timing was so fortuitous that it led people to joke that Square Enix really wants to ease the stress on XIV's servers.
  • ...free trial that goes up to level 70 and includes the award-winning expansion Heavensward and Stormblood.^ExplanationDuring the July 2023 FanFest, along with the announcement of Dawntrail, it was also announced that the free trial will be expanded to include Stormblood, the expansion which follows Heavensward, in patch 6.5. This led to an amendment of the copypasta meme to reflect this change. This became something of an Acknowledged Meme when Bethan Walker mentioned this version at the end of the "Culinary Chaos" video, and is even adapted to promote the expanded free trial on the 6.5 teaser website.
• WoW Refugees ^ExplanationRefers to the influx of World of Warcraft players after the launch of that game's Shadowlands expansion prior to this game's Endwalker expansion. A 7-month gap between Shadowlands' launch and any new content being added, player concerns going mostly unanswered by Activision/Blizzard, and the "Critically-acclaimed MMO FFXIV with a free trial that goes up to level 60 with unlimited playtime, and includes the award-winning expansion Heavensward" combined to send a mass exodus of World of Warcraft players to Final Fantasy XIV starting in late 2020.
  • wow bad xiv good, upvotes to the left of me^ExplanationA phrase, usually used on reddit, that criticizes users that felt the need to attack WoW in order to praise Final Fantasy XIV.
• Blue Catcher Jr./RaptorCon^ExplanationEnemies that have strayed too far from their spawn will automatically stop what they're doing and run back to their home point, becoming temporarily invincible until they make it back. Grass Raptors in a certain part of Eastern La Noscea can get stuck inside a rock during this process and become unable to move, and therefore unkillable. As soon as this became widely known among the playerbase, the immortal grass raptor became a popular tourist attraction, just like Smooth Rock before it. The raptor was affectionately named Blue Catcher Jr., after Blue from Jurassic World, as well as a player named Bug Catcher who was part of the Free Company to first discover the phenomenon.
• You either quit in ARR or you become a walking advertisement after Heavensward.^ExplanationA phrase used to describe the journey that many players and content creators alike have taken. The ARR experience suffers quite a bit from pacing issues and doesn't hit its stride until near the end, after you clear the Garuda fight. However, following that, the game improves massively, especially in Heavensward, leading to many a Reddit post, Youtube video, Twitch clip, etc. about how incredible Heavensward is.
• Joking about how a certain quest NPC was smothered to death. ^ExplanationBecause the game does not despawn players who are in cutscenes, they end up standing all around the questgiver, making it quite difficult to see them. What's worse is the first character you had to talk to to start Endwalker content is a Lalafell.
• Lobbycon ^ExplanationThe Limsa Lominsa Aetheryte plaza is a popular spot to hang out on a given server, likely because it has quick access to most services. As such, a lot of hijinks go on that people compare it to being at the lobby of a major entertainment convention, where similar hijinks tend to happen.
• Danger Dorito / Safety Dorito^ExplanationA viable method of explaining mechanics of a fight without needing to type out each step in the chatlog is for one player who already knows the mechanics to be marked with an icon. This is a way of telling everyone "look at what this player is doing and do that" if they don't know how to clear the mechanics on their own. Oftentimes, the Triangle sign is picked for this purpose, leading to various nicknames containing "Dorito", after the triangular tortilla chips snack food.
• Making jokes about flying off ledges - since a lot of classes have abilities that are gap closers or movement related, it doesn't stop you from doing them when you would actually go off the ledge in certain encounters.
• (The Maker's Ruin starts playing) The boss: "Why do I hear boss music?" ^ExplanationThough it started as a Bootstrapped Leitmotif, The Maker's Ruin has become the Warrior of Light's theme. When it starts playing during a boss fight, we become the boss.
• PEPSIMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! ^ExplanationAs demonstrated in the video, the "Duty Complete" theme has a vocal chord that many people thought sounded like "Pepsiman". As a result? It segues into the "Pepsiman" music almost too perfectly.
• Square-Enix hate Hrothgar ^ExplanationHrothgar have always had the least amount of customization options - and every patch, rarely get any. They also couldn't change their hairstyle without expending a Fantasia until 6.1, almost three years after they were made playable.
  • "Hrothgar never invented haircuts - they'll cut their ears off." ^Explanation6.1 finally added new hairstyles for Hrothgar... but these styles literally removed the character's ears. Thankfully fixed in 6.2.
    • "Hair or ears?"
    • "The Charr stole the Hrothgar ears!"^ExplanationThe Charr, a feline race in Guild Wars 2, have four ears, contrast that to hairstyles for Hrothgar removing their ears.
  • "I expect nothing - and I'm still let down".
  • Adding forehead customization.
  • Karen Hrothgar / Hrothgaren / "I would like to speak to your manager." ^ExplanationOne hairstyle added in 5.21 resembles in infamous "Karen Hairstyle" meme. 6.1 added Hrothgar compatibility.
    • "As of Dawntrail? You can finally make a Karen!"^ExplanationSince Female Hrothgars were added, presumably this hairstyle would be added.
• Legend btw ^ExplanationA condescending comment on players who, despite having cleared Ultimate Trials and have any variant of "the Legend", still screw up basic mechanics that they should know like second nature. More often than not directed at the commenter themself.
• You spank it, you tank it. ^ExplanationA (sometimes) mock warning to players to let the Tank go first in a dungeon, since the enemies are designed to focus on the Tank instead of the DPS or healers. Rushing ahead too quickly will pull enemies towards you, causing many a frustrated Tank to refuse to help anybody who runs ahead of them to "teach them a lesson". The debate among the playerbase over whether or not it's acceptable to pull enemies when you aren't the Tank is the source of a lot of heated debate, and a lot of mockery from both sides of the issue.
• Raiden Server ^ExplanationFollowing the introduction of a new server in the EU "Light" Data Center which was given the name "Raiden," the server quickly became flooded with players cosplaying as characters from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance due to the massive surge in popularity from that game.
• The Balmung Blockade ^ExplanationIn the wake of Data Center Travel being implemented, a sizable amount of travelling players would find the Ul'dah Aetheryte Plaza blocked off by the Balmung natives to prevent players from visiting the Quicksand bar, or even trying to stop them from just leaving the plaza. Seeing as Balmung's Quicksand is rife with open erotic roleplaying, the natives are keen on keeping whatever happens in the Balmung Quicksand in the Balmung Quicksand.
• The Rain Nightclub billboard ^ExplanationA player-run, in-game nightclub spent twelve thousand dollars on real life billboards in the American state of Texas to advertise an event in July 2022. The inherent absurdity of the situation made headlines, and several details about the billboards and the event hosts caused backlash from the player base. This includes the billboards showing off ToS-breaking content (such as datamined outfits and poses which needed third-party tools), the existence of the billboards potentially being illegal due to showing Square-Enix-owned assets without permission, the group running the event being associated with erotic roleplay, and an immature response from the event hosts after their Discord server was flooded with mockery. The latter also drew a "You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!" response from players when the billboards' creators made it clear that they legitimately didn't think they did anything wrong, and threatened spurious legal action against anyone who mocked them. In particular, the event drew ire from the modding and roleplaying communities, who felt the debacle reflected badly on them and could potentially cause Square-Enix to crack down on their scenes, all because one club had to do something stupid. All in all, much mockery (and memes) ensued.
• Shiba Drifting ^ExplanationThe Megashiba mount from the FFXIV Online Store has a unique animation when using the /pet emote on it. Players later found out the animation can be done while in motion, making it appear to glide across the fields sideways. Thus, the players declared the Megashiba can drift around corners.
• Y'shtola has nine lives ^ExplanationY'shtola has gone through several near death experiences, more than anyone else in the cast, and combined with her being a Cat Girl the obvious joke is often made.
• The Rule of the Roulette: The better quality of the Duty, the less chance you'll see it in the roulette.^ExplanationEveryone has That One Level or That One Boss who they hate not because it's difficult, but because they simply hate seeing it so much. The Duty Finder roulettes also have a rather annoying tendency to bring up these challenges quite frequently, leading to jokes that the Duty Finder's roulette is actively malevolent.
• RP Walk ^ExplanationYou can walk by either slightly tilting the control stick or pressing a key to toggle between walking and running. There are very few tactical reasons to walk instead of run, generally limited to optional content like deep dungeons and Eureka, which punish you for attracting unnecessary aggro. And since you run by default anyways, walking just makes getting anywhere take longer. As such, walking is jokingly known as "RP walking" because the only remaining reason anyone would walk instead of run is because they're roleplaying as their character.
• Dammit Koji!^ExplanationWhile Koji Fox is beloved for his clever localization, his fans are also likely to groan or curse his name whenever a pun is made apparent, even when Kathryn "Kate" Cwynar handled the localization while Koji is focused on Final Fantasy XVI. Doubly so if it's a punny reference to pop culture.
• Final Fantasy XIV is an equal-opportunity fanservice provider. ^ExplanationThe game has been noted for the number of Mr. Fanservice characters, along with efforts to ensure that there are stripperiffic outfits available to both sexes. This can even go so far as to make previous female-only outfits into unisex ones, such as a Playboy Bunny costume or the Thavnairian Bustier. As a result, the game has garnered a sizable fanbase among women and LGBT communities for making sure those who are into the gents have something nice to look at.
  • Followed by someone pointing out some set of armour that looks different on female avatars than male avatars. Sometimes, it's a pair of pants on a male yet a pair of pink mini-shorts on a female.
• Final Fantasy XIV is the most unintentionally accurate commentary on Real Estate markets. ^ExplanationWhen the housing market first came up, anyone could buy a house, resulting in only the richest of the rich getting houses, or buying so many that poorer players were left holding the bag. Eventually, systems were added to mitigate how many houses a player could own, as well as establishing a lottery bid instead of outright purchase to keep things more fair. Even so, jokes abounded that the housing market reflects some of the more underhanded parts of actual real estate investment, albeit entirely without meaning to.
• Anime finisher ^ExplanationIt's very common to see DPS players hoard the party's Limit Break until the boss's HP is extremely low (usually around 5%) so that they can use the move as the killing blow. Considering that most level 3 limit breaks are very flashy, people have compared them to an over the top attack that one would see in most action-based anime.
• Final Fantasy XIV x Puma Collab^ExplanationIn March 2023, SquareEnix revealed that they were partnering with clothing company Puma for FFXIV-related clothing. To do this, they had various advertisements that showcase the Warrior of Light, Estinien and Alisaie showing off the new clothing, similar to another promotion done with Final Fantasy XIII. A lot of jokes arose from this, including the usual confusion between the twins, mocking Estinien for his apparent "chicken legs" (as he has thinner legs than a purported "Azure Dragoon" should have) and why they would be doing such a thing, between side jobs to Tataru making them do it.
• DON'T BLINK!^ExplanationSome boss tells are over very quick - and sometimes as of Endwalker, will appear at the same time as other tells.
• Baby hair◊^ExplanationA joke entry for an in-game hairstyle contest that leaves the player model completely bald, save for a shoddily-drawn single strand of hair.
• WoL's head is getting crowded.^{Explanation (Spoilers!)} Over the course of the main story and in sidequests like the Dark Knight quests, the Warrior become a Mind Hive absorbing or forming links with multiple beings, including Fray, Myste, and Ardbert. People make jokes about them being crowded inside the Warrior's head, with Midgardsormr sometimes also being present. Endwalker added to the fun by introducing the Avatar, who is often depicted as a pest to the other residents.
• We fall (guys) ^ExplanationThe surprise announcement of a collaboration with Fall Guys caught people off-guard. This was one of the many memes created from it.
• The Fanfest Comic ^ExplanationFollowing the Las Vegas FanFest 2023 event, a player drew a 10-page comic about his time at the con. The comic revealed that this player had COVID-19 prior to arriving and tried to fight through it, but ultimately threw in the towel and returned home early. Instead of the sympathy the player hoped for, he was derided for willingly going to the FanFest while infected with a potentially deadly disease. It was pointed out that he was risking a superspreader event at the convention floor, the airports, and the planes he flew on. Thus, this player might have gotten con staff, production staff, airport workers, and his fellow XIV fans killed from a horrible disease, all because he wanted to go to a video game convention while he knew he was sick. The player who drew the comic was mocked for his self-righteous and entitled attitude towards the event, with those who viewed the comic saying that this player really needed to get his priorities straight. This included suggestions that the player had a humiliation kink after all of the mockery was rained down on him.
• Yoshi-P(rimal) ^ExplanationAt FanFest 2023, Naoki Yoshida remarked onstage how he believes he'll keep working on XIV until the day he dies because of how much he loves the project, jokingly adding that he could possibly keep going even after he dies. Fans have joked that the fandom's love and zeal for Yoshi-P will turn him into a primal/eikon that could be summoned by the playerbase so he can keep working on his passion forever.
• "Extreme Raid Prog"^ExplanationA Bait-and-Switch name for "ERP", the acronym for Erotic Roleplay. Veterans like to mess with new players by trying to hype up "ERP" as endgame content, who are usually none the wiser for what it actually means. It's about as harmless as the "ligma balls" joke, as propagators of the joke don't actually go through with making the roleplay session.
• "Okay, I forgive you." ^ExplanationSo many villains are given the "Tragic Villain" treatment who just need forgiveness. Regardless of what they did and whether or not people feel they deserve it. This is related to a few series of Kingdom Hearts parodies that repeatedly use "Okay, I believe you!" as somewhat of a catchphrase.
• Japanese Internet^ExplanationFinal Fantasy XIV appears to be designed with the assumption everyone has internet like that of Japan - when it's as much as seven million times faster than that of the rest of the world. This would ultimately rear its ugly head during the Fall Guys collab, intended to simulate a more synced-up Battle Royale Game, to the point that it was reported on by gaming news sources.
• "Modbeast". ^ExplanationSome people run mods that change their character so much they look hideously out of place.
• "Final Fantasy XIV is a very immersive MMORPG experience^ExplanationSimilar to how many say Yakuza is a very serious crime drama sarcastically, people say the same about this game too.
• Despite the Creator Worship, plenty of memes have been made about who Square-Enix actually listens to:
  • "Great feedback - now learn Japanese so YoshiP / Square-Enix / the devs can read it." ^ExplanationBecause Square-Enix is a Japanese company, feedback that isn't in Japanese usually doesn't make it to them. what also doesn't help is that many decision-making managers and designers usually don't read official forums that aren't the Japanese ones - so feedback from players outside of Japan on issues such as lag usually don't make it to them. YoshiP has allegedly expressed confusion when asked by people about fixing issues with server lag. Some people have even gone so far as to comment that the only way for the game to truly improve is for an issue to affect the Japanese players.
  • Square only listens to Japanese players. ^ExplanationAn evolved meme from Final Fantasy XI where English-speaking players accuse the developers only paying attention to feedback from the Japanese players due to said developers responding on the Japanese forums much more often, and completely ignoring various community problems that plague the NA/EU servers but are nonexistent on JP servers, such as Real Money Trade and lag
  • Square only listens to Balmung. ^ExplanationA similar meme to the previous one where people accused and passive aggressively joked that the developers were only listening to players from Balmung due to Yoshida in a live letter taking a lot of questions from Balmung players and addressing questions regarding role playing.
  • "The western audience is bigger, so YoshiP / Square-Enix / The Devs listen to them, more." ^ExplanationThose who know Japanese point out that the Japanese audience has a similar complaint - that their concerns / needs about the game are largely ignored in favour of catering to the western audience simply because they are a bigger number than they are.
  • Great community, btw. ^ExplanationOften done whenever flame wars or disagreements appear, especially in regards to people pointing out Square-Enix does/does not listen to community feedback.
  • The grass is much greener on the other side it seems...
