Memes / Literature

We saw these memes in a book somewhere... but we really read them for the actual stories, we swear! (Look at that... we're poets and we were unaware of this fact until recently.)

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• Beware of Chicken
• Captain Underpants
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid
• Harry Potter
• The Lord of the Rings
• The Moomins
• Parahumans:
  • Worm
  • Ward
• Twig
• The Twilight Saga
• Warrior Cats

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Please add entries in the following format:

• The name of the book.
  • Meme name: description of meme and how it's used.
    • Source of meme and fandom it relates to in the form of a hot tip.
    • Famous instances (such as the Rick Roll during the Thanksgiving parade).
    • Further mutations and successor memes, if any.

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• fnord
• Rare poetry example — Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven":
  • Once upon a midnight dreary as I pondered weak and weary...
  • Quoth the raven: "Nevermore."
• Another poetry example, from Beowulf: "So."
  • It should perhaps be noted that only the Seamus Heaney translation begins that way. Others translators have rendered the opening word, "Hwæt!", as quite a range of words and phrases, among them "Lo!", "Listen!", and "Hear me!".
• A Court of Thorns and Roses: "Rhysand invented feminism". This is used by some detractors and even a few fans to poke fun at Rhysand's characterization from Mist and Fury onwards, as the author's attempts to depict him as the ultimate love interest and heavy emphasis on him letting Feyre 'make her own choices' and how progressive he is by Prythian standards etc can get a bit on-the-nose for some readers.
• Ermahgerd — Gers Berms! ^Explanation An Image Macro series of a really dweeby-looking girl holding bunch of the books. It's a Funetik Aksent of a retainer lisp.
• Poetry example #3
  T S Eliot's The Hollow Men:
  This is the way the world ends
  Not with a bang but a whimper
  (not "with a whisper")
• H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos:
  • Phn'glui mgl'wnafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
  • Iä! Iä! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!
  • The Necronomicon.
  • I am the last. I will tell the audient void.
  • The mad piping of two amorphous flute-players.
  • Tekeli-li? ^note "Spoken" by an Elder Thing and then later a Shoggoth barrelling down on the protagonists in "At the Mountains of Madness". It was borrowed from Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym.
  • We'll be alright as long as no one says Hastur-AAAAUUGH!
    • Just don't say it three times and we'll all be okay.
  • Whatever you do, never, ever read the name of Y'golonac. (YOU FOOL! YOU'VE DOOMED US ALL!)^Explanation Reading Y'golonac's name gives him the power to possess you and transform your body into a duplicate of his own. Given that Y'golonac is described as a headless, bloated giant with toothy mouths in the palms of its hands and its groin, this is not something you'd like to have happen to you.
  • Lovecraft was an adequately excellent lover.^Explanation Lovecraft's wife at the time, Sonia Green, once said this of the man in a letter. Mostly funny because of it being able to be taken either way.
  • "That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons, even death may die."
  • Star or Tree? ^note There's two images associated with the Elder Sign, one of those being a branch/"tree" and the other being a pentagram.
  • Googling the name of Lovecraft's cat. ^Explanation  When he was a child, Lovecraft's family had a black cat with a very unfortunate name.
    • Don't antagonize the cats! ^Explanation  From The Cats of Ulthar, wherein a cat-hating couple kills a cat and the titular animals kill them in response.
  • Don't mind me, I'm just standing on a ship's deck monologuing for ten minutes.^Explanation The protagonist of The White Ship does exactly this, and imagining the logistics of what the rest of the crew is thinking when they see him doing it is hilarious.
  • Nyarlathotep's gay pride robes ^note The end of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath has Nyarlathotep wearing "gay, prismatic robes". The problem is, "gay" no longer means what it did when Lovecraft wrote it. Has led some to ship Nyarlathotep and Randolph Carter, the protagonist.
  • The Lovecraftian Compulsion to Continue Writing Even as One is Being Devoured. ^note From an e2 thread about many of Lovecraft's characters continuing to narrate their downfall and even death as they Go Mad From the Things Man Was Not Meant to Know.
• The King in Yellow: The Yellow Sign. Fear it. ^Explanation  The titular Sign is in and of itself a meme that causes madness and possibly even mind control in those who see it.
  • "Have you found/seen the Yellow Sign?" ^Explanation Phrase commonly associated with Hastur and spoken by his cultists in some adaptations of the character.
  • "No mask? No mask!" ^note  The infamous line from one of the (given) scenes of the play in which the Stranger reveals he isn't wearing a mask.
• Pride and Prejudice:
  • It is a trope universally acknowledged that a meme in possession of great fame must be in want of mutation.
