Memes / League of Legends

League of Legends is a veritable Fountain of Memes, since the game has lasted since 2009. Granted, few of them have spread outside the community, but they tend to spread rapidly within it. It's quite telling of Riot Games how in-tune they are with their fanbase seeing how many of these memes have been ascended into the game itself or related media.

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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.
  • Further mutations and successor memes, if any.

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Memes originating in the game:

In General

• Press R To Win. ^Explanation A descriptor for several champions that (by popular opinion) require no skill to play whatsoever and can just ult their way to victory. Most often Karthus and his infamous Requiem but more recently got tagged onto Darius for his chain execution ults.
  • Ascended Meme: In the LoL Mac trailer, there actually is a Big Red Button with an R on it with this meme as the instructions. The trailer in general is chock-full of references and Ascended Memes, some more cleverly hidden than others. With his relaunch, Karthus has a joke that says "What's the incantation again... yes, erm... oh, right, R!"
  • One of the sources of this meme - the "Pro as heck Guide to Karthus", featuring Spawn Karthus.
• Spin2Win ^ExplanationThis is never said in verbatim, but this has become synonymous to Garen and his Judgment where he spins around doing tick damage. Because of this, if there's a MOBA game that features Spin Attack, if they do not say it by default, they make a reference to this; occasionally you'll see it referenced outside the MOBA genre as well. Cases in point: Smite (Thor's Ragnarok Force X can make him say 'Spin To Win!' when doing his Spin Attack equivalent (Berserker's Barrage)) and Heroes of the Storm (One of the unlockable skills for The Lost Vikings is titled 'Spin To Win!', though they spin once for burst damage instead.)
• Wood Division. ^ExplanationA hypothetical rank lower than Bronze, often referenced by the titles of fail compilations. Potentially Ascended when Riot announced a new lowest division below Bronze called Iron for Season 9.
• The meme graveyard ^ExplanationA nickname Riot has for their habit of ascending memes, particularly in regards to acting upon ancient skin suggestions like Dragon Master Swain or giving old joke characters much needed overhauls.
• From LoL Philippines, we have Bidamere◊ ^Explanation"Bida" in Filipino (in this context) refers to a hero, protagonist or main character. The impression of typical Filipino MOBA players is that they tend to pick Badass Action Heroes and try to get killing sprees. Tryndamere is the poster boy for this, though this also extends to assassins like Katarina and Akali, gunslingers like Miss Fortune and Caitlyn, and other highly damaging melee fighters like Master Yi and Darius. Players using these characters tend to be pigeonholed as having a Leeroy Jenkins mentality and tend to build damaging items exclusively without any defensive items.
• Riot Game. ^ExplanationFans noted that the company that creates LoL was called "Riot Games", but for ten years LoL remained their only actual game (not counting a couple of flash minigames, the board game Mechs vs Minions, or Teamfight Tactics which, while a totally different game from LoL, was made from LoL assets and ran within the LoL client, causing players to treat it as an alternate game mode rather than a separate game). A Discredited Meme by the time this example was added, as Riot announced a slew of new games during their 10th anniversary celebration in 2019, with the first new game, Legends of Runeterra, entering open beta in 2020.
• 200+ years^ExplanationIn early 2020, champion designer RiotLutzburg made an infamous response to complaints about the seemingly aimless trajectory of the long-awaited Wukong rework, claiming that Riot had "200+ collective years of professional game design experience." Considering the perpetually unbalanced nature of the game, this instantly became mocked among fans, and this number is brought up whenever another balance fiasco occurs.

Controller Champion Memes

Morgana

• Morgana Q lasting for [insert exorbitantly long amount of time]^ExplanationThe root from Morgana's Q Dark Binding is one of the longest single instances of crowd-control in the game, and it somehow feels even longer if you get tagged with it in a crucial moment, so players are keen to make jokes exaggerating the length of the root. Became an Ascended Meme when Riot made the debuff tooltip for the root say that it lasts for "roughly 3 years".

Pyke

• Phil Swift here with Flex Tape. ^ExplanationPyke's /joke has him begin leaking seawater from his body, complete with the sound of a cork popping. This has lead Pyke to become the focal point of memes for Phil Swift, the spokesperson for the water proof "Flex Tape". Killing a Pyke becomes patching a leak, and killing with Pyke becomes "sawing a boat in half".
• The best crowd control is death. ^Explanation Pyke's ultimate not only prevents the downsides of Kill Stealing, it actively encourages him to do it. This is such a Violation of Common Sense for a support that people find it funny.

Sona

• Sona's breasts, in general. ^ExplanationHer older splash art's Impossibly-Low Neckline on full display was highly infamous. Even after she received a newer splash art that also resulted in that aspect being less blatantly seen, the memetic awesomeness of her breasts show little sign of dying away.

Soraka

• Soraka's deadly bananas.^ExplanationIn her auto attack animation, Soraka throws golden crescent moon particles. Combine this with her low auto attack damage and decent attack range, and you'll have people raging about just barely escaping a fight only to be picked off by a random flying 'banana'. Ascended with a changed joke emote and a changed dance emote (to the Chiquita dance). Then "Order of the Banana Soraka" changed her particles TO bananas and dispensed with all subtlety.
  Soraka: Yes, that was a banana. No one expects the banana.

Taric

• Truly, truly, truly, outrageous ^ExplanationPart of Taric's pre-VGU /joke referencing Jem and the Holograms' opening, likely to follow wherever he is mentioned.
  • now immortalized in emote form.

Thresh

• CLICK THE LANTERN ^ExplanationThresh has an extremely useful ability where he can throw his lantern out and any ally who clicks on it will be dragged back to his location, very useful for saving allies caught out of position. Unfortunately, a lot of less experienced players will not actually know this, resulting in them regularly ignoring the lantern and being killed with salvation just a single click away. As you can imagine, this causes no end of frustration to Thresh players.
  • In Patch 4.1, this prompted Riot to add an indicator that directs allied champs' eyes to the lantern with a line of arrows... and some people still don't click it.
  • This was ascended when Riotgave Thresh an Eternal aptly called "CLICK".
• Thresh Prince of Bel-Air ^ExplanationOriginates from commentators at the EU League Championship Series, who bust out the pun whenever Thresh is picked or banned, which in that tournament, was quite often.
  • As an extension, commentators began ranking people based on their alleged skill with Thresh. So the reportedly best Thresh player in the EU would be called the Thresh King, and the second best will be the Thresh Prince.

Yuumi

• Yuumi is not a champion.^ExplanationYuumi's entire gimmick is that she can attach herself to teammates, granting them bonus stats as well as other assistance while being immune to harm unless she's somehow forced off or her partner is killed. Naturally, this leads to a much less active playstyle where the player doesn't even have to move, autoattack, or generally play the game for the most part. This has led to many complaints and jokes about how Yuumi shouldn't be considered an actual champion as opposed to something like a buff or item.
  • Sadcat Yuumi^ExplanationYuumi often receives criticisms that she's a lazy AFK champion who wins by doing nothing, and all that negative jazz. Expect to see someone photoshopping the Sad Cat meme onto Yuumi in response.
• I hope Yuumi wins. I am a Yuumi main. I love cats, and my parents tell me I'm a parasite, so we have a lot in common. Yuumi might not be able to flash, but it lights up my life and heart. Go Yuumi!!!!!!^ExplanationA copypasta taken from Twitch and often used whenever Yuumi is involved or brought up.

Fighter Champion Memes

Aatrox

• COME! FIGHT! ^ExplanationThe bulk of Aatrox's interactions with other champions are capped with the aforementioned Bring It line, which has since turned into a Catchphrase of sorts for his player base.

Briar

• Briar's feet^ExplanationFrom as early as her splash art being leaked prematurely, the biggest thing the entire fanbase focused on beyond anything else in her design was her conspicuously bare feet, not helped by the splash art's lighting almost putting a literal spotlight pointing towards her toes. As you would imagine, this provoked jokes about how Riot was at long last making a champion for foot fetishists.

Darius

• Get dunked! ^ExplanationDarius's ultimate, in line with his spiritual predecessor, Dota 2's Axe, is referred to as a "Dunk", up to and including his first ultimate skin being "Dunkmaster Darius" who replaces his armor with a basketball uniform, and literally slam dunks people with Noxian Guillotine.

Garen

• DEEEEMMMAACIA! ^ExplanationLine brought to you by Garen, the Might of Demacia. Really, Garen and his Spin2Win is the most memetic thing in the game.
  • Yup.
  • and again.
  • In a bit of Beam Me Up, Scotty!, he screams that when he uses Courage, the defensive self-buff, not the spinning thingy everyone attributes it to. The association comes from the fact that the two skills are often activated at the same time, since his spin requires him to stay in melee range of the enemy for three seconds to achieve maximum effectiveness, and as such, he tends to draw fire.
  • Became a bit of Ascended Meme, as Lux screams "DEMACIA!" for her Ultimate as well.
  • As does Jarvan IV.
  • The Brolaf skin for Olaf puts a humorous spin on this when he activates his ultimate skill.
    Brolaf: ''BROMACIA!
  • The "Patch notes" for April Fool's Day 2011 included Galio shouting "DEMACIA!" while he channels Idol of Durand.
  • And now we have Darius, the Hand of Noxus who is a stylistically similar counterpart to Garen. His joke? He looks around for a sec to see if anyone is watching before he tries to spin around in a circle with his huge axe, screaming NOXUUUUUUS! Unfortunately, he gets really dizzy and...
    Darius: "Noxuuu... oh, woah, oof! How does he do it?"
  • Yet again, Quinn's /joke has Valor say something to her about one of three Demacians. Quinn's responses make it clear one of them is about Garen saying something a lot... you'll know what Valor must have been referring if you've read the rest of this section.
    Quinn: "Who's there? Garen who? Yeah, I guess he does say that a lot."
  • Upon being reworked "Troll King" Trundle continues the gags.
    Trundle: "TROLLMACIA!"
  • Gnar tries his best on doing an impression too, but due to Speaking Simlish, all that comes out was...
    Gnar: "DEMAGLIO!"
  • Even SION does this now after his relaunch. And when you hear him shouting, it's a REALLY bad sign for your team if he's an enemy.
    Sion: "NOOOOOXUUUUUUS!"
  • Ekko from Zaun also wants to join in the fun when taunting Garen:
    Ekko: "ZAUUUUUUNNNN!!"
  • After VU, Irelia also joins in.
    Irelia: "IONIAAAAAA!! Hmm, that's me, if I was you."
  • Even after he got scarier post update, even Fiddlesticks can't resist to insert the meme, even if it sounds distorted and would look scary in hindsight. This happens whenever he encounters any Demacians, not just Garen.
    Fiddlesticks: "De... ma... ci... a..."
  • Jax from his 2023 voiceover makes a reference bordering on Obligatory Joke territory:
    Jax: ICATHIAAAA! There! A battle cry before your beatdown, Garen!
• Garen is a cat person. ^ExplanationIn a case of unexpected synergy, both casual and professional teams discovered Yuumi with Garen in the bottom lane proves to be an extremely unorthodox but effective strategy. This coupled with his lion motif in the God-King skin and his affection for Katarina have led to a lot of jokes regarding his pet preference.
• Stoner Garen, a Korean variant on the DEMACIA meme. ^ExplanationThe word for marijuana in Korean is very similar to the DEMA in Garen's DEMACIA, making DEMACIA spam sound like Garen is shouting his praise of drugs.