  • Feedback is a game of telephone. ^ExplanationSquare-Enix does employ community managers in other parts of the world, but for feedback to reach decision-making managers, it has to go through people who speak Japanese.
• FFXIV is no longer a great community, btw. ^ExplanationAfter Baldurs Gate 3 won "Best community support" in the 2023 game awards, people made jokes that the FFXIV community is no longer great. Others tried to cite other reasons for it - including Endwalker's perceived Seasonal Rot, the Newbie Boom, or blaming the World of Warcraft players.
• Yoshi-P's Shirt ^ExplanationFans realized over the years that director Naoki Yoshida would often wear t-shirts alluding to upcoming jobs at each Fanfest. This leads to rampant speculation based on minor details on each shirt. While some hints are more obvious (a Scarlet Witch t-shirt in advance of Red Mage), others are more esoteric (i.e. Pictomancer was alluded to by a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt, as all of the protagonists are named after famous artists).
• "Marsha Brady" ^ExplanationOne (Rarely used) customisation feature gives female Roegadyn a more bestial nose like Merlwyb. Some people think this makes them look like their nose was broken like Marsha Brady in an episode of "The Brady Bunch".
• "Roegadyn are the Fantasy MMO meme" ^ExplanationFemale Roegadyn are notably smaller and slimmer than their male counterparts due to being a stretched Midlander Hyur model. (This was done on the cheap) This was compared to a meme making fun of other fantasy races where the women look more "human" whereas the men look more monstrous or bestial.
• Healer priv(ilege)^ExplanationAs a general rule, queue times for a given role are inversely proportionate to how common that role is in the Duty Finder. Healers, naturally, are the rarest role, and sitting in queue as a healer for longer than five minutes is unheard of, except maybe during the deadest of dead hours for a given data center.
• You clap for Peak Fiction. You weep in sorrow before Peak Fiction. You stagger before Peak Fiction. You kneel before Peak Fiction. ^Explanation A very popular image in which an unknown player uses the emote system to produce these chat messages in-game to a character called Peak Fiction, originally used to praise certain moments in the MSQ, but has since spread outside the FFXIV fanbase as a general reaction image to (ironically or unironically) praise a story.
• "Acorns Savage" ^ExplanationThe Gold Saucer GATE Leap of Faith currently has three maps, one for each of the three major regions in ARR. The most recently-added map, "Sylphstep" (based in the Black Shroud's Sylphlands), is widely seen as the hardest one, with one of the obstacles requiring the player to jump over a series of acorns and pine cones. The game engine already makes for an awkward platformer, and the acorns provide plenty of Hitbox Dissonance such that a lot of players struggle whenever this obstacle is placed on the map.
• "It's only Lv __" ^ExplanationA condescending dismissal of content below the current level cap, used as a way of insinuating the duty is not important and thus not worth taking seriously. Most prevalent at Lv 50 and below, usually from over-geared veterans will issue the rebuttal to players who attempt such practices as "engaging safe numbers of enemies rather than everything possible at once" or "actually doing boss mechanics instead of just attacking"; occasionally seen in any duty with a cutscene, from people who have skipped it and engaged a boss before those still watching are finished; rarely seen as high as Lv 83, by Trolls who will deliberately screw up mechanics or waste a Limit Break on a sub-optimal usage or when the healers want to preserve it as a last resort.
• "Lol spaghetti" ^ExplanationFinal Fantasy XIV's english script is quite wordy and flowery - whereas a lot of people who read the Japanese script interpret it as much more direct and to the point. So some people have taken to describing the English script as "Lol spaghetti" both as a non sequitur to make fun of the Early Modern English-sounding script and those who read a more literal interpretation of the Japanese script.
• How did you end up on the First?! ^ExplanationTo celebrate the game coming to Xbox, a tweet was made from the Xbox account with a picture of a cute Miqo'te girl waving with a question asking where the first dungeon was. However, players quickly realized the background of the picture was of Il Mheg, on the First Shard. Jokes flew quickly, ranging from the stereotypical idea of players level skipping without knowing the mechanics to the girl having Roronoa Zoro-levels of No Sense of Direction to the Crystal Exarch really having bad luck (or at least missing his temporal mark again) when recruiting the Warrior of Light.

Legacy

• LOLPATCH X.XX ^ExplanationA 1.0 meme, frequently posted on the official forums after a patch deemed useless goes live. Or when a massive patch goes live. Heck, when any patch goes live.
• ARC ARC ARC ARC ARC CON CON GLA ^ExplanationRefers to the "optimal" class setup for clearing the 1.0 version of the Dzemael Darkhold, which is simply including as few melee classes as possible.

A Realm Reborn

• Limsa Lominsa Chat^ExplanationDue to having its marketplace right next to the Aetheryte Plaza, it's the most crowded of the three city-states. That said, it's also infamous for inviting some...interesting conversations and people, gaining its reputation for being a Cloudcuckoo Land.
• Thancred no^ExplanationMinfilia's Dull Surprise moment of shouting this at the revelation of him being possessed by Lahabrea was supposed to be a dramatic moment, but ended up in Narm territory. Now the line gets associated with a number of things, such as poor judgment choices on his behalf, or Thancred's old idle animation of checking the sharpness of his dagger right around the corner from others in the Waking Sands like he's about to kill them.
• Praetorium Chat^ExplanationDue to Praetorium being the more common MSQ Queue result, and it having a number of cutscenes, Party Chat during said dungeon has become filled with various memes or jokes made during the dungeon, ranging from joking about Gaius/Nero monologuing forever, calling Lahabrea "Lahabread", to players jokingly interacting with Gaius in ways like asking him to do pirate impressions during the fight with him.. More specific memes include:
  • "SUCH DEVASTATION! THIS WAS NOT MY INTENTION" ^ExplanationIn the Praetorium, while using the Ultima weapon against the Warrior of Light, Lahabrea convinces Gaius to use the Ultima spell, which ends up blowing up the entire Praetorium. Gaius's reaction is this line, hammily spoken by Richard Epcar.
  • Tell me, for whom do you fight? (gets no response) How very glib!^ExplanationGaius' first voiced line in the Praetorium has him directly questioning the player character about why they fight. Originally, the player could choose a response but as the years went by and more expansions were released, less players spent time actually letting cutscenes play before rushing through the instance to get the reward for the Main Scenario Roulette. The problem is said instance serves as the finale to the initial Realm Reborn story. This left new players just running the instance as part of the main story in the dark as to what happened, their only recourse in game being to watch the cutscenes in an inn. Eventually, the cutscenes were made unskippable, and all dialogue choices were removed. Thus leaving the amusing image of the player character responding via facial expression, which Gaius accepts as an eloquent response. The line was eventually changed in Patch 6.3, leaving many fans mourning the lost meme.
  • Praetorium speedrun. ^ExplanationDue to how long the dungeon is, players have either joked, or actually tried to find ways of shaving off as much time as possible to get the dungeon over with faster. By far the most common one is adjusting the voices to Japanese because of how the Japanese language is handled meaning the cutscenes end a few seconds before the English ones.
  • Praetorium divorce. ^ExplanationA common nickname given to Nero’s Motive Rant before his boss fight, joking that his tirade towards Cid sounds like a jilted lover tearing into their ex.
• Greg ^ExplanationThe name Inspector Hildibrand mistakenly calls Gilgamesh. It promptly became a Fan Nickname for him.
• Welcome to the Bone Zone ^ExplanationA reference to the first boss of the Crystal Tower Labyrinth, Bone Dragon, usually in regard to the tanks' duties in dealing with the skeletal Platinals.
• More Donuts. ^ExplanationFan Nickname for Mor Dhona, though how it came to be is anyone's guess. Some speculate that it was a nickname for the area's map design in 1.0, which looked like a donut.
• Pray return to the Waking Sands. ^ExplanationThe Waking Sands is the base of operations for the Scions of the Seventh Dawn at the beginning of the story. The main scenario quest makes you go there a lot, which is annoying since there's no way to conveniently teleport there; your options are to teleport to Horizon and walk all the way over, or go to Limsa Lominsa and take a ferry directly there. It's especially annoying after the Scions move their base to Mor Dhona, but the MSQ and various sidequests still make you go there.
  • This has become something of an Ascended Meme in Shadowbringers, as one of the FATEs in Amh Aerang is called "Pray Destroy the Waking Sands".
• "Has anyone seen Naul?" "Nault today!" ^ExplanationA very groan-worthy pun whenever someone asks where the B hunt mark, Naul, was last seen. Especially prevalent during the launch of patch 2.3, which introduced Hunt Marks — Naul was the very first Elite Mark bill, and was hunted down mercilessly.
• Cape Westwind is the hardest trial in the game. ^{Explanation (spoilers)}It's common to troll newbies by hyping up Rhitatyn, the boss of the game's first 8-man trial, as a massive challenge. In fact, he frequently goes down in under a minute. In some instances, the parties will even bet on whether or not one of their tanks can solo Rhitatyn.
  • Cape Westwind was removed for being impossible to clear. ^Explanation After it was anounced that Cape Westwind would be removed as an 8-man trial and replaced with a solo instance in Patch 6.1 fans began joking (and later Square itself joined the fun) that the original trial was so difficult that Square had to remove it.
• Yuyuhase's deep voice ^{Explanation (spoilers)}An infamous Vocal Dissonance moment due to the fact the Crystal Braves have voiced roles on the scene revealing they've set up a coup. Players that have their game's voice language to Japanese are more often than not shocked at how jarringly deep Yuyuhase sounds, especially considering he's a lalafell, who look like children. Some players end up finding the juxtaposition hilarious after the initial whiplash, though.
• Sniff the Chocobo. ^ExplanationThe Seventh Astral Era had a lot of Padding because Heavensward wasn't ready. One particular (removed) quest, "If Wishes were Horsebirds", required players to literally sniff a chocobo.
  • "This is my life now..."
• Crystal Tower strippers. ^ExplanationHigh-level players looking to get their daily roulette bonuses as fast as possible often cheat the system by removing most of their gear before queuing into alliance raid roulette, putting them below the minimum item level for most raids so it can only place them in the Crystal Tower series. This is a source of great annoyance to players who need to run one of the later raids and have to deal with excessively long queues as a result, as well as roulette-running players who are just heartily bored of CT.
  • "Don't you people EVER get bored of Crystal Tower?!"^ExplanationPlayers frustrated with getting the Crystal Tower over and over again in the roulettes sometimes ask this after getting weeks of nothing but Crystal Tower day after day.
  • Crystal Tower strippers are crying.^ExplanationDuring the Live Letter for patch 6.5, it was announced that a change would be made to the Alliance Raid roulette to close the "Crystal Tower stripper" loophole. After that patch, a player couldn't queue in to the Alliance Raid roulette unless they met both a job level and an item level. Cue a lot of memes, posts, and mockery towards high-level players who were mad at this change, characterizing them as Sore Losers who were angry that they couldn't cheat the system anymore.
• A = adds, B = belly, C = chains.^ExplanationThe penultimate fight of the World of Darkness 24-man raid is Cerberus, who requires some very specific mechanics to beat. It's likely someone will say some variation of this phrase before the fight starts, as the community has decided that each alliance has been given a specific task in this fight. Alliance A takes care of the weaker enemies (or "adds", as they're often called), Alliance B will be shrunk and swallowed by Cerberus to attack its insides in order to make it slump in pain, and Alliance C will grab the chains to re-fetter Cerberus and return it to its weaker state once it's slumped over. After the Crystal Tower raids became mandatory to advance the MSQ, this started showing up far more often.
  • (A)ll DPS in the belly, (B)etter get in the belly, (C)an't wait to see the DPS go in the belly ^Explanation The "adds belly chain" strategy was created back when the World of Darkness was current content, before four expansions' worth of Power Creep. As such, it tends to draw a lot of mockery for being unnecessarily cautious compared to just having all of the DPS players get swallowed, leading to a counter-mnemonic.

Heavensward

• Stinky Estinien. ^{Explanation (spoilers)} In Heavensward, after the events of The Aery, Estinien gouges out Nidhogg's eye and as a result his black armor turns a crimson color, being completely soaked in blood. He proceeds to wear this blood-soaked armor for the rest of the 3.0 main story quest, despite saying after the fight that he was going to change out of it. This ends up biting him in the ass at the end of 3.0's story, as this makes him much more vulnerable to getting his body taken over by Nidhogg when he acquires both of Nidhogg's eyes, though in his defense, he actually mentions trying to wash it off at some point but being unable to. Since then, it's become commonly poked fun at for being a bit silly on the Dragoon's part. Even the official twitter for the game poked fun at it.
• "Sickness must be purged!"/"Filthy rats!"/"This shall be a mercy!" ^ExplanationCharibert, the final dungeon boss for the Vault, says this line every time he uses a specific attack in a rather hammy tone, notable for being a battle that has voiced lines. Some find it amusing, others annoying.
• Pepsi Man ^ExplanationLiving Liquid, the third fight of the Gordias tier of Alexander was a blue and largely featureless humanoid, kind of like Pepsi's old mascot of sorts. The savage version was also notoriously a static killer as it was very challenging compared to what had come before mechanically and had a very strict enrage timer (that initially was impossible to clear on week 1, players needed to upgrade their ilvl with savage and tomestone gear to have a chance of clearing the fight as crafted gear wasn't enough. It combined with the final fight led to one of the longest times to World First clear that wasn't held up by bugs, and led the developers to try being more lenient in future tiers. It's infamy is such that when the ultimate fight "The Epic of Alexander" came out, it was not the Manipulator, the final boss of the tier that was the tier's boss rep but Living Liquid that appeared as the first part of the fight.
• Fucking moogles! ^Explanation3.0 had a lot of people upset and angry at the moogles in the Churning Mists due to nearly every sidequest from them involved going all over the huge map in an overly long Fetch Quest with some objectives being difficult to find thanks to needing to search high and low while flying. What also did not help was the moogles being incredibly lazy and barely try to hide that fact when they ask the player to assist them.
• Wiping City/Wiping City of Salt. ^ExplanationNickname for The Weeping City of Mhach raid due to its higher difficulty compared to Void Ark that has lead to many uncoordinated alliances to wipe against certain bosses over and over, followed by people getting upset at their alliance's incompetence.
• Active Time Maneuver.... READY! ^ExplanationThe third fight in the final wing of Alexander (aka A11) Cruise Chaser is the first fight in the game to include a transition involving a quick time event. Usually paired with a reference to its theme song, which has quickly become a fan favorite
• Holy vore. ^{Explanation (spoilers)}It's revealed that Hraesvelgr was asked to "consume" his beloved Shiva at one point. One might at first think this was some sort of ritual or figure of speech, but it's later revealed that it's Not Hyperbole; Shiva asked Hraesvelgr to literally eat her like she was a kernel of popcorn. Cue numerous jokes from the fandom about "holy vore" from the dragon and the maiden, namely for how unintentionally silly it is.
• Sloppy! ^{Explanation (slight spoilers)}The last boss of Baelsar's Wall in patch 3.5 will say this line in a very condescending manner whenever he casts a powerful attack, which is to say, most of the fight. It doesn't help that the man saying it is very much despised by players already.◊
• Skipping Soar. ^ExplanationContainment Bay Z1T9 (Extreme) has an attack early on named Soar, which involves precise positioning and coordination. If the party can output enough damage before Zurvan uses Soar, however, Soar won't happen and the fight will move onto the next (much simpler) phase. For whatever reason, many Party Finder groups for Zurvan EX decided that skipping Soar was paramount in succeeding, and began labelling their parties with such things as "must skip soar, low dps = kick/blacklist" and "skip soar or disband". It quickly became common to mock these melodramatic groups by adding completely absurd requirements to Zurvan parties, like "must have minimum of 3 PhDs" or "fight lasts longer than 20 seconds = reporting all dps".