  • The very existence of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
  • OOH MR DARCY *bodicerip*
• The Areas of My Expertise spawned The 700 Hoboes Project.
  • The Furry Old Lobster, which even got its own song by Jonathan Coulton.
  • Getting either very high or very autistic.
  • John Hodgman has only masturbated out a window once.
  • More Information Than You Require gives us 700 Mole-Man Names and Their Occupations.
  • "The Internet: A Series of Tubes."
  • Martin Van Buren was a Time Lord.
  • That is all.
• Discworld:
  • That! Is!! Not!!! My!!!! Cow!!!!!
  • I Aten't Dead.
  • Buggrit! Millennium hand and shrimp!
  • Ook.
  • It is a pune, or play on words.
  • Writing or typing everything related to Death in the required font.
  • Five exclamation marks!!!!! The sure sign of an insane mind!!!!!
  • The hedgehog can never be buggered at all.
    • A wizard's staff has a knob on the end.^note Both of these have been defictionalized as Filk Songs.
  • Scumble: Made from apples. Well, mostly apples.
  • That was me jumping to what we call a conclusion.^Explanation Used to discredit I Never Said It Was Poison in an argument, as in the book
  • Don't let me detain you. ^Explanation This is a Catchphrase of Lord Vetinari. He rules the city. Really DON'T let him detain you.
• Thomas Pynchon:
  • We Await Silent Trystero's Empire.
  • Don't Ever Antagonize The Horn.
• Dune:
  • Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
  • In the form of the film's version of the Baron, "HE WHO CONTROLS THE SPICE CONTROLS THE UNIVERSE!"
  • Also from the David Lynch film: "The Spice must flow...
• Nineteen Eighty-Four:

• 1984 is not an instruction manual.^Explanation The rise of surveillence-heavy, run-down dystopian totalitarian societies in the latter half of the 20th century—North Korea being one particularly notorious example—has led people to wonder if the leaders of such regimes read 1984 and thought "Hey, a Big-Brother-is-watching-you Crapsack World regime of power sounds like a good idea!"
• "Wow, this is just like 1984!"/"Literally 1984"^Explanation Mockery of Misaimed Fandom comparing the novel to any attempt at censorship or calling out political incorrectness, regardless of context, reached new heights when Donald Trump Jr. referenced the novel in the context of his father's Twitter suspension. This led to a surge of ironic memes comparing any restriction to the book's dystopian setting.
• "This is just like Animal Crossing by George Orwell!"^Explanation A further corruption of the "Literally 1984" meme, where the person making the comparison is so ignorant that they not only mix up 1984 with George Orwell's other famous book, Animal Farm, but then proceed to mix THAT up with Nintendo's Animal Crossing games.
• "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a(n) [insert something here] - forever"
• This scene featuring a crowd of people while juxtaposed to a large static image of Big Brother have been used as an exploitable Image Macro in which the context will involve orders forbidding acts that are considered stupid, pointless and/or downright dangerous.

• "5. Thus, they at once began to quarrel about the nut." (From McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader, via the Annals of Improbable Research.)
• One Hundred Years of Solitude: "Cease, cows! Life is short!"
• In snarky discussions of anything related to Twilight, copious amounts of Bishie Sparkle must be used. This is also considered a case of Never Live It Down, since beyond the romantic plot between Edward and Bella, the only thing most snarkers (care to) remember is the fact that Their Vampires Are Different...and extra shiny.
  • The chagrinning books also suffer from the chagrinning act of shoehorning the word chagrin, no matter how chagrinningly inappropriate, into every chagrinning sentence, much to the chagrin of many.
  • THIS IS THE SKIN OF A KILLERRRRRRRR!!!
  • Edward doubts your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
  • Team Edward and Team Jacob
    • "Sod that, Team Dracula."
    • Team Buffy!
    • Team Edward AND Jacob!
    • Team Tyler's Van.^Explanation Tyler is the guy who drove the van which nearly killed Bella at the beginning of the novel. This phrase is used by a lot of haters accordingly.
    • Team Orlok
    • Team Edward Elric — because vampires aren't shiny, automail is!
    • Team Mustache Dad ^Explanation "Mustache Dad" refers to Charlie, Bella's father, particularly as portrayed by Billy Burke in the films. The Rifftrax crew made him a surly mascot during their riffing of the four films
  • Do I dazzle you?
    • You are totally chagrinning my dazzle, dammit!
  • The 108-year-old virgin, courtesy of RPatz himself.
  • Why so sullen, Edward Cullen?
  • "EMMETT CAN YOU KEEP IT DOWN I AM READING PROUST!"
    • SHE SMELLED DELICIOUS. LIKE BACON.