Gragas

• Bomba^ExplanationA popular catchphrase among Gragas mains tied to AP builds, where Gragas sacrifices his durability for magic damage, turning his Explosive Cask from merely a disruptive (dis)engage tool into an insane damage nuke that can one-shot squishies.

Jayce

• NA Jayce^ExplanationJayce is an infamously pretty volatile champion as not only does he have tricky mechanics, he must win lane otherwise his relevance drops like a brick. Just as infamously, he's a personal favorite of many North American pros but has historically turned up inconsistent-to-mediocre winrates compared to other pro regions, leading many to lampoon the seemingly NA-specific phenomenon and groan whenever the "NA Jayce" is busted out.

Jax

• The Counterstrike Copypasta^ExplanationA copypasta/shitpost writing out Jax's Counterstrike ability word for word that originated on r/Draven and appears in nearly every conversation when Jax is brought up, often with spelling errors and calling Jax "Jacks".

Lee Sin

• Lee Syndrome^ExplanationAn unfortunately common bad habit among Lee Sin players is always following up a successful Sonic Wave with a Resonating Strike no matter how dangerous and suicidal the risk, with a widespread joke that it's rooted in an uncontrollable urge as a result of a widespread, champion main-specific mental condition.
  • "My mind's telling me nooooooo... BUT MA BODYYY... MA BOOODYYYYY'S TELLIN ME YEEEEEEAAHUUUUUUUSSSS!"^ExplanationThanks to this video, the opening lines to R. Kelly's "Bump N Grind" has become the soundtrack to this phenomenon.

Mordekaiser

• Morde es the best, # 1, best, shield es always win, never loose huehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehue. ^ExplanationThe joke being that Brasilians on NA were abundant, generally bad and spoke in mangled English. "Huehuehuehue" is the equivalent of English "hahahaha" or the infamous Korean "kekekeke". Sadly discredited ever since server splits have made Portuguese and Spanish speakers rare in NA.
  • Originating here. Version 2.0 here. Popularized with these videos. Safe to say, looks like it's getting Parody Displacement on Mordekaiser, being that the meme may be dead, but "Huehuehuehue" to League Of Legends players is going to always be linked to Mordekaiser.
    • Full version of that: "Brazil?" "Gibe moni please." "I repot you." "Mordekaiser es #1. HUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUE."
• Mordekaiser being a fountain of bugs^ExplanationPre-rework Mordekaiser was infamous for being responsible for an obscene amount of the game's bugs. Post-rework Morde seems to have less, but the meme stuck.
• Mordekaiser sending his enemies to the Shadow Realm^ExplanationMordekaiser's Realm of Death temporarily banishes him and his foe to a dark world where they fight it out. It instantly drew comparisons to the Shadow Realm featured in the Yu-Gi-Oh anime, and many players just refer to his R as the Shadow Realm and using it as banishing someone to said realm. Even the developers admitted to using this nickname for it in development during an AMA.
  • Mordekaiser sending his enemies to Brazil^ExplanationA snowclone variation of this meme and another one based on the now infamous "come to brazil" meme, where they forcibly send the reader to Brazil after many times being rejected to come to Brazil. Combined with the aforementioned Brazilian Mordekaiser memes, instead of sending people to the Shadow Realm, Mordekaiser is often depicted as sending them to Brazil instead.
    • Brazil 2077 ^ExplanationA further permutation of the "Brazil Realm" involving PROJECT Mordekaiser, whose Death Realm is portrayed as a Rooftop Battle over a cyberpunk skyline.

Nasus

• Brb, need stacks ^ExplanationNasus' main gimmick is that the more stacks of his Q he gains by using it to kill enemies, the more damage it does. By endgame, this can be a terrifying amount - hence, spending most of the game gaining stacks off minions. However, this also leads to many jokes about Nasus players who will be still gathering stacks up top as a 4v5 teamfight erupts at Dragon or the enemy team starts tearing down the inhibitor or base turrets. Even worse, the ones who leave a crucial defensive position because they feel they're behind. Sadly, such jokes are based on truth occasionally.
• Susan.^ExplanationA Fan Nickname for Nasus, since that's his name spelled backwards. This became an Ascended Meme in Legends of Runeterra, where searching "susan" will pull up Nasus' card.

Olaf

• Olaf'd. ^ExplanationPoor Olaf received nerfs so many times he went from an utter Game-Breaker into completely unviable in any competitive scenes (unlike Irelia, who managed to find a slightly better balance in spite of many necessary nerf and another meme to go along with that, 'Better nerf Irelia'). At this point, if a character received so many nerfs that players fear the character may be unviable, they call it 'getting Olaf'd', as in sharing the same fate as Olaf.

Sett

• Sett's Animesque appearance, combined with his Japanese VA being Takehito Koyasu, led to no end of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure jokes (even from Riot themselves: the end of Sett's showcase has him and Pantheon recreating the "Oh? You're approaching me?" scene). This has resulted in him being a Fountain of Memes which includes but not limited to:
  • "You thought it's X BUT IT'S ME, SETT!" ^ExplanationHaving the voice of Takehito Koyasu, led to this catchphrase parody of Dio Brando himself!
  • MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA!! ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA!! ^ExplanationThe Battle Cries of Dio and Jotaro when beating the crap out of each other. Since Sett uses Good Old Fisticuffs to fight his opponents, this has led to a lot of Sett players reciting said mantras whenever they use his Q skill (Knuckle Down) to beat the crap out of their enemies.
  • WRRRRRYYYYYYYYYYY!! ^ExplanationAnother one of Dio's Battle Cry. Expect Sett players to shout this whenever he uses his W skill (Haymaker).
  • ROAD ROLLA DAAAAAAAAAAA!! ^ExplanationExpect Sett Players to shout this out when they use his Ultimate R skill (The Show Stopper).
• "You guys are getting weapons?" ^Explanation Sett's nature as a practicioner of Good Old Fisticuffs led to this already memetic scene from We're The Millers being associated with him, often in conjunction with champions such as Aphelios and Jax.

Skarner

• Pay your taxes^ExplanationSkarner's ultimate is a notoriously powerful single-target suppression that can doom any enemy of his choice on the spot, but it can be universally countered by a cleanse effect, especially with the Quicksilver Sash item. Due to how QSS is a rather niche and somewhat expensive item that will set them behind in gold, a lot of players (especially AD carries) consider the purchase a "QSS tax" that they must remember to deal with lest Skarner utterly ruin them.

Sylas

• Sylas The Communist. ^Explanation Sylas' backstory about leading oppressed mages in a revolution against their oppressors, and his quotes about taking magic back (especially his "Call it, redistribution of magic!" quote), have lead to many joking that he's League's first communist champion. Whenever he's mentioned, expect Russian Reversal jokes and/or lines from the Communist Manifesto to follow.
  • It's not your ultimate, it's OUR ultimate!^ExplanationThe fact that Sylas steals his foes' ultimates doesn't help with the communism jokes.

Urgot

• Urgod ^ExplanationAn ironic Fan Nick Name given to Pre-VGU Urgot due to him being seen as a Joke Character. The "ironic" part was lessened by changes to his numbers and the meta that made him a Lethal Joke Character, then he got his VGU, which grabbed "ironic" with a drill hook and turned it into mulch. Today, Urgod is used to refer to people who are really good at Urgot and to the significantly cooler Urgot in general.
• Urgot has a dark, secret past.^ExplanationComing from the Urgot's 2017 rework post. While basically the ENTIRE POST is a Fountain of Memes, the one line mocking the new three-line lores became the most known one.
  • Urgot's light and dark form.^ExplanationAlso from the above post. This one mocks the release of champions with two forms that often have way more skills in their kit than the usual 3 basic + ultimate.
• SHOTGUN KNEES ^ExplanationUrgot has chemtech shotguns in his knees, it's as awesome as it sounds, and players adore him for it.

Warwick

• 1000 DEGREE CLAWS ^ExplanationImmediately after the cinematic teaser for Warwick's rework was uploaded on the official League of Legends YouTube channel, comments comparing Warwick's new augmented claw to the "1000 Degree Knife" meme started pouring in.
• ARH-WOOOOO ^ExplanationBased on this random gush "shitpost" about Warwick that made it to the front page of r/leagueoflegends for some reason, baffling even moderators. "ARH-WOO" has caught on the sub as shorthand for Warwick like wildfire.

Xin Zhao

• Xin Zhao will make a man out of you. ^Explanation Associating Xin Zhao in general with Shang from Mulan and his famous "Be a man!" training montage since they're both quintessential Chinese badass manly men. The linked video (part of Choleraninja's "I'm Bad At LoL" series) is one of the more famous propagators of the meme.
  • From the same video: KIAI! KIAI! HWOAA HWOAA!!^ExplanationCholeraninja doesn't just add up the Mulan song when playing. Whenever Xin Zhao attacks, he goes calling out his kiai really loud that it's amusing. Therefore, when playing as Xin Zhao, if adding "I Will Make A Man Out Of You" does not suffice, then players start yelling the kiai like Choleraninja. Observe
  • Looks on the way to be in Ascended Meme as Patch Notes, if they include and are describing Xin Zhao, will insert lyrics of "I'll Make A Man Out Of You".

Mage Champion Memes

Annie

• Annie Bot is a little bitch. ^Explanation Despite the bots' reputation for Artificial Stupidity, if there's one thing that bots are invariably better at than humans, it's superhuman combo. Champions like Annie whose combos involve stunning an enemy then unloading all of their burst within the duration of the stun are deadly when computer-controlled, since they can and will do it perfectly every time. Every new player who's run into Annie Bot has experienced being stunned by a gigantic flaming bear then running for their lives at 20% health once it's over.
  • Ascended Meme (anyone starting to notice a trend here?) by form of a shirt reading I SURVIVED ANNIE BOT◊ that was (but now is unfortunately removed) in the official merchandise store.
• "Have you seen my bear Tibbers?" ^ExplanationA very common phrase said by Annie, playing roughly every two or three times you tell her to go somewhere. This, combined with her cutesy, high-pitched voice, led to many players finding her almost intolerable to play. This was addressed by Riot in her graphical rework; she kept the iconic line, though a wider quote pool made it more tolerable.

