Ascended Meme / Live-Action TV

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• "Jesus Christ, Marie. They're minerals" became associated with Breaking Bad despite Hank not actually saying the line itself during his mineral collecting phase. He does however say the first sentence in the Season 5 episode "Confessions"
  • The "I am the one who knocks!" meme got a shout out in the comedic "alternate" ending.
• Cheers: In the episode "What is... Cliff Clavin?", Cliff goes on Jeopardy!, but despite a runaway lead of $22,000, he loses by wagering everything in Final Jeopardy and answering "Who are three people who have never been in my kitchen?" Cliff's answer has frequently been used as a stock answer to questions that stump contestants, the earliest example occurring in the 1990 College Tournament by eventual winner Michael Thayer, and Alex Trebek frequently warns players not to "pull a Clavin"^note That is, overbet in FJ. The categories from "Cliff's Dream Board" were also featured in a 2005 Ultimate Tournament of Champions game.
  • Jeopardy! also at times does categories straight out of the Saturday Night Live Celebrity Jeopardy sketches, once all of them (ranging from Sean Connery to Therapists).
• Carl Sagan is famous for the way he described the universe's multitude of stars in Cosmos (although he didn't, until he said it as a joke in a book foreword). In the 2014 reboot, Neil deGrasse Tyson mentions that the invention of zero is useful for writing "billions and billions".
• Fringe The fandom names for the alternate Walter and Olivia, "Walternate" (prior to his reveal) and "Fauxlivia" (following her introduction), have both been canonized by the show.
• Game of Thrones:
  • An in-universe example is the Lannisters' catchphrase, "A Lannister always pays his debts," which is used so frequently that Bran mistakes it for their official motto (which is actually "Hear Me Roar").
  • "Balon Greyjoy won the War of Five Kings" became a popular statement by fans, given that the character was the only one of the original five combatants left at that point despite being the most unlikely. He actually takes note of this in the beginning of Season 6. And then he dies.
  • Gendry's eventual return in Season 7 earns the remark "Thought you'd still be rowing" from Davos. Gendry perpetually rowing became a meme after he was smuggled out of Dragonstone on a rowboat in Season 3 and was never heard from until this point.
  • Fans often jokingly say that Westeros has "only two songs" (in reference to the show's emphasis on/multiple versions played of "The Bear and the Maiden Fair" and "The Rains of Castamere", including the fact that both songs supply episode titles. In "The Mountain and the Viper", those are the only two songs mentioned in the brothel's belching contest. In Season 7, Arya comes across a group of Lannister soldiers singing a song. She quips she's never heard it before, and they reply it's a new one.
• Glee's pairing names Finchel, Puckelberry, and Furt showed up all in Episode 2X08. It was titled Furt. The pairing names continued to show up throughout the series, including the names for the more obscure fanon couples (i.e. Faberry). At the big double wedding of Season 6, the characters hand out OTP hats.
• It's been a running joke among Gossip Girl fans that Chuck and Nate are practically lovers. In Season 5, Jack Bass makes a comment on how it's about time Nate professed his true feelings for Chuck.
  • Also with regards to Nate, fans have been joking about how many of his love interests are cougars. In an early Season 5 episode, Chuck Bass, of all people, turns to Nate for advice on seduction since the woman he has his eyes on is... a cougar. Chuck claims Nate "speaks old lady".
• House:
  • The fandom's name for the Thirteen-Foreman pairing, Foreteen (or Fourteen), was actually used by House himself.
  • Another one picked up and spoken by House himself was the fan term "ducklings" to refer to whichever 3+ doctors are working on his team.
• HGTV spoofed the House Hunters meme of where people seemingly have much too large a budget for what their jobs are in a Christmas ad (Santa and Mrs. Claus with their unlimited budgets).
• iCarly:
  • The series used the pairing names for the two major ships on the show, Creddie (Carly/Freddie) and Seddie (Sam/Freddie).
  • Similarly, Dan Schneider became annoyed by the Forced Meme of "SEDDIE" on his blog, so it became the Running Gag of Gilbert in "iStart A Fan War" and "iOMG".
• The Shrine of the Silver Monkey is easily the most famous room from Legends of the Hidden Temple, due to how many teams crashed and burned in there. It's the only room from the original to make it into the 2021 remake unaltered, and Olmec makes a snide remark about it as he describes it — apparently even he doesn't care for it.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Adar strongly resembles the majority of fanart depicting Sauron before he lost his glamour, which helps draw attention away from the real Sauron.