    • NO ONE UNDERSTANDS MEEE HE WOULD SEETHE AS HE PRESSED HIS WILDFLOWERS
    • EMMETT THAT ISNT A WORD TAKE IT OFF THE BOARD
  • UHMAAAAZING BUUUUUUUK!
  • Twilight means never having to say you're kidding.
  • CAUSE OF DEATH: Crushed vagina.
  • Edward watches Bella in her sleep.
  • Renesmee: Demonspawn/Anti-Christ.
    • Albus Severus Potter thinks Renesmee has a dumb name.
  • Real men sparkle.
  • 'Stupid shiny Volvo owner'.
  • Edward is gay for Caustic
  • And there's always the classic: Edward Cullen is Joseph Smith! ^note Based on the idea that the description Stephenie Meyer gives Edward looks suspiciously similar to what Joseph Smith looked like as well.
  • They don't turn into werewolves.◊
  • Hop on, spider monkey.
  • Rick Mora embraces the loin! ^Explanation From an interview, "It's kind of funny...the essence of the Native Spirit tends to resist modernization for a desire to return to the Old Ways, yet we struggle to show that the Native does not only come drunk, in breechcloth and sounding primitive. Don't get me wrong, I embrace the loin, that's my bread and butter but we still have a ways to go."
  • In Croatian language, Cullen sounds a lot like "kulen" which is a type of spicy salami. So anytime you want to make fun of Twilight in Croatia, just say Edward Kulen.
  • Still a better love story than Twilight. ^Explanation After Stephenie Meyer stated that her novel was a better love story than Romeo and Juliet, backlash ensued and this line was in defense of Romeo and Juliet being better, in spite of the Downer Ending. This eventually spread to include any work, even the ones that didn't actually have a love story.
    • Came full-circle with the declaration "Still a better love story than Fifty Shades of Grey".
  • "And Buffy staked Edward. The end".
    • Alternately, the Doctor killed him. ^Explanation In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, David Tennant plays Barty Crouch, Jr., who masterminds the resurrection of Lord Voldemort, during which Cedric Diggory, played by Robert Pattinson, is killed. Since Tennant is best known as the Tenth Doctor and Pattinson is best known as Edward Cullen, this led to a number of "the Doctor kills Edward Cullen" memes.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • It is known.
  • Also to refer to oneself and others as "a girl" or "a boy".
  • Hodor.
  • You know nothing, Jon Snow.
  • A Lannister always repays his debts.
  • Winter is coming.
  • I want to see him fly!
  • Fat pink masts and myrish swamps.^Explanation  These two phrases are used as references to the often-times hilariously badly written descriptions of characters having sex in this series.
  • CLEGANEBOWL CONFIRMED! GET HYPE!
  • X is secretly a Targ. ^Explanation Accusing a character (commonly Jon Snow or Tyrion) of being secretly Targaryen.
  • X is Azor Ahai. ^Explanation Lampooning fan theories about a character.
  • Benjen = Daario = Euron. ^Explanation Another way of mocking fan theories, specifically those involving elaborate Secret Identity.
  • Referring to any Essosi character as "Harzoo."
  • "...and a flagon of Dornish wine."^Explanation The copious amounts of Food Porn present in Martin's writing always seem to end with a flagon of wine, typically Dornish but some times other locales.
• John Ringo's Ghost
  • OH JOHN RINGO NO.^Explanation  The phrase comes from a LiveJournal review of Ghost, wherein the reviewer is reading along and finding something interesting, then runs into something totally, brain-breakingly wrong, prompting the uttering of the phrase. Given that the book, an exercise in letting loose some demons in Ringo's head that were blocking his writing other stories, was originally to be titled "The Wanker Piece" until Baen Books marketing convinced Ringo otherwise, it goes without saying this was a frequent utterance on the reviewer's part.
  • Ringo had the review pointed out to him, and in the journal he replied with praise for it as the most accurate review of the book he had ever seen. Later, the phrase was used as part of a t-shirt design for a garment whose proceeds were to be sent to an organization helping sexually exploited women around the world, many in the situation of pretty much all the prostitutes in the Paladin of Shadows series.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
  • 42.
  • Don't Panic.
  • ...mostly harmless.
  • You'll be fine as long you have your towel.
  • So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.
    • "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish / So sad that it must come to this..."
  • "Oh, freddled gruntbuggly/Thy micturations are to me..."
  • "BELGIUM!" (One of the galaxy's strongest curses.)
  • ...has this to say on the subject of alcohol...
  • Life? Don't talk to me about life.
  • Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike this trope.