Lux

• Her laugh is infamous for how obnoxious and unhinged it is.
• IMMA FIRIN MAH LAZAH ^Explanation Since her ultimate is a Wave-Motion Gun, references to shoop da whoop are inevitable.
• Lux Skins/Lux skins in every skin line^ExplanationUp until Miss Fortune topped her off for being champions with the most skins released, Lux was the subject of many and many cosmetic releases, varying in quality. Because of her popularity as a character and in gameplay, Lux skins tends to be the one selling like hotcakes, which prompted Riot to release more Lux skins at least once a year. Players love to joke that there are a lot of Lux skins released ever since that it's possible that every skin line will have at least one Lux skin included
  • Champion X is broken/unbalanced in the current patch? Better release more Lux skins!^ExplanationThe most common snark given by the playerbase whenever there are broken or overtuned champions/items/combinations in the current patch, calling out that Riot would rather release a new skin for Lux so that the playerbase would be distracted elsewhere instead of addressing the balancing issue in the firsthand.

Neeko

• Neeko Neeko Nii!^Explanation From the moment Neeko was revealed, people looked at her Animesque design and immediately put two and two together. It even became an Ascended Meme with her champion spotlight.
• Schrödinger Caster Minion/"Why is there an extra caster minion in the botlane?"^ExplanationNeeko receives a major overhaul during patch 13.9 that, among other things, allows her to gather essence from nearby neutral non-epic monster camps and allied units which can be consumed so she can disguise as one herself. The keynote is that it allows her to disguise herself as almost literally anything asides of enemy units, non-ward buildings, and epic monsters, which allowed her to catch the opponent off guard most of the time. One of the most common strategies of using this new feature is to guise herself as one of the caster minions and blend in, and it can be a headache to go up against, which gave players the same vibe of Schrödinger Garen above when players need to be careful whenever they want to facechek the nearest brush if there are Garen nearby, except this time to be more careful whenever there are wave crashing and you're unsure whether Neeko is disguised as one or not, or wondering why the stealth ward you destroyed earlier is still there and moving several spaces closer to the opposing champion.

Ryze

• Ryze reworks.^ExplanationRyze has been reworked more times than any other League of Legends champion, leading to jokes about when he will next get reworked while other champions are still in their season 1 state.
• r/RyzeMains^ExplanationThe Ryze Mains subreddit is... quite something to behold. The members and contents of the subreddit can be summed up as an exaggeration of the playerbase's frustration of how Ryze constant nerf/reworks and how uncomfortable to play Ryze while still playing him like an addict because of his constant underperforming and low numbers, posting almost incomprehensible madness or just visualized frustration akin to a boiling hot wojak in a bitcoin market crash. It got so bad that the subreddit pinned a post that gave users access to free-for-charge mental health support lines, and it hasn't been unpinned by the moderators since.
  • EQEQEQEQEQ^ExplanationE and Q is the bread and butter of Ryze's gameplay, by using his E to mark his target and nearby enemies within the target's range with the Spell Flux and finish them off with Q for a quick and easy burst. Ryze mains uses the EQ not just as the usual combo for playing as Ryze, but (jokingly) also a signature to distinguish themselves among League playerbase, and even using the word "EQ" as a way to communicate with each other. Chances are if you find a comment spamming "EQEQEQEQ" excessively, it's usually just Ryze mains.
• doinB RYZE HACK? 英雄联盟 400 CS 24 MIN ^ExplanationPro player doinB once got extremely angry at his jungler and proceeded to steal every scrap of farm he could get his hands on, leading to the otherwise impossible 400 cs by 24 minutes. People use the phrase to refer to both scripting and Youtube videos with clickbait titles, which are common among Youtube's League content creators.

Taliyah

• The Trump Wall. ^Explanation Taliyah's reveal and release coincided with that of U.S. President Donald Trump's declaration to build a border wall between the United States and Mexico in order to get illegal immigration under control. Almost immediately, comparisons were drawn to Taliyah's ultimate, which allowed her to create an enormous wall across a great deal of the map, and resulted in "Donald Trump Champion Spotlights", memes of the president's face on Taliyah's body, and most of the LOL fanbase simply referring to her ultimate as "The Trump Wall".
• "THROW ANOTHER ROCK!" ^ExplanationA very common line given when using Threaded Volley Taliyah players are gonna hear a lot. As a result, it shows up in nearly every thread talking about her.

Twisted Fate

• The "Regi Special"^ExplanationNamed after Andy "Reginald" Dinh (current co-owner and former midlaner of LCS team Team SoloMid, known for his many mistakes as Twisted Fate), this is a mocking term used to describe players accidentally missing their Gold Card during ganks/engages, instead merely poking their target with a far less useful Blue Card.

Seraphine

• Seraphine The Sociopath ^Explanation Following the release of Seraphine's voice lines and lore, memes quickly arose depicting her as a sarcastic, sociopathic Alpha Bitch that uses Skarners deceased kind to power her devices (Due to the Unfortunate Implications of her lore), tramples on Sona (Because she's a "better" Sona), or of her using the members of K/DA to boost herself to worldwide stardom (based on some of her K/DA All Out voice lines, particularly in her final form as K/DA All Out Superstar Seraphine where she appears to have Acquired Situational Narcissism).
  • Seraphine is a white savior. ^Explanation Another meme based off of the perceived Unfortunate Implications of her lore, as her lore implies that she has the ability to unite two war torn places dealing with systematic oppression through the sound of her music alone, which many league players find hard to believe, or borderline Mary Sue-ish.
• Spamming this image◊ of Skarner with a caption in Amharic under Seraphine's Twitter posts has become popular.
• Depicting Seraphine butchering Skarner's kind for various purposes such as needing new batteries for her headphones, platform, etcetera has also become a trend which persists even after her lore update.
• SeraQUEEN^ExplanationA play off both her name and her heavy Idol Singer inspiration (and in turn "stan" slang), it's become a tongue-in-cheek Fan Nickname of reverence, used with varying degrees of sincerity.
• Censoring Seraphine ^ExplanationIt's a tongue-in-cheek joke for content creators to censor Seraphine's face, pretending she didn't exist or treating her like either a 'She Who Must Not Be Seen' kind of character or 'Devil Incarnate', to show distaste on her, almost equalling those 'Teemo is Satan' days.

Vel'Koz

• "Vel'Koz has been engrossed with anal..."^ExplanationDuring the 2014 Snowdown event, Vel'Koz was disabled in the Legend of the Poro King mode due to bugs, with Riot initially notifying players with a note saying "Vel'Koz has been engrossed with analyzing Poros.◊" Unfortunately, they didn't anticipate that the shortened cutoff would turn "analyzing" into "anal", and while it was later replaced with the simpler "Vel'Koz will be disabled for Poro King mode", fans had quite the field day with it. The fact Vel'Koz is a giant tentacle monster isn't helping him live it down, either.

Zoe

• I hope Zoe wins xD. I’m a Zoe main and she’s just so fun!! People get so trolled by the bubble, and her voice lines are so cute like when she sings about chocolate cake LOL! She’s super random but also smarter than she looks, just like me xD^ExplanationA supremely common copypasta on Twitch any time Zoe shows up, mostly in pro League games.
• "Don't be fooled by her appearance, Zoe is actually an ancient being..."^ExplanationWhile Zoe is indeed a likely millenia-old deity in a child's body, the constant reminders about her true nature (and thus true age) has spawned countless jokes involving jailbait, the FBI, and the like.

Marksman Champion Memes

Aphelios

• People being stuck reading Aphelios' abilities^ExplanationAphelios has one of the most complex kits on a Champion and the single longest passive in the entire game, to the point where his kit needed a primer document on release, and he had to have a new UI designed just for him. Because of the sheer amount of new knowledge players needed to take in (particularly the myriad of interactions between his passive and active weapons), players love exaggerating the difficulty of learning the champion to comical levels.
• 200 YEARS^ExplanationAphelios's very high power in pro play upon release and lack of transparency over his abilities left LCS casters baffled at what they were seeing him accomplish. Coupled with the above infamous Riot response to player criticism over game balance and the Wukong rework (which had nothing to do with Aphelios, but coincided with his release), the meme became primarily attached to Aphelios when casters simply yelled 200 YEARS whenever Aphelios would do something shocking, like steal Baron Nashor from multiple screens away or multikill an enemy team.
• Red/White Don't Fight^ExplanationThe Severum/Crescendum combo (the red and white guns) is considered the single most powerful duo of weapons for an Aphelios to duel with due to how well they synergize with each other, able to rapidly lifesteal off enemies and ramp up chakrams to finish them off. It's become a common occurrence for a team to attempt to pounce on a low-health enemy Aphelios expecting an easy kill, but failing to notice he has this combo ready, enabling a ridiculous comeback as he shreds his assailants while coming out with more health seemingly from out of nowhere. Similar to "Don't Chase Singed!", this has become an increasingly common mnemonic to avoid another potentially frustrating and embarrassing Aphelios encounter.

Draven

• Welcome to the League of Draven! ^ExplanationDraven is basically Mundo 2.0 memetically, just somewhat more sane and significantly more narcissistic.
  • When I'm Draven...
    • Not Draven, Draaaaven.
    • This became an Ascended Meme for April Fools' Day 2013, as on the front page on the wiki, every Champion's face was replaced with Draven's.
    • ...and as of July 2013 Draven's passive skill has been renamed "League of Draven".
  • Riot: "Guys, remember how we teased that Victorious Elise skin [as a Season 3 reward]? Sorry, but we accidentally made it for Draven instead◊."
  • In February 2014, Riot added the ability to add champion emoticons to comments. This was the end result.◊

Jhin

• Four isn't just a number, it is ART! ^Explanation Jhin has a strong number motif with four, which has naturally spread to his fanbase. Examples include shooting down any skin suggestions as it would mean he'd no longer have four skins (discredited after the release of PROJECT:Jhin, his fifth skin), treating Quadra-Kills as greater accomplishments than Penta-Kills, and making a big deal about April fourth.
• Never fear, the FAST is here. ^Explanataion Due to Jhin's... Interesting scaling, building a ton of attack speed and crit, especially in URF mode where bonus attack speed is doubled, would result in him running circles around the enemy team. Following the example of youtuber OCE Kha'zix's montage on the subject, players using the build will roleplay as a superhero named "the Fast".

Samira

• 201 years^ExplanationSimilar to Aphelios, Samira was considered exceptionally powerful on release, with a kit that was overloaded with damage, mobility, and enemy denial, on top of applying lifesteal that made her nearly unkillable. Her presence in the meta at the time was so dominating that players often joked about how they didn't believe they could release a more overloaded and broken champion than Aphelios, only for Samira to quickly take his place.

Smolder

• Smolder's face^ExplanationWhen Smolder was first revealed as a champion, the design of his face received criticism for looking strangely human, even though he's a dragon. In response, Riot changed his face to look more dragon-like, prompting even more jokes about the subject.
• Smolder is Jarvan IV and Shyvana's son.^ExplanationBy coincidence, Smolder bears a resemblance to Shyvana, another dragon champion. Shyvana has had Ship Tease with Jarvan IV, and combined with the memes about Smolder's human looking face, players began joking that Smolder was their child.
• Smolder's Mom was part of the Riot layoffs.^ExplanationA rare taunt from Smolder has him mention that his mom works at Riot. Unfortunately, around the time of his release, Riot had announced changes and closure of Riot Forge. Jokes were made that Smolder's mom was part of the layoffs that ensued during the closure.