• Piss off, kupo! ^ExplanationWhen the Moogle Beast Tribe was added in Heavensward, this was the dialogue choice you could choose to refuse to start the questline when first prompted. Considering how the Moogle-focused parts of Heavensward's main quest are near universally reviled for their overreliance on fetch quests and the general unlikeability of the Moogles themselves, this dialogue choice quickly became one of the most popular Warrior of Light lines in the game.
• Church sucks because they won't let you fuck dragons. ^ExplanationA joke from Twitter that often gets described as being the plot of Heavensward.
• Au Ra were made playable this expansion - which resulted in a lot of jokes about the male Au Ra's run cycles:
  • Crash Bandicoot Run.
  • Ministry of Silly Runs.
  • The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Run

Stormblood

• "Sword of Oath", "Shield of Oath" and "Bio is Bio" ^Explanation During the 21st live letter detailing all the class abilities in Heavensward, Yoshida's translator, most likely owing to having both a long day and long session, started to do really bad at translating Yoshida's words to English, resulting in some pretty nonsensical statements. They learned from their blunder and allowed the translator to take her time in translating for Yoshida in the Live Letter showing off the new job skills for Stormblood.
• Rescue me! ^ExplanationThe reveal of the Rescue skill for cross role healer jobs in Stormblood prompted many people to joke or assume that DPS players would stand in an AOE on purpose to maximize their DPS output while assuming a healer would yank them out of it.
• Raubahn and blocking progress. ^ExplanationThe launch of Stormblood suffered from a number of technical issues. The most notable one was the very first combat instance involving Raubahn leading an ambush on a Garlean patrol. Due to the sheer amount of people trying to get in during the early days of the expansion, the instance was in a constant state of overload, preventing all progress further into Stormblood. Even numerous attempts at damage control (such as logging inactive players out and even the playerbase forming lines in-game to wait their turn) didn't help matters much. Cue numerous jokes and memes about Raubahn being such a badass that he could single-handedly keep the entire playerbase at bay.
  • Raubahn and Pipin Savage/EX. ^ExplanationAn extension of the previous joke, where players put Raubahn and Pipin on the same level as an Extreme primal or Savage raid due to the sheer amount of players who couldn't get past them.
  • Alpha and Alphinaud Savage/EX. ^ExplanationA copy of the previous Raubahn and Pipin meme, where patch 4.2 brought back the exact same issues in a different spot.
  • Chair EX. ^{Explanation (spoilers)}Another copy of the previous memes, where a solo duty near the end of patch 4.3 caused similar problems. However, this one was extra ridiculous, as the instance was started by sitting on a chair, causing the playerbase to develop Enmity with an Object by hating this one particular chair.
  • "A system error occurred during event movement." ^ExplanationThe infamous error message that popped up whenever the server had problems transferring the player to instanced content during 4.0 and 4.2.
  • Raubahn was just trying to protect us! ^ExplanationAn even worse Game-Breaking Bug in a trial shortly after Raubahn's instance occurred during the launch of Stormblood — it temporarily locked you out of your account before SE fixed the issue in a patch. This has led to the playerbase joking that Raubahn was stopping everyone on purpose to prevent players from falling victim to the bug.
  • Noctis EX ^ExplanationThe initial launch of the Final Fantasy XV event was similarly buggy and resulted in players being locked out of their characters.
    • slaps rooftop This bad boy can fit so much 90k!
  • Yoshi-P EX ^ExplanationThe Live Letter from the Editor LI was plagued by audio bugs, delaying the stream for an hour. Poor Yoshi-P looked so exasperated.
• It's like all my namedays have come at once! ^ExplanationGrynewaht comes out with this line during the cutscene preceding the instanced portion of "Best Served With Cold Steel". Thanks to the infamous technical issues plaguing the battle during Stormblood's launch, players heard it a lot. Became an Ascended Meme in this blog post. It also got referenced in one of the Blue Mage job quests where an NPC recites the meme word for word.
• She can stomp on me anytime! ^ExplanationThe more perverted reactions to the reveal of Yotsuyu, who was shown stomping on Gosetsu's head with her heel.
• Y'all need to chill out a little bit. ^ExplanationYoshida's response to angry White Mage players that were upset to the changes made to their class when it was revealed.
• Fuck you to the tumultuous heavens! ^ExplanationSusano calls out his lightning marker attacks with a shout of "Hark you to the tumultuous heavens!" — but players heard the voice line a little differently. "Helped" by the fact that in bad pickup groups, said line tends to herald mass death, if not an outright wipe.
• Shirogane (Savage), Shirogane Massacre, Shirogane Bloodbath, etc. ^ExplanationSome of the many nicknames given to the day Patch 4.1 dropped and people went insane trying to get houses within Shirogane. Expanded to "Housing (Savage)", "The Goblet (Ultimate)", and so on as 4.2 added an invisible timer on purchasing relinquished plots (effectively requiring new homeowners to camp a placard for 6-24 hours just to try) and especially after Shadowbringers massively increased the size of the playerbase (and so the number of people seeking land and competing for these plots)
• Lakshmi's bosom. ^ExplanationWhen using her Signature Attack, "Alluring Embrace", Lakshmi creates a giant projection of herself and declares, "Ressst your weary sssouls in my bosom. Partake of my life and my love..." A lot of players seem all right with "resting in her bosom."
• MOTHERFUCKIN' HYPE (DOOM) TRAIN!^ExplanationIn the lead up to Letter from the Producer XLI, there was a small video showing off Yoshi-P and a few others dressed up like a train. The trailer for Patch 4.2 later revealed that the Phantom Train would be a boss in the game.
• UWU ^ExplanationShorthand for the second Ultimate challenge, "The Minstrel's Ballad: The Weapon's Refrain (Ultimate)". Almost all trials are informally referred to as "[boss name] [difficulty]", making this "Ultima Weapon Ultimate", or uwu
• Safe Spot ^ExplanationAn image from a guide to The Weapon's Refrain (Ultimate) which shows almost the entire arena covered in massive AoE attacks except for one really tiny space in the bottom left which is conveniently labeled to help readers notice the incredibly tiny opening in all the attacks.
• Ridorana Lighthouse spawned several memes on the first day of its implementation. Here are some of them:
  • The Ridorana Wipehouse ^ExplanationSimilar to The Weeping City of Mhach above, the Lighthouse had a difficulty spike compared to Rabanastre, along with bosses that required a degree of coordination between the alliances.
  • Red Chocobo Calamity ^ExplanationPart of the quest chains that unlock the Ridorana Lighthouse raid has you searching for Montblanc, who is attacked by a pair of red chocobos. The chocobos can use Choco Meteor and they use it a lot, which inflicts Vulnerability Up and can stack. While it's a perfectly reasonable encounter under normal circumstances, on the day the patch went live, a lot of players were going for the quest all at once, which resulted in a lot of chocobos spawning all at once, a lot of meteors going off, and tons of players dying.
  • Tide Pod ^ExplanationFamfrit, one of the bosses of Ridorana Lighthouse, has a tankbuster called Tide Pod. This immediately went memetic as soon as it was discovered (the Tide Pod challenge itself became a meme due to how many people tried to eat or bite the Tide Pod laundry detergents) Made even more hilarious when the puddles it spawns are orange and blue.
  • Simple math: OH THE HORROR! ^ExplanationYet another meme spawned from Ridorana Lighthouse, the boss Construct 7, has a mechanic which requires you to stand in specific areas to proceed, with said mechanic requiring you to perform some simple math calculations and eventually, calculating prime numbers. The sheer number of wipes caused by people messing this mechanic up became instantly memetic, joking that Yoshi-P has too much faith in the playerbase.
    FF14 Player: so if I use this materia I can have a .79% increase on my dps and this materia will lower my GCD by .009 which allows me to-
    Construct 7: lmao what's 9+2
    FF14 Player: WHAT THE FUCK ^ExplanationA text post on the subreddit made into an image◊, mocking the playerbase for being able to do advanced calculations for insignificant gains, yet fail to the simple math of Construct 7.
  • SCREAM LOUDAH! I WANT TO REMEMBER THIS! ^ExplanationYiazmat, the final boss of the Ridorana Lighthouse, just utterly chews the scenery, practically screaming all his lines. He also has an inexplicable cockney accent which the Bangaa he came from did not have. It instantly made him memorable.
  • The primality of 1 ^Explanation1 isn't a prime number — there are very good mathematical reasons for this, but it's not intuitive, particularly because it's also plainly not a composite number. Because it's not intuitive that 1 isn't prime, many players make a point to remind their group of this as the fight begins, which often leads trolls or the legitimately uninformed to argue the opposite (Usually along the lines of "if a prime is anything only reducable by 1 and itself, that includes 1, right?" Which it doesn't). Especially prominent in duty roulette groups.
• GAIUS LIVES! ^{Explanation with spoilers}The end of patch 4.3 has a MSQ where an unknown Garlean assists the player in battle. The man reveals he had some crossings with the Scions before and the game zooms in on a mask at the man's hip, which appears to be the face plate from Gaius' helmet. Fans immediately cheered that their favorite villain finally made a return.
  • THE LEGEND NEVER DIES! ^ExplanationPretty much the same as the meme above, playing on the character's strong fanbase.
• Eureka has spawned several memes on its own as well:
  • We waited (17) months for this!? ^ExplanationThe launch of Eureka was not given a warm reception by the players due to massively grind happy the content was for relics and dyeable artifact armor. The reception was even worse when one remembers that Eureka was delayed twice and the devs touted that the content would be "something never seen before". Needless to say, people were not too happy with the results.
  • Has Pazuzu spawned yet? ^ExplanationOnce players got to a high enough level in Eureka for the final Notorious Monster, Pazuzu, to drop an item needed for the final Stormblood relic weapon upgrade, it became not uncommon to see this ringing throughout the instances of Eureka (or some other variation of the phrase). Sometimes done by the same players multiple times, due to Eureka being the only instanced multiplayer content to not impose a penalty for leaving an instance, allowing players to surf across Eureka instances for Pazuzu.
  • Bear puns ^ExplanationOne of the Notorious Monsters in Eureka Anemos is a big bear spawned by killing little bears. For some reason, it became a thing to spam awful bear puns in shout chat whenever your group is hunting this enemy.
  • All aboard the train! Choo-choo! ^ExplanationThe most optimal way to gain a lot of EXP in Eureka Anemos is to follow groups of players that are spawning Notorious Monsters, kill said monsters, and then rinse and repeat as everyone goes from one monster to the next like a train. It hardly works in Pagos, unfortunately, since the Notorious Monsters spawned less frequently there.
    • THE TRAIN IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE CHAIN! ^ExplanationThe memetic response of players in Eureka Pagos, the sequel to Anemos, where Notorious Monsters not only spawned less frequently, but the EXP gained from slaying them was barely worth focusing down the monsters needed to spawn them. It became faster to chain kill regular Pagos enemies, which also fulfilled Eureka challenge logs.
    • THE CHAIN IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE TRAIN! ^ExplanationA response to the above meme after a hotfix, when EXP with Pagos Notorious Monsters was buffed significantly, and the number of monsters needed to spawn them was reduced as well (though many agree that chaining regular mobs was more effective for the relic light grind).
  • "Please learn how to do that." ^ExplanationYoshida's response towards players that complained about the very lengthy EXP and aether grinding in Eureka Pagos, which many took it as a polite way of saying "get good." Fans were very livid by the response while others quickly took the phrase to snark levels by mocking all content that needed adjustment by saying the phrase.
• WASSHOI! ^ExplanationThe Namazu beast tribe have a mount that is basically a parade float. Some quests have you using it to spread cheer to other Namazu and encourage you to give a big hearty "WASSHOI!" although you aren't actually required to say it.
• Y'shtola (Savage) ^{Explanation (spoilers)}After Y'shtola fights Magnai on the Azim Steppe in 4.4, he is so moved by her grace and strength that he asks her if she's his Nhaama. Y'shotla, not wanting to be hit on, bluntly tells him "I am not interested, little sun. Try again when you've become a man". Magnai can only say "Little...?" while sounding like he's on the verge of tears. As such, the fandom has taken Y'shtola shooting down Magnai as if she crushed his spirit completely.
  • Y'shtola: The Burn ^ExplanationSame as the above meme, but with a reference to a dungeon with the same name.
• STARBOARD LARBOARD ^ExplanationRefers to which broadside Omega's Wave Cannon fired to in Alphascape 3.0. While starboard is a naval terminology used by sailors to this day, the term larboard had long been replaced by the term "port" specifically for being confusingly similar to "starboard". Combined with the fact that which side Omega fires to depends to where Omega is facing, it caused much confusion even among the players who are familiar with the aforementioned naval terminologies.
  • "Why not just use port/left?!" ^ExplanationAt least once a raid, you'll hear someone ask this when they mistakenly get hit with "Larboard", or more generically, they'll just say 'left'
  • "Your Other Left".
  • "But they use 'Left' and 'Right' in Japanese!^ExplanationIn Japanese, the translation when read literally is "Leftshipside" and "Rightshipside" - so thus "Port" and "Starboard" are much more correct.
• CHICKEN TENDERRRRRRRS ARE READY TO FRY^ExplanationA mondegreen of Omega's theme "eScape", due to the lyrics being hard to make out. Eventually got acknowledged by the Omega Smart Home Assistant video for April Fools Day 2019.
• The hype and implementation surrounding the Blue Mage lead to several memes spawned around it.
  • Pimp Mage ^Explanation Blue Mage's reveal at the 2018 fan fest showed the character wearing a very stylish hat, a cape, and wielding a cane for a weapon.
  • Fish Mage ^Explanation One of the Blue Mage's spells is Flying Sardine, which has characters spit fish out of their mouths to interrupt enemies' attacks. Cue fanart of Blue Mages trolling people by spitting fish at them.
  • Now I can kill myself! ^Explanation Another Blue Mage spell is the Bomb's "Self-Destruct" spell, which deals massive damage at the cost of your life. Many players consider it a free version of the emote "Play Dead". You couldn't go two feet in any city area where people were strewn about dead since you normally can't be hurt inside a city.
    • Return II ^ExplanationYour Return spell is on cooldown? Self-Destruct! Also an easy way to reset boss matches, and lets you cheese Those Particular Sightseeing Vistas by letting someone else raise you to the target point. It was nerfed in 5.1 by having the spell inflict "Brush with Death", rendering the spell unusable for 10 minutes... which is still a shorter cooldown than Return, which can only be used every 15.
  • BLU is great side content! ^Explanation Due to its status as a "limited job", Blue Mage can't participate in the majority of duty finder content unless they are in a preformed party. Furthermore, the Blue Mage's level cap is independent of other jobs; at launch in Stormblood, they were capped at 50 (thus limited to A Realm Reborn content), and as of Patch 6.45, they are currently capped at 80 (thus barred from Endwalker). Finally, even a sufficiently-levelled Blue Mage is prohibited from participating in the MSQ (regardless of whether one is playing through for the first time or using the New Game Plus feature) for reasons unclear. Many people have dubbed BLU as a mini-game or side content to do just to kill time.
• DENIZENS OF THE ABYSS! FROM INK OF BLACKEST NIGHT! I SUMMOn you... ^Explanation Ultima in the Orbonne Monastery raid says this a freaking lot when she summons her minions. It doesn't help that there's a bug in the audio playback where she gets cut-off at the word "summon".
  • KNEEL BEFORE ME! ^Explanation Ultima again, who is also very fond of saying this a lot.
• Yes, yes! ^Explanation This is the Verbal Tic of the Namazu beastmen, which is how they always end their affirmations.
• Oreo ^ExplanationA Japanese exclusive meme related to Asahi. Based off his line where he says 'Ore wo' (Japanese for 'I') which sounds like he was saying 'oreo'. They found this to be a humorous mishearing that goes well with his psychotic smirk, acting as the Japanese equivalent of the "Sloppeh" meme above. Here is a clip of the scene. It was notable enough that Square Enix made Asahi masks based off the scene◊.