• In Lost, fans gave the smoke monster the nickname 'Smokey'. In Season 6, Sawyer referred to him by this name (justified by the fact that Sawyer gives everyone creative nicknames).
• For decades, fans of Star Wars from Christian (specifically Catholic) backgrounds have joked about how they felt the urge to reply to "May the Force be with you" with "And also with you" (a response used during Mass to the similarly phrased "May the Lord be with you"). An episode of The Mandalorian had a New Republic pilot reply this way, finally making the joke a canon response.
  • The camtono, a portable combination-locked safe for transporting valuable items, is based on the ice cream maker that Willrow Hood carried when he evacuated Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back. Its name seems to come from the viral video where a father tries to get his baby daughter to say "ice cream" but she keeps saying "camtono".
  • Season 3 of The Mandalorian establishes that the Dark Side did have cookies, which Dr. Pershing and his peers found delicious. They refer to the treats as "travel biscuits" instead of cookies, but the official recipe uses both terms.
• YouTuber swedemason made a Voice Clip Song about MasterChef, particularly judge Gregg Wallace and his line, "I like the buttery biscuit base". The song duly went viral and even made the UK Top 40 charts. Later, when he appeared on TV magic show The Magicians, Wallace took the opportunity during his illusion to enthusiastically quote the song, much to the joy of the audience.
• In the first episode of Muppets Now, one of the photobombing poses made by Kermit shows him drinking tea, a direct reference to the "But that's none of my business" meme that uses a still from a Muppets-themed commercial for Lipton tea.
• For a Discovery Channel contest, Awkward Zombie creator Katie Tiedrich created a MythBusters fan-short about firing a pig from a cannon made entirely out of duct tape. The pig thing isn't too implausible, as the 'Busters do use pig carcasses as human analogues, but the "duct tape cannon" seemed like pure ridiculousness. The short didn't win the contest...but was so popular elsewhere that the Mythbusters themselves saw it and loved it. Come the Duct Tape Special, guess what Kari, Tori, and Grant actually made?^note They didn't fire a pig, but they did fire a bright-orange cannonball.
• On a page advertising a cardboard standup of Jess from New Girl on their website, FOX officially called her "everyone's favorite manic pixie dream girl." Jess is played by that Trope's codifier Zooey Deschanel.
  • Also, in one episode Jess gets mistaken for an attractive doctor's date, whom he knows only through her dating profile picture... and her name is Katy.
• Obi-Wan Kenobi: In Part VI, Obi-Wan says his memetic line "Hello There!" when greeting a young Luke Skywalker.
• Saturday Night Live
  • Miley Cyrus is evidently a fan of the sketch "The Miley Cyrus Show", starring Vanessa Bayer as Cyrus, and has often incorporated the sketch's "prrrretty cool" catchphrase on her Twitter account (her sister Noah is also known to use it in YouTube videos). When Miley hosted SNL in March 2011, she used the catchphrase in promos with Kenan Thompson, and even got to act in a "Miley Cyrus Show" sketch dressed as Justin Bieber (one of the highlights of the episode).
  • Bayer-as-Cyrus introduced Miley's infamous 2013 VMA performance.
  • Also, this Instagram post.
  • The Ahnold parodies Hans and Franz used to mock what they described as "girlie men". Arnold Schwarzenegger himself used the phrase (and given the years following the sketches saw political correctness started to ramp up, at times with moral outrage).
  • From his first appearance Devon Walker was referred to as a "Black Pete Davidson". So when the show did the "I'm Just Ken" parody, "I'm Just Pete", what character does Walker play? Black Pete.
• Sesame Street:
  • The show was the focus of an uproar whereby Cookie Monster was purported to have drastically reduced his cookie intake, or even given them up altogether and been renamed the Veggie Monster. ^note The actual incriminating scene was of Cookie Monster listening to a song about how "Cookies are a sometimes food", not saying it himself, after which he pointed out that "right now is sometimes", and ate a cookie. In any case, over the course of the whole show, he's more of an Extreme Omnivore for whom cookies are a Trademark Favorite Food; he's happily eaten vegetables, fruit, and numerous random objects. The show has referenced this firestorm on a few occasions. In one sketch, Cookie Monster is about to eat some fruit when interviewer Matt Lauer confronts him about why he "doesn't like cookies", to which the monster replies "You members of media blow story waaaay out of proportion!" In another scene, after eating some vegetables, he said "But remember, me not Veggie Monster. Me still Cookie Monster. Just for record. Me got reputation to think of."