Teemo

• Teemo is Satan. ^Explanation Despite never having been considered to be too strong of a pick, playing against Teemo is almost unanimously found to be incredibly frustrating because of his passive stealth, poison, blind, and mushroom traps, leading to the meme that Teemo is evil and so is anyone who plays him. Became an Ascended Meme with the release of the Little Devil Teemo skin.
  • Teemo's real passive is his Global Taunt. It's why he's such an excellent tank. ^Explanation The aforementioned frustration of playing against him leads to jokes about his passive ability to draw people away from objectives and/or into traps because of the enemy team's desire to kill him as soon as possible.
• Teemo needs more skins. ^ExplanationA sarcastic joke made because Teemo had the most variable skins for the longest time.
  • So of course, Riot released a Panda Teemo skin.
  • It was explained by a Rioter that Teemo skins are common because his model is just easy to work on.
• Teemo's Scrappy status has culminated into the phrase "delete Teemo".
  • When something went wrong with a Riot sale news page, filling it with broken code, players immediately accused Teemo, who is on sale, for breaking the page.
• Buff Teemo^ExplanationNot exactly a meme, but it was common for fan artists to draw Teemo as a massively buff and hunky yordle. For the game's 10th anniversary, Riot released the "Annie-versary" skin for Annie which replaces Tibbers with a giant buff Teemo.

Varus

• "Vaarus". ^ExplanationAfter Varus was retconned into being a Darkin, post-rework Aatrox pointed out that he missed "the double 'A' thing" present for him and Rhaast after they had all agreed on it. As such, many fans have taken to "correcting" his name to fit the name scheme.
  • In a similar vein, applying the "double 'A' thing" to any champions theorized to have connections to the Darkin, such as Kaayle, Morgaana, Sonaa, etc.
• Varus is a walking threesome/two gays and a demon. ^ExplanationIn his updated lore, Varus' physical body is made of the combined flesh from a pair of gay lovers (Valmar and Kai), with their minds trapped inside by the third consciousness, the Darkin Varus. Threesome jokes are inevitable

Vayne

• WELCOME TO - SILVER OF THE MOON. ^ExplanationVayne is somewhat unique in that she vocally announces ranking her W, Silver Bolts, to its first level. Hearing Vayne make this sound at the very start of the game is a good indication that you've got somebody in your team that doesn't know how to use her properly: picking up Silver Bolts at level 1 is Schmuck Bait, because even though it increases damage and makes farming easier, picking up Tumble at level 1 also increases damage, makes properly farming easier and greatly increases her mobility. Basically, the least bad reason to pick up Silver Bolts at l is because you suck at farming and must compensate with passive extra damage. The fact that Vayne is Difficult, but Awesome means that there's a good chance she'll end up feeding the enemy if this happens.

Xayah

• "Does Xayah lay eggs?" ^ExplanationA constantly-repeated question found in several Riot Q&As, almost always resulting in a blunt "No."

Skirmisher Champion Memes

Gwen

• GWEN IS IMMUNE^ExplanationGwen's signature Hallowed Mist gives her some very impressive defense, understandably annoying to opponents out of its range, prompting a "Gwen is immune!" tooltip each time they try and fail to hurt her through it.

Yasuo

• The 0/10 Powerspike.^ExplanationYasuos are either godawful or capable of 1v9ing with ease, since his popularity makes him a common pick among players of widely varying skill levels. Even so, a Yasuo can spend a whole game being stomped on and still manage to scale if he gets his hands on a few core items and/or get multikills with a good ultimate, leading to the joke that your team's Yasuo simply needs to hit his "powerspike".
• "i will change ur experience of yasuo"◊ ^ExplanationA player who thinks they're hot shit at Yasuo claims that they will totally change the opinion of the person doubting them towards the champion. They don't.
• Windshitter.^ExplanationA common nickname for a bad Yasuo.

Yone

• Being Yasuo's brother, the same memes apply to him about needing to reach his 0/10 powerspike or being nicknamed "Windshitter 2".

Slayer Champion Memes

Nocturne

• DAAAAAARKKKKKKKKNEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS, mimicking a line Nocturne might say after using his ultimate, is a popular way to distill and describe Nocturne. Similar to Fiddlesticks, many agree Hell Is That Noise.
  • Became even worse after Eternum Nocturne came out, whose ultimate has been likened to sound like Harbinger molesting a blender.
  • Even Gnar gets on the act. Of course, Speaking Simlish is at play, so....
  Gnar: "MARMNESS!"

Pantheon

• Baker Pantheon.^ExplanationPantheon's joke about wanting to be a baker doubles as not only a Shout-Out to 300, but also makes a good source of Real Men Wear Pink jokes. Afterwards, tons of fanarts, videos or skin ideas about Pantheon being a baker get a good deal of popularity and 'being a baker' is memetically considered Pantheon's closet or actual dream. Tons of guides about Pantheon would also make reference to the baker joke too. Eventually ascended and even after he gets reworked, the Baker joke stays with Pantheon materializing a freshly baked loaf out of nowhere and stating it to be "His secret dream."
• The fact that he's a buff war loving spartan Expy has led people to call him "Mantheon" and his ultimate "The Man Drop".

Viego

• The Ruined Simp.^ExplanationThe term "simp" — used to describe someone excessively, almost embarrassingly devoted to their love interest — caught on in popularity before Viego's reveal, and when his full backstory and his obsession with Isolde was fully revealed, it was only natural that the term spread to him a lot.
• Viego, the Buggy King^ExplanationUpon is release on the PBE, many players start to realize how buggy he was, ranging from being permanently stuck as Elise if you've gone to the ceiling right before he transforms back, temporarily converting Caitlyn's Q to behave like Nunu's W if you possess the latter then kill the former after casting his W, to bugs that literally crash the game or multiple instances of the game immediately deleting itself and booting out the players. Needless to say, the playerbase caught up with it and start making jokes that Viego has dethroned Mordekaiser as the new king of bugs, or Mordekaiser being proud of Viego for surpassing him in his Game-Breaking Bug capabilities.

Zed

• "The unseen [X] is the deadliest."^ExplanationZed's selection quote "The unseen blade is the deadliest." has been endlessly snowcloned.
• Omae wa mou shindeiru.^ExplanationZed's ultimate puts a mark on a champion and then reapplies some of the damage dealt to the marked target when it expires. The end result is a Fist of the North Star reference waiting to happen.

Tank Champion Memes

Galio

• HI EVERYBODY! ^Explanation Like Sion before him, Galio's ultimate, Hero's Entrance Is such an over the top example of Dynamic Entry that it has become a meme in and of itself. Common examples include comparing it to a wrestler body slamming someone from the top rope/a ladder , or putting it's symbol in a scene where someone falls from offscreen (usually on to there face and with some rubble from the ceiling coming with them).
• Has anyone seen Azir? ^{Eggsplanation} For April fools 2018, Galio received his first post VGU skin, Birdio. It turned him into a fast food mascot complete with Goofy Suit, chicken clucking in his dance, frying grease instead of wind, and a rooster call for Hero's Entrance, all at a reasonable 975RP. The community fell in love almost immediately, saying it was an ultimate skin (as opposed to Gun Goddess Miss Fortune, which released in the same patch), and having bird themed champions ask Galio about missing friends or relatives in role play threads.

K'Sante

• Giga-K'sante^ExplanationWhen first revealed, K'sante rugged look and extreme jawline causes the fandom to notice the similarity between him and Ernest Khalimov, otherwise known in the interwebs as Gigachad. Riot took notice of the comparison and didn't waste any time to create an emote based on it.
• K'Sante copypasta ^ExplanationPrior to a sweeping rework to his numbers in patch 13.20, K'Sante was proving to be a terror due to his absurd scaling and damage output despite being a tank champion. On one early 2023 stream by LCK player Heo "ShowMaker" Su, "ShowMaker" would launch into a comedic rant deriding K'Sante's design and numbers after watching the champion in question run over his teammate. His rant quickly became a meme that was utilized as a copypasta whenever K'Sante demolished someone in streams and pro play, at least until his rework — and then he was buffed back into relevancy in patch 13.21, leading to a resurgence in the copypasta.

Malphite

• "He doesn't do anything" / Reality Denial ^ExplanationA reference to an infamous video where a toplane Sion loses lane to an enemy Malphite and grows increasingly belligerant with his teammate Vi, leading to quotes such as the above. The video as a whole is cited as an example of how players become toxic in losing games, but the individual quotes are frequently reposted in jest whenever Malphite becomes a discussion topic.

Ornn

• Tank Mage Support Bruiser Assassin Fighter DPS Burst Ornn^ExplanationPopularized by LCS caster CaptainFlowers, Ornn was seen as especially dominant through early 2020 after he received buffs to his usually-negligible damage, with many (jokingly or otherwise) referring to him as such, including other casters who take the titles even further.

Poppy

• The face of old Lollipoppy◊ ^Explanation In the older splash art of the Lollipoppy skin, the face was rather... off. In spite of being changed in response to such criticism, the disturbing-ness of it persisted among the community.
  • It was so infamous that Riot couldn't help but keep it in some capacity. It can be found on a lollipop in the skins newest splash, and can be seen in-game if Poppy dances long enough with the skin equipped.
    • For April fools 2018, the rift was "blessed" with the Heeere's Poppy!◊ emote. now EVERYONE can spread the Nightmare Fuel!
• NotLikeThis ^Explanation When first brought onto the PBE, the reworked Poppy's "low-health" quotes would constantly be spoken when low, the most notable of which being "Not like this!" which has since been used to refer to Poppy in a multitude of ways or as a way of expressing regret over a bad decision with Poppy. Frequently typed out as seen above, due to NotLikeThis being a Twitch emote.

Rammus

• "Ok".^ExplanationThis came from Rammus' extreme concision in speaking. "Ok." is one out of his four one-word lines.
  • When he was considered overpowered, you might have also heard "Op".

Shen

• River Shen. ^Explanation A joke strategy based around an old story of a guy playing Shen with Ignite and Exhaust... and never leaving river except to constantly gank. Thanks to the absurdity of the concept as well as the repetition of the phrase "River Shen," it's spread far and wide and become one of the most notorious troll builds ever conceived.

