Memes / Overwatch

Soldier: 76: We're all memes now.

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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Tank Hero Memes

D.Va

• Gremlin D.Va / Korean Gamer ^ExplanationA popular fan depiction of D.Va as a stereotypical MLG gamer that lives entirely on Doritos and Mountain Dew, usually drawn in a Super-Deformed style. This meme incidentally got big enough to popularize "gremlin" as a catch-all term for any short, wide-eyed, wide-faced person— fictional or not— with a similar energetic and/or irritating demeanor.
  • Referenced in her sitting "Game On" emote, which has her eating D.vas chips and drinking a green-colored soda while playing a video game.
• D.Va's Mom Squad ^ExplanationD.Va isn't as directly femslashed with many other heroes due to her being much younger than the rest of the cast. As such, the other female characters are sometimes depicted as overprotective and doting older sister/mother figures for D.Va (who in this situation is often portrayed in the above "gremlin" mode). Junkrat, being the second-youngest (human) character, is sometimes added in as D.Va's brother.
• NERF THIS! ^ExplanationLike Cassidy's "It's high noon…" and Mercy's "HEROES NEVER DIE!", D.Va's Self-Destruct call-out has been repeated by many fans.
• Protecting Junkrat tires. ^ExplanationReferring to an infamous comment by Geoff Goodman, one of Blizzard's Lead Designers, in which he suggested D.Va could use her Defense Matrix to protect ally ultimates like Junkrat's RIP-Tire. This quickly became a source of mockery, with angry fans pointing to it as "proof" of the developers not understanding how the character's actually played. Became Hilarious in Hindsight after people started legitimately using this tactic, and was even recommended by the #1 Junkrat player, PvpTwitch.
• D.Va's mech can't crouch.^ExplanationGiven the inability of D.Va's MEKA to crouch, there are often jokes about how she can't communicate with other players in Skirmishes by crouch spamming or not being able to Teabag her enemies.
• Naked D.Va/Baby D.Va ^ExplanationBasically D.Va's Fan Nickname when she's out of her mech. It's usually heard through player communication when one informs their teammates that D.Va is now vulnerable to kill.
• Mech drop^ExplanationFollowing the April 2021 patch which increased the damage of the Call Mech ability to 250, it's actually become a running gag for a de-meched D.VA to try sneaking up on a group of enemies and killing them by dropping the mech on their heads.
  • The better Meteor Strike^ExplanationDoomfist's Meteor Strike has been notoriously underwhelming for its intended purpose (more often than not, it's used as an escape rather than an attack due to how risky it is to use that way). With the buff to D.Va's Call Mech, many began comparing the two abilities, many quickly realizing how D.Va won out in sheer practicality.

Doomfist

• Terry Crews for Doomfist! ^ExplanationAfter Sombra's release, Doomfist — a character mentioned in the first trailer and on the Numbani map — was commonly considered to be the next character that should be added to the game. Someone on Reddit suggested that Terry Crews (who's a fan of the game) could be his voice actor — and suprisingly, Terry himself declared he'd love to do it. A few weeks later, Blizzard posted a photo of him visiting the developers, adding even more fuel to theories.
  • Similarly, it's become common to adapt some of the phrases from The Man Your Man Could Smell Like to Doomfist.
    • "POWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER!"^ExplanationA suggested Actor Allusion, which fans want to think that Doomfist might say this after being Nano-Boosted by Ana. Since that didn't end up being his Nano-Boosted quote, it instead goes to imagining when he's charging or launching himself with Rocket Punch.
    • "GUESS WHO!" "It's you." "IT'S ME!◊ METEOR STRIKE!^ExplanationDoomfist's ultimate, Meteor Strike, just happens to look like how Terry Crews jumps off to Isaiah Mustafa's ship in this commercial. So even if Crews is not voicing Doomfist, at least some Old Spice stuffs still made it to his kit.
    • "OH NOOOOOOOOO!!!!"^ExplanationThe scream of Terry Crews during the Blown Mind ad is often synonymous with Doomfist falling off to a bottomless pit.
    • WHAT, usually right before Doomfist smacks some poor fool or uses his blast. Taken from the commercial where Terry does the same to some fool who hates Old Spice.
  • "YOUR DOOM, MAKE ROOM!"
  • One of the more out-there, but popular theories is that Terry Crews will only voice the fist itself, and instead of its owner being a Crews-esque Scary Black Man, he'll be a scrawny white guy played by Michael Cera.
  • Not Terry Crews. Refund now.^ExplanationMany people have expressed disappointment over how Doomfist won't be voiced by Terry Crews.
• Shoryuken! ^ExplanationDoomfist's Rising Uppercut is played very similarly to the same move from Street Fighter, so most people feel obligated to say 'Shoryuken!' whenever executing this move, or just slapping 'Shoryuken' on contents regarding Doomfist.
• Saitama skin for Doomfist!^ExplanationFollowing Mei's dance emote which shouted out to Haruhi Suzumiya, many fans are clamoring to see an alternative skin for Doomfist inspired by One-Punch Man protagonist Saitama, for obvious reasons...which eventually happened for real on March 7, 2023.
• Has a giant mechanical fist... melees with normal hand. ^ExplanationA vast amount of players find it silly that when it comes to Doomfist using his normal melee attack, he chooses to punch with his smaller hand over his larger one.
• Daddy's home! ^ExplanationDoomfist's status as one of Talon's leaders has fans imagining him as the true father of the Talon trio, usurping Reaper's slot as dad.
• THE RAGE OF AFRICA HAS COME TO OVERWATCH ^ExplanationA recurring character in TBFP lore is RAGE, a character created to be the Scary Black Man whose only interest is fighting and becoming stronger. Upon Doomfist's reveal, many fans were quick to note the similarities.
• Doomfisted^ExplanationThat Doomfist was released, then quickly nerfed, has led to this being used as an alternative to the word "nerfed."
• Rising Apricot ^ExplanationA misheard line for Doomfist's Rising Uppercut ability, sometimes being Ryzen or Raisin Apricot as well.
• AN DEY SAY AN DEY SAY AN DEY SAY ^ExplanationSpamming the "And they say chivalry is dead" voiceline makes it sound like a weird annoying jingle.
• The Shape of Doomfist ^ExplinationFor the Halloween event, Doomfist just got a new skin that bears a striking resemblance to the fishman from Guillermo del Toro's film.
  • DOOMFISH!
  • "METEOR SPLASH!!"

Mauga

• "What can I say except 'You're welcome!'"^ExplanationEver since day 1, Mauga has drawn comparisons to Maui from Moana, another well-known Disneyesque Polynesian giant. It's taken many fans by surprise that Blizzard haven't done the obvious Shout-Out by having Mauga say "You're welcome!"... yet.