• Zenos's ass ^ExplanationThe coattails on Zenos's first outfit are shaped in a way that makes it looks like he has a ridiculously big butt, causing many to jokingly call him juicy.
• Showing Mustadio your hole ^ExplanationMustadio, first boss of the Orbonne Monastery, has an attack wherein players are surrounded by a C-shaped target and must face the opening towards him or take lethal damage. Naturally, players like to explain this mechanic in a way that makes it sound like a very different hole.
• Comedic misinterpretations about the Choir in Stormblood's theme. Some of these include things like "There's no stuff at all - hear the pizza fall, sweating it's so hot!".
• "When did the Warrior questline become Hildibrand?"^ExplanationStormblood denotes a massive tonal shift for the Warrior job quests - in which characters go from angsting about the damage one's "Inner Beast" can cause to suddenly Comically Missing the Point, flying into the water, and awkward close-ups. When one goes straight from Heavensward to Stormblood, it's borderline Mood Whiplash.
  • "When your mentor was named 'Curious Gorge'."

Shadowbringers

• baracat ^ExplanationRefers to the new playable race the Hrothgar. This all-male race features muscular cat men of the anthropomorphic variety.
• Urianger adjust! ^{Explanation (Spoilers)}In Shadowbringers, the Scions update their skill sets from Classes to Jobs, with Y'Shtola getting Black Mage and Urianger getting Astrologian for the Trust system. Naturally, players proceeded to apply the "Healers Adjust" meme, as shown in this fanart◊.
• 0.1% Wipe. ^ExplanationOne of the changes to the HUD in Shadowbringers is the fact that enemies now show decimals for how much HP they have left when they get below one percent health. As such, the playerbase has made jokes, memes, and stories about a Total Party Kill when the boss they were fighting had 0.1 percent of its health remaining, and the despair that comes with wiping out when the party almost had it.
• Soundbringers ^Explanation Roughly the first hour of the Live Letter from the Producer LI consisted of the team trying to get in-game sound to work for the stream, with ear-deafening results at a few moments, before they decided to just have sound play second-handedly through a microphone. The community went to town on this extensive period with memes on the team trying to conquer these sound issues as if they were a trial/raid.
• HOLY-!!^{Explanation (spoilers!)}The E3 Launch Trailer for Shadowbringers revealed that Hydaelyn and Zodiark, the goddess who has guided us and the dark god we're meant to stop are actually Elder Primals stunned the audience silly. After the trailer was over, one guy expressed everyone's reaction with a loud shout of "HOLY-!!" before he was cut off, which turned into a meme.
• Welcome to Shadowbringers. ^{Explanation (Spoilers!)}Veteran players will often say this to newer players that finish watching Tesleen's Sin Eater transformation, which is cited as one of the most memorable shocking moments that happen in the story, both as Nightmare Fuel and for setting the upcoming tone of the expansion.
• laa HEEEE ^ExplanationThe music for the Rak'tika Greatwood carries some partial vocals, with a notable "laa HEEEE" at the very start of the loop. Many agree that the music is great, but that particular vocal is repeated amongst the community due to how often it is heard. So much so that it ascended into becoming a Qitari quest name that makes you say it aloud!
  • I HAVE EBOLA! ^Explanation A mishearing for the same song, said right after the LA HEE.
    • Taken to its extreme and final conclusion: Soken himself singing LA HEE during the fan festival, while playing the Otamatone. It's as crazy as it sounds.
  • KEIKO's :| face.^ExplanationOn Day 1 of the 2021 Fan Fest, Masayoshi Soken came out and, after messing with a few electronic devices, asked everyone "Do you know... 'Lahee'?". The camera turned to pianist KEIKO, who is giving a look that says "Okay... we're actually doing this." The song and her response was both hilarious and had people wishing for Orchestration Rolls.
    • Nanamo's :| face ^{Explanation (5. 55 spoilers)}During "The Company You Keep," the Sahagin Priest in the room lets out a war cry that's a mood killer but is more of a Pardon My Klingon moment. Nanamo's expression was superimposed on Keiko's face.
• Crystal Exarch Confirmed For Smash!^ExplanationAt one point, one conversation with the Crystal Exarch will have him raise up a letter sealed with a red wax seal. Such a letter is sometimes used in trailers for Super Smash Bros. as an invitation for a character to be in the game, leading to jokes that the Crystal Exarch was going to be added as a fighter.
• twinning.mp4^ExplanationMany players agree that "A Long Fall" is a catchy beat that people can dance to, having a couple of videos titled this way eventually making the rounds on YouTube. Eventually got acknowledged during Digital Fan Festival 2021 concert, with the live performance having four members of dev team performing said dance, down to having the colored shirts in the exact order as the video.
• The Warrior of Light has brain damage.^Explanation During the Eden raid, the Warrior of Light summons primals they have previously fought from their memory. The results are... not accurate. Most notable so far are Leviathan having two heads and Titan having a transforming ATV he rides around the arena.
  • Alternatively, joking that the Warrior of Light is a massive Blood Knight who totally disregards Thancred's suggestion that they make a tamer version and goes for the coolest fight they can imagine. Its also common for fans to tease that rather than focusing their thoughts on recreating Titan, the Warrior of Light is too distracted with wanting to play Mario Kart instead.
  • "I believeth four." ^ExplanationA famous tweet based on Ariel Needs Legs about a hypothetical conversation between Urianger and the Warrior of Light trying to figure out how many wheels Titan had.
• The landslides... the landslides... ^ExplanationWhen Ryne askes the Warrior of Light what the primal Titan was like, this is one of the dialogue options the player is given, which many players empathized with since the early Titan was That One Boss.
• "WE FALL!" ^ExplanationThe main theme of Shadowbringers includes this line repeated several times, and those particular lines have increased presence in the normal and dungeon boss battle themes. Needless to say, players will be hearing it a lot.
• Forgiven ______.^ExplanationThe theme of the new sin eater enemies is that every mook's name is prefixed with "Forgiven" along with the stated sin they were "absolved" from when coming into being. Some players took this idea and applied it to themselves, creating names out of silly "sins" such as "Forgiven Undercutting" or "Forgiven Cleaves". Others apply it to other enemies and bosses in the game such as referring to 9S from the NieR raids as "Forgiven Simp".
• Oh, Great Serpent of Ronka! / Skree!^ExplanationIn the Rak'tika Greatwood, one of the sidequests involves a tiny tsuchinoko which is said to predict the future, and act as the protector of the Greatwood itself. The NPC believes this with such utter sincerity that it's hard not to play along, especially when the player winds up with the Great Serpent as a minion. 5.2 now adds a Great Serpent of Ronka mount!
• 2B's dress ^ExplanationA much sought-after glamour dropped from The Copied Factory, contained in one convenient coffer that gives you the entire ensemble when you crack it open. Notable in that the dress is wearable on both male and female, with the leggings giving 2B's shapely butt and legs. Because of this, a good amount of male characters are unironically wearing the dress alongside the females.
• Don't look at the fanservice! ^ExplanationThe boss for Eden's Verse: Refulgence is Ryne taking on the form of Shiva, but a loss of control causes this Shiva to take on Light mechanics in addition to Ice. These mechanics switches are heralded by changing outfits mid-fight, leaving her briefly nude (albeit covered by a Lens Flare Censor). The swap to the Light outfit in particular actually is a look-away mechanic, lest the violator get stunned.
  • She's not a child (anymore)! ^ExplanationMore controversially, Ryne got a Plot-Relevant Age-Up when she transformed into Shiva. This however has not stopped people from pointing out that Ryne's actual age is 16-17, which is below legal age in many countries and severely toes the line in some others. Even with the Age-Up, this has resulted in as many Ephebophile guilt trips as it has jokes.
• The Exarch will die for you! ^{Explanation (spoilers)}Towards the end of the 5.0 version of Shadowbringers, the Crystal Exarch prepares to commit suicide in order to help the Warrior of Light remove the plague of light from the First and return their friends back to the Source. Everyone sees through his bad acting, and things end up happening that prevent him from dying as planned. Later on, the Exarch continues to remind the Warrior that he is willing to die for them if it will help them. It thus became a running joke in the fanbase that the Crystal Exarch would die for the Warrior of Light if they suffered the slightest minor inconvenience, such as not getting all of their laundry done.
• Gaia's lips ^ExplanationFans have poked fun at the prominence of Gaia's lips, sometimes enlarging them in photo editors.
• CAVE RAVE ^ExplanationOne of the valid spawn points for A-rank Hunt marks in the Tempest is inside a small cave system. When a "Hunt train" (loosely-coordinated group of several parties killing every A-rank hunt mark one after the other) goes after a mark here, it results in funneling a few hundred players and their brightly-colored mounts through some very small tunnels, giving it an appearance vaguely reminiscent of a rave. Also, it rhymes.
• Shadowbangers ^ExplanationA common nickname of the Shadowbringers extension due to the sheer number of praise-worthy tracks featured.
• OH, BIG FAT TACOS, OH, BIG FAT TACOS, OH, BIG FAT TACOS, SO BIIIIIIIG!!!! ^ExplanationA hilarious mishearing (with variants such as "beef soft tacos supreme") of "Ultima (Scions and Sinners)", which was used as the battle theme for the Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald Weapons (Actual lyrics: "Beat, the heart of Sabik, the heart of Sabik, the heart of Sabik"). Has now gained Meme Acknowledgment from the game's official twitter here.
• Feelsbringer ^{Explanation (spoilers)} The ending of 5.3 has a lot of emotional scenes that moved the player base to tears, be they tears of sadness or Tears of Joy. Such scenes include the Scions saying their goodbyes to the people on the First, Elidibus having his final moments after he remembers what his mission was, Ardbert's soul having a final goodbye with his companion Seto, and the Exarch transferring his soul and memories to his past self G'raha Tia on the Source. The latter has both Exarch and G'raha merge together and he formally joins the Scions, being able to adventure with the Warrior of Light, just like he always wanted, no strings attached. As such, the playerbase considers 5.3 to be one of the high points of the entire game in terms of storytelling.
• Bee's Knees' theme^{Explanation (spoilers)}The new dance emote, Bee's Knees, has the exact same BPM as "To The Edge", the Leitmotif of Eldibus, Warrior of Light. Cue fans joking that "To The Edge" is actually the Bee's Knees' Leitmotif.
• Finally, Rhitatyn EX ^{Explanation (spoilers)}When Elidibus makes the player fight through a simplified recreation of their adventure so far, one of the opponents they must fight is the infamously easy Rhitatyn (see the Cape Westwind entry in A Realm Reborn above). Despite being a mostly scripted fight that is almost impossible to lose, most fans joke that this rematch is harder than when he was fought in Cape Westwind.
• Diadem Chat ^ExplanationThe Diadem is now gathering only, with not much effort being required to fly between nodes and harvest the needed materials; this leads to some very strange chat topics between the very bored players, on par with Barrens Chat.
• Grapes ^{Explanation (spoiler)} The penultimate Tale from the Shadows has a conversation between a pre-Zodiark Elidibus and Emet Selch about how a certain island is being evacuated because of an imminent volcano eruption. Elidibus tells Emet Selch that Azem (the Convocation of 14 member that eventually reincarnates into the Warrior of Light, the player character) has a plan to stop the eruption by "borrowing" a summon concept of Ifrit (Ifrita to be more specific) from Lahabrea's labs to take all of the active fire aether from the volcano, create Ifrita out of it, and take Ifrita elsewhere and slay it to stop the volcano from erupting. When Emet Selch asks Elidibus of he knew why Azem was so interested in saving the island, Elidibus said that he was told Azem wanted to save the island's grapes. Emet Selch annoyedly thinks to himself that he is going to have to go lecture Azem on priorities. This has led to jokes about how Emet Selch is Azem (and Hythlodaeus)'s babysitter and jokes about how the goofier dialogue options for the Warrior of Light are now canon since they are in line with their Ancient predecessor. Eventually received acknowledgement in Endwalker where the player can remark that they'd "brave an erupting volcano for a choice bunch" when actually discussing grapes.
• Cid has no chill. ^Explanation After the defeat of the Ruby Weapon, Gaius wants to know what happened to the pilot, as she was one of his adopted daughters. When he asks Cid if she at least died a painless death, Cid almost excitedly lets him know that she in fact died a horribly agonizing death due to the Oversoul system, without sparing any concern for how Gaius might react to this news.
• Fandango ^ExplanationDue to his Memetic Loser status (mainly from Zenos forgetting his name in his debut cutscene,) fans often call Fandaniel by the wrong name for laughs.
• Red Comet ^ExplanationThe sequel to Red Chocobo Calamity from Stormblood, a single red chocobo is fought as a Critical Engagement in the Bozja Southern Front. Naturally, many players reacted in horror to the return of the infamous Choco Meteor, especially since it comes in a few more flavors to make the players scramble in confused panic. Got Meme Acknowledgement from the official English-language Twitter account in amusingly laconic form: 🐦 hi. There's also been an overlap in Gundam memes, especially with the original Red Comet Char Aznable.
• Oliver Twist Kobold ^{Explanation with spoilers}When Ga Bu is cured of his tempering, the voice he has sounds like a very young British boy, causing many fans to compare him to Oliver Twist. The voice heavily clashes against the voices the Kobolds had in A Realm Reborn which, while not sounding any better, were very high pitched and scratchy.
• Licking the rock salt ^ExplanationThe materials gathered from the Diadem tend to have quirky descriptions. Among them is rock salt, in which it is described that Ishgardian families lick them during mealtime. This became a Running Gag with each grade of rock salt, to the point where the Grade 4 Skybuilders' Finest Rock Salt is so popular, that many diners choose to forego their meal altogether and spend the evening licking the communal salt rock. Needless to say, this has caused some people to be unable to see Ishgardians the same way again.
• Return to MNK-E ^ExplanationThe 5.4 changes to MNK have been received very positively, leading many to pick up the job again. The wording is based on the meme "Reject Humanity. Return to monkey."
• The Square Enix Building tries to kill you^ExplanationOne of the attacks of the Tower at Paradigm's Breach final boss is throwing the Square Enix building from under you. Naturally this lead to many jokes and memes about the fact that Taro did so.
  • We're going to the moon early ^ExplanationWhen the aforementioned building attack hits, it launches players very high up into the air, and since we're going to the moon in the next expansion, comparisons quickly ensued.
• Cartoon balloon pop ^{Explanation with spoilers} Valens meets his end at the end of the Sorrow of Werylt story by being crushed to death by the Diamond Weapon, who is controlled by Alfonse's consciousness. The result of the squeeze is not shown on screen and a pop is heard, which implies Valens's head popped. Said pop uses a stock cartoon balloon pop effect, which is then followed by the sound of water being poured to emulate the sound of blood flowing out. The cheap sound effects made a serious scene become hilarious for the wrong reasons.
• Butterbringers^ExplanationDuring late April-Early May 2021, the game had a cross promotion with Butterfingers where if US players show they purchased $5 USD of candy to Square-Enix, they would get a code for a Chocurpokkur mount.
• Fourchenault must die! ^{Explanation (Major Spoilers for Patch 5.55)}When Fourchenault made his first official appearance in the Endwalker full trailer, many fans swooned over his prettiness despite him telling Y'Shtola that the Sharlayans were willing to let Eorzea burn. However, all of that goodwill went down the crapper when he makes his first appearance, tells off the Eorzean Alliance for wanting Sharlayan's help then proceeds to disown Alphinaud and Alisaie for "going native". It's the fact that he would do something so callous to his children despite them literally being world-saving heroes that really set players off.