Sion

• Sion the dank engine ^Explanation Sion's ultimate, Unstoppable onslaught, is often compared to a train, and has spawned every joke that would entail. Became an Ascended Meme with his Transformers inspired Mecha-Zero skin, which turns him into a train-esque vehicle when using the spell.
• Inting Sion/Thebausffs Special ^ExplanationSion has a surprisingly high AD scaling in his kit (specifically his Q and R) and his potential DPS skyrocket when he triggers his passive, which requires the player to die to activate. Players realizes that a dying Sion is much more dangerous to fight against than a living, healthy Sion. Many players start building AD Lethality items to maximize his DPS potential by deliberately dying up close to the enemy or structures because the DPS can instantly disintegrate towers within seconds. The build was dubbed "Inting Sion", popularized by a streamer and a Sion main Thebausffs. The build was so popular yet divisive because the success being reliant on a coin flip plus the ability to disintegrate structures that makes Yorick shed tears of joy, causes detractors to dub the strat boring and predictable, cursing anyone who uses this strat as braindead and partially blaming Thebausffs for popularizing it. Riot, predictably fed up with the nonsense, decided to nerf the strat permanently by lowering his AD scaling a bit and makes it so Sion can no longer chew on structures with his passive, ensuring that the strat will be nothing more but a troll pick.

Specialist Champion Memes

Fiddlesticks

• CAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAW ^ExplanationThe often dreaded sound of Fiddlestick's ultimate, that can easily ruin your day when he jumps out of the brush with it.
• S U C C ^Explanation Fiddlesticks W, Bountiful Harvest, siphons health from a target with a tube of energy, almost as if he was using a huge straw. It's not uncommon for people to make slurping noises or crack a few blowjob jokes while using the spell.

Gangplank

• Some people created a meme involving Gangplank. but I ate some oranges and it was k ლ(ಠ益ಠლ) ^ExplanationSome takedowns against champions work by stunning (or otherwise immobilizing) your enemy and then killing them while they're defenseless. However, Gangplank has an ability ("Remove Scurvy") in which he removes all immobilizing effects by simply eating an orange. Therefore "Someone was about to kill me, but then I ate some oranges and it was k".

Graves

• X has Y, but Graves can't have his cigar? ^ExplanationThe champion Graves originally had a cigar in his splash, but it was later removed. As a result, anything that could be remotely adult or offensive in the game or supplementary material prompts the above response. This has been ascended multiple times by Riot.
  • One of post-VU Gangplank's taunts to Graves is "Can't light cigars at the bottom of the sea."
  • A more blatant reference was in Yorick's Champion Spotlight, where while describing Yorick's Grave mechanic, Phreak notes "Also, none of the graves can have a cigar."
  • In his Snow Day Graves skin, while tampering with his snowblower shotgun, he accidentally shoots a snowman head into his face, with a carrot as a cigar.

Kayle

• 5 AD. ^Explanation One infamous patch note during the Sated Devourer meta had Riot nerfing Kayle's base Attack Damage due to her being too good at jungle, while completely ignoring the fact that Sated Devourer was the problem, not Kayle. 5 AD is now euphemism for quite a lot of situations on patch notes, such as Riot nerfing a champion instead of a broken item/mastery/mechanic or nerfing a champion's base stats when the problem is in their kit.

Singed

• "Muahahaha! Hahaha! Muhuhuhahahaha!" - Singed ^ExplanationSinged's /laugh is probably the most memetic of any champ. People playing Singed often have it bound to a key and spam it constantly as they run circles around people spreading poison gas. It's also an Ascended Meme because that's exactly what Phreak tells everyone to do during the Champion Spotlight, and then taken up to eleven after one set of buffs made him automatically laugh when he flings someone.
• DON'T CHASE SINGED! ^ExplanationSelf-explanatory really, as not only is chasing Singed generally pretty futile, you'll usually die if you persist anyway due to the toxic gas he spouts.

Zilean

• Can't Killean The Zilean^ExplanationZilean's ultimate inflicts a buff to himself/any ally where if the inflicted one gets killed when the buff is active, they'll get resurrected after a delay. This phrase refers to any chances where an opponent attempts to kill a Zilean-ult'd enemy (especially Zilean) and then saw the enemy rise back from the dead, and possibly ruin the killer's day. Silly dancing with "Oh My Little Baby Boy" optional. This has gone memetic enough that some people made fan-stuffs about "Can't Killean The Zilean" (like big emoticons) and demanding that should Zilean get a VU, he gets this dance, but thus far, Riot hasn't budged to ascend this meme.
  • Foda se. ^ExplanationA random Brazilian guy, just fired from its job, recorded an audio of himself saying "foda se" (basically, "fuck it/screw this" in Portuguese). Someone took the recording and replaced the audio from the Can't Killean the Zilean video with it. Cue instant viral and a full song based on the meme.
  • MAP AWARENESS ^ExplanationWhile 'Map Awareness' is a common phrase amongst MOBA community, thanks to this video, it's not rare to see this phrase attributed to part of Zilean's silly dance with Shen chiming in (Shen saved Zilean from a second death by Darius using his ult, which required good map awareness).

E-sport/Tournament Memes:

