Paladins has garnered many memes throughout the years, here's a list of them:
Please add entries in the following format:
- The meme. [[labelnote:Explanation]]The explanation behind the meme, if necessary.[[/labelnote]] Explanation Like this.
- Further mutations and successor memes, if any.
Gameplay-balance-based memes:
- Buying Aggression (usually associated with Viktor) and proceeding to have something horrible happen. Explanation It was commonly seen as a noob move, since there are better abilities to buy first and its damage upgrade potential was pitiful, and was stereotyped to follow up with pissed-off toxic comments about how the team/ this game "suxxorz". When Aggression was removed in Patch 42, the meme left with it.
- "Nerf Skye"Explanation At the start of the open beta, this was a rallying cry. Skye's ultimate was seen as overpowered because its powerful damage lacked damage dropoff, meaning it would do full damage even if you were barely in its radius. This led to players chanting the phrase "Nerf Skye" nonstop in the forums and livestreams. The meme has since largely died out, mostly because Skye's been so nerfed people instead wish she was buffed or reworked.
- "Nerf Koga!"Explanation Players who found Koga annoying to play against chanted this everytime balance was brought up. Koga did eventually get nerfs that satiated the playerbase, and was later made into an Ascended Meme as when Buck's Buck Wild skin got new splash art
,the artists referenced the meme on a waving sign in the crowd. - Buying (pre-4.5) Veteran. Explanation Before its rework, Veteran was derided as the single worst item to pour credits into, as all it did was increase the healing when out of combat. Taking Veteran was essentially an insult towards a healer on your team, as it meant Veteran, an item nobody usually buys, is doing a better job than them. Veteran got rebalanced in Patch 4.5 to increase max base health in 4% steps, which doesn't exactly destroy the meme, but does make said item significantly more useful to a lot more players.
- Buying Deft Hands, particularly when playing as a damage champion. Explanation Deft Hands increases reload speed on champions in 20% increments, so naturally this lead to a lot of damage players expecting it to make them better in some way (which is rarely often the case, as if you need to reload so much to make Deft Hands useful, then ammo conservation is the issue, not reload speed). Became particularly memetic with Mal'Damba, as his reload stuns players, so picking Deft Hands was outright beneficial to his playstyle, with his Wickerman skin outright referencing it when buying items (Was it... Deft Hands? It was!, ADMIT IT!) and in one of his jokes.
Audio-Based Memes:
- YOUR TEAM HAS THE KEY, ENEMY TEAM HAS THE KEY:Explanation Back during the Dragons' Call event, a new game mode was made that was very Capture the Flag-esque. However, the lore lady announcer repeatedly said "X has the key" whenever it changed hands, and it became the most memorable (and arguably worst part) of the event due to it's repetitiveness getting annoying real fast.
- "YOU CHALLENGE MAKOA!?"Explanation Makoa's ultimate quote, that has him bellow out a challenge to kill him. Often used (completely unaltered) on images showing pissed off turtles (not necessarily Makoa) like a turtle nipping a mans' hand in a gif, or if there's a new champion revealed, "Oh that's cool, but CAN THEY CHALLENGE MAKOA!?". Became an Ascended Meme in 2016 with the release of Terminus, the hulking zombie wielding an enormous battle-axe, where his kill taunt toward Makoa references this meme.
- "NO MAN CAN CONTROL RAUM!" Explanation Raum's Badass Boast from his teaser trailer has been joked about, since if you play as him, you're technically controlling him. And he specifically says "no man can control Raum". As it turns out, as of his release, the characters with Percent Damage Attacks, his biggest weakness, are all female.
- Fans love to twist the words of an ultimate's Badass Boast into funny phrases:
- "Sunday We Gonna" or "Sunday Wekona":Explanation Players frequently mishear "Sun de Wekono!"; Mal'Damba's ultimate voice line, as "Sunday We Gonna" or "Sunday Wekona". Given how bizarre the pronunciation is for the line, as well as the fact that the last "o" in Wekono is silent, it was inevitable this would give way to Memetic Mutation after folks kept mishearing it. Becoming an Ascended Meme with Patch 4.7, where an LTM was named "Sunday We Gonna"; and has you in a Team Deathmatch against other Mal'Damba players.
- "Neil!"Explanation Lian's ultimate quote is her saying "Kneel!" angrily. The fanbase ran with it and twisted it to sound like Lian is referring to someone called Neil. Became an Ascended Meme, with her Shore Patrol voice pack referencing the meme (when you win a match, and when you start a match).
- "Gays into the Abyss!"Explanation Seris' ultimate casting line is "Gaze into the Abyss", but many insist she's actually saying "Gays into the Abyss". This has the effect of jokingly saying that Seris is homophobic, even if she ultimately has no particular quirks against homosexuals.
- "Step into the light... in Paris!"Explanation Jenos' ultimate line makes people think he sends them to Paris to be killed, instead of into the light.
- "No one escapes the LAW."Explanation Someone asks if somebody can escape the law, only for Lex to confirm that, in fact, "No one escapes the LAW." Talus' reveal trailer references the meme when Talus asks Barik if he's "ever escaped the law?" At some points, people joked that certain people could escape the law, such as when Lex was attacked by Vora and Yagorath in their trailers, or when he was temporarily disabled due to causing issues.