  • Many people seem to think that Ernie and Bert got their names from the cab driver and the police officer in It's a Wonderful Life. Jim Henson, the creator of said characters, had said this was just a coincidence. But then in an Elmo Saves Christmas special, Ernie and Bert walk past a TV set showing It's a Wonderful Life, right at the scene where George calls out "Bert! Ernie! What's the matter with you two guys?" The two Muppets then look at each other, confused.
• In a 2016 Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em skit for Sports Relief, Frank told his daughter Jessica that he was always proud of her, and she replied "Even when I did a whoopsie on the carpet?", referencing the stock line used by Frank Spencer impersonators "Ooh, Betty, the baby's done a whoopsie on the carpet". Frank replied that he didn't remember that, referencing the fact the line never appeared in the series.
• Comedy clip show The Soup would often describe The Hills star Spencer Pratt as having a "creepy flesh-colored beard". The phrase would eventually make it into an episode.
• Spitting Image would often feature film critic Barry Norman (voiced by Rory Bremner), giving him the catchphrase "...and why not?" He didn't say it in real life, but it fit with his style and became the first thing anyone thought of regarding him. Years later, Norman said in a review "...and, as Rory Bremner would say, why not?" and also made it the title of his autobiography.
• Star Trek
  • The franchise in general is famous for its Rubber-Forehead Aliens. In most series, characters from one species (usually human) who wished to be disguised as another (usually to avoid violating the Prime Directive) would get some quick cosmetic surgery courtesy of the ship's doctor, which of course would be reversed by the beginning of the next episode. However, one episode of Enterprise bucked this trend and showed the characters peeling literal rubber prosthetics off their foreheads after returning from an away mission. Later, they must return to the planet, which requires them to put the rubber foreheads back on, and their relative ease of removal becomes crucially important to the plot.
  • Star Trek: Enterprise: There was a recurring mysterious time traveller pulling the strings of several plots points in the show, and was never identified and given a name. Fans often referred to him with the name Future Guy. Then the creators of the show also used it. (Although the term never actually appeared in the show.)
  • Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Season 1 sparked a lot of fandom jokes about Pike's Peakinvoked, i.e. the fact that Pike's hairstyle is seemingly as unflappable as he usually is. In "Those Old Scientists", Ensign Boimler, crossing over from Star Trek: Lower Decks, remarks upon meeting Pike that he's famous in part for having "great hair."
• Supernatural was fond of meta episodes that poked fun at/outright ridiculed the rather keen elements of its fandom.
  • In Season 5, they attend a con in which they see merchandise emblazed with Got Salt? and other meme-y phrases from the fandom.
  • In the Season 10 episode "Fanfiction", they visit a high school putting on a play about their adventures, complete with a "Destiel" subplot that irritates Dean. Sam, on the other hand, speculates what his ship name with Castiel would be and comes up with Sastiel, which is the most popular one.
  • In Season 13's Scooby-Doo crossover, Dean races the Mystery Machine in the Impala, mirroring a popular meme that compared his car to the Scooby gang's iconic van.
• Top Gear: The presenters' use of the term "Flappy Paddle Gearbox" to describe Semi-Automatic Transmission has led to many car manufacturers and reviewers adopting the term themselves.
• Originally in the Bonus Round on Wheel of Fortune, a contestant would have to pick five consonants and a vowel to assist in solving the bonus puzzle within a time limit. By the late 1980s, almost every contestant was picking R, S, T, L, N and E in that order, because those letters are the most common. The rules were finally changed in October 1988 to give those letters automatically — in that order — and then ask for three more consonants and a vowel (but also making the puzzles harder and slashing the time limit).
• Wynonna Earp: In the Season 2 finale, Jeremy refers to Waverly and Officer Nicole Haught by their popular shipname, WayHaught, much to Doc's confusion.
• Originally, The X-Files character was named "Cigarette-Smoking Man" in the scripts. But no one ever called him by name. So the fans started calling him "Cancer Man". By Season 3, so did Mulder.

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