• Cheering for ward kills. ^ExplanationDuring the season 2 championship series, a game between Counter Logic Gaming EU and World Elite came down to an agonising stalemate due to one team's dedicated strategy. By about the 45-minute mark, practically nothing was happening apart from the two teams placing wards in their jungles, only for them to be swept out by the opposing junglers with the Oracle's Elixirs. The game was so boring that the commentators started sarcastically getting worked up whenever a ward was killed and the audience joined them, cheering loudly for each ward kill as though it were an exciting play. Even after the match, in more fast-paced exciting games, the audience has persisted in cheering loudly whenever a ward dies.
• Kassadin should be banned every game ^ExplanationComes from a match in the January 2013 IEM Katowice tournament where Team fNatic's xPeke playing as Kassadin made an amazing play to destroy the enemy nexus singlehandedly with two enemy champions attacking him. Granted, he was always known for backdooring, but this incident infamously cemented him (and his team) as some of the most notorious practitioners of backdooring and split-pushing.
  • XPEKE! XPEKE! XPEKEEEEEE!!! ^ExplanationXpeke in general has become a verb meaning "to backdoor a nexus", especially alone and under improbable odds because of his legendary Kassadin play (on top of his backdooring shenanigans in general). Expect players/streamers/casters to just yell his name excitedly if someone does something similar, especially if they actually pull it off.
• *picks Teemo* YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!! *picks someone else* BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! ^ExplanationDuring LCS or other tournament matches with large crowds, teams have taken to trolling the crowds by highlighting champions that are considered poor competitively (most commonly Teemo,) prompting the crowd to cheer loudly to encourage them to lock them in, before switching to the champ they're actually going to play, prompting disappointed boos. Even though the crowd knows that they're NEVER going to pick Teemo (or Karma, Mordekaiser, Heimerdinger or any of the other unused champions) they still go along with it every time.
• WildTurtle's smile. ^ExplanationWildTurtle's head shot◊ is very noticeably beaming and Memetic Mutation just followed from there.
• If you're Jungling, watch out for Janna's Howling Gale. It steals everything. ^ExplanationVulcun's Support player, Bloodwater, achieved a clutch Baron steal with a rank one Howling Gale on Janna (for the record, this deals 90 damage, making the steal extremely improbable). The Howling Gale is now cited by the casters as the thing for Junglers to watch out for.
• Enter !skincode for a chance to receive a free skin! ^ExplanationIf there's a League of Legends-related stream, someone will just throw this out as Schmuck Bait, and watch the spam of !skincode roll in, from people who don't know better or are just greedy. Guys and gals, Riot never gives away skins on stream chats, and they won't know your in-game summoner name based on your Twitch or YouTube username. Also appears as /skincode on YouTube.
• Mineski Pain Train ^ExplanationA Flippino League of Legends team, Mineski, was in a constant losing streak with virtually no chance of entering the quarterfinals. So they decided to run a four support + adc team composition just for fun and laughs in a game versus Fnatic. The shoutcasters and announcers referring their team as "the Mineski Pain Train" as big irony to the fact that they lacked any form of damage and limited to utility. They still lost, for the record.
• Bjerger King ^ExplanationTSM acquired Bjergsen as their midlaner for Season 4, whose Danish name is often mistaken to be pronounced similar to "burger" by NA (it's closer to "bee-yerg"). It's not quite clear if he himself, TSM, or the fans started it, but he himself has fully embraced the nickname, even going as far as to name one of his smurfs to that effect and make his stream icon a modified Burger King logo.
• Memes coming from the Analyst Desk of the Season 3 World Championships: ^ExplanationA brief pre- and post- game feature with the analysts making predictions and breaking the game down surprisingly took off and become something of a Fountain of Memes due to addition of pro players as guest analysts and their... colorful personalities.
• Fnatic Death Bush ^ExplanationSimilar to brushy-brushy never fails (see below). Started from the 2014 LCS Spring. If there's anything else Fnatic is known for besides backdooring recently, it's waiting in a bush (during the mid-game) for an enemy to pass by for an ambush. Any other team doing this ambush will likely prompt the casters to saying they're doing the "Fnatic bush tactic".
• Deman cannot believe. ^ExplanationTendency of Riot employee and European caster Leigh "Deman" Smith to react to impressive professional plays with "I do not believe it" or variations thereof, including the infamous "xpeke" moment above.
• X-senpai pls notice me^ExplanationTongue-in-cheek reference to idolizing highly skilled or respected professional players in the same fashion as an underclassman crushing on an upperclassman in Japanese shoujo manga. Often used in the context of professional players idolizing other professional players. Popular subjects include Faker, the midlaner for SKT T1, the season 3 world champions and widely regarded as the most skilled player in the world.
  • Specifically with regards to Faker, his handshakes have reached memetic level as well, with jokes perpetuated that whosoever manages to shake Faker's hand receives Faker's blessing and instantly increases in skill.
  • On the other side of the spectrum is the "hug of death," which claims that whosoever is hugged by Faker will retire from the professional gaming scene within months.
• "Look at the cleanse, look at the moves! Faker! WHAT WAS THAT?!"^ExplanationDuring the LCK 2013 summer finals, Faker and Ryu (both playing Zed) ended up in an extremely fast 1v1 blitz where despite starting at a disadvantage, Faker managed to come out on top with an aggressive all-in of his own. The commentary by English caster Erik "DoA" Lonnquist instantly caught on, and is usually referenced with any similarly crazy outplays.
  • Ascended with Galaxy Slayer Zed, who gets the line "Look at the skills, look at the moves. Zed, what was that?"
• SAINT SMITES^ExplanationSarcastic reference to the unfortunate tendency of Saintvicious, formerly the jungler for Curse gaming, to get outsmited at major jungle objectives. In explanation, junglers usually carry a spell called Smite, which deals a large amount of damage to neutral monster camps that can be found in the jungle instead of the lane. Smite is often used to secure these monsters by dealing a large amount of damage in a finishing burst, preventing opposing players from stealing the kill (and therefore the gold or buffs) with their own attacks. Since the opposing jungler often also carries Smite, when teams battle over contested monsters it often comes down to whichever jungler is faster on the trigger with Smite. Good timing on Smite is essentially mandatory to be a jungler.
  • Saintvicious does not care about your Fantasy Points. ^ExplanationSince the invention of Fantasy LCS, pro players at the end of their winning games try to get more kills just to pad their fantasy stats. Saintvicious, returning as the jungler for Team Gravity as of Spring 2015, usually just dives the enemy fountain and dies, lowering his fantasy score. There is even a voice highlight where his teammates are saying "Fantasy, fantasy!" and he still suicides at the fountain.
• DIGNITOSS^ExplanationBy extension, the use of the term "throw" to refer to a team that has been winning the game so far completely abandoning their advantage and looking like they will lose the game after a series of bad decision and/or unfortunate occurrences. Popularly used in reference to Team Dignitas, a North American team that has thrown games more times than they would've liked, often in the vicinity of Baron Nashor, a highly contested, highly valuable neutral monster that grants a powerful buff and gold to the team that kills it, but is so powerful it requires a team to kill. Since Baron is so valuable, the mere possibility that the opposing team might be killing Baron draws teams into battles around the "baron pit." However, just attacking the Baron is dangerous because if the opposing team attacks your team, the combined damage from both sides will often result in an ace, and the Baron buff on the opposing team.
• Speaking of Dignitas, almost everything scarra says^ExplanationWilliam "scarra" Li, former mid player for Team Dignitas before retiring, returning, retiring again, and finally being picked up as coach for CLG, occasionally referred to as "The Prophet" due to his on-point analysis skills during his appearances on the desk:
  • "Up until they lose the game, they're winning."^ExplanationReference to Team Coast, which evolved out of GGU, the Season 2 Summer runner ups in an EXTREMELY close series against TSM. Since then generally regarded as a team with incredible potential (itself a meme), but has never actually realized that potential. Refers to Coast's tendency to do appear to be solidly winning almost every game before disastrously throwing everything to the winds and losing horribly
  • "... I hate this game."^ExplanationUttered during the so-called scarra ward, now a general term for misplacing a ward into a bush by complete accident
  • "I need the reset SO BADLY"^Explanationscarra's favorite champion, Katarina, significantly reduces the cooldowns on her abilities whenever she gets a kill/assist (or "resets"). This makes Katarina very effective at finishing off a team of low health opponents.
• Puns of Damage^ExplanationReference to Phreak, who aside from being a fountain of memes in the champion spotlights, also casts for professional tournaments, during which he has a tendency to make incredibly lame puns.
• Bubbadub's mustache ^ExplanationBubbabdub was a support player from compLexity, an underdog team where they did decently well in the 2014 summer LCS scene to the point that won games against some of the top tier teams in the LCS. He is known for his memetic mustache, as he's known to be the only professional League of Legends player to have a mustache (most professional players either are clean-shaven, or have beards). Lampshaded in his description at Leaguepedia stating he has "the most elegant mustache and in fact the only mustache in the LCS."
• The '4th' Meme (a.k.a. the Curse Curse) ^ExplanationA reference to Team Curse (now Team Liquid), regarded as a team that generally should be among the top teams in NA, but would somehow always end up getting fourth place, regardless of how far above or below that standing they maintain during the majority of the season. Has led to jokes that fourth place is essentially reserved for Curse and that no other team can steal the spot from them, as well as numerous occasions where the number four is related to the team. They finally break this curse with a dominant 9-1 record through the 2018 spring split playoffs, netting the organization their first NALCS championship. However, they still are the fourth unique team to be crowned. Many of their other accomplishments have been associated with the number 4 as well.
• Hai and reverse sweeps. ^ExplanationA reverse sweep is the end result of a best-of-five series where one team starts off losing the first two matches, then sweeps the remaining three for the overall victory. Hai, as part of both C9 and FlyQuest, seem to pull these off far more often than should be possible. This included the infamous 2015 NALCS Regionals for Worlds qualification, where C9, only taking seventh in the regular season, would start at the bottom of the gauntlet and then reverse-sweep both Gravity and Team Impulse. A standard 3-1 victory over Team Liquid afterwards would then bring C9 as the third seed to Worlds.
• Doublelift's trophy case ^ExplanationOriginating from reddit, one inspired user created the subreddit r/doubleliftstrophycase and then locked out user submissions, causing visitors to receive a "there isn't anything here" message. This was a jab at Doublelift's utter lack of tourney wins ever since his induction into CLG. People trash-talking Doublelift or CLG would often post a link to the empty subreddit. That was until CLG finally won the NA LCS 2015 summer split championship, marking his first ever win and causing the subreddit to receive its first post. A rare occasion where the death of a meme was actually witnessed and recorded.
  • NO THREAD IS SAFE ^ExplanationAlso from reddit. Used whenever someone mocks CLG outside of a thread directed related to the pro scene. The meme died for a while after the 2015 Summer Split win ("EVERY THREAD IS SAFE") only to return even stronger after CLG's poor showing at Worlds.
  • Jensen's trophy case ^ExplanationFollowing a slew of disappointing results from C9 in the playoffs and a community backlash to 'public appreciation threads' for the aforementioned, midlaner Jensen received the Doublelift treatment with /r/jensenstrophycase. However, this meme has also been reversed as he won his first championship in the 2019 Spring split alongside Team Liquid.
• Donezo / Sivir Comp. ^ExplanationAfter a disappointing end to the Spring 2015 split, CLG Link stepped down from the mid lane position and retired. In addition, he wrote a scathing, rambling, and slightly incoherent rant about his tenure at CLG, heavily criticizing his former teammates and support staff. Highlights from the 17-page manuscript include "...I mean it’s a f—-ing sivir comp. You group up and you win right?" and "At some point double lost respect for [MonteCristo] and once he loses respect for ANYONE your’e (sic) f—-ing donezo.". Many players, former players, and staff related to CLG spoke out about Link's "Donezo Manifesto", refuting or reinforcing his points. This of course resulted in a huge honeypot of drama during the off-season. In the aftermath, the CLG squad and fans have embraced this meme in the next split, with aphromoo referencing the fabled word in an interview and image macros such as this◊, following a victory that featured (as you'd expect) a Sivir comp.
• AnnualShallowBlackwidowspider ^ExplanationCLG Doublelift and aphromoo were generally considered to be one of the most dominant, if not the absolute strongest, AD Carry/Support duos in the history of the NALCS. A fan montage made by ThePeacePigeon plays on the skill and brotherhood between the two by superimposing their faces on JD and Turk from Scrubs. This scene eventually gets turned into a gif, and it immediately reaches memetic status as the gif is posted and reposted every time the CLG duo crushes their opposition. Due to the link-naming system of gfycat.com, the gif is given the tag "AnnualShallowBlackwidowspider". The gif can be found here, while the originating montage is here (1:49 for the scene).
• "Dyrus gets to play League of Legends." ^ExplanationTSM's top-laner Dyrus is infamous among professional players for the sheer length of time he spends getting camped, focused, and harassed, often to the point he's essentially a second support. TSM even puts him on a champion that's okay if it gets shut down in lane because it happens so often. In an interview with TSM, Dyrus was asked how he feels about being camped so hard and so often, to which he replied, "I just want to play League of Legends." When Dyrus gets the rare opportunity to become a power in lane, farm decently, and start making plays on his own, it's said that Dyrus finally gets a chance to play the game.
• LUSTCENA ^ExplanationIf there's anything TSM's support player Lustboy is known for, it's his amusing twitter feeds, and his use of the "You Can't See Me" wave popularized by John Cena.
• By far.^ExplanationFORG1VEN had a magnificent performance in the EULCS season 5 spring split, being a key part of SK Gaming's success in the regular season. This brief but confident phrase was his response to a question about having the most skill out of all ADC's. "By far" is now more or less spammed in Twitch chat every time FORG1VEN does something well or poorly.
• Crumbzz the Prophet ^ExplanationCrumbzz, then the jungler for Team Dignitas, was featured as part of the analyst desk at Worlds 2014. Following a streak of correctly predicting improbable upsets during the group stages, fans gave him this title. Riot Games has also embraced this as well, as Crumbzz the Prophet has been featured in subsequent intermission snippets. He then humorously provides insight into the future - armed with a beard, staff, and cloak.
• LOSEcian ^ExplanationSo far (as of Week 7 in the 2015 Summer Split of the NA and EU LCS), Lucian has been picked more than 10 times in 2015 Summer and his team lost every one of those games. The unfortunate pattern was first noticed by the casters in Week 6's Primetime League preview show, with an image of Lucian's splash art edited with tears while Thresh has a caption saying "HAHAHA!" in the background.
• ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ X TAKE MY ENERGY ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ ^ExplanationSeemingly an offshoot from "Raise Your Dongers", this phrase became commonplace in post-match reddit threads in the NALCS 2015 summer split. Started off with Team Dignitas fans celebrating a string of improbable wins, and eventually found its way into the lexicon of CLG and C9 fans.
  • (づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ X TAKE MY FAITH (づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ ^ExplanationTypically the variant used by CLG and C9 fans, based off of the #FAITHAGE meme born from CLG the split prior. A sort of brotherhood was formed between the two teams due to CLG granting circumstances to allow C9 to perform their miracle run through the Worlds qualification gauntlet. (づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ THANKS FOR THE FAITH X (づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ and corresponding "you're welcome" responses were spammed between fans of the two teams after C9 clinched the final berth to Worlds.
• X is a worrying trend for Y.^Explanation Jatt, shoutcaster for Riot Games, made a tweet regarding C9 Balls about his seeming inability to climb ranks in solo queue despite being a professional player. This launched a small storm of controversy, with many pro players reaching out to defend Balls, and then fans criticizing the pros for their overblown and knee-jerk reactions. The term "worrying trend" then became a sort of catchphrase to describe a large plethora of unusual circumstances. See here for a more in-depth explanation.
  • Diamond 2 ^ExplanationThe Elo in which Balls got stuck, starting the above. Even Balls acknowledged the meme: after scoring a pentakill in the Worlds, he said that he only did it thanks to "all the Diamond 2 practice".
• Same. ^ExplanationDue to distinct speech patterns that the C9 roster has, fans have taken to mimicking their conversations in an emulation of their discussions during a match. Most of these conversation ends with the word "same", Sneaky's catchphrase, even if saying that makes no sense.
• Tahm Kench got several from the 2015 Worlds:
  • "Un/Bench the Kench!"^ExplanationTahm Kench provides a very wide variety of utility and power to a team, making him a popular support pick in competitive game play. Fans and the Casters commenting on games have taken to calling the act of picking Tahm Kench, or desiring a team to pick him as "Unbench the Kench". When ever a team ignores or bans him, or fans wish this, this, it's called "Bench the Kench"
  • "Noodling for Tahm Kench"/"The proper counter to Tahm Kench, is proper catfishing technique" ^ExplanationDuring the Group stages of the 2015 Worlds, the casters had a discussion in a match he was being used, as to the best counter to Tahm Kench. Deducing from the fact that his character design is partly based on being an anthropomorphic cat fish, and his Southern U.S. accent, they decided that the best strategy then, was to use a fishing technique that's used in the Southern U.S. to catch them in rivers, known as "Noodling". The act of which is basically "Stick your arm into a catfish's hole, and providing there is one in it, a catfish will swim forward, and latch onto your arm as a defensive maneuver. At which point, you pull your arm back, and out of the water with your hand still in the throat/mouth of the catfish". They came to the conclusion that teams should start countering a Tahm Kench pick, by picking Blitzcrank. The reasoning being that Blitzcrank's Rocket Grab is most akin to Noodling as it shoots his hand forward, before pulling back whoever it grabs back to him.
• Yo Jensen, body these fools. ^ExplanationDuring the C9 vs CLG game during the 2016 NA LCS Spring Split, casters were discussing C9 Hai's ability to lead and shot-call, but One Thing Led to Another, and Jatt exasperatingly claimed that Hai doesn't give specific commands to his teammates such as the above quote. Since then, the meme has been quoted by both Hai and Jensen, and is generally repeated by fans when Jensen does well.
• "STEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVE!"^ExplanationEtienne "Steve" Michels, initially top laner for Roccat in 2015 and then for both Elements and Schalke 04 in 2016, is almost inexplicably popular with the house crowds at EU LCS recordings, who regularly chant his name in a deep, melodramatic manner throughout the game. Initially they would cheer him every time his champion appeared on camera, irrespective of whether he was doing anything or not, although in Season 6 they mostly restrain themselves to only chanting it when he's making a good play. There's no particular reason for it.
• Bug Catcher Sneaky ^Explanation C9 Sneaky seems to stumble upon bugs in-game way more often than should be probable, such as stepping on a trap that is under another champion. The meme culminates in a Season 6 summer split game between Team Liquid and Cloud 9, where TL Lourlo's Trundle is knocked up by C9 Meteos' Rek'sai unburrow and is launched very high off-screen. Since there is no Z-axis in calculating champion interactions, Lourlo was able to continue to attack and kill Sneaky. A pause was immediately called and the game was eventually remade.
• Top Die ^explanationDuring an interview of the victorious Cloud9 after they take down Team EnVyUs in the 2016 NALCS regional gauntlet, Meteos praises his teammate Impact after a stellar showing in the top lane, saying "[Impact] just goes 'top die' and then he gets a solo kill". Twitch chat took the phrase and ran with it. Later on, Impact himself says it on a post-match interview after Cloud9 defeated Immortals the next day. Variations such as 'bot die' also show up in the chat depending on who Impact kills.
  • C9 runs into Faker, cue "Mid die" ^ExplanationFaker solo-kills Jensen while the rest of his team camps Impact and Sneaky. Lampshaded by MonteCristo with a twitter post
• 17-0 perfect split. ^Explanation Team Solo Mid's 2016 Summer Split formation is one of the most powerful formations that the North American scene ever had, outright curbstomping even their closest rivals, and were in the way to a perfect split when they were completely upset by Phoenix1, a team who started the split with 9 losses in 9 games and was just starting to get in form. Naturally, the reactions were full of shock and memes, with most of the TSM fans pretending that the game never happened and that they got a perfect split with only 17 games.
• Pocket Pick Lucian ^ExplanationTSM Doublelift's willingness to play Lucian was especially prevalent in the 2016 NALCS Summer split, being selected 21 times over TSM's 41 regular-season games, including an unbroken 13-game streak of only Lucian early in the split. Jokes eventually cropped up as fans noticed the trend, and fuel was added to the fire with Riot Games releasing a video where Doublelift expounds his strategies and opinions on him. The meme eventually reaches critical mass in a dramatic championship-winning teamfight, where in the grand finals versus Cloud9 Doublelift's Lucian is able to dodge several key abilities from C9, doling out nearly 11,000 damage in the counterattack to turn the tide for TSM.
• 200 IQ play ^ExplanationOnce during his stream, pro player Pobelter claimed to have 200 IQ. Since then, "200 IQ play" is synonimous for "insane play" on the LoL community.
• Bjergsen counters Aurelion Sol. ^ExplanationDuring the 2016 Spring Split semifinals and during the Worlds later in the same year, TSM Bjergsen found himself facing Aurelion Sol in the midlane only for both matches to be interrupted and remade due to the champion presenting bugs. Thus, people claim that having Bjergsen facing Aurelion Sol will automatically cause the champion to bug and the match to be remade.

