10. You Know I Had to Do It to ‘Em
Why don’t we first start off with something relevant. You Know I Have to Do It to Em is a Photoshop meme based on a picture of Twitter user LuckyLuciano17k standing on a sidewalk wearing a light-colored shirt and shorts with the caption “You know I had to do it to em.” On September 2nd, 2014, LuckyLuciano17k posted the photograph of himself with the caption “You know I had to do it to em” (shown below). Prior to the Twitter account becoming private on December 22nd, 2016, the tweet received more than 1,700 likes and 1,700 retweets.
9. Bongo Cat
Bongo Cat refers to an animation of a cat appearing to play the bongos that has been used in various remix videos to make it appear as though the cat is playing along to different songs. After the original video grew popular, people made different versions of the video showing the cat playing other instruments. On May 7th, 2018, Twitter user @DitzyFlama responded to Twitter user @StrayRogue’s GIF of an animated cat slapping a table by posting a video in which he’d edited the GIF to include bongos and added the song “Athletic” from the Super Mario World soundtrack. The tweet gained over 3,800 retweets and 7,000 likes.
7. Steamed Hams
“Steamed Hams” comes from a scene in the Simpsons episode “22 Short Films About Springfield,” which first aired on April 14th, 1996. In the episode, which is an anthology of 22 short scenes about several of the citizens of Springfield, the character Principal Skinner has Superintendent Chalmers over for dinner in a play on the “dinner with the boss” sitcom trope. The dinner, as per the trope, does not go according to plan, as Skinner burns dinner, leading him to cover the truth about dinner through elaborate and increasingly unbelievable series of lies. After burning dinner and telling Chalmers that he’s making “steamed clams” for dinner, Skinner attempts to convince Chalmers that what he had prepared “steamed hams” for dinner, an expression for hamburgers, he says, which is native to Albany, New York.
6. This is Sparta!!!
“This is Sparta!” is a catchphrase usually used in images that parody the scene from the film 300. The scene originates from the 2006 film 300 directed by Zack Snyder, an American film adapted from a graphic novel of the same name by Frank Miller, a fictionalized retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae. The film tells the story of King Leonidas and his lead of 300 Spartans into battle against Persian King Xerxes and his army of more than one million soldiers. Right before battle, a Persian messenger arrives at the gates of Sparta demanding the submission of Sparta to King Xerxes. In response to this demand, Leonidas and his guards kick the messengers into the large well, immediately after shouting “This is Sparta!”. A classic meme that never gets old.
5. ZA WARUDO!!
“Za Warudo” is the Japanese pronunciation of the English word “The World”, the name of Dio Brando’s Stand on the third part of the popular manga and anime series JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. The main ability from this Stand is time stopping, being the most memorable moves used with it throwing a series of knives while the time is stopped, and slamming a steamroller while pummeling it until explodes, letting out his battlecry “WRYYYY”. Both terms and moves became source of parodies, mostly associated with inverse colors pictures, as a reference to the Stand time stopping abilities.
4. The Cake is a Lie
The Cake is a Lie is a catchphrase popularized by the game Portal, and is often used to convey the message that a promised gift is being used to motivate without any intent of delivering. In the game, you are required to do numerous tasks in a research facility guided by a computer named GlaDOS, who repeatedly mentions that following the experiment, there will be cake. As the game progresses, the player finds messages written on the walls as warnings from Doug Rattmann, an old lab worker who has been featured on the Lab Rat comic series. One message scrawled on the walls in later levels reads “the cake is a lie. the cake is a lie. the cake is a lie. the cake is a lie”. After the games release, “the cake is a lie” was widely popular between Portal players, but soon it spread to forums and blogs where the phrase began to take on a new meaning outside of the context of the game. People were using the phrase, “The cake is a lie”, on forums as an idiom meaning, “You are chasing after an empty, unattainable goal.”
3. It’s Over 9000!
“Over 9000” is a popular catchphrase based on an awkwardly translated quote from the Japanese manga anime series Dragon Ball Z that is typically used as an innumerable quantifier to describe a large number of something like “several”, “lots”, and “butt loads”. The line was originally said by Vegeta, one of the main recurring characters featured in the series, and voiced by English voice actor Brian Drummond in the 21st episode of Dragon Ball Z titled “The Return of Goku,” which originally aired on April 19th, 1997. In the English-dub of the episode, the main protagonist character Goku returns to the Earth after intense training in the Other World to square off against Saiyan warriors Vegeta and Nappa. As Goku powers up in rage after learning they had killed his friend Piccolo right before his arrival, Vegeta senses an explosive increase in his power level through his scouter device and yells: “It’s over nine thousand!” The scene from the episode was uploaded by 4chan user and YouTuber Kajetokun on October 17th, 2006.
2. Leeroy Jenkins
Leeroy Jenkins is the name of a World of Warcraft character that is known for screaming out his name before ignorantly charging headlong into battle, killing everyone in his party. The video was first uploaded to World of Warcraft fan-site Warcraft Movies on May 11th, 2005. The guild PalsForLife posted the video to the official World of Warcraft forums asking for constructive criticism on their gameplay. The video showed the guild intensely discussing battle strategies, preparing to enter a dangerous zone in the game known as the about to enter the Rookery in the Upper Blackrock Spire, known for its large quantity of dragonspawn. Suddenly, a paladin in the group named Leeroy Jenkins, who appeared to have missed the discussion, yells out “alright, lets do this!” before charging into the area, killing everyone in the party. Though the video may have been staged, Leeroy Jenkins was embraced by Blizzard, making several appearances in World of Warcraft products.
1. Trollface
Trollface is a rage comic character wearing a mischievous smile that is meant to represent the facial expression of an Internet troll. The image is most commonly used to portray a character as a troll in rage comics, or alternatively, to identify oneself or another participant as such in online discussions. It was originally drawn by Carlos Ramirez, an Oakland-based artist known by his DeviantART handle Whynne, as part of a MS Paint webcomic about the pointless nature of trolling on 4chan’s /v/ (video games) board. The comic was uploaded to deviantART on September 19th, 2008. This face is one of the most recognized memes ever posted on the internet.
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