  • Dulia-Chai vs. Fourchenault^ExplanationSince Dulia-Chai was something of a Parental Substitute during Alphinaud's time in the First, she'll somehow hear about the Twins' father disowning them from all the way across time and space and move heaven and earth just to give him a beatdown.
  • I am your daddy now^Explanation With Alphinaud and Alisaie being disowned by their own father, many players wanted to adopt the twins and be their new father.
• "This could have been a mooglemail."^ExplanationIn 5.55, just about every head of state in "The Company We Keep" gets at least a line or two, except for Hien, who gets no lines at all and is only even present as an afterthought, despite him being one of the instrumental reasons they were able to have a meeting like this in the previous expansion.
• Hrothgar make condom ^ExplanationA piece of official artwork related to the Ishgardian Restoration showed a Hrothgar blacksmith holding a piece of metal in his tongs. However, said piece of metal had a certain resemblance to a condom still in its wrapper.
• PVP laser ^ExplanationThe second boss of The Puppets' Bunker, a trio of flight units, has an attack that blasts a large laser at each party. Careless positioning by one of the targeted players can easily take out an entire neighboring party in one go as they find themselves zapped by two lasers at once. This happens a lot.
• Everyone loves the cubus! ^{Explanation (spoiler)}Other than some friendly NPCs, the only other living creatures in Amaurot are the cubuses, unappealing slime monsters that attack on sight. One tweet ran with the idea that they're part of Emet-Selch's rose-tinted memories of the city.
• Red Alphinaud/Rugged Alphinaud/Blue Alisaie ^Explanation A cutscene in 5.5 has Estinien mistake Alisaie for Alphinaud, prompting a humorously over-the-top reaction from her. This has lead to people jokingly labeling pictures of Alisaie as "Red Alphinaud," and sometimes "Rugged Alphinaud" as a reference to Estinien having called her "twice as rugged". Some fans have pulled a reversal on this and started referring to Alphinaud as "Blue Alisaie".
• "You're not going anywhere, WHORE!" ^ExplanationA Mondegreen of one of the Fatebreaker's voice lines in Eden's Promise.
• "Yell on wall, big store, Rock 'n' Roll, stop talking, Rock 'n' Roll, pumpkin, Walk on dead, walk TALLL" ^ExplanationAnother Mondegreen of the chorus from the final Eden boss
• Seizurebringers / Epileptic Seizure Attack. ^{Explanation (spoilers)}The finale of the Hades trial in Shadowbringers involves a large sustained blast of light against Hades - which can cause some Sensory Abuse to people or, if it's on a weaker graphics card, look weird and/or cause slowdown.
• UNGA BUNGA ^Explanation Because Warrior is generally seen as the easiest tank job, many players jokingly describe it as pretty mindless since you mostly just swing your axe around like a demented caveman. Warrior's Inner Release lets them use Fell Cleave and Decimate three times at no cost and Infuriate refills the job gauge by 50 to let the player use Fell Cleave and Decimate. Combine Inner Releaes and Infuriate together and you get a Warrior that can go absolute ham on enemies.
• Liquid phyiscs ^Explanation One cutscene has the Warrior of Light pouring themselves a drink in their room. The animation for the liquid being poured and jiggling about in the cup as well as how the Warrior of Light is animated pouring the drink gained a ton of attention due to how realistic it looked in motion compared to the more canned animations the game had used for years.
• It's been X days since Light Rampant was mentioned ^ExplanationEden 8 Savage contains a mechanic known as Light Rampant, which requires half the team to stand in circles and move in precise ways, while the other half of the team guides orbs of light to the opposite side of where they spawned. All this has to be done without the orbs touching each other or the players, otherwise it results in a chain reaction of everything exploding. This mechanic is very infamous in the community that the difficulty of other Savage mechanics gets compared to it. In a meta-meme, mentioning the "Ilya Strat" will probably bring even more PTSD, due to how hard the strat is to pull off compared to the other ones that were developed by the community and it became one of the main strats for pick-up groups.

Endwalker

• TO THE MOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!^ExplanationIn the teaser trailer, it ends with the Warrior of Light on Hydaelyn's real moon. This was also a borrowed catchphrase from the Wall Street Bets subreddit, where the Gamestop incident was happening at roughly the same time.
• Alphinaud/Sage is Gundam!^ExplanationIn the teaser trailer, Alphinaud is showing off a brand new job, Sage. Sage's weapon are strange devices that are definitely not funnels!
• Naoki Yoshida / the calamity salvager ripping the belts off of players ^ExplanationThe announcement that the expansion would be retiring the belt equipment slot (for reasons that basically boil down to "it's redundant") and that any equipped belts would go to the calamity salvager NPC naturally led to many jokes.
  • *Angry Nomura noises*/Nomura has been defeated.^ExplanationTetsuya Nomura's is memetically known for adding Too Many Belts to his character designs, and many jokes were made at how he would disapprove of the decision to remove all belts from the game.
  • "PANTS FALL!"^ExplanationYoshi-P joked that once the belts are removed, everyone's pants will fall down. Amusingly, the background music this comment was made in was "Insatiable", whose lyrics prominently features the line "WE FALL!".
• Alisaie: oh hey you guys are back early
  Warrior of Light: moon's haunted
  Alisaie: what?
  Warrior of Light: *loading four nouliths and getting back on the lunar whale* moon's haunted ^ExplanationEndwalker's reveal event showing that we'll be going to the Moon to fight who knows what new monstrosities, and that the new Sage class uses magic gun Attack Drones, and that the Lunar Whale Cool Starship from Final Fantasy IV was going to be added as a mount, drew comparisons to a popular Non Sequitur tweet about an astronaut repeating "moon's haunted" to a NASA technician while loading a gun and getting ready to fly back into space that had also been referenced by the likes of Destiny 2.
• whaling ^ExplanationAs the game's first eight-seater mount, and only available for $42 through the Online Store, the Lunar Whale can technically buy you some gameplay advantage by ferrying around players who haven't unlocked flight yet. Since the advantage here is niche in the first place, replicable for free by various two-seater mounts unlocked through in-game accomplishments, and not all that impactful when it is relevant, jabs of the mount enabling "whaling" are based less on the actual Bribing Your Way to Victory aspect and more as a pun on the fact that the Lunar Whale is a whale.
• Square-Enix shoes ^ExplanationThe Square-Enix logo appearing in one of the Warrior of Light's footprints at the start of the the teaser trailer has lead many to joke about him owning a pair of shoes with the logo on their soles.
• EW ^Explanation The abbreviation for Endwalker, which unintentionally makes it look like someone is grossed out.
• Yoshi-P's been playing Bloodborne ^ExplanationOn Day 1 of the 2021 Fan Fest, to reveal the new Reaper class, he came out in cosplay that would not look out of place in Yharnam. Zenos also has a scene in the trailer in which he looks up at the moon with a scythe over his shoulder, prompting comparisons to Gehrman.
• Bunny boys ^Explanation The announcement that the very highly requested male Viera race would be debuting in Endwalker was met with universally positive reception from the player base, who promptly gave them this affectionate nickname similar to male Miqo'te being called "cat boys".
  • Catboy genocide^ExplanationMany jokes were made at how many male Miqo'te players would Fantasia into male Vieras, causing a mass disappearance of catboys everywhere.
• Y'shtola really is blind! ^ExplanationThe Endwalker trailer shows Y'shtola talking to Fourchenault in the center of a spiral of desks. After she's done talking to him, there's a dramatic shot of her walking away... except the aerial view we got earlier in the trailer shows that she's technically walking directly into another set of desks. Y'shtola is indeed blind, but it isn't often brought up due to her using aetherial sight to compensate.
• Jokes about Zenos being the Reaper Job Trainer. ^ExplanationFollowing the reveal of the Reaper Job and that Zenos Yae Galvus would be taking up said job, the fandom began to joke about the Reaper Job Trainer being Zenos wearing a Paper-Thin Disguise
• Reaper is just Botanist as a DPS.^ExplanationWhen Reaper was announced, jokes immediately began about how Botanist would be the starter class for the job, as Reaper uses a scythe and Bontanist has a scythe as a secondary tool. This joke grew to even bigger heights after the class's lore was released, revealing that Reapers were in fact originally Garlean farmers who were driven from their homes and made pacts with voidsent to get revenge on those who drove them from their lands.
• Unlimited Blade Works ^ExplanationDuring the Job Actions trailer, the Paladin revealed that they're getting a significant expansion to their Confiteor ability that allowed them to launch three more Blade Spam attacks. Comparisons were immediately drawn to Archer from the Fate series and his Unlimited Blade Works ability
  • Look at Scholar go! ^ExplanationDuring the same trailer, most classes showed off cool new abilities, attacks and job functions, and caps off most demonstrations with a big final attack... while the Scholar, a class that has languished for quite a while already, finishes its segment with an in-combat movement and defense buff that just shows them casually jogging out of an AoE. The fandom took it and ran with it.
  • Scholar Waddle ^ExplanationThe Scholar in the trailer was being played by a Lalafell, and so the movement buff was demonstrated with the race's normal waddling gait. Depending on who you ask, this made the showcase more hilarious, more insulting, or both.
• The fairy's more responsive? SCHOLAR LIVES!!!^ExplanationWhen several testers from the Media Tour began showcasing the changes to the jobs, one thing that became noticeable was that the Scholar's fairy became much more responsive to execute its commands, almost instantly even. For several Scholar players, this was enough to give them hope of Scholar being a great job again.
• Yoshi-P just cast Fire ^ExplanationDuring his interview with Asmongold and Rich in the Endwalker media tour, after a question from Asmongold regarding disconnects between game developers and their playerbases, Yoshida related how he and his friends wonder about certain games, "Do these developers even play their own game?" While he obviously didn't elaborate on which games he was referring to, the fact he was talking to two high-profile ex-World of Warcraft players and it fitting a commonly held opinion of that game's developer team made many view it as a Take That! toward Blizzard Entertainment, in comparison to XIV's dev team often playing on their own time and Yoshida himself sometimes taking on high-level content with the general playerbase as Black Mage and achieving high success with the job. A common comment was some variant of 'Yoshi-P just cast [Black Mage spell name]', with Fire, its variants and Flare being the most common picks.
• Zenos delayed the expansion to play SMTV. ^ExplanationWith the announcement of the delay of Endwalker so close to the release of Shin Megami Tensei V, players joked that Zenos delayed starting his plans to play it.
  • Zenos delayed Endwalker to play Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl.^ExplanationEndwalker's initial release date was on November 19, the same date that the remakes of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl would also be released. As such an alternate version of the above meme was made
    • Zenos actually did go to play Pokémon Legends: Arceus! ^ExplanationA character named Volo in Legends Arceus has somewhat of a resemblance to Zenos in appearance.
• Moon Cactuar/Saboslender ^ExplanationOne of the new enemy types in Endwalker is the Lunatender, a very tall and very thin Cactuar on the moon. Players immediately began drawing comparisons to Slenderman and The Enigma of Amigara Fault, among other things.
• ERROR 2002 / 2002 (ULTIMATE) ^ExplanationDue to a heavily anticipated Demand Overload for Endwalker's launch, Square Enix warned that players may experience Error 2002, an error screen that occurs if too many players try to log in to the game at the same time, resulting in the game's login server having a massive queue. Unsurprisingly, many players were met with this error screen, which instantly turned into a meme.
  • Jokes about long queue times, especially after servers crashed, being that they were on average between 2500-4500+ (and some as high as over nine thousand.
• "Errorwalker" ^ExplanationUnsurprisingly for a very hyped up and long-awaited new expansion, Endwalker ended up having a rocky launch with constant errors, lag, and disconnects.
• low polygon grapes ^ExplanationThe grapes in an orchard in Labyrinthos were memed on for using an extremely low-quality model — while grapes on the vine are one of the hardest fruits to model realistically, and this model had been around since ARR, a cutscene in a Main Scenario Quest would put these particular grapes front-and-center, calling attention to the quality in a way that the previous uses never did, and of course people took notice. The square grapes would eventually be immortalized as a LINE sticker in Vol. 4 of the FFXIV sticker collection, as well as becoming physical goodies for FanFest 2023 in the form of a stress squeezer. Patch 6.55 made the low-poly grapes into an Ascended Meme by adding the Labyrinthos Grape Lamppost: an outdoor furnishing in the form of a lamppost with low-poly grapes as the light source. The item’s description is an in-universe story that mirrors the progression of the meme
  • RIP square grapes^ExplanationThe grapes would be fixed in Patch 6.01, leading many to jokingly lament its disappearance.
  • Massive Graphical Upgrape^ExplanationThe new model for the grapes in Patch 6.01 is only very slightly better, immediately leading to mockery about how small the upgrade was.
• Moon Dog ^ExplanationIn the same vein as the Serpent of Ronka, the sudden, inexplicable, out of left field appearance of the friendly dog familiar Argo on the moon of all places caught so many players off guard that he immediately became a hit just from the sheer ridiculousness of the entire concept.
  • Minfilia, is that you?! ^ExplanationBetween the blonde hair, blue eyes, and the braids, many people thought that the aforementioned Moon Dog was actually Minfilia somehow.
• Scholar is the third new Job! ^ExplanationThe quality of life improvements to the Scholar's companion and abilities led many in the game community to joke that it plays like a whole new Job class.
• True Rhitatyn EX ^{Explaination (Spoilers!)} During the Level 89 dungeon, shades of Livia and Rhitatyn serve as the midbosses. Rhitatyn with 4 people, at the Endwalker level cap (or one shy), with a hard item level sync, is legitimately more challenging than his Cape Westwind form, let alone the Elidibus Memory.
• "[Noun/Verb]way"^ExplanationThe Loporrits' names come from a character trait of theirs or a goal they wish to pursue followed by "way". This naming convention has lead to people coming up with various joke names for them.
• E N H A N C E D U N M E N D^ExplanationSadly, every expansion is going to have at least one job that's considered to have gotten the short end of the stick, and this time, it's the Dark Knight. Their new Enhanced Unmend trait is widely considered to be utterly useless (reduce Plunge's cooldown by 5 seconds when using Unmend...), and they also have the weakest of all the targeted tank mitigation skills (Oblation is a 10% damage reduction with no additional effects whatsoever, in vast contrast to Nascent Flash, Intervention, and Heart of Corundum). However, it should also be noted that while the Dark Knight didn't get a lot of changes, what it did get was a massive boost to its personal damage output, so it didn't get all bad stuff.
• sharks ^{Explanation (Spoilers!)}During their time in Elpis, the Warrior of Light discovers that creating life with shark characteristics is extremely popular. Thus, people online would submit their "shark concepts" for approval from their peers.
• Waow, sugoi! ^{Explanation (spoilers!)} 'Wow, (great/amazing)' in Japanese, part of Hythlodaeus's rant about the increasingly bizarre shark concepts people keep submitting, said incredibly sarcastically.
• "This is Thancred."^{Explanation (Spoilers!)}A solo-duty prior to entering the Garlemald zone has the player infiltrate a magitek base as Thancred. Midway through, he makes a call to the squad he's operating with, stating his name. Dialogue which appears in a window labeled with his name, which now also include a portrait of the character. All of which resoundingly reinforces that this is, in fact, Thancred. The quote eventually made its way into the Island Sanctuary, if players release the Dress-up Thancred minion into their island.
  • Metal Gear Thancred ^{Explanation (spoilers)}The Stealth-Based Mission nature of the above solo duty and the mechanics involved (namely, sneaking up on oddly unobservant guards and knocking them out) has drawn a lot of comparisons to the Metal Gear series, and Metal Gear Solid in particular
  • “It’s-a me, Thancred!” ^ExplanationWhen fans found out that Thancred’s French VA was the voice of Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, fans combined this trope with Mario’s catchphrase
• You're breathing him. ^{Explanation (endgame spoilers)}Initially, the only reason why Ultima Thule has a breathable atmosphere or walkable terrain is due to Thancred's Heroic Sacrifice essentially "willing" those into being for the benefit of you and the other Scions, due to the nature of the location and Meteion's power over it. Naturally, darkly humorous memes followed.