• Love me some Regi^ExplanationDuring mid-2016, Andy "Reginald/Regi" Dinh (co-founder of esports organization Team SoloMid) criticized Riot during an interview for drastically changing the game at points so ill-timed that they frequently threw players off their game, scared off investors, and put teams/organizations on unstable bedrock. This ended up prompting a response from Riot co-founder Marc "Tryndamere" Merrill◊, beginning with the "Love me some Regi" quote before pinning blame on esports organizations for investing in their game to begin with, justifying the instability as out of the interest of making things exciting for the audience rather than the well-being of the actual teams, and transparently admitting their favoritism of certain orgs with regards to their promotion/relegation model. The response was almost universally panned by fans and organizations alike, with the backlash being so one-sided that all LCS teams were to able to negotiate with Riot an overhaul of their leagues within a year that granted them the security they needed, and "Love me some Regi" became a catchphrase tied to whenever Riot displays an egregious lack of touch with their associates and audience.
• Syndra Outplays. ^ExplanationDuring the first half of the 2017 season on a number of occasions pro players using Syndra, a Difficult, but Awesome mage that revolves around difficult manipulation of magic orbs, have simply killed opponents using Glass Cannon characters by using her ultimate ability to send all present spheres to collide with the target for a huge burst of damage. This has resulted in casters and fans alike using the meme phrase to sarcastically overhype a boring play with little effort on an otherwise complex and demanding champion.
• 2016 and 2017 has had Team Liquid of the NA LCS producing a number of memes, often for all the wrong reasons:
  • Breaking Point^ExplanationAs Season 6 (2016) was winding down, a one hour and 48 minute documentary called Team Liquid: Breaking Point was released via their partnership with HTC Esports on YouTube and produced by the film studio 1Up. The film followed Team Liquid's very rocky 2016 season and chronicled the internal strife, notably that between the team's rookie Jungler Joshua "Dardoch" Hartnett, coach Choi "Locodoco" Yoon-sub, and ADC Chae "Piglet" Gwang-jin, and the effect it was having on the team. It highlighted Dardoch's impressive skill as a jungler, marred by his incredibly abrasive and toxic attitude, which nearly ended with him benched for the Summer Split, only to be given another chance thanks to Team Liquid's not having a comparably skilled jungler at the time, Locodoco habit of being dismissive about team members concerns while showing what Dardoch views as favoritism to Piglet, while Piglet himself is burned out due to the stress of playing in the LCS, taking an offer from TL's management to send him down to the TL Academy Challenger team. Ultimately, these issues and others reach the breaking point, where Team Liquid couldn't justify to themselves the value of keeping Dardoch on the team or Locodoco as head coach. Esport fans have in turn discussed whether airing team issues like this is good or bad for a team, while TL fans often point to this as a summary to the start of TL's troubles through out 2016 and most of 2017.
  • Dardoch'd ^ExplanationA resulting Person as Verb meme to describe Dardoch's playing habits brought to light by Breaking Point. When he's having a good match, his level of skill is very capable of carrying his team. But his attitude and habit of tilting when falling behind in a match being just as capable of dragging his own team down with him. Fans claim that a team has been "Dardoch'd" towards whichever team is supposedly losing due his actions, be it the opposing team or his own.
  • Midlet ^ExplanationDuring the Spring Split of 2017, TL's midlaner Goldenglue was benched due to a mediocre performance and then went to South Korea for a month long training there. To fill his spot, TL's ADC Piglet, who had been struggling with the ADC meta at the time, was role swapped to Midlane. The name "Midlet" very quickly gained traction, especially after some early good games Piglet had, until other midlaners had time to figure out his playing habits in the position.
  • "This message is paid for by Steve" ^ExplanationBy Summer 2017, Team Liquid had barely survived the Spring Relegation/Promotion tournament to stay in the LCS, only to be just as horrible again in the Summer Split except now with weekly roster swaps and Doublelift, who temporarily played with them at the end of Spring, had returned to TSM. In response, fans started jokingly tagging any thing positive they were saying about the team as though they were really only saying it as a paid for opinion on behalf of team owner Steve "LiQuiD112" Arhancet. It reached Ascended Meme status when it became the official description tag line on TL's subreddit and even Riot's casters have made reference to it.
• 612^ExplanationAt the start of the Spring Split 2018, former invincible kings of pro-LoL SKT got off to a shockingly bad start after losing the Worlds Grand Final the previous year, getting thrashed by what was expected to be radically weaker opponents, only winning one match out of their first six. The biggest weak point on the team was quite easily identified as jungler Blank, who'd performed acceptably in the past, but seemed to have completely lost the plot, culminating in an abysmal game against Afreeca where the end-game damage stats revealed that Blank, playing jungle Jax (an incredibly high-damage champion) and ending on a 0/3/2 score, had only done 612 damage to enemy champions over the course of the game, possibly the single poorest performance by a pro-LoL player in the history of the game. The chat field was instantly overwhelmed by people spamming "612" and Blank was, unsurprisingly, immediately shelved to make room for new, untested recruit Blossom (who, to his credit, almost immediately helped SKT reverse their losing streak). For what it's worth, the online match history for the game displays his damage as 1.1k rather than 612, but that's still embarrassingly low, by far the weakest in that game.
• Bannon Minion^Explanationin 2018, utilizing Banner of Command onto a Baron-empowered cannon minion assures that the minion will not die and that the turret will be subject to a maximum 10-hit kill. Even the audience counts the number of hits when the offense cannot advance due to no minion wave within turret range while the defending team is kept away from the cannon minion.
• Silver Scrapes^Explanation"Silver Scrapes" was originally a piece of production music played by Riot during Season 2 Worlds whenever they encountered some technical issues - which back then, meant "often and for a long time". Despite some early hate, the song eventually grew on people, and was often requested to play before the most important games. Riot eventually took notice, and since then, it became a go-to song to play whenever a match goes to its final game - fans, casters, and even players will often refer to match reaching Game 5 as "going to Silver Scrapes".
• "That TP sucked!"^ExplanationLCS caster Sam "Kobe" Hartman-Kenzler blurted this out during a game, seen by many as intruding on the professionalism expected from casters but being so funny that it's worth letting slide. Since then, this has become a go-to phrase used by casters for especially egregious misplays with the Teleport spell.
• The Monologue Curse / "It starts with success..."^ExplanationDuring Worlds 2020 quarterfinal between Fnatic and Top Esports, Fnatic took a 2-0 lead, prompting the host Eefje "Sjokz" Depoortere to deliver a monologue about Fnatic and their bot laner Martin "Rekkles" Larsson overcoming their failures and rising to the top. Top turned the series around and won after the first reverse sweep in Worlds history, leading many to declare that Sjokz's monologue cursed the team. This wasn't the first example of "caster's curse", and Sjokz kept joking about it, giving another monologue during LEC's 2021 spring split... only for Fnatic to lose to then-dead last Team Vitality. At that point European community fully embraced the meme, and every monologue since then is seen as a death sentence to teams' hopes. At one point, she even gave a monologue about how the then-underperforming G2 Esports was going to fail horribly in an attempt to invert the curse towards their favor.
• Sad Croc^ExplanationCoined by fan-run League esports VOD and highlight channel Loleventvods, a Running Gag is the frequency that Renekton — an extremely common champion among pros that's almost never fallen out of favor due to his straightforward efficacy — dies tragic and undignified deaths. The "sad croc" joke has since spread out beyond the videos, usually spammed during live chats as he continues to bite the dust.
• FNC Pause^ExplanationMid-game pauses aren't exactly uncommon, but LEC team Fnatic became pretty infamous around the 2021 season for the sheer amount of technical pauses they called, which led many to suspect (largely jokingly) that Fnatic were doing it as a tactic and rigging their games. This in turn has resulted in pretty much any mid-game pause, especially during very heated moments, being called a "Fnatic/FNC Pause".
• Airport Speedrun^ExplanationKicking up in popularity around 2020, anyone expected to flounder out of international events are joked to be doing it to get to the airport and fly back home as fast as possible.
  • NA/"Near Airport"^ExplanationNorth America is most often targeted with this meme due to their chronic underperformance in international events, very rarely making it very far at MSI or Worlds.
• Church of LS^ExplanationNick "LS" De Cesare is a longtime caster/coach whose profile increased dramatically during the 2022 season as he became head coach of LCS team Cloud9. LS is famous for being vocally harsh on questionable player decision-making, describing overly risky plays as "sinning", which evolved into a joke that certain players were "sinners" or "saints", in turn hailing his judgement as religious-style gospel. Upon becoming C9's coach, he immediately drew attention for his idiosyncratic leadership, drawing up very strange drafts and unconventional champion picks (the first match against Golden Guardians saw them pick Ivern mid) that managed to be impressively successful, leading to an even further degree of memetic celebration, transforming into unprecedented levels of mourning when he was abruptly released from the team less than a month into the season.
• Armut has such a big champ pool, he can play SSG Gnar, Dino Gnar, Gentleman Gnar, Snow Day Gnar, El Neon Gnar...^ExplanationA popular copypasta about Turkish pro top laner İrfan Berk "Armut" Tükek, who has a notoriously shallow champion pool, with an infamously blatant preference towards champions like Wukong and especially Gnar.
  • GNARMUT has consequently become a popular Fan Nickname.
• "Wow! League of Legends! Wow..."^ExplanationA clip from an early 2023 stream by acclaimed LCK player Heo "ShowMaker" Su, made in response to watching a teammate getting utterly thrashed by K'Sante in the most annoyed, done-with-it tone of voice possible. The voice clip gets a lot of usage whenever fans want to make fun of Riot for egregiously unfair or unfun gameplay decisions.
• KT chose T1^Explanation Often a joke describing what lead to T1 winning the League of Legends Worlds 2023 Championship. During LCK summer season, KT finished in 1st place while T1 finished fifth due to Faker having a wrist injury midseason. This led to KT choosing to face T1, resulting in them losing to the latter. This led to T1 getting a seat in Worlds 2023, with them later winning the entire tournament.
• All roads lead to Faker^Explanation A similar line was said by Faker in the T1 vs JDG semifinals teaser in response to Ruler's line about JDG's Golden Road being unstoppable (a Golden Road is when a team wins spring season, MSI, summer season and Worlds in the same year without losing a single game). Often paired with that line is the clip of Faker "getting his revenge against Ruler" in the 3rd game of the T1 vs JDG semifinals match (Ruler caught out Faker in the Worlds 2017 Championship, resulting in Ruler's team winning the championship).

