Memes / Fortnite

For as popular of a game Fortnite is due to its game modes, crossovers and collaborations, it has also spawned numerous memes within the community.

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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.

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Save The World

• Ray ^ExplanationFor being the most talkative of the cast in both the cutscenes and in gameplay.
• Kyle ^ExplanationFor his loud voice, particularly his dance lines.
• "Hmmm, I know they're out there." ^ExplanationA bug in the Survivor Relay missions has Ray speak the line ad nauseam even when the team already saved all of the survivors. This quote was eventually removed.
• "I know it's a lot to ask. I really can't leave without it. It's somewhere nearby." ^ExplanationA quote by a specific type of survivor, widely known to be The Scrappy due to them not allowing you to rescue them unless you locate their medkits which are located in inexplicable locations, sometimes on the other side of the map. Became an Ascended Meme with the survivor (canonically named Ned) becoming his own character of being stuck in a time loop where he's constantly asking for his missing medkit.
• "I am a bear. You are not a bear. I was a bear." ^ExplanationT.E.D.D.Y.'s battle quotes when deployed.
• “Original vs Un-Tumblrized" ^ExplanationReferences an image◊ from 4chan of one of Penny (Female Caucasian Constructor) photoshopped to be more "conventionally" attractive (skinnier, bare midriff with a panty tan line despite the lighter skin tone, wearing a cross around her neck for some reason, blond-er hair with the streak removed, etc...). This image has received a lot of derision, especially on Tumblr where it gets a lot of edits.
• Other Mode ^ExplanationPokes fun of the fact that a large number of people do not pay attention to Save the World, jokingly including Epic Games themselves. The second definition comes from the Save the World and Battle Royale subreddits removing posts with the other modes' name on the title; the phrase "Other Mode" is used to combat this.
• *Laughs in STW* ^ExplanationA frequent reply to Battle Royale players who are worried about needing V-Bucks for cosmetics/Battle Pass — Save the World players who purchased it prior to June 29, 2020 can get V-Bucks from missions, including daily missions, while Battle Royale players pretty much have to buy them with real money.
• Twine Beans ^ExplanationTwine Peaks' lava is the most unfinished graphic in the entire game with the lava spew being cubes and the lava texture resembling beans. Despite the various graphic improvements and the overhauled map in Battle Royale's Chapter 2, Twine Peaks still has unpolished lava textures. It took a few more updates for the new lava graphics to be implemented.
• "Bonus Objective Complete, You might actually be Ghost Boss material yourself!" ^Explanation There used to be a bug in The Haunted Hotel mission where Dennis would repeat this line ad nauseam similar to the example involving Survivor Relay missions above.
• Scammer Get Scammed ^ExplanationA series of videos where a player (the scammer) might give a legendary Level 130 weapon (mostly the Nocturno) for a high amount of materials or weapons, with either the scammer or the victim one-upping the other. Since this mostly happens in Stonewood and Plankerton, players sometimes get harassed by "Scammer Get Scammed" wannabes by boxing you into trading and/or scream when you don't comply.