• Just 5/15 minutes ^ExplanationThe platform where the world boss Chi spawns was camped by players upon finishing the campaign as the boss has a 48 hour window that it can spawn in upon the initial waiting time ending. People who had just shown up would often ask how long the wait is until the boss spawn, with the answer inevitably being just a few minutes (the exact number varying by data center), regardless of how long it might actually be.
• Dancing Emet-Selch ^ExplanationA greenscreen based on an earlier animation which featured Emet-Selch dancing saw a revival in the various new Endwalker Tracks released... not uncommonly with a disconnect error mixed in.
• Oh my God. Zenos was right.^{Explanation (spoilers)}The Post-Final Boss fight of Endwalker is a Duel Boss fight against Zenos. It's considered by many players to be the Best Boss Ever, leading to players wanting a way to replay the fight again. Considering how Zenos often likes to goad the Warrior of Light into believing that they love fighting just like him, this led some players to realize that Zenos was right all along.
  • That, I can't deny. ^{Explanation (spoilers)}Right before said Post-Final Boss fight, the Warrior is asked by Zenos if they're just a Thrill Seeker at the end of the day, then given three dialogue options to choose from in response. The first of these options is "That, I can't deny"; choosing this will even have the Warrior give Zenos a Grin of Audacity. Thus, the Warrior can finally agree with Zenos' claims about being a fellow Blood Knight who's looking for a challenge. Whether it's due to players actually agreeing with Zenos, or respecting the sheer audacity of asking the question, the answer became a very popular dialogue option.
• We're only Level 83! ^{Explanation (spoilers)}Pretty much the universal reaction to, after several expansions and nearly a decade of buildup, finally fighting Zodiark... as the Disc-One Final Boss.
• Fist clenching. ^ExplanationWhile the Fist of Rage has always been a stable in game for dramatic scenes, Endwalker saw a sharp increase in its usage, leading to many jokes.
• "FFXIV sucks, you shouldn't play -" "Yes! PLEASE leave!" ^ExplanationWith how bad the queues got shortly after the release of Endwalker due to Demand Overload, many players changed from arguing with people deriding the game to encouraging them to leave so that more people who want to play the game can play it.
• "Look at it! It has depression!" ^{Explanation (endgame spoilers)}The ultimate Greater-Scope Villain of Endwalker and the entire series of expansions until this point turns out to be Meteion, a Cute Monster Girl made by Hermes/Fandaniel to explore the universe, only for Hermes to phrase this mission so badly that she proceeded to Go Mad from the Revelation from processing how many "perfect" societies collapsed. Meteion became a Straw Nihilist driven to Mercy Kill the universe until the Warrior of Light and Hydaelyn snap her out of it. Emet-Selch, who already was skeptical of her as a concept, chews out Hermes when Meteion starts falling apart. Cue jokes about Hermes somehow managing to give a space exploration probe a mental disorder using variations of the phrase, based on snowclones of this tweet.
• "Do not redeem the tomestone!" ^ExplanationUsually found on the message board 4chan, it's a reference to Kitboga's scam busting activities, and the tomestone redemption city being one that might bring to mind the usual victims of his scammer busting. This is also fueled by the fact that the city in question was introduced to having a scam problem and that it is the Fantasy Counterpart Culture of India which happens to be one of the scammer hotspots that Kitboga covers on this channel.
• "Lahabrea fucks?!" ^ExplanationWhen the first set of Pandaemonium raids revealed that Lahabrea had a wife and son, many people were stunned to discover Lahabrea - a Memetic Loser best known for his Large Ham speeches and being the Post-Final Boss of the also-memetic Praetorium - was the first ancient Ascian confirmed to have managed to not only woo a woman, but also father a child with her.
  • I get it now./Hesperos was right, actually ^ExplanationThe key art for Patch 6.2 features an unmasked Lahabrea that the fandom instantly agreed is a Silver Fox. Cue deluge of fanart, jokes about Hesperos's infatuation with him being justified after all, thirsty references to the "bred deep" line in "Hic Svnt Leones", etc.
• EVERYONE'S HERE!^{Explanation (spoilers)}Near the end of Endwalker, a lot of characters show up to assist the Scions and the Warrior of Light in powering the Ragnarok so that it can reach Ultima Thule where Meteion is hiding. Likewise, a lot of characters show up during the operation to free Garlemald. Some of said characters haven't been seen since A Realm Reborn.
• Full movement Black Mage rotation. ^Explanation Paradox, Black Mage's level 90 skill, has allowed for many new optimizations... including an infamous joke rotation that lets you move freely and still do a sizeable amount of damage, completely antithetical to Black Mage's entire design philosophy; highlights include Umbral Soul in uptime and the universally loathed Scathe. While ultimately worse than the standard BLM rotation, many unfamiliar were led to believe the joke rotation was optimal; especially after an expert player ended up with a high ranking log using said rotation.
• This is why peer review exists! ^{Explanation (spoilers)}Had Hermes decided to review Meteion with the other Ancients, it's possible that Meteion wouldn't have screwed up the vague instructions Hermes gave her, and the Final Days wouldn't have happened. Jokes about Hermes and his complete mess-up of Meteion's programming made Hermes into a Memetic Loser for somehow giving a cute, innocent emotion-based creation enough purpose to become a Straw Nihilist Eldritch Abomination, all because he didn't want to get his creation peer-reviewed.
• Oh no! Emet-Selch got Norted! ^{Explanation (spoilers)}Emet-Selch's appearance in the distant past resembles Xehanort from Kingdom Hearts. As a result, people invoked ProZD's "casual vs diehard kingdom hearts fans watching new trailers" video regarding Emet's appearance.
• We're sorry, Crystal Mom! ^{Explanation (spoilers)}For years, some fans suspected that Hydaelyn was Evil All Along, due to her being a cryptic Stealth Mentor. These suspicions grew worse when Shadowbringers revealed that she's a primal, and thus may have tempered the Warrior of Light into carrying out her orders against their will. When the Warrior of Light meets Venat (the ancient who became Hydaelyn) in the distant past, they find out that not only does she have a love of life and adventure like they do, but her magic protected the Warrior instead of tempered them, so the Warrior was acting of their own free will the entire time. She also hatched a plan to sunder the world and make people suffer so that they would grow strong enough to face Meteion with the power of Dynamis. And for this plan to work, Hydaelyn herself suffered over the ages with each Rejoining. Along with her parting words to the Warrior of Light after they defeat her in a boss fight, many people who doubted Hydaelyn felt sorry for her and regretted ever thinking that she could have been evil.
• Arrokoth / I can see New Horizons from here! ^{Explanation (spoilers)}The final area of Endwalker is named "Ultima Thule", which was the old name for Arrokoth, which was passed by the "New Horizons" probe in 2019. Since Ultima Thule/Arrokoth and its renaming in late 2019 due to Unfortunate Implications isn't fully common knowledge, it became a way for people to mention the name of the final zone without spoiling it.
• A test of your reflexes! ^{Explanation (spoilers)}Zenos shouts this line several times as a telegraph to a hard-hitting point-blank AOE in your final duel with him at the finale of Endwalker. Due to how frequently he says this, it's become parodied with edited images of Zenos throwing random objects at the viewer. Other versions of this meme use a cutscene of Zenos throwing a sword at Fandaniel that is then edited to show something else getting hit. This later started getting applied to any kind of reflex-based activity.
• I see Namco and Square-Enix have been comparing notes!^{Explanation (spoilers)}Meteion's sisters combining into one figure is similar to the Fodra Queen of Tales of Graces, while her nihilistic outlook is similar to Lambda. And then of course, the overall tone of the finale (Exploring a dead world, stopping a powerful being from causing an apocalypse, then the final unlosable duel with Zenos) is very similar to Tales of Arise.
• Phlegma Balls^ExplanationOne of the Sage's spells is named Phlegma. Naturally, people were very quick to make comparisons to "Ligma Balls". The fact that it's the Sage's hardest hitting attack only adds to the hilarity.
• ALL IN EXISTENCE BENT TO MY WILL!^{Explanation (spoilers!)}Fandaniel as Zodiark shouts this line several times during his battle. The bombastic delivery and the unique mechanic that accompanies it caught on quickly with fans, who apply the line to images of various things being rotated 90°.
  • THE GREAT CATACLYSM... FAITHFULLY RECREATED!^{Explanation (spoilers!)}Another line spoken during the same fight when he casts Astral Eclipse. This line is also associated with screenshots of Booksquirm or in more absurd cases, waffle makers to explain the unconventional way of dodging said attack.
  • WILL YOU LIVE TO SEE THE END? ^{Explanation (Spoilers!)}Another hammy quote that is said multiple times throughout the fight, specifically when he uses Styx, a multi-hitting stack atrack and a rather brutal heal check to those unprepared for it.
  • SOON MY HOLD OVER ZODIARK SHALL BE COMPLETE! MINE... ALL MINE!!! ^{Explanation (spoilers!)}And another, this one from when he phase changes in the normal mode of the fight. If it wasn't obvious, this is what happens when a Large Ham takes over what in any other game would have been the Final Boss!
• Graphics Update^ExplanationDuring the February 19th 2022 Live Letter, it was announced that the game would be receiving graphical update in the future, with player models getting updated resolution and shading. Players were very, very quick to meme about what the upgrades would look like for various playable races, with many different people making their own variations of the "graphics update", some alluding to other community memes.
• The WoL is the actual final boss. ^{Explanation (spoilers!)} Phase 1 of the Endsinger final boss fight is fairly standard until she rewinds time and hits you with an unavoidable wipe mechanic. That's when Phase 2 kicks in, the boss music changes to a remix of Maker's Ruin and the player gains a buff that exponentially increases their damage and HP regeneration. All while the final boss of the entire game, the personification of despair, starts panicking and unleashes a barrage of attacks that you simply shrug off. This has led to jokes that the players were the real final boss of the game.
• Wild freaks! ^{Explanation (Pandaemonium spoilers)}"Hic Svnt Leones," boss theme of Hesperos in Asphodelos: The Fourth Circle, may be the second-most-Mondegreened song behind "Ultima". The reveal when the official lyrics were released that the first line was *not* actually "wild freaks" but rather "wild *shrieks*" was met with nearly universal disbelief and a fair amount of Fanon Discontinuity.
• "May I offer you an egg in these trying times?"^ExplanationHatchingtide 2022 revealed one of the event rewards is an /eategg emote, which lets players eat a hardboiled egg. Plenty of egg related memes came about from this reveal.
  • It came back in late 2022-early 2023 when parts of the world (especially the US) experienced an egg shortage as well as price-gouging.
• Me on my way to dress up your mom^ExplanationThe new Custom Deliveries NPC in Patch 6.1 is Ameliance, the mother of Alphinaud and Alisaie. Since you can usually glamour over Custom Delivery NPCs' outfits at max satisfaction (except M'naago), many players began planning to potentially dress Ameliance up in outfits like 2B's leggings, a maid outfit, the sexy bunny outfit... you name it. She also embraces any glamours that can potentially fluster her husband, effectively giving players her blessing to dress her in sexy outfits.
  • NTRing Fourchenault as revenge.^ExplanationSome of the more, ahem, excited reactions to Ameliance jokingly declared their intent to steal her away from her husband Fourchenault, as a way of getting back at him for his actions in the past.
  • Don't sleep with our mom! / The twins' new parent.^ExplanationNaturally, this has also lead to jokes about Alisaie and Alphinaud realizing the Warrior of Light is their new dad/mom with varying levels of trauma.
  • Fixing their marriage^ExplanationAfter Ameliance asks for clothes that can "put Fourchenault to the blush", a subsection of players went with the interpretation that the lewd outfits were intended to help Ameliance re-ignite her and her husband's sex life.
• THAL'S BALLS! ^{Explanation (spoilers!)}The explicative has always been memable, but it took off once again when promotional screenshots not only showed Thal as a boss in the Myths of the Realm raid, but that he would use orb-shaped attacks against players.
  • Thal IS the balls! / Nald is Thal's balls! ^{Explanation (spoilers!)}The intro proper to the Nald'Thal fight reveals that the twin gods share a body... and initially has Nald on top as the head, with Thal down below in a... rather unusual location. The two rotate and take turns being in control, which means their balls are the quite literally the most important mechanic of their fight.
• Deryk is sus. ^{Explanation (spoilers!)}One thing everyone agreed on is that Deryk's behavior in the "Myths of the Realm" questline was highly suspicious and something was off with him, be it his muted reaction to the gods or his travelling habits. The big question was: who, or what, is he exactly? Most people agreed he was one of the Twelve, but the jury was out on whether he is Oschon or the unnamed thirteenth god. Patch 6.5 would eventually confirm the former theory, as he reveals himself to be Oschon the Wanderer before the third and final raid of the trilogy.
• Lahabrea is no longer a joke! ^ExplanationLahabrea's boss fight in the climax of A Realm Reborn was considered to be a complete joke due to how overpowered a full party of 8 players were compared to him and his damage output was laughable. Between his pitiful boss fight and how easily Thordan killed him in Heavensward, Lahabrea was the butt of jokes for years. When patch 6.1 gave the climax fights (Ultima Weapon and Lahabrea) in A Realm Reborn their own instances, not only was Lahabrea's given a complete rework, he also binds the Warrior of Light halfway through the fight to use his ultimate attack and manages to kill them (Although Hydaelyn does save the player). Many people who had dismissed the Ascian were completely floored by how badass he became.
  • Rhitahtyn's Revenge. ^Explanation Similar to Lahabrea, Rhitahtyn was memed for being a total pushover in his trial fight. He too was given a revamp in patch 6.1 where he's now a solo boss fight with revamped mechanics. Rhitahtyn also has three phases to his fight and each one has him coming back stronger and more aggressive. His last phase has him pulling a Taking You with Me approach by binding the Warrior of Light to him inside a ring of fire and attacking while both of them slowly burn to death.
• Y'shtola the Butt-Monkey^Explanation6.1 takes glee in giving the more serious-minded Y'shtola a bit of a peg-dropping including dropping a book on her head, giving you the choice of throwing her under the bus over destroying some heavily-needed guardians and even being forced to summon her childhood summons to give her aid. Needless to say, the girl goes through some stuff for our amusement
  • Y'shtola the Magical Girl^ExplanationThe aformentioned summoning involved Y'shtola doing a serious chant before ending it with "Water, water, froth and foam~!", saying it in a cutesy voice and winking at the camera. It doesn't help that Y'shtola's English voice actress, Robyn Addison, also voiced the child-like Titania and her Japanese voice actress, Ai Kayano, has actually voiced magical girls in series such as Symphogear and Delicious Party♡Pretty Cure
• The 6.1 update brought a new housing district to the game. People wasted no time in making fun of it:
  • "And the winning number is... 0!" ^ExplanationHouses were awarded by lottery - while the actual lottery process was performed successfully, the server responsible for carrying it out failed to properly relay the results to the housing data servers. This resulted in many lotteries defaulting to "0", which is a number not assignable to a player. What made it impressive is that not all houses were subject to this, leading players to initially believe that the lottery system accidentally had 0 assigned as a viable number (which, to be fair, would've been a lot funnier than the reality).
    • "Only one bidder and I LOST?!"
    • The error being blamed on Francel, Aymeric, or Emmanellain (complete with fanart of one of those characters trying to hide from angry bidders).
  • Teaching people how the real world housing market works due to the Artificial Scarcity.
    • Because many people enlisted the use of multiple accounts, bots, or their free companies to stack the lottery in their favour, many decided to compare them to AirBnB or investing firms jumping on board with housing plots and not letting individuals getting a chance to get one.