- "Bend over!"Explanation Mishearing Buck saying "Up and over!" while leaping due to how softly he says "up" while shouting the rest. People take it to mean how screwed enemies are when he hops in. Became somewhat of an Ascended Meme when the Paladins Twitter referenced the meme.
- "SINNER!"Explanation Mishearing Raum's ultimate line as this is pretty common. He's actually saying "Shatter!".
- "Nap time!"Explanation Mishearing Moji's ultimate quote as "Nap time!" instead of "Snack time!", something which is really easy to dom as Moji doesn't accentuate the "K" in "Snack".
- "Oonga!" Explanation Mishearing Tiberius's ultimate line due to his heavy French accent. He's actually saying "En garde!"
- "Piss! Then shred 'til nothing's left!"Explanation Mishearing Caspian's ultimate line due to the voiceline not putting much emphasis into "erce", but he's actually saying "Pierce." Due to the hilarity of this, the fandom had a field day with it, and comparisons with Sniper naturally came into existence.
VGS system Memes
- The VGS system has also spawned a few memes:
- "Woo hoo! Woo hoo! Woo hoo!"Explanation Players spamming the command "Woo hoo" with the default announcer voice pack active, which is literally the default announcer giving a stoic "Woo hoo". It was done usually to convey sarcasm at a poorly-thought out situation, and was an extremely common command to spam. The default VGS announcer pack was made redundant in Update 3.01 (when all voice packs became free), and was removed entirely in the following update, severely crippling the meme, which is now limited to certain characters instead as a way to annoy players, like Grohk and his incredibly spammable "WHEEeeeEEeeeeEEE!".
- Good luck, have fun!Explanation These are two separate commands in legacy VGS (VVGL and VVGF) that are constantly used by players at the start of each round. This meme is oddly enforced when using new VGS, as these two commands have merged into one context-sensitive command (VCQQ), with the latter voice line never playing until the former voice line has done so.
- You rock, cancel that!Explanation A permutation from SMITE's VGS, Two Commands in the VGS (VER and VVX in legacy, VCER and VCRF in new VGS) that players use as a form of insult
- VHS VHS VHSExplanation The Paladins variation of constantly calling for a healer, which used the VGS command of VHS (VE in the new VGS), which players used either to annoy healers, or to demand healing the moment they press the command. Like with any other game with a healing command, it became a meme simply due to sheer repetition.
- Spamming "Cancel that!" in a match, most often during the now-removed Top PlayExplanation Another permutation from SMITE's VGS system, in which players originally abused the "Cancel that" command to disapprove of something they don't like (a plan, a person, it varies on context). It was often abused most during Top Play, to show disapproval of a person getting to be in it. When Patch 3.02 removed Top Play, it limited the meme to mid-match use.
- "Did you freeze.... or burn?" - Yes! Explanation If Imani got Top Play, she will quote this to the rest of the players. In response, players tend to answer with a Mathematician's Answer of Yes (which could refer to either freezing or burning). When Top Play was removed, the meme died with it.
- "Have you met my friends?" - Yes! Explanation Similar to the above, Vivian's ultimate callout poses the eponymous Sarcastic question, with players often responding with "Yes!" via the VGS system as an answer to said question.
Misc. Memes:
- Horse SpinningExplanation Forcibly mounting up at the start of the round lets you ride around on your mount early and... not much else. A very easy way to annoy players / show excitement for the upcoming match is to repeatedly spin about. You can't do it on the vehicle mounts due to the differing control schemes, but you can do a very similar thing with roaming emotes, like Pepper Step or Cutting Shapes.
- Bomb King JesusExplanation Bomb Kings' aerial animations after using the Poppy Bomb makes it look like the common hands-out at the sides Jesus art pose found online.◊
- Dying mid-ultimate and spamming death screams (in this case, death quotes) is a given.
- "Overwatch for poor people"Explanation Since Paladins is free-to-play and has similarities to Overwatch (which originally costed money), many often referred to it as simply the poor man's Overwatch.
- "Chinese Overwatch"Explanation Many often referred to Paladins as this, due to China's reputation for making Shoddy Knockoff Product games.
- Horrible portmanteaus of the Paladins title getting blended with competitors and/or being referred to by said competitors' names, resulting in things like "I drew Skye from Overborn", "I main Torbjorn" instead of Barik, "Palawatch", "Overdins", "Palabattlewatch", "Team Overbattledins", et cetera.
- Inara TrumpExplanation With Inara's wall building powers, comparisons to Donald Trump were inevitable.
- Booby and booty shootersExplanation Paladins has many scantily clad characters, often attention being drawn to the chests of female characters, leading many to say you play Paladins for boobs, Overwatch for butts, and Team Fortress 2 for hats.