Battle Royale

• Stairway to Heaven ^ExplanationBuilding stairs up to the highest point in the skybox in Battle Royale mode.
• Rocket Riding ^ExplanationRockets that are shot from a player's rocket launcher can be ridden on. The result can lead to some really crazy surprise attacks by riding on a rocket through the air in order to get behind, or on top, of the enemy.
• "Where we droppin' boys?" ^ExplanationIf any video game provides a shot of a large area from the sky, or allows you to get really high above the map somehow, expect to see a picture from high up asking where the player and/or their squad should land.
• "X Temporarily Disabled" ^ExplanationItems or other game elements are removed for a short time to fix any game breaking bugs associated with it. The common occurrence of this has fans expand this for any small event or bug.
• Fortnite is CANON to X! ^ExplanationImages tend to connect Fortnite to a completely different series, such as JoJo's Bizarre Adventure or Neon Genesis Evangelion, using little references in certain media similarly to Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. These usually start with the fact that Thanos is in both Fortnite and Marvel vs. Capcom.
• Had to been done ur welcome ^ExplanationA tweet from Elon Musk's official Twitter account with a picture of an article claiming that he bought Fortnite and deleted it.
• Streamer[XXX] ^ExplanationBefore Anonymous Mode was introduced, many of the game's players used Streamer Mode, which replaces their name with Streamer and 3 numbers in brackets. Whether or not they're actually streaming that game or just imitating popular streamers is up for debate.
• Default Skins/noskins ^ExplanationEvery "Default Skin" is usually seen as a Memetic Loser, since people using these skins are likely people who just installed the game and are trying it for their first time, hence having no skill, and/or are broke/don't have permission from their parents to make in-game purchases.
  • Fake noskins ^ExplanationSimilarly, many players wear the default noskin outfits in the hopes of making other players underestimate them by assuming they're new to the game and hence have no skill. Naturally, this also stems from a thing that popular players sometimes do, to the point that many players just assume anybody wearing the default outfit is a fake noskin.
• ttv ^ExplanationMany, many players use their Epic account name solely to advertise their Twitch stream by appending ttv somewhere on it.
• "Ramirez Royale" ^ExplanationThe Nintendo Switch version for some reason has the female default Ramirez show up for most players (enemy or teammate) even if they have another skin. Usually, the skins that do appear are the Battle Pass and Starter Pack skins or those on your Duo/Trio/Squad team.
• Default Dance ^ExplanationThe "Dance Moves" emote, more commonly known as the "Default Dance", has become the internet's preferred method of Unsportsmanlike Gloating, especially on TikTok.
• Leviathan LTM ^ExplanationA Limited Time Mode released around Season 3/4 based around on a giant Leviathan skin. Remembered so fondly that players often request for its return. That is for the fact the LTM does not exist in any capacity, and it's often used to troll newer players.
• "Thank you, Apex." ^ExplanationA commonly said reason for Epic's changes in Update 7.40 is that the sudden popularity of Apex Legends means that Epic has competition and has to improve their game to stay relevant. This is despite the fact that the game has been released for nearly a week before the update was announced (and coding does not take a few days to implement all of the fixes).
• "SEASON X IS HERE, AND THE WORLD IS DESTABILIZING FAST" ^ExplanationFor whatever reason, the script of the overview trailer for the...contentious Season X became a popular copypasta on the Fortnite BR Subreddit in early 2020.
• The Black Hole ^ExplanationAt the end of the Season X event, everything on the Battle Royale island, the player, the Battle Bus and the lobby were sucked into a black hole, shortly resulting in a screen containing the black hole playing ambient sounds and occasionally displaying random numbers. Since all of the game's social media accounts went dark and did not mention when the game would return back online, it lead to jokes about people paying way too much attention to a single black hole on screen, Fortnite ending or being deleted, and players breaking down as a result of being unable to play because of the event.
  • Is Fortnite okay? ^Explanation As part of the Season X finale event, the official Fortnite Twitter account @FortniteGame deleted all of their tweets and replaced their avatar with solid black. While this is obviously meant to represent the account getting sucked into the black hole just like the island did, this behavior is also associated with people having melodramatic breakdowns on social media, leading to inevitable jokes.
• Marvel vs. Capcom 4 ^ExplanationAfter Ryu and Chun-Li were announced, many joked that Fortnite would be the Marvel vs. Capcom 4 many hoped for (since Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite is often treated with Fanon Discontinuity), thanks the previous addition of Marvel characters.
• Fortnite/Non-Fortnite Characters Doing Emotes ^ExplanationThe emotes, particularly the Default Dance, the Paws & Claws Emote, and the Griddy and proceeding to using them on characters or making animations of non-Fortnite characters that wouldn't dance to them. For example, Kratos, the Terminator, The Mandalorian, and for outside of the game, Sans, and so on.
• Chug Jug With You ^ExplanationA Fortnite-themed parody of Estelle's American Boy, folks have noted how surprisingly catchy the lyrics are and edit the song onto a slideshow to portray small, childlike characters as "pro Fortnite gamers".
• "I hear footsteps?" *builds* "Alright, now I'm at the top of the map—" ^ExplanationA clip from a video explaining strategies, with this segment being of the author quickly building a skyscraper in a blur just because he thought he heard footsteps. The clip is taken as an exaggerated example of how player skill in building has advanced to an extreme point, and it's also prompted jokes that the sounds of the player's keyboard inputs resemble the rapid clicking of a LEGO object being built as shown by its advertisements.
• FrenchFry/The Peter Griffin/Family Guy collab ^Explanation Data miners found frames from Family Guy in the files for the Super Cab-Masher Back Bling that were also associated with an unreleased "FrenchFry" set. This discovery led to players thinking (jokingly and not) that a Family Guy collab was coming, with many jokes stemming from the idea of playing as Peter Griffin or the fact that Epic Games would collab with an adult show, let alone Family Guy, of all things (note that this was before the Rick and Morty collabs). Although these frames were then claimed to be placed as a troll, rumors of a Family Guy collab kept being reinvigorated thanks to the FrenchFry set being updated as well as a folder labeled "Family Guy" being discovered during a ''State of Unreal'' showcase. The same showcase also had folders labeled "Doom", "C3S3_Jones", and "C3S3_Vader", with the latter two eventually revealed to be Indiana Jones and Darth Vader for Chapter 3, Season 3, and the former revealed to be for the Doom Slayer two seasons later. These led many to believe again that a collab for Family Guy was still in the pipes. This was finally confirmed to be true to mass rejoicing that Peter Griffin would finally be joining Fortnite as one of two crossover characters in Chapter 5: Season 1's Battle Pass (alongside Solid Snake).
• "IT'S THE GUY FROM FORTNITE!" ^ExplanationDue to Fortnite having many crossover events, and being popular with kids who might be more familiar with those characters as Fortnite skins, there are many memes about someone watching a show or playing a video game only for a kid to exclaim that one of its characters is "from Fortnite" (or even that the character was plagiarized from Fortnite), resulting in Disproportionate Retribution.
• "Imagine playing Fortnite and getting eliminated by W, while X, Y and Z do the [emote]." ^ExplanationDue in part to the numerous amounts of crossovers and collaborations that Fortnite has done, there are numerous memes and comments on social media about collaboration characters participating in Battle Royale and proceeding to do things that would be out of the ordinary.
• Live Toph gameplay ^ExplanationWith the release of Chapter 5 Season 2 in early March, comes the Avatar The Last Air Bender mini event that brings in not only Korra (from the much maligned sequel series as the bonus skin), but also brings in the Blind Bandit herself as a purchasable skin (alongside Zuko, Katara and Aang, with the former three costing 2,000 VBucks a set with Avatar State Aang being the final unlock), with Toph herself being a huge source of memes (who was already a source of memes herself back in the show). The most common ones being players playing Toph like an actual blind person would act such as running into walls, shooting in the opposite direction, dancing in the opposite direction during synched emotes or falling off builds and the screen going black whenever she's driving a vehicle.