• CS Multilaser, author of several multilasers in the Warhammer 40,000 multilaser, is an example of this multilaser. ^Explanation  CS Goto wrote the Dawn of War novels, in which units such as Space Marine Terminators use multilasers despite having never been depicted using them in any other piece of fluff. Fans ran with it and any discussion of Goto is almost certainly going to mention multilasers at some point.
• "That'th a cock, hey-o!"
  • Women do not rever [sic] the venom cock as men do.
• Don't like Anne Rice? Clearly, you are interrogating the text from the wrong perspective.
• The phrase Catch-22. The "original" Catch 22 from the book is summarized as; "We don't have to provide a citation of the rule that allows us to do this because the rule (that we're claiming allows us to do this) says we don't have to provide a citation of it". However, as in the book, this is applied broadly to mean a situation where each step relies on completing a previous step but the first step requires one to have completed the previous one.
  • For instance, Yossarian can be exempted from flying more bombing missions if the doctor does a mental evaluation and declares that he's crazy. But for the doctor to make that declaration, Yossarian would have to request an evaluation. Requesting an evaluation because he doesn't want to fly more bombing missions proves that he's not crazy, because not wanting to risk your life repeatedly isn't crazy at all.
• Sword of Truth:
  • This was no chicken. This was evil manifest.
  • And, at least on this wiki, the evil pacifists.
• The Bible:
  • Samson killed a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass!
    • He made an ass out of them. (Yes, that pun is in some translations.)
  • As for the fate of Dagon... Is The Lord Thy God gonna have to choke a bitch?
  • The Bible is a rip-off... of Neon Genesis Evangelion!!!
  • Due to a translation quirk, "know in the Biblical sense" has become a Memetic Euphemism.
  • Why is Jesus better than Kamina? Because when Jesus came back from the dead, He stayed that way.
  • Doubting Thomas.
  • As one of the key texts of Western culture (and having spread it as far and wide as possible), recounting all the phrases and metaphors from the Bible that have become part of the language could be a wiki all of its own - David and Goliath, Judas, "Render unto Caesar", "Easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle", "In the beginning", "Live by the X, die by the X", "Let there be light", the Ark...
  • JOHN 3:16
  • "The number of the Beast is 666".
  • Jesus promised the end of all wicked people. Odin promised the end of all ice giants. I don't see many ice giants around.
  • Where is your god now?
  • The most well-known prayer ever: Psalm 23:4 "Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death".
  • Iron chariots.^Explanation In Judges, the Israelites with all God's power behind them are unable to defeat an enemy armed with the then-latest technology, iron chariots. The chariots have thus become something of a rallying point for atheists, who see them as representing the triumph of science and technology over religion
• The phrase "Yngvi is a louse!" from The Roaring Trumpet became a meme among science fiction fandom before the Internet existed. [1]
• A common explanation of how Goosebumps books always end: "The kids turn out to be dogs or something".
• The Butler Did It.
• For a very small subset of fans who have read the right novels of the New Jedi Order... Blackmoon Eleven is the greatest pilot of all time.
• The Princess Bride has generated many memes, but they're all under Live-Action Films. No point in duplicate entries.
• Good Omens:
  • The point is... the point is... the point that I'm trying to make is... dolphins.
  • Gorillas. They build nests. Saw it in a film.
  • Kids! Bringing about Armageddon may be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your own home.
  • English, intelligent, and gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide.
  • "Making an effort" has become a bit popular with the slashers.
  • God's "ineffable" plans.
  • All tapes left in a car for more than a fortnight metamorphose into Best of Queen albums.
  • Oh Lord, heal this bike.
    • And its related phrase, "consenting bicycle repairmen".
• Artemis Fowl:
  • I don't like lollipops.
  • Your elf-kissing days are over, Artemis.
  • My truffles? You took them? That's just mean!
  • Bivouac?
• Animorphs:
  • My name is
    • We can't tell you who we are, or where we live. It's too risky, and we've got to be careful. Really careful. Because if they find us... Well, we just won't let them find us. The thing you've got to know is that everyone is in really big trouble. Yeah. Even you.
    • We can't tell you our names or where we live, but we'll tell you that we're humans, and go to a school where the vice principal is Visser Three's Number Two. And one of us is the son of Visser One's host body. But we can't give you any identifying details other than that! Now here are the names of all our allies and informants.
  • IT'S OAT FREAKING MEAL!!!
  • Don't call me 'Prince'.
    • Yes, Prince Jake.
  • They're everyone's minutes.
    • We have X of your minutes left in morph.
  • "Cheer up, Emohawk!"
  • Visser Three is there. Visser Three is always there.
