I don't see the case for it needing to be retired. Like, speaking for myself, I never had interest in Blizzard games until 2016's Overwatch, but I was still very extremely familiar with people using "Leeroy Jenkins" as shorthand in exactly the way it was codified as as trope (someone bumrushing in recklessly and jeopardizing an entire plan — which is the entirety of the joke of the video that "Leeroy Jenkins" originated from).
I'd understand the idea that if you're not in the know of what the term is that you'd be confused, but that could be applied to just about any trope with a proper noun in it — Goomba Stomp uses a made up video-game word, but it can definitely be assumed that most people would be able to figure out what Mario is and what a Goomba is, and speaking anecdotally, I think it's recognized enough outside the vernacular of TV Tropes and niche WoW memes to be left as is.
Edited by number9robotic on Nov 8th 2024 at 8:57:46 AM
Thanks for playing King's Quest V!We don't rename tropes (or retire trope names), unless, as has been mentioned in the TRS discussion threads, there's evidence that the name itself is causing problems to the trope (i.e. misuse/underuse). I'm not a gamer and have never played WoW or any other Blizzard games (this is the first time I knew the origin of Leeroy Jenkins's name, actually) but I never had any problems understanding the trope.
Just because no longer allow tropes to be named after characters or work-specific jargons doesn't mean we need to retroactively rename every character/jargon-named tropes without good reason.
Edited by Adept on Nov 9th 2024 at 4:24:38 PM
Part of OP's concern seems to be "newer generation do not even know who Leeroy Jenkins is", and I feel like you're overestimating its urgency.
You can't understand Leeroy Jenkins without knowing mid-2000's Internet culture, that is right. But those newer generations are still pretty young; and I don't know how exactly "kid-friendly" can be considered Tv Tropes, but we do discuss a lot of mature topics, and it's plausible many kids and teens cannot, or don't want to, join us yet.
It doesn't appear that we're having a Newbie Boom of post-Leeroy Jenkins tropers, so I think it's still too early to assume many of us are unfamiliar enough with its name to misuse it.
As the others have said, Leeroy Jenkins has misuse, but its name doesn't seem responsible for it, which means that it's not worthy of getting a rename, at least for now.
Oo oo ah ahyeah as the one who asked about hero stole my bike i don't see any reason in retiring leeroy jenkins. granted, i can't speak from an unbiased point of view because i know the meme, but i haven't played world of warcraft or any other blizzard game and i know the meaning of the trope. it's highly likely there are already tropers on the site who were born after the leeroy jenkins video was first posted (god that makes me feel old), and keeping that in mind, there doesn't seem to be any actual issues caused by the name. there are lots of cases of obtuse character-named tropes that have stuck because they've glued themselves to the TV tropes dictionary — Xanatos Gambit, My Name Is Inigo Montoya, Chuck Cunningham Syndrome to name a few. i don't think we have to do anything preemptively, since TV tropes runs on the "don't fix what isn't broken" principle.
Edited by NoUsername on Nov 9th 2024 at 11:59:57 AM
Agreed that the name needn't be changed if it isn't creating problems.
Although if there are other concerns besides the name, a wick check wouldn't hurt.
Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper WallI get what y'all are saying, but since I was thinking of taking Leeroy to TRS anyway to work out those other bugs, I was kinda thinking it was a "speak now or forever hold your peace" deal on the name, now or never. While it is true that we haven't had a huge Newbie Boom of >20 year old tropers, we also need a regular influx of new tropers to replace the ones that leave, or, you know, we're going to die. I'm not saying the future of the site depends on the name of one trope, that would be hyperbolic, but it would also be a simple change to help appeal to younger people and make us seem less like a circlejerk of millennials keeping our dated memes on life support. Keeping the site from looking like a relic is important.