• The scions are still in time-out? ^ExplanationA Running Gag was that the Scions couldn't help you when the story said they could was that they were "put in timeout" until Shadowbringers when the Trust system was added. When the Trust system was expanded to A Realm Reborn, none of the named Scions actually join you for these.
  • "No job crystals." ^ExplanationThe unnamed Scion NPCs are all in base classes - Thaumaturge, Conjurer, Gladiator, and Lancer. Even all the way until Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium. Going without your job crystal past about Brayflox's Longstop is seen as very bad form among real players, so people like to make jokes about it.
  • "Order representatives don't give a shit." ^ExplanationIn Castrum Meridianum and the Praetorium, the "Scion" party members are replaced with "Order" representatives. Just like the players, they seem very very unimpressed with Gaius's diatribe about Eorzea.
• The 6.1 update added the Pod 602 mount, resulting in people calling it the "Mary Poppins Mount" or saying "I'm Mary Poppins, Y'all!"
• Easiest ultimate btw. ^ExplanationThe hardcore raiding scene mocked the presence of a checkpoint after the first phase of the Ultimate Raid, Dragonsong's Reprise, pointing to it as an example of Square-Enix increasingly catering to casual players. Then it became apparent that the entire raid is a Marathon Boss that involves a "Groundhog Day" Loop that only breaks if you manage to save Haurchefant after the fight loops back to the Vault. Combine this with the brutal AOE patterns, multiple enrage periods, and extremely tight DPS checks, and this phrase instead became used to mock elitists who dismissed Dragonsong's Reprise off-hand.
  • SAVE HIM ^ExplanationThe Twitch chats of those running Dragonsong's Reprise will invariably be flooded with variants of this when the time to break the "Groundhog Day" Loop arrives. Expect this to be followed up by SADGE if the players fail for any reason, and expect SAVED or POGGERS if they succeed.
  • RIBIDE RIBIDE RIBIDE. ^Explanation Team Krile, a popular Japanese streaming group racing Dragonsong's Reprise, uses Text-To-Speech call-outs. Due to their TTS bot's Japanese accent, their "Living Dead, Living Dead, Living Dead" call-out ended up sounding like "RIBIDE RIBIDE RIBIDE" to English viewers. With how Living Dead is used very early on in an extremely difficult encounter, as well as the rhythmic and catchy way the bot says it, "Ribide" quickly became a popular Fan Nickname for Living Dead. It helps that Living Dead itself was recently buffed to be much more useable.
• Thavnairian FedEx. ^ExplanationThe playerbase's nickname for the Hippo Riders, which is... not inaccurate, given their job.
• Looking for ASS (Savage) party, no wiping. ^Explanation The announcement of high-difficulty dungeons which would be introduced in Patch 6.25 was met with universal praise. It was also met with hilarity, as the first such dungeon was named Another Sil'dihn Subterrane, which would be abbreviated as "ASS" by the community. Cue players instantly making jokes and memes about the unfortunate acronym of the dungeon.
• Swolebuncle ^ExplanationPatch 6.2 introduced new raid bosses. The boss in Abyssos: The Fifth Circle is an enormous, feral-looking Carbuncle. The community quickly began to make jokes about how a creature commonly depicted as a Ridiculously Cute Critter was now portrayed as a menace.
  • Tataru, what have you done?! ^{Explanation (spoilers)}A Running Gag throughout the storyline is that Tataru has summoned a Carbuncle a few times, only for the Carbuncle to act in a way she didn't intend, such as running off or even attacking her. With the introduction of the Carbuncle boss, players joked that Tataru was somehow responsible for it.
• Island Sanctuary is casual content to relax with! ^ExplanationPatch 6.2 gave each player an Island Sanctuary, along with a new mode exclusive just to this island. The Sanctuary is meant to be a casual farming and building sim-type game, in the vein of Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing. Within hours of the patch going live, there were already spreadsheets, notes, and extensive guides as to how to maximize one's time on the island, which caused a lot of jokes that the community was Comically Missing the Point of what the island was supposed to be for. The line in question from the reveal trailer is often thus used to highlight the Misaimed Fandom of the Sanctuary content.
  • Animal Crossing ^ExplanationThe Island Sanctuary where players can get away from all the chaos of the war and violence of the last several years and just start a farm where they can grow crops and raise animals sounds suspiciously similar to another franchise.
  • I might go and tend to my island. ^ExplanationThe MSQ of 6.2 gave this as a dialogue option during a conversation between the Warrior of Light and Y'shtola. Players joked that even the devs knew how much players would be spending time on their islands instead of playing the main game.
• Nahbdeen's face ^{Explanation (spoilers!)} Nahbdeen is the first NPC who welcomes back the WoL and their party from their initial trip into the Thirteenth in 6.2, which is accompanied by a closeup shot of his gonk-looking face.
• The PlayStation nostalgia crossover^ExplanationThe final boss of the first tier of Pandaemonium is against a clear Dracula reference despite vampires not properly existing within XIV's lore (he drains aether instead of blood). However, the bigger surprise was the final boss of the second tier, specifically the Savage exclusive second stage where Hephaistos turns into a horrible multi-eyed abomination that looks like it walked straight out of a Resident Evil installment. Finally, the final boss of Anabaseios turned out to have some kind of connection to Ivalice linking this back to Final Fantasy Tactics. This raid is connected to Lahabrea and it's even noted that Praetorium, which he was heavily involved in, resembled Metal Gear Solid. All four are related to games considered classics for the original PlayStation.
• We dumbed down P8S for you peons. ^ExplanationPatch 6.21 slightly reduced the HP of the boss of Abyssos: The Eighth Circle (Savage). The explanation for the change in the patch notes was that the development team overestimated the difference between the strength of their pre-made playtesting versus the strength of random player composition in raids. The community thus made jokes that the developers either expected too much from high-end raiders, or that the developers are so godlike in skill that they were throwing a bone to the masses for not "getting gud" enough to clear the raid before it was nerfed.
• Who would win: the Warrior of Light: Slayer of False Gods, Champion of Eorzea, Savior of Mankind, or a fucking rat? ^ExplanationThe first boss of Another Sildihn Subterrane, a cute giant mouse/rat, thing served as an unexpectedly challenging fight for players entering it for the first time, partially due to being the first difficult 4-person content since Rathalos EX (and being more difficult than that). Given that to even face it, your character has literally saved the universe from destruction, it is rather unexpected that a rat thing could be such a threat.
• "Mommy!" ^{Explanation (spoilers!)}The trailer for patch 6.3 reveals of Menphina, Halone, and Nophica in the 24-man raid Euphrosyne. The character designs of the goddesses have made many people react this way to them.
  • Euphrosimping. ^{Explanation (spoilers!)}Shortly after the release of patch 6.3, players got to fight against Menphina, Halone, Nymeia, and Nophica in Euphrosyne. The result was many people fawning over the goddesses during the raid itself, which led to deaths and party wipes from players who couldn't get over the way their opponents looked.
  • Huge tracts of land. ^{Explanation (spoilers!)}The goddess Nophica is depicted as a beautiful woman with a very large bust, and a Cleavage Window in her top that shows off said bust. Since Nophica is a goddess of the earth, land, and farming, this led to a lot of jokes about her breast size through the medium of land or earth-based puns, including this slang term for large breasts from a Monty Python movie. Aiding the spread of these jokes/memes was the fact that after the Euphrosyne raid was released, the amount of fanart for Nophica exploded.
  • No way, Hatsune Miku in Final Fantasy?! ^{Explanation (spoilers!)}Thanks to Menphina's cute looks and her blue-green hair being done up in twintails, many players compared her to the titular Vocaloid.
  • Mooncats are vindicated. ^{Explanation (spoilers!)}Seeker of the Sun Miqo'te (Suncats) have a far larger prominence than Keeper of the Moon Miqo'te (Mooncats) in the narrative. Menphina, the primary patron of the Twelve for Keepers of the Moon, is the final boss of Euphrosyne. Like Nald'thal, Menphina's boss fight comes with a song that is essentially a prayer, and it's in the context of a Keeper of the Moon praising Menphina. Many Keeper of the Moon Miqo'te players are calling this song their vindication for how little focus their race has gotten compared to their counterparts.
• Canon Hyadain ^{Explanation (spoilers!)}The theme for the battle against Rubicante in 6.3 is a new remix of the Final Fantasy IV Fiend theme with chanting and bells. Fans immediately noticed the similarities with Hyadain's parody cover of the song, and upon closer examination the similarities became more noticeable to the point Soken's remix being an intentional reference to Hyadain's cover became more plausible than it being a coincidence. Jokes about Hyadain being canon to Final Fantasy soon followed and eventually came in full force when it's revealed that Hyadain (under his real identity Kenichi Maeyamada) did work on the arrangement.
• "How very glib." ^ExplanationPatch 6.3 removed a line from the speech Gaius van Baelsar gives in the Praetorium where he mocks the Warrior of Light as being "very glib" at their silence in response to Gaius asking who they fight for. Cue players missing the line, with some calling its very removal to be quite glib.
  • "Remember us. Remember that we were once glib." ^{Explanation (spoilers!)}One variation of the line that popped up in its removal, utilizing Emet-Selch's last words.
• "Don't expect [The Omega Protocol] to be higher difficulty than Dragonsong's Reprise". ^ExplanationIn a Live Letter prior to its release, Yoshi-P had this to say about the then-upcoming raid The Omega Protocol (Ultimate), comparing it to what is considered the most difficult raid in XIV. During the World First race, players slowly memed this quote more and more as the length of the race approached and then surpassed DSR's race length. More high-end racers found TOP to be just as hard, if not even harder, than DSR as they continuously ran into brick walls during the race. As such, the quote ended up highlighting Yoshi-P's underestimation of the raid's difficulty.
  • TOP NASA strats ^ExplanationThe Japanese team UNNAMED_ came from behind to achieve World First on The Omega Protocol (Ultimate). However, it was soon leaked that at least one member of the team used several plug-ins to aid in the fight, which many players considered to be cheating. One of these third-party tools allowed the observers to zoom the camera out way beyond what's normally possible, letting the players figure out mechanics more quickly than with the normal camera. Jokes and memes spread immediately, mostly involving experience with NASA, the International Space Station, or the Hubble Telescope being required to clear the fight.
  • Yoshida's dad energy ^Explanation Yoshida made a public statement regarding the team that cheated the aforesaid World First race. In the statement, Yoshida expressed how very disappointed he was to see people cheat at something designed to be challenging, and that he didn't consider that team the true "World First" as a result. Many people have likened his attitude in the statement to a father disappointed with their child.
  • SAVE HIM ^{Explanation (spoilers!)}This meme from Dragonsong's Reprise (Ultimate) saw a comeback with the World First race of The Omega Protocol (Ultimate), albeit in another context. Just before the final phase of the fight starts, Alpha fuses with Omega to create Alpha Omega, the One-Winged Angel form of the boss. As such, when the transition occurs, a lot of live chats erupted into this statement, causing the meme to run through the community all over again.
  • Red/Blue is Defamation. ^{Explanation (spoilers!)}The third phase of the fight has an extremely complex mechanic called Hello World. Part of the mechanic involves a pair of players being marked red or blue, and either pair could be targeted by a large spread AoE typically referred to as a "Defamation" by the community. As such, calling out "Red/Blue is Defamation" during the fight was a fairly common occurrence. Eventually, live chats descended into mock faction wars between Team Red and Team Blue over which color would be Defamation during a pull, leading to a lot of memes and in-jokes among the community.
  • Joel. ^ExplanationA spinning fish emote which was already popular on Twitch inexplicably blew up during the World First race. Along with already existing variants, fans created numerous variations of Joel based on the fight; combining it with other memes like "Red/Blue is Defamation" or the NASA zoom hack.
  • Buff Cap ^ExplanationA staple mechanic of XIV is the "debuff vomit", wherein a boss gives the entire party several debuffs that all must be resolved to prevent a party wipe. The ultimate version of Hello World takes this to a ludicrous degree, where a player can have up to ten debuffs applied at once. However, the game itself has a hard limit of thirty buffs and debuffs per player, and prioritizes debuffs. This led to players dodging their own buffs thanks to Hello World applying so many debuffs at once that they couldn't stack anymore. While this bug was already encountered before in 24-man raids and larger, the fact that this could happen in an 8-player Ultimate raid was seen as a hilarious oversight.
  • Ley Lines: DODGE ^ExplanationOne of the most hilarious examples of the Buff Cap problem above where the most essential tool in the Black Mage's kit in the form of Ley Lines, in which it greatly accelerates their casting times and thus bolsters their DPS, can fail to work properly if Hello World and the other party buffs stack together to keep Ley Lines' buff from working, which all but kneecaps a Black Mage.
• Shield PTSD ^ExplanationIn the 6.35 addition of the Somehow Further Adventures of Hildibrand, one scene has Brandihild, an imperfect clone of Hildi, grab a plate of metal that resembles a shield to block a laser blast aimed at the Warrior of Light. A lot of players admitted to freaking out, fearing a reprisal of Haruchefaunt's fate. Thankfully, nothing of the sort happens
• Rave on the Moon ^ExplanationThe Loporrit Tribe Quests begin with Dreamingway opening a "Musicking Station" complete with a DJ, dance floor, and modern-day party lights set to "Dreamwalker", a techno remix of the expansion's main theme. Many players spend a considerable amount of time emoting on the dance floor instead of actually doing the quests.
• Realistic bread pulling ^{Explanation (spoilers!)} When Zero and Jullus share a meal together, they both pull apart the bread they're eating, which is animated quite realistically by showing the bread stretching a bit before breaking in half. Many people joked that the patch's animation budget all went into the bread pulling and others compared the scene to the drink pouring scene from Shadowbringers.
• "I'll give you special cells!" ^ExplanationWhen Pandaemonium is brought to life for the second fight of Anabaseios, it just so happens to have the same English voice actor as Zodiark, resulting in it absolutely chewing the scenery with every line. This line in particular grew to be the most memetic, as the accompanying mechanic - tanks taking two towers - also sends them flying in the Savage version of the fight, more than likely sending them into the abyss the first few times they see it.
  • Harrowing Hell ^ExplanationUsed by Pandaemonium late in the fight, Harrowing Hell does a boatload of damage to the party over a period of nearly 20 seconds. On both Normal and Savage, parties are completely blindsided by just how much damage this does, with the Savage version rivaling Ultimates with its damage output. The attack's infamy quickly became a meme, with many saying healers begging for more heal checks got more than they bargained for.
• I can fix her. ^{Explanation (spoilers!)} Athena, the Big Bad of the Pandaemonium raids, is a villain who denies every chance to display humanity, declared by the heroes to be beyond saving, and was intentionally written to be a vile antagonist that the playerbase would hate. This did not stop some fans from getting attracted to Athena anyway, some jokingly and some not, with these four words as the go-to justification. It's even theorized in-game that Pandaemonium was actually built as Lahabrea's last ditch attempt to fix Athena's broken mind.
  • Irrefutable proof. ^{Explanation (spoilers!)}The line refers to a scene after Athena's defeat where she stands up hunched over with her eyes twitching before she gives the camera a blank stare while explaining her motive. It was notable for the unnerving animation and the zoomed in shot of her face which also brought to mind the "No bitches?" meme.
  • Zoom hacks are canon ^ExplanationIn the final Savage fight in the Pandaemonium raid series, there is a sub-phase wherein the party and arena shrink dramatically, giving the impression that the camera has zoomed out beyond its limits. Many were quick to draw parallels to the aforementioned "NASA strats", only this time, the zoom was completely by design.