  • The covers, depicting the central character of the book morphing into the book's central animal morph. Infamous for the many, many edits of various characters and celebrities transforming into things associated with them (for example, Pitbull morphing into a pit bull).
  • Thanks to some offhand comments from Visser Three in the first two books about Jake's tiger morph and Rachel's cat morph, "Visser Three loves kittens!" has turned into one of the more enduring inside jokes of the fandom.
  • Cinnamon Bun-zuh!
  • "The Animorphs committed war crimes." "Yeah, but which time?"
  • God is a gamer.^Explanation The Ellimist is revealed to have originally been an alien who enjoyed playing his species' equivalent of video games.
  • Nice Is Neat.^Explanation In #12, Cassie mentions telling her mom that Nine Inch Nails is actually called this so she can get their CD.
  • Thermals.^Explanation Mentioned at least once per book, especially Tobias books.
  • "Happy meal with extra happy."^Explanation The password to a Yeerk Pool entrance in a McDonald's.
• Maximum Ride:
  • I vill now destroy de Snickuhs bahrs.
  • "You looooooooooove me. You love me thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis much."
  • Fnick and Figgy
• Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt?
  • When will John Galt shut up?
• The house from House of Leaves.
  • This is not for you.
  • This XKCD includes most of the popular House of Leaves memes.
• Harry Turtledove: CONFEDERATES WITH AK47s!
  • Sam Carsten has blonde hair and freckles and burns extremely easily in the sun, which is a very bad trait for a sailor in the Navy. It doesn't matter how much zinc he slathers on, he still gets sunburnt. Also, General Clarence Potter sounds like a Yankee since he went to Yale.
• The Canterbury Tales: Don't get The Wife of Bath angry.
• Atlanta Nights. Particularly Chapter 34.
• Margaret Atwood does not write science fiction. Science Fiction is about talking squids in outer space.
• The Dresden Files:
  • Zombie Tyrannosaurus. It even has a Fauxtivational Poster. See?◊
  • POLKA WILL NEVER DIE!!!
  • The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.
  • Fuck subtle.
  • Bolshevik Muppet!
• Star Trek Expanded Universe:
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation Relaunch: The Borg. They EAT. FUCKING. PLUTO.
  • An In-Universe example in The Romulan Way, where the main Romulan religion of the series' present (a form of animism focused on the Four Natural Elements, mixed with a concept similar to karma) began life as a memetic joke on the Vulcan version of the Internet thousands of years ago while the proto-Romulans were still planning things out. The meme proved so popular that idioms based on it developed among the proto-Romulans, e.g. that a particularly stubborn person "had too much Earth in him", and the fact that it was a joke was gradually forgotten.
• Dorothy Parker told us that "Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses." (Hey, she was an American and she died in The '60s—she was unfamiliar with the concept of a Meganekko.)
  • Another quote of hers that's become a meme is "This is not a book to be put down easily. It should be hurled with great force."
• Ogden Nash's idea of how to win over a girl: "Candy is dandy, But Liquor Is Quicker."
  • He also mutated Joyce Kilmer's "I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree" into "I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see a tree at all."
• Gertrude Stein: A rose is a rose is a rose.
  • Are you aware that the American novelist Gertrude Stein was a self-confessed lesbian?
• Fight Club: The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club.
  • Birds ate my face.
  • Fight clubs themselves. Someone even did a mini-Project Mayhem, putting bottle rockets in mailboxes.
• I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream:
  • HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE.
  • Exploiting the title as "I have no x, and I must y".
• The Wheel of Time: Sniff.
  • Woolheads.
  • In-universe, Matrim Cauthon's exploits.
• Vernor Vinge: Hexapodia is the key insight.
• Don Quixote: This book generated various memes that have survived for more than four hundred years, and even are words recognized by the Spanish Royal Language Academy’s dictionary:
  • "¿Leoncitos a mi?" Could be translated as "Do they want to scare me with those little lions?"
  • Quixote: Man who fight for love of the ideal. Man who fight for noble causes
  • Maritornes: A rude, ugly and mannish maid.
  • Rocinante: Horse thin and weak, almost always full of sores. This one was even documented by Cervantes in the Part II, Chapter III, when Carrasco declares that the first part of the novel got read…
  " by heart by people of all sorts, that the instant they see any lean hack, they say, 'There goes Rocinante.' "
  • Con la iglesia hemos topado: Could be translated as "We have run onto the church". A case of both a meme and Beam Me Up, Scotty!, as the original phrase is actually "Con la iglesia hemos dado, Sancho". In the book it is literal (they examine a stone wall and determine it is a church) but it is always quoted to denote a situation in which the Church, bureaucracy or some other power that be is impeding your progress.