For what it's worth, I don't think every old meme should get changed, provided they work out of context, like Giant Enemy Crab, despite being a reference to a meme that spawned from Sony's '06 E3 presentation, is straightforwardly about antagonistic crustaceans that are large, so I wouldn't say the meme is a problem because the name is still Clear, Concise, and Witty. I would also weigh the longevity of the work/franchise's cultural impact into this. For instance, fellow mid-00's cultural juggernaut Mean Girls, despite very much being a product of its time, is still incredibly popular with generations too young to have actually been in high school the year it came out, and even kids who hadn't been born yet. So if we had tropes called "So Fetch" or "Get In Loser Were Going Shopping" I wouldn't have the issues I have with Leeroy with them. But I already showed you the receipts for Leeroy's fall from relevance. While I agree with ![]()
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saying that TV Tropes isn't a kid friendly site, but Leeroy's about to turn 20 next year. There are legal adults who weren't born yet during Leeroy-mania, and obviously time is marching forward and the problem will get worse every year.
I'm just saying, the way the wind is blowing, "Leeroy Jenkins" is not in the vernacular of the younger people we at least need to make some appeal to, and the name lacks the clarity to work without the context of the meme. It's true that I think we've brute-forced it into our lexicon, but theoretically we could brute-force anything into our lexicon, Trope Namer Syndrome doesn't exist. I'll also argue that I think the name is causing some (but not all) of the misuse, because the name is why the description is so video-game-centric (when the trope isn't just for gaming), and a bad description can butterfly effect out into misuse in the wicks. I mean, I still have to do the actual Wick Check, but I've seen enough of a pattern that I think a check is necessary (if I didn't see misuse, I wouldn't be talking about it.)
if the wick check shows that it's being misused and you believe the name is significantly contributing to the misuse then yeah a rename could be in the cards. it's mainly the argument of relevance that i don't get, because then it's more a conversation of the greater culture on the site, and whether healthy tropes should be renamed out of fear that their names are obtuse enough to cause misuse in the future. leeroy jenkins is just one of many examples there. TV tropes was founded mostly by gen Xers referencing things relevant to them and the ones who got in early got to stick; if we want to talk about that i think that's a separate topic (still worth discussing imo) especially as trope naming has shifted to self-descriptive language rather than referential language
There is a thing that, while we are not an encyclopedia of memes, there is some value in trying to keep a record of terms and how they evolve. Even if Leeroy Jenkins becomes archaic, evolves to mean something else or superseded by a new term we will likely still keep the page but update it to reflect changing thoughts. As a comparable example, First-World Problems may mean something completely different in ten years as the term is sarcastic and not intended to be a sincere list of issues.
Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.I mean, pretty much no one now knows why Alfred Hitchcock decided to call a certain kind of plot device a "MacGuffin" (if anyone ever did know), but we still keep the name.
The original Leeroy Jenkins may have fallen into obscurity (for now), but the impact he has on geek culture with that video permeates into our Internet language. Consider The Starscream or The Creon. I don't think many people are well familiar with Creon unless you study Greek tragedies. But people know that The Creon means loyal second-in-command simply by looking at TV Tropes. The Starscream is the same thing. Not everyone knows about the 80s cartoon that made Starscream so infamous, but casual viewers are aware that the name itself is synonymous with treachery.
I wasn't even aware of the Leeroy Jenkins craze until I came to TV Tropes. I was more familiar with Warcraft III at the time. My impression with Leeory Jenkins was that he was just some crazy lunatic charging into danger and screaming his name "LLEEEEERRRRRROYYYY JEEEEKINNNNS!!!" just like Grom Hellscream.
And that's pretty much all I need to know. I didn't know what was the context of the raid or even the video.
More importantly, if it was just an internet meme taken from a small fandom it would likely fall into obscurity because after three years the fandom dissipates. Leeroy Jenkins started as a meme that permeated video games narratives, with a variety of characters named Jenkins who die because of their enthusiasm. That turns it akin to Jump the Shark or George Lucas Altered Version where the "meme" is actually common vernacular within the narrative of a work. Recently Shana Clone was disambigued because while there was a pattern the trope namer wasn't entirely clearly the inspiration, and even though Char Clone and Darth Vader Clone came from iconic works and had a lot of internal franchise examples the non-franchise examples tended to get abstract and they were disambigued as well.
Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.

So, the seed of this idea germinated on the Tropes with Outdated/Offensive Names thread,
when someone brought up how Hero Stole My Bike is a snowclone of a racially-insensitive meme from Punch-Out!!, but it was decided that since the trope name itself had no slurs and the meme itself was more-or-less forgotten by time, it wasn't an issue. But that got me thinking - we actually have quite a lot of trope names from mid-late-2000's era memes. Giant Enemy Crab, How Do I Shot Web?, Screw the Rules, I Have Money!, The Cake Is a Lie... but all of those at least do explain what the trope is about in the titlenote , and they're clear even to people who have never seen Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series or played Portal. While they're fond memories of the internet of yesteryear to our older tropers, they're intuitive enough a youngblood could figure out how to use them correctly and remember what it is. That's not really true for the subject of today's thread, Leeroy Jenkins.
Leeroy Jenkins was born on May 11th, 2005, from a World of Warcraft video that went viral. At the time, he was rather famous for his recklessness, and that's how he lent his name to one of our tropes. He stands as one of our very few remaining Character Named Tropes not taken from either mythology, religion, or classic literature. Character Named Tropes, like Leeroy Jenkins, were once ubiquitous, but we started turning against them because we were concerned that people from outside the fandom may not understand the reference. Which leads me into...
In 2024, Leeroy's star has fallen hard. WOW's not popular with Zoomers in general, but Leeroy in particular has the added un-benefit of also being tied to mid-2000's internet culture. Google Trends
says he peaked in June '05 and is currently raking in only 2-3% of the searches per month that he had during his peak month, and he's been at this sorry state since the early New 10's. Reminder, a lot of our younger userbase straight up wasn't born yet when the meme was big, and that'll only get worse as the years roll on. He hasn't had any real nostalgic revivals (and we can't count on one necessarily ever occurring to bring him back into the spotlight and known to people younger than, like, 35) The kids have no idea who this guy is or why we would compare any similarly hot-headed and reckless character to him. Yes, new young tropers will learn what we mean by "Leeroy Jenkins" because it's wicked in 5,700 articles, but will they remember to use it when applicable with its un-straightforward name?
Then what explains the nearly 40,000 inbounds since 2012, which only started counting way after the peak? Well, I think it's because we show up early in the search results for the people that are looking up Leeroy Jenkins. When I looked, we came up 5th, behind Wikipedia, a reupload of the original video, Dictionary.com, and Reddit. To be fair, those Google Trends metrics do seem to imply that he still gets a few hundred Googles a month, and I'm sure a good number of them head our way. But is that really worth keeping Leeroy as a trope namer and not just a disambig page?
As for the trope itself, Leeroy Jenkins isn't in the worst shape I've ever seen a trope, but it does have its issues, most notably how I've seen it used both for characters who regularly act impulsive and for times that characters act impulsively (even if it was out of character for them, or was forced by the situation). The description of the trope also makes it seem like it's mostly about the (now pretty outdated for the reasons I mentioned above) internet slang, while the examples are largely not about online gaming. The trope may also technically have a clause about how the Leeroy must cause problems for their team (or at least nearly cause them), but this may be getting ignored. Leeroy also gained a kissing cousin trope in 2021, The "Why Wait?" Combatant. TWWC is actually apparently a duo or group trope, where a group decides on a plan and one character (the "Leeroy", if you will) decides to rush it. The trope hasn't finished crosswicking, but I imagine when it finishes it'll still be <100 wicks.
I was thinking of doing a wick check on Leeroy mostly for the other reasons mentioned in the preceding paragraph, but I did want to float the idea of a rename of this nostalgic trope before starting because, you know, I think it's time. If he's that unfamiliar to younger generations, it's probably time this trope got a new namenote . Wouldn't you say, after twenty years, it's time to take Leeroy out to greener pastures?note