  • Unstable Factor: Subject to a factor that will cause explosive damage when this effect ends. Physical contact with another subject with unstable factors will result in both subjects' stack counts being added together, divided by two, and redistributed. Fractions will be rounded down to the nearest whole number. ^Explanation Pallas Athena's Pangenesis mechanic applies this mouthful of a debuff, which raiders found hilarious; oft compared to a Yu-Gi-Oh card description. The math aspect of the mechanic also brought to mind the infamous Construct 7 "Math Boss" from the Ivalice raids, in a fight already full of references to Ivalice.
  • Gaslighted, Gatekeeped, Girlbossed too close to the sun ^ExplanationThe phrase refers to a meme about toxic female employers. Throughout the entire raid, we found out Athena manipulated those associated with her and planned to create a world that only she would approve of. Athena's schemes are ultimately destroyed all because she picked a fight with you, the reincarnation of Azem who is symbolized with the sun.
• Raubahn’s Stunt Double ^ExplanationIn Patch 6.4, the Stormblood MSQ duties were updated to add Trusts. The last two duties allow you to have Raubahn on your side. However, players noticed that Raubahn looks off, being smaller and thinner. This has prompted jokes about how off he looks, suggesting that it’s actually his stunt double.
• A wild Zeromus appeared!^ExplanationWhile it's in part of it being a faithful recreation of the original track, players found the remix for Zeromus' boss theme sounding eerily like a Pokémon battle theme, akin to battling a legendary Pokémon. Zeromus being contained in a memoria is akin to an Olympus Mons being caught in a pokeball.
• Who the ???? is J'moldva? ^ExplanationPatch 6.5 wraps up Duty Support for the three post-Stormblood dungeons. Serving as a DPS for the Drowned City of Skalla is a Miqo'te lancer by the name of J'moldva. The filler character being given an actual name (in contrast to previous generic Duty Support units like "Scion Lancer" or "Temple Banneret") produced plenty of baffled reactions as to who this is supposed to be. For the record, J'moldva was originally a Legacy character who has been assigned with Arenvald and V'mah Tia during the events of Stormblood.
• Oi! Cut it out, you! ^{Explanation (spoilers!)}In-game lore states that Llymlaen once threw a knife at Oschon for trying to peep on her while bathing, which led to the creation of two kinds of fish. Players soon discovered that using the /blowkiss, /dote or /hug emotes on Llymlaen during her boss battle would trigger an Easter Egg, causing Llymlaen to knock said offender backwards and pierce them with a throwing knife. This attack knocks the target backwards, applies a Stun debuff, and deals 99% of the target's current HP, with Llymlaen annoyedly saying "Oi! Cut it out, you!" to the offending player. As a result, it's standard to expect at least one player to do this whenever Llymlaen is encountered.
• Where Thaliak thighs at ^ExplanationBefore Thaliak's formal appearance, all the players have to base him off of is the Astrologian's The Ewer card, and Old Sharlayan's statue of him; both of which dress him with little to the imagination. Thus, when he shows up in the flesh, a large part of the playerbase was disappointed he dressed more conservatively than what the iconography depicted.
• The producer of Final Fantasy XVI finally asked Yoshi-P! ^ExplanationA Brick Joke to the existing "Well, I have to ask the producer of FFXIV first." meme, where the interviewer asked if FFXVI will be a collaboration. The answer obviously being "yes", it was a matter of when it will happen.
• Clive’s PTSD ^ExplanationThe FFXVI crossover will have Clive Rosfield coming over to Eorzea and he and the Warrior of Light battling his version of Ifrit. However, Eorzea is not the best place for him, what with all the summonings and mounts that take up the forms of firebirds and all that, not to mention the copious amount of crystals scattered all over the realm and its hub areas. Becomes Harsher in Hindsight when it turns out that a different PTSD is exactly what Clive is going through when he arrives.
  • “Shit! I can’t move!” ^ExplanationDuring the event, Clive becomes trapped and unable to help, uttering the line in response. Since characters native to Hydaelyn prefer "shite" when cursing, it came out of nowhere and surprised players. Cue jokes of Clive being a Dragoon or Black Mage player or Xbox banning players for the scene.
• "Moenbryda was a Roegadyn?!" ^ExplanationDue to a mixture of Female Roegadyn models being a stretched Midlander Hyur model and Moenbryda having almost no Roegadyn-customisation features (Such as skin, nose, or sideburns) many people learned Moenbryda is considered a Roegadyn in-story in Endwalker, naming convention be damned.
• "The Void Arc" ^ExplanationThe post-Endwalker sidequest focusing more on the Void was jokingly called this as it was phonetically similar to a raid called the "Void Ark"
• Dynamis queue times^ExplanationThe "Dynamis" data center for North America was added in the tail end of 2022. With only four new Worlds therein and no existing Worlds being transplanted to it, a player on Dynamis can expect to be sitting in queue for much longer than most other Data Centers. In spite of the bonuses available to characters created on or transferred to Dynamis (namely The Road to 80, which makes levelling to qualify for Endwalker a breeze) and on one occasion seeing the entirety of Crystal labelled as "Congested" (which means no one can create a new character there, to say nothing of the population and lag that a World has to have to get the label), the problem has persisted all the way through to the last story update prior to Dawntrail.
  • Dynamis Party Finder^ExplanationRather than endure the aforementioned queue times, many players will put up a Party Finder to recruit allies instead. As a result, Party Finders for normally quick-queueing duties, like pre-Stormblood dungeons or duty roulette, are much more common on Dynamis than they are elsewhere.
  • Just go to Crystal/Aether/Primal.^ExplanationDynamis was added after the Data Center Travel function, allowing players to visit another DC in the same region. As such, people whose Home World is on Dynamis often hop to another North American DC for their queues, and it's not uncommon for people who use the Party Finder method to be hit with /tell messages advising them to travel instead. Of course, this only exacerbates the problem for people who are still on Dynamis...
• ZODIARK TRANCE! ^ExplanationThis quote comes from a fan-comic that depicts Hydaelyn as the real villain of the story, and has the Warrior of Light go into a Zodiark Trance to fight her. The words "Zodiark Trance" have since been used for the sake of mocking people who misunderstand or intentionally misinterpret Hydaelyn as the bad guy, usually to portray the Ascians and/or Zodiark in a better light.

Dawntrail

• Catboy tacos, so big! ^ExplanationIn the reveal trailer for Dawntrail, G'raha Tia is shown enthusiastically eating a taco. As a result, the fandom began to joke that the "big fat tacos" Mondegreen was now a real thing. It also played into a meme of G'raha Tia eating a hamburger in Endwalker.
• NO BLITZBALL! ^ExplanationWhile discussing the upcoming Gold Saucer update, the crowd erupted in cries of "BLITZBALL!", prompting Yoshida to fire back with "NO BLITZBALL!" As soon as Yoshida said this, FFXIV twitter exploded in simultaneous disappointment and laughter.
• BEACH EPISODE EXPANSION! ^ExplanationThe "tropical vacation" aesthetic for Dawntrail has many a fan joking about how the expansion is a Beach Episode unto itself and, after stopping so many world/reality-ending crises, the Warrior of Light is finally taking a vacation.
• Orlander Bloom / Wol Turner ^ExplanationThe Warrior of Light's new hairstyle, clothes, and use of the Viper job in the Dawntrail trailer makes him resemble Will Turner (played by Orlando Bloom) from Pirates of the Caribbean.
• Lute intensifies/The Road to El Dawntrail ^ExplanationThe fact that the Dawntrail expansion takes place in a location inspired by South America, along with Emet-Selch's claim in Endwalker that the New World has "cities of gold", has drawn comparisons with the movie The Road to El Dorado. This resulted in many memes placing XIV characters in movie stills or memes, such as an image of Urianger and Thancred as movie protagonists Tulio and Miguel.
• You're going to Brazil. ^ExplanationWhen it was discovered that Tural was in the southwest part of the world map — more-or-less exactly where South America would be on a map of Earth — this meme caught on in the XIV community.
• TWO DYES ^ExplanationWhen discussing the graphics updates that will be coming in Dawntrail, the team revealed that one of the major upgrades will allow two different dyes to be applied to a given gear piece. The crowd exploded at this reveal, with many people saying that this is the highlight of the entire expansion.
• October 35th ^ExplanationMichael Christopher Koji-Fox, while translating what Yoshi-P was explaining about the Fall Guys collaboration, accidentally mistranslated "31st" as "35th". Naturally, the chat in the live stream had a field day with this.
• Lalafell Chin ^ExplanationWhile explaining more details about the Dawntrail graphical update at the London FanFest 2023, Yoshi-P spent five minutes talking about changing how certain model polygons would look, using a Lalafell's chin as the example. The change was so small, and the time given to it so long compared to other things, that even Yoshi-P himself said that it felt like it should have been in another developer panel. This led to multiple memes and posts about replacing the change to the Lalafell's chin model to something else.
• The Kirito expansion. ^ExplanationThe appearance of the Viper class surprised many fans, who didn't expect such a job to appear. However, a lot of people focused on the twin sword playstyle, reminding them of the (in)famous anime swordsman. With Red Mage already providing plenty of material for Asuna cosplayers, many are certain there will be an explosion of Kirito cosplayers once Dawntrail drops
  • "It's so light..." ^Explanation The Viper shares its Scouting armor with Rogue/Ninja, who specifically wield small blades that are light, maneuverable, and unlikely to catch on something. In contrast, Viper uses what arguably qualifies as a One-Handed Zweihänder in each hand. Remarks have sprung up (both sarcastic and otherwise) about how 'light' the swords must be for the Viper to merit Scouting armor, with some quoting Kirito's complaints about light weapons.
  • Get your cosplay here. ^ExplanationWith so many Dual Wielding and/or hooded characters in other media, a common joke after the Viper job reveal was that people were going to flood the Market Boards with clothing items so others could cosplay their Warrior of Light as any number of characters. These included Edward Kenway, Lloyd Irving, the Good Hunter, Zidane Tribal, Alexander Anderson, and many others.
• "I am the Viper, and I am here to vash and vipe the vindows."^ExplanationThe new Melee DPS class introduced in Dawntrail is the Viper, prompting a few people to make jokes the class secretly being a "Wiper" instead, including altered pictures of the Viper using two squeegees as weapons.
• Hrothgals/Femhroths/Lion Ladies ^ExplanationCommon Fan Nicknames for the female Hrothgar that will be added to the character creation menu.
  • "We need to make sure that people know which Hrothgar is male and which one is female." / "Disney Wolves" / "Feminine Muzzle" / "Blacksad" ^ExplanationHrothgar women have notably smaller muzzles and larger/more expressive eyes than their male counterparts - making people draw comparisons to the meme spread crtiicising this practice in western animation
    • "We expected Mi'qote and got Khajiit". ^ExplanationAn early piece of concept art from Bozja Southern Front (Shadowbringers) detailed what was presumably a female Hrothgar that was just a blue human with feline ears.
  • "Is this the first unique player model we've had since A Realm Reborn?" ^ExplanationBecause Female Roegadyn were literally just a modified Midlander Hyur model due to budget reasons, people joked that it took so long as they made a new skeleton and model.
  • Scoliosis.^ExplanationFemale Hrothgar have a notably more upright posture compared to the male Hrothgar, who are slightly hunched forward a bit. This leads to some Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism
  • Catgirl/Bunny girl genocide.^ExplanationThe "catboy genocide" meme from Endwalker gets repurposed for Dawntrail. Somewhat more justified than its predecessor, as many players have made "placeholder" Miqo'te or Viera characters with intention to Fantasia themselves into female Hrothgar at the first opportunity, even as far back at 6.1.
• "Whogar" ^ExplanationA Hrothgar seen in the trailer has a significantly smaller muzzle than even the revealed playable Female hrothgars - some were reminded of the Whos from the 2000 version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
  • "Is that a Mithra?!" ^ExplanationOne of the races from Final Fantasy XI, the Mithra, had a notably more feline face compared to their successors, the mi'qote
• Barreltender^ExplanationThe new expansion introduced another Sabotender, a massive and buff one known as the Barreltender. Almost immediately, the thing gained numerous nicknames, such as “swole Sabotender”, “buff Sabotender”, “Chad Sabotender” and “the Sabotender she tells you not to worry about”.
• Welcome to Night City/Wake the fuck up SAM, we have a city to burn^ExplanationThe reveal of Solution 9, the expansion's endgame town, brought about a slew of Cyberpunk 2077 jokes due to its cyberpunk appearance, including reusing Cyberpunk 2077 memes.
  • "We can't let you wear other jobs' gear because that would clash with the aesthetic... by the way here's Solution 9." ^ExplanationA commonly requested feature was to let people wear other jobs' gear, but this was denied as it would clash with the general fantasy and Steampunk aesthetic. Cue Solution 9 looking centuries ahead of even Garlemald.
• A Relm reborn. ^ExplanationThe new Ranged Magical DPS class introduced in Dawntrail is the Pictomancer, an Art Attacker class. The class was first used by Relm Arrowny in Final Fantasy VI, prompting this play-on-words based on the title of XIV.
• WhyMaige is in the game! ^ExplanationOn the expansion illustration, there’s a mysterious female Hyur on top with light brown shoulder-length hair. The character design resembles the avatar of FFXIV fan artist WhyMaige, which the artist even noticed
• Lesbians (Ultimate) ^ExplanationThe first Ultimate raid for Dawntrail, announced at the 2024 Tokyo FanFest, is Futures Rewritten (Ultimate), which uses the Eden raid series from Shadowbringers as its main theme. The title and key art used in the announcement was the same as Patch 5.4, which shows Ryne and Gaia together. As a result of this art, the large amounts of romantic subtext that the playerbase had already read from the Eden raid series upon its initial release, and the fact that Patch 5.4's key art showed Ryne and Gaia holding hands, it led to numerous jokes resurfacing about Ryne and Gaia being "roommates" or otherwise completely oblivious to what's obvious to everyone else.
• Green G'raha Tia ^ExplanationThe first day of 2024 Tokyo Fanfest had a panel where the developers talked about the game development process. Said panel showed an image of G'raha Tia when he was in development, where the character had a bright green color palette. The rather jarring colors caused Yoshida to instantly reject this design and order it replaced, leading to what would be the final red color palette for G'raha Tia instead. As a result, the fanbase made jokes about the image with puns and nicknames like 'G'reen Tia', 'Cabbage G'raha Tia', etc.
• Warrior of Light's art skills^ExplanationOnce Pictomancer was announced as the new job, people have been joking about their (and by extension, their player avatars') nonexistent art skills. It began within minutes of announcement, with one of the questions sent in to the official panel being "can I be a pictomancer if I can't draw?"
• Pictomancer LB3 ^ExplanationSince each job has a unique third-level Limit Break, speculation immediately began upon the Pictomancer's reveal as to what its own LB3 would be - including painting a cartoon anvil and dropping it on the enemy's head, or defeating foes by simply drawing yaoi.
  • "It's over! I have drawn you as the soy wojak, and myself as the chad!"
• Yoshi-P's suit. ^ExplanationProducer Yoshida appeared onstage for the Tokyo Fanfest PvP finals dressed atypically in a regular suit, stunning fans who had gotten used to seeing him in cosplay or other outlandish wear. Jokes abounded about him suddenly having aged 20 years, or that this was the producer of Final Fantasy XVI.
• JUSTICE FOR FANGS ^ExplanationThe Dawntrail benchmark featured a number of changes to characters and the Character Creation screen to coincide with the first graphical update. While the majority of the feedback was positive, there were a number of changes which some players considered steps backwards. One of the biggest changes was Keeper of the Moon Miqo'te characters having the size of their fangs significantly reduced, leading to calls to change this. The cry of "justice for fangs" eventually changed from a rallying cry to a triumphant one when Yoshida invoked an Author's Saving Throw, announcing that there would be a second version of the benchmark released with this feedback in mind.