Unsorted Memes

• Trinity Force and "Tons of Damage"^ExplanationPhreak during early Champion Spotlights was famous for having a preference for the item Trinity Force, pretty much always suggesting players build it for its "tons of damage". Has been Ascended a few times, most notably with the in-game description of the item immortalizing "Tons of Damage" as its flavor text.
• "Morello did X, so he nerfed Irelia." ^ExplanationThere was a lot of talk about the apparent nerfing of Irelia, so people have been jokingly stated some reasons they nerfed her (IE: "Mordekaiser was overpowered, so we fixed this by nerfing Irelia.")
• "pro as heck guide to master yi" is an incredibly quotable early League of Legends fanvid, with several lines having been referenced in the actual game itself:
  • "Get dunked!" It became one of Vi's quotes when using her ultimate, and later formed the basis for the basketball-themed Dunkmaster Darius skin.
  • "Watch out! It's the Swordboots." Ascended with Yasuo as well — taunting an enemy Yi prompts him to possibly comment on them and sound utterly baffled while doing so.
    Yasuo: Nice... sword... boots?
  • "Nooblord!", repeated ad nauseum in response to a teammate dying.
  • X Y-ed. Better nerf Irelia. ^ExplanationRumors that Irelia was going to be in the Riven patch was met with disbelief that it was going to happen yet again while others felt there were much clearly problems instead. She was later changed due to problems Lead Champion Designer Morello listed with her kit here: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=14539155
    • Nowadays, people snowclone the meme with whatever the most nerfed champion in the latest patches is. Examples include Kassadin, Azir and Rek'Sai.
• Just pink ward ^ExplanationAfter a trend of complaining Akali was overpowered, this response became nigh ubiquitous involving Akali discussion for a time (the item Vision Ward "pink ward" can be placed down to counter an invisibility ability of Akali's).
  • Just dodge the spears ^ExplanationNidalee was in a similar trend about the same time, this response in reference to a powerful but non-targeted skillshot ability of Nidalee where she throws a spear.
    • Just pink ward the spears. ^ExplanationUsed generally to joke around in any discussions of counter-play to champions or complaining about a champion being overpowered. Used more specifically to snark about the long-standing bug of Nidalee's spears being invisible under certain conditions, meaning you can't see them to dodge them, combining the two memes nicely.
    • Just QSS, Zhonya, pink ward and use a Thornmail against the spears. ^ExplanationThe above phrase taken to its logical conclusion with the most common counterplay items the game has to offer. Quicksilver Sash removes all formsof paralysis and crowd control except knockups, Zhonya's Hourglass briefly locks you in stasis and lets you escape from life-threatening damage bursts, and Thornmail returns 30% of any damage you receive from basic attacks.
• This game is Rated T. ^ExplanationAn in-joke among players who are familiar with the game's extensive lore. There are many situations described in character backgrounds such as Tahm Kench eating someone alive when he "snapped her bones and crushed her limbs", or Vladimir killing two children because he liked the look of their blood, that one would think would push the rating into M territory. It got quite revitalized after Evelynn's rework, as many of her new lines are so blatantly sexual she made Ahri seem chaste, making some players wonder how the hell that got through.
• Alcove gaming^ExplanationPreseason 2020 slightly expanded the top and bottom lanes with alcoves for opponents to play around, usually disproportionately hailed as one of the biggest map changes ever in League. With there being a decent amount of ways to play around and outmaneuver your enemy with them, "alcove gaming" is used to refer the entire meta surrounding this one terrain addition. This became an Ascended Meme with a Challenge called "Alcove Gaming", rewarded for scoring a takedown on an enemy in the alcove.
• MILLION DOLLAR COMPANY / SMALL INDIE COMPANY.^ExplanationUsed on /lolg/ when Riot Games is perceived to be not doing their job of fixing the game or implementing long-requested features, implying that Riot Games is not acting like a million dollar company but instead more like a small, inexperienced indie studio.
• X coded as minions.^ExplanationOnce in a while someone finds a Game-Breaking Bug which is the result of the game reading as a minion something that shouldn't, including but not limited to: skillshots, turrets, champions... Thus, people started to say that everything in the game is coded as minions. ^Addendum This explanation isn't actually far off from the actual case; due to the game's coding foundation being built without today's massive mechanical complexities in mind, many shortcuts have to be made in order to increase efficiency (such as Jarvan IV's impassible wall ultimate being coded as minions since players can't walk through minions either).
  • "Spaghetti code." ^ExplanationAs mentioned with above's further addendum, copy-pasting properties that already exist with certain elements onto others usually makes for efficient shortcuts when you start, but can produce problems if things change, confusing both programmers and the game itself, which is bound to happen since the game is constantly being updated/changed. The game's programming has now been compared to "spaghetti" by both developers and fans; a giant, tangled mishmash of different, inexplicably connected elements that make changing individual strands of code tricky and bug-laden.
• Today, an episode of <usually negative story that happened in the game>. ^ExplanationA storytelling format recently used on /lolg/ as of mid-2016.
• Ezreal kissing Shyvana's leg ^ExplanationReferencing this bizarre shitpost asking "What would Shyvana do if Ezreal kissed her leg?" that inexplicably made it to the front page of the League subreddit, catching the attention of a few Rioters as well. Not only did this make Shyvana X Ezreal a thing, but it also spawned fanart, complex fanfiction, and even an official in-client sale the next day for Shyvana and Ezreal skins called the "Leg Day Bundle."
• Fluid Champ Design. ^ExplanationEssentially a near-retelling of the Ezreal kissing Shyvana's leg meme above. One day, a Smite player, a little miffed about less-than-stellar recent god releases in Smite, came to the League subreddit to ask about League's champion design principles, initially asking how they made champs "so original and fluid" before going into more detailed questions. As Xayah and Rakan had just come out at the time, one redditer made a joke that Riot starts by deciding a new champion will be a bird and go from there, which quickly spiraled into a running gag. Just like with the previously-mentioned meme, the reddit post hit the front page, got Rioter attention, and a "Fluid Champ Design" bundle sale with all the bird or bird-related champions (Azir, Anivia, Swain, Quinn, Xayah, and Rakan) and one skin for each was briefly released.
• The 1000 Day Club^ExplanationAn ever-changing list of champions who have gone at least 1000 days without receiving a new skin. Because Riot has no set-in-stone quota of giving champions definite amounts of skins, fans took it upon themselves to make one, resulting jokes about how certain champions are being sent to, stuck in, or even rescued out of the club.
• "I wish I could say it's been a pleasure."^ExplanationIn early 2021, Riot requested a takedown of Chronoshift, an unauthorized fan emulation designed to revert the game back to its state in 2011. The project was shut down with relatively little incident, but the leaked Discord conversation between its project head and "Riot Zed" (the corresponding Riot security agent, unrelated to the playable champion) became a target of mockery due to said Rioter's incredibly unprofessional and laughable behavior, ending the conversation with the line in question, with even the heads-up at Riot expressing disappointment at how poorly they handled the approach. "Riot Zed" and their overly edgy responses has since become a recurring joke on the League subreddit regarding behind-the-scenes disputes.

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