Content Creators

• Ninja ^ExplanationA very popular Fortnite streamer who is known for his overly offensive Snapchat Posts, and bullying little kids.
  • Ligma ^ExplanationA fictional disease made up by a troll to "explain" Ninja's absence. It's short for "LIGMA BALLS".
  • This is the shittiest reply ever. Fortnite requires movement, editing, building, rotating, and hitting shots. There are not “positions” in Fortnite. A kickers job is LITERALLY to kick. Horrible analogy, kind of embarrassing. ^ExplanationOn the Saturday after Thanksgiving 2019, Ninja made a tweet saying that he doesn't understand National Football League kickers that miss kicks, saying that it shouldn't be too hard to find kickers who don't miss. Twitter user "duckybtw" mocked this statement by giving it the copypasta treatment and saying that they don't understand Fortnite players that miss shots, and that it shouldn't be too hard to find players who don't miss. Ninja replied with the since-deleted Tweet quoted above, which quickly made circles as a copypasta due to its longform, no line breaks writing that vastly simplifies football.
• Ali-A ^ExplanationA very notorious YouTube let's player, Fortnite included, who is, since the Call of Duty fever of the early 2010s, known for his clickbaity tactics, stretching his videos for 30 minutes, his infamous intro that too has also become a meme, and overall low-quality content.
• Tfue ^ExplanationAnother popular Fortnite streamer who is known for mainly using the default skins and his uncanny resemblance to Jonesy (the male, blond default). The Brainiac skin is even dubbed "Tflu" by fans.
• MLK in Fortnite. ^ExplanationIn August 2021, Fortnite promoted an LTM serving as a virtual museum showing Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech and being educational about the Civil Rights Movement. Since Fortnite is notorious for its immature fanbase and commercialized nature that clashed with King's economic views, this promoted jokes about Dr. King becoming a playable skin and using the LTM being used as a map to fight in.
• "MOOO!" and "Joy the Cow Skin" ^ExplanationSome rather distasteful memes about Joy (a skin of a woman with vitiligo, a skin condition that makes part of her skins light and other parts dark) having Doja Cat's "Kiss Me More" as a built-in emote. Joy's vitiligo has promoted jokes about her being a "cow" and how Doja Cat's "MOOO!" song would've been more appropriate than "Kiss Me More".

Other

• The Fortnite Burger ^ExplanationSomeone made an image macro that, without context (it's a reference to the in-game burger restaurant "Durrr Burger"), looks like "let's just slap the word Fortnite on anything and call it referential humor". The large number of people who did not, in fact, have this context immediately turned it into an ironic meme.
• Dead game ^ExplanationA phrase that has a tendency to pop up whenever anything resembling negative news occurs in relation to Fortnite, commonly used by people tired of hearing about the game, and players of the game themselves whenever unpopular changes occur. Became Hilarious in Hindsight when Epic, in preparation of a massive overhaul, staged it to LITERALLY became a dead game, via the Visitor's Macross Missile Massacre meant to neutralize the rift orb went haywire and nuked the entire universe off the map and making the game unplayable until its brought back, including silence on the social media themselves.
• Epic puns. ^ExplanationRelated to Epic Games and quotes such as "Okay, this is epic" and "...the epic Victory Royale".
• "IT'S ABOUT DRIVE, IT'S ABOUT POWER, WE STAY HUNGRY, WE DEVOUR" ^ExplanationThanks to rumors and outright hints that Dwayne Johnson was not only involved with Fortnite but portraying the Foundation himself, Dwayne's verse from "Face Off" by Tech N9ne came to be adopted as the Foundation's Leitmotif.
• "X is older than the entire Fortnite community" ^ExplanationAs Fortnite is known to have a sizable young fanbase that can be notorious for being annoying online, jokes are commonly made about Minecraft, other video games, or anything that came out a while back that is older than those younger fans.
• "Its been X minutes without Fortnite. I cannot walk without trembling, I feel like I am going through withdrawals. I can't go much longer without Fortnite, I can barely breathe I don't know how much longer I can last here without Fortnite." ^ExplanationA common copypasta used on Twitter that is used whenever the servers go down for maintenance (usually before a patch), that talks about players getting withdrawal symptoms from being unable to play, despite the servers only going down moments after the tweet is made.