  • Maybe they're just windmills, but They Might Be Giants…
• The Faerie Queene: Malacasta is so sassy!
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: "Two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers..."
  • ... a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls...
  • Holy Jesus! What are these Goddamn animals?
  • We can't stop here. This is meme country.
  • We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.
• The Golden Demon: The Signature Scene of Kan'ichi Sparta-kicking Omiya. It even has a statue◊ made out of it, it's the first thing anyone thinks of when they think of this book, even those not having read it, and it's even printed on the covers of some editions.
• Star Wars Legends: Anakin Solo had the hots for his aunt?
  • Cliegg: Your son's dead, son. Accept it. ^Explanation In Legacy, we see Luke as a ghost. Yes, he'd be over 150 now, but we have proof of Jedi living hundreds of years, even human Jedi. LFL won't say if Luke's alive or dead.
    • Your Wookiee's dead, son. Accept it. ^Explanation They killed Chewbacca at the beginning of the New Jedi Order, making all those heartwarming moments in the Holiday Special and the like much Harsher in Hindsight.
  • Jimmy ^Explanation Lucasfilm referred to the death of a character given the operative name "Jimmy". Turned out to be Anakin Solo.
  • Destroy your planet. ^Explanation No, not the Death Star. This one comes from the Marvels: "If Lando dies, I'll destroy your planet."
  • Jacen's penis! ^Explanation The art for the American cover of Destiny's Way is a bit, ahem, suggestive.
• "My god—it's full of stars!" The last thing said by Dave Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey, though not in the film.
• In The Pendragon Adventure fandom:
  • What exactly is a french before it's fried?
    • White vegetable, cut into strips. Now shut up.
  • Hobey ho! Let's go! ^note  Vo Spader (and most people who are close to him by series end)'s catchphrase.
    • Hobey lady of the night!!!! Let's go!!!
  • This is the way it was meant to be.^note  The Traveler Motto
  • THERE ARE FREAKIN' POLAR BEARS AND PENGUINS IN THE DESERT.
    • The penguin in general.
    • The penguin being Spader's best friend.
  • Everything obscure Bobby says is quoted enough to be considered a meme. Especially anything he has to say about clowns, smiley faces, or his boxers.
• This trope becomes a lot less funny and gets a rather large serving of terror when Faction Paradox enters the picture. Their beautiful universe has the Celestis, a group of Homeworld agents who foresaw a monstrous Time War, and obsessed with preventing the destruction of their bodies, they destroy them themselves, and leaving their meaning behind, making them sentient ideas, the literal physical incarnation of this trope. After they Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, it becomes painfully obvious they're still the same fearful, backstabbers they were, and then they find about their new cool powers...
• Maradonia Saga: 2 dislikes. Gloria and her mom have been here. ^Explanation  Inevitably, whenever a video criticizes Team Tesch, 2 dislikes will appear. Because fandom for Tesch's books is literally nonexistent, youtubers took to saying they had to be Gloria and her mom. It's not clear where this first surfaced.
  • "Appolyon's Club of Evil": "The powers of evil believe in teamwork!" ^Explanation  Actual excerpts from the book about the villains, in a clear case of "I don't think those words mean what you think they mean" by Tesch. Now used to show how much of Designated Villains Apollyon and co. are.
  • "[...] But what about poison?" ^Explanation  A particularly narmful line from the first book. Now used as a standard response to any strange events in the novels.
• Faust:
  • A Faustian pact or bargain as a Deal with the Devil, or anyone else who probably should have been avoided.
  • Forbidden knowledge or diabolical research methods.
• I Want My Hat Back
  • I HAVE SEEN MY HAT
  • Substituting characters from different fandoms for the characters in the book
• The Phantom of the Opera has several, mostly originating from the LiveJournal badfic-sporking community, Phanwank:
  • The most ubiquitous is "Roule's Ingenious Plane," which also has a Distaff Counterpart in "Christine's Small Bus" and a modern-day counterpart in "Ryan's Lime Service."^note All originate from typos in terrible pieces of fanfiction; in the first, the author was trying to say "Raoul's ingenious plan." The second comes from a fic in which Erik compares the heroine's bustline (or at least tries to) to Christine's, and the third from a modern-day fic in which... we have no idea what the author was trying to say.
  • "Erique would never kill a whale!" and "Erique is one with teh walez!!!11!!"^note Spammed by the phanwank members to an anti-Raoul community.
  • "Erik's Wonton Goddess."^note The author of the fic was trying to say "wanton."
  • "Bonnie-Marie."^note The name of a particularly hideous Self-Insert; she went on to be a major player in The Sueniverse.
  • "KIMMEEEEEEEEEEEEH!"^note The name of a modern-day Sue's best friend; this meme is often accompanied by a picture of Bob Saget.
  • "Erik's pink kissable lips."
  • "Erik the hospital."
• The Art Of Fielding has "X is skilled. We exhort him!" and its variations taking hold in the baseball community.^note The phrase is Owen's way of congratulating Henry on his good work, and pops up a lot.
• The Stormlight Archive:
  • Plottwistspren ^Explanation Spren are things that appear to represent things, such as flames or fear. Thus, a Plottwistspren appears during plot twists.
  • The Shattering of the Vase ^Explanation A running joke that the God of The 'Verse, Adonalsium, was a vase which broke when Hoid knocked it over.
  • "I am a stick." ^Explanation It is a stick. It does not want to be fire.
• Mistborn: The Original Trilogy:
  • "He ate my horse."
  • Catquisitors and the Caton of Inquisition.
  • Kelsier/Marsh being Batman and Spook being Robin.
  • Vin being A boss and The Lord Ruler being THE boss.
• Legend of the Galactic Heroes: If only Kircheis were here ^Explanation Siegfried Kircheis's death is much lamented by the characters of Legend of Galactic Heroes, and he is more influential and well-developed in death than in life.
• Les Misérables:
  • "Do you permit it?" ^Explanation Grantaire's last words spoken to Enjolras, asking permission to die by his side. Needless to say, both a Tearjerker and a source of Ho Yay.
    • "THEY DIED HOLDING HANDS!" ^Explanation Grantaire and Enjolras also die holding hands; many a shipper has exclaimed these words whilst sobbing her heart out.
• The Hunger Games:
  • Advice Peeta.
  • May the odds be ever in your favor.
  • I volunteer as tribute!!
  • That. Is. Mahogany. Especially after the movie came out.
• The Picture of Dorian Gray:
  • S/he must have a portrait in the attic (said of anyone who looks significantly younger than they are).
• The Pillow Book:
  • Ito okashi (How very lovely)
  • Haru wa akebono, natsu wa yoru, aki wa yūgure, fuyu wa tsutomete. It's even become well-known worldwide with the help of Hetalia: Axis Powers.
• Infinite Jest:
  • "Year of the (Banal Consumer Product)" ^Explanation In Infinite Jest's universe, each year is named after a product. Most of the book takes place in the "Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment."
  • "Eliminate his own map" ^Explanation Future slang for suicide, with "map" being roughly equal to "face."
• The Fault in Our Stars:
  • This book (not to mention the author) has a pretty big following on Tumblr, mainly for being a massive Tear Jerker and a major source of feels. A common Running Gag is for newtime readers to document their first readthrough of the book and the progressive regression into a blubbering puddle of tears.
  • "Okay?" "Okay."
  • “My X are Y that I cannot fathom into z.”
  • “I the way you : slowly, then all at once.”
  • “It’s a metaphor; you put the X in between the Y, but don’t give it the power to Z.”
  • More of a meta example but a comment that John Green made on his official Tumblr regarding a gifset of Hazel and Gus, which spawned a meme (largely from the book's critics) about John being the inventor of feminism.
  John Green: I just want to point out one thing here: When was the last time the girl kissed the boy in a teen romance? Ever? Has it happened ever? I seriously think it might not have happened ever.^note This comment was met with immediate backlash, with people pointing out that this trope is much Older Than They Think. John swiftly corrected himself afterwards, admitting that he got a little carried away with his euphoria over the film being released. In the book, it's not clear who kisses who first, and he was commending the filmmaker's decision to have Hazel kiss first rather than trying to self-promote.
  • The beautiful X is beautiful.
  • Purposefully confusing Augustus Waters with a certain other Augustus.
  • "No...I just want to cry and play video games."
• Sporewiki Fiction Universe
  • Aww, you're so cute! Can we pet you?^Explanation The Asgord are a Spore wiki race infamous for thinking everyone is cute and wanting to pet them.
  • Slurp all the memes available
  • Not the kittens Zillium! ^Explanation  Zillium is a Mortialis warlord infamous for his love of eating kittens.
  • Peem! ^Explanation Gorf's verbal tick.
  • Fear the Dvotties! ^Explanation  Dvotties are cute, magic pet birds that can vomit sugarplums and flowers, but trying to kill them turns you into a Dvottie.
  • The true meaning of life itself! ^Explanation  What happens when you get Gorf with a Dvottie.
• "You're a better ______ than I am", from "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din", the closing line of Rudyard Kipling's narrative poem "Gunga Din".
• Gulliver's Travels is the source of the terms "little-endian" and "big-endian," now often used to describe computer memory architectures and their insidious differences in ordering bytes within words, thanks to Danny Cohen's 1980 paper "On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace."
• Ancillary Justice:
  • Propriety Turtle. ^Explanation Ann Leckie answered an ask on Tumblr about Radchaai memes, mentioning the possibility of a Propriety Turtle. Since then the fanbase has been loyally swapping captioned turtle pictures, and Leckie periodically reblogs one she finds amusing.
• A Tale of Two Cities:
  • "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" ^Explanation The novel's opening line, which has gone on to become one of the most remembered quotes in literature
• The Betrothed:
  • "Enough with your latinorum!": Renzo's reply when Don Abbondio tries to use Techno Babble on him. To this day, "latinorum" is the Italian equivalent of techno babble.
  • "Carneades, who was him?": Don Abbondio found him mentioned in a panegyric, and said this quote because he couldn't remember him, leading to "Carneade" (the Italian form of Carneades) becoming synonim with "lesser known person", in spite of Carneades being actually a relatively famous philosopher.
  • Azzeccagarbugli: the nickname of the lawyer Renzo initially goes for help with don Rodrigo's veto, meaning literally "knot weaver" (with "garbugli", the word used here for knots, also doubling as "loopholes") in Milan's dialect and used to designate lawyers (or even people) extremely skilled in the art of the Loophole Abuse. The word originates in one of Niccolò Machiavelli's lesser known works, but The Betrothed's use of the word to nickname this memorable character is what made it popular.
  • "Defender of losing lawsuits": derived from Azzeccagarbugli's other nickname, "lord doctor of the losing lawsuits", an Ironic title he got for his penchant for winning even when filing impossible or frivolous lawsuits. The meme lost the irony, however, and the phrase returned to designate lawyers that lose often.
  • The whole Italian language in its current form: for centuries Italian intellectuals had debated on what the language of a united Italy should be, if a Conlang or one of the dialects (and which one), with Tuscan dialect having a slight advantage due already being their written language thanks to Dante Alighieri's fame, but the novel's immense popularity right as Italy was being unified propelled its language, Firenze's variant of the Tuscan dialect, as the to-go language of anyone who could read, at which point the intellectuals saw no reason to try and define a standard Italian as it already existed.
• The Dark Tower: "I don't X with my Y. He who X with his Y has forgotten the face of his father. I X with my heart."^Explanation From Gunslinger's "I don't kill with my gun... I kill with my heart" mantra. Consequently, X is the action, and Y is the obvious implement to use for that action. P.e. "I don't make pancakes with my frying pan. He who makes pancakes with his frying pan etc..."
• An interactive children's book called It's Time To Call 911:
  • It became this when a video of what the book sounded like on low batteries was posted to Reddit. Many found it ironic considering that the book was meant to teach children about how to save themselves from danger, but when the buttons used to "call 911" were pushed with little battery power remaining, it makes it sound as if it could induce Accidental Nightmare Fuel in the target demographic. The video may have even inspired the creation of an entire subreddit dedicated to what various battery-operated items sound like when their batteries are low.
  • "911! Let's go!" ^Explanation  A version of the sound clip that sounds distorted due to a low battery has become a meme on several Internet sites, mostly on Reddit's Low Battery Sounds subreddit, due to how creepy the book sounds in this manner.
• "A !Tangled Web (1981)":
  • "All die. O the embarrassment."
    • !tang apologies were memetic in SF fandom in the '80s and '90s, especially the obligatory ending above.
    • Demicon used to hold !tang apology contests.
• "This Is Just To Say", by William Carlos Williams
  • I have [eaten] the [plums] that were in the [icebox]... forgive me
    • Used as a snowclone to apologise melodramatically for something frivolous, or to make fun of an insincere or superficial apology in a similar way as a YouTuber Apology Parody.
• "Ozymandias", by Percy Bysshe Shelley
  • "I met a traveller from an antique land, who said:"
    • Invoked to accuse someone of hubris, or describe something unusual and dilapidated, predictably enough. Often involves attributing a quote to the traveller that sounds ridiculous or otherwise at odds with the expected style of the poem.
  Well the years start coming and they don't stop coming
  Empires falling and statues crumbling
  Check out the words he left behind
  On the statue in the desert that nobody can find...
• Industrial Society and Its Future: The first line of the manifesto, "The Industrial Revolution has been a disaster for the human race" has been copy-and-pasted through the internet both in modified and original forms to express dissatisfaction at aspects of modern life from genuinely concerning (wars, criminality, pollution) to completely nonsensical (long queues, rude neighbors, being banned from a Subreddit), no matter how much actually related to the Industrial Revolution these things are.

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