Orisa

• Orisa is not Doomfist.^ExplanationAfter Sombra's release, players were convinced the next released hero would be Doomfist, especially when a change to Numbani's map showed the Doomfist gauntlet being stolen. The leadup to, and reveal of, Orisa was virtually out of nowhere — especially compared to Sombra's incredibly long ARG and Ana's presence in lore beforehand.
• Beetle Orisa.^ExplanationOne of Orisa's skins makes her take on a beetle-like appearance, which immediately got popular among fans.
• "I recommend moving behind my barrier."^ExplanationOne of Orisa's lines when activating her barrier. During the PTR, because almost everyone there was there to play Orisa, the barrier — and thus the voice line — got spammed. A lot.
  • Though some Reinhardt mains appreciated this because people almost never gather behind his shield (see below).
• Orisa is only 1 month old!^ExplanationBack when Efi was first introduced, a mild debate sprouted on her inclusion as an in-game hero since she's only 11, which would've been... problematic. When Orisa was announced to take her place but was revealed to be only a month old, people have jokingly called out this Double Standard, since robots are people too.
• Pharmercy sinker^ExplanationDue to alphabetical sorting, Orisa's place in Hero Gallery is between Mercy and Pharah, who complement each other's playstyle and are sometimes shipped together. Thus, shippers tend to see Orisa as someone who shot torpedoes to the Pharmercy ship, even moreso after Blizzard seems to swing more into Genji-Mercy.
• Less Reinhardt in the future. ^ExplanationGiven how the current competitive scene is almost always mandatory to have a Reinhardt tank for each team to try to succeed, many believe that Orisa has finally provided an alternative.
• MOMnic^ExplanationDue to being a sweet, protective, and adorably dorky female Omnic, this nickname has been quickly catching on with fans.
• Orisa: Expectations Vs. Reality. ^ExplanationIn Orisa's origin video, she is shown stopping a car to rescue an elderly Numbani citizen. Attempting the same exploit in the streets of Oasis has proved... less than effective, leading players to joke about Blizzard already drastically nerfing Orisa's power, or other silly reasonings for this bit of Gameplay and Story Segregation.
• Remember Sombra?^ExplanationBefore her release, due to Orisa's unique trait of being able to resist all forms of crowd control in the game with her ability "Fortify", some people had been calling her overpowered. Those people usually got a response mentioning Sombra, who was believed to be a complete Game-Breaker because of her hacking abilities and invisibility, but turned out to be a low-tier scrappy.
• There will still be Rule 34 of her. ^ExplanationDespite her Nonstandard Character Design for a female character, many joke that there will still be a lot of porn of her due to the game's infamously huge Rule 34 following that's determined to make erotic art of every single character in the game, regardless of their age or species.
• Zarya and Orisa.^ExplanationOrisa has an ability similar to Zarya's Graviton Surge, except it's a right-click ability rather than an Ultimate, and is an Omnic. This has led some fans to believe that Zarya will hold a grudge against Orisa due to the former's Fantastic Racism against Omnics. Alternatively, Zarya puts aside their differences after seeing Orisa in action and softens up to her.
• "Can I ride you?" ^ExplanationOrisa's centaur body makes horse riding jokes (and the associated double entendres) all too easy.
• _{*muffled "I NEED HEALING"*} ^ExplanationOrisa's Protector legendary skin has a piece in the middle that closely resembles Genji's head/helmet◊, resulting in jokes that Genji was absorbed by Orisa or got an upgrade to his armor.
  • _{*muffled "PASS INTO THE IRIS"*} ^ExplanationSimilarly to the Genji head in Orisa's Protecter skin, her Null Sector skin from the Uprising event has what appears to be Zenyatta's face on her front legs◊.
• CEASE YOUR EXISTENCE! ^ExplanationA play on Orisa's ultimate callout "Cease your resistance!", usually in a response to getting a multikill, usually through Halt!. Some players who first hear the line assume it's this, but many tend to find it just as appropriate.

Reinhardt

• Joking that Reinhardt's shield is bugged/invisible to teammates. ^ExplanationDespite Reinhardt's bread-and-butter being that he possesses a huge shield to protect squishier teammates with (that they can also shoot through), a lot of less-than-competent players will mindlessly rush ahead of it or stand in front of it and quickly get killed, thus leading to the joke that it must be invisible to them.
• Reinhardt being a 90s kid (or millennial). ^ExplanationThe game takes place in the not-too-distant future, and Reinhardt is just over sixty years old (assuming the game takes place in 2076, that would make him born in 2015), so it's not uncommon to see depictions of him spouting memes from these demographics.
• "Catchphrase!" ^ExplanationReinhardt's voice-line of "Catchphrase!" has become relatively iconic of the character himself, and it's almost considered shameful to not use that as your Reinhardt voice-line.
• "Hot Reinhardt-on-Reinhardt action!" ^ExplanationA Meta Game developed which centered around a Nano-Boosted Reinhardt smashing a swathe through the enemy team. In attempts to counter it, many teams began using the same strategy. Cue two super-fast, nigh-unstoppable men with hammers duking it out in a large number of games.
• Flying Reinhardt ^ExplanationThere are several Youtube videos dedicated to showing some strange events happening during gameplay. Several of these feature Reinhardt being sent flying into odd locations, usually due to his Charge ability.
• Reinhardt outta nowhere.^ExplanationIn several videos and highlights, Reinhardt can be seen frequently charging someone from outside the view of the player, leading to jokes that Reinhardt is a better ninja than Genji.
• Cliff Charge.^ExplanationIn the absence of any convenient walls to crush a target against, Reinhardt can just as easily score a kill by pushing an enemy off a cliff and into a Bottomless Pit with his charge; the downside to this strategy is that unless the charge is timed perfectly to end right at the edge of the cliff, Reinhardt's momentum will carry him over the edge, too. However, if Reinhardt is close to death anyways and/or the enemy team has a particularly aggravating member that's giving Reinhardt's team a lot of grief, it can still be Worth