- ThunderBrush and edgy spike skins.Explanation After Paladins got a new Art Director in April 2018, some people inevitably had misgivings on the differences this led to, such as the new splash arts intended to all have a a similar artstyle to replace previous placeholder art or art created from Paladins' Chinese version...and that proportionately too many of the skins released under him had a Dark Is Evil theme and/or lots of spikes. Became an Ascended Meme during a preview of the plans for Paladins in 2019.
- "Flank Pip"Explanation A old joke was to call Pip a Flank champion instead of a Support champion because of his high agility and a power that's used to escape when used right. Though Pip technically wasn't introduced as a Support, so there is some truth to the joke. (There's even a chart◊ proving that Pip is objectively better than Buck, an actual Flank Champion, in nearly every way). People also like to portray Pip as actually believing he's a flanker, forgetting that he can heal, and being confused when his teammates ask him for healing. The Goddess Lian voice pack makes reference to this as one of her jokes:
- "Jenos was Viktor all along!"◊Explanation Jenos being presented as a damage-focused support with an assault rifle led to a meme about him just being Viktor in a mask. However, the meme died down shortly after statistics revealed that Jenos can do incredible amounts of healing with his fire-and-forget healing ability.
- Fans have noticed Viktor tends to die when he shows up in a champion teaser. Even when he doesn't appear, fans assume that the featured champion is going to kill him offscreen. Strix's champion teaser threw people off when Viktor appeared... and didn't die at all.
- Torvald's usefulness on maps with Bottomless Pits led to memes about his love for such maps.
- The Savior of PaladinsExplanation When HirezChris became the Executive Producer for Paladins and announced the removal of the infamous Cards Unbound update, formerly disgruntled fans started praising him and calling him the Savior of Paladins.
- Replacing "can" with "Khan"Explanation This was used as a pun, usually in tandem with the Makoa challenge meme; "Yes, but Khan he challenge Makoa?". This got amplified with the release of Ameri-Khan, with horrible renaming's of countries to fit the "Khan" naming scheme, such as Khanada.
- ”Behold, the Dragon’s FURY!”Explanation Drogoz's ultimate is widely feared by frontliners, thanks to the fact that it deals 100% of the target’s health in damage and how Drogoz players will almost exclusively target frontlines with it. Because he’s killing you with a single right hook, comparisons to Saitama have also been made.
- "Add it to the list, Helvian!" Explanation Former Paladins-Youtuber Helvian started a bug report series called "The Hunters Log" to keep track of all the bugs experienced by himself and by others on streams. The phrase is often used on the /r/paladins subreddit, as well as by his fanbase when he finds a new bug, and the titular list is referring to this gargantuan spreadsheet that documented pretty much every bug running.
- Jenos looking at his hands◊ Explanation An image of Jenos from Io's teaser immediately became a meme because of how silly it looked. It's either used to show hopelessness or weighing two mutually exclusive choices. Became an Ascended Meme with the January 2020 Community Battle Pass, where it was one of the unlockable sprays.
- Io's splash art quickly became the subject of complaints due to being Off-Model compared to how she looks in-game. Fortunately, she got better-looking art in the Pirate's Treasure patch.
- Hi-Rez is drunk/Professional companyExplanation The official Paladins YouTube channel has some very strange trailers (case in point), which causes people to either attribute the videos to drunkenness, or cast doubt on the professionalism of the company.
- Make Merman Jenos! Explanation One of the skins added in the Pirate Battle Pass was Mermaid Ying, which many people found disappointing as Ying had already gotten a skin in the Street Style event, which was fairly recent at that time, and was also lambasted for being yet-another-Fanservice-heavy skin for a female character (Something Ying isn't exactly short on). Many began saying Jenos should have gotten a merfolk skin instead, and the idea immediately became extremely popular, to the point that even Evil Mojo staff acknowledged it, and Thunderbrush himself drew it. The skin finally became official with the Radiant Stars update adding Mernos Jenos
- Terminus's "Headsman" pose killing allies Explanation His "Headsman" MVP Pose immediately became a meme format, and is usually used to convey dislike for a certain character.
- Tiberius is often compared to other feline characters such as Tai Lung, Tigress, Tony the Tiger, or Tigger.
- C***ie Explanation The profanity filter in the game is notorious for over-blocking words, even if they're not offensive. Included in the block list is "Cassie", as it has the word "ass" in there, and was therefore treated as an expletive. It became a bit of a meme in the community because of how funny it was the game was blocking a champion name. Patch 4.6 fixed a bunch of words, and "Cassie" was one of those words, and so this specific meme died, but it continues on as the aforementioned filter still blocks reasonable words all the time.
- This image of SaatiExplanation Saati's card art for Aggressive Tip became a meme format to voice unpopular opinions, much like the "I don't sing" Gif◊ from Tangled provoked similar reactions online. So much so that the official Paladins Twitter got in on it.
- Comparisons between the "Maurauder◊/ Royal Mark◊" Tyra skins and Undyne from Undertale were immediately seen after the release of the Absolution patch.
- Why?◊Explanation The Bounty Store Bot on the Paladins Discord listed Willo's "Bluebell" skin as having a Bounty Coin value of "why". This became a bit of a meme on that Discord, and other associated servers, with people joking the bot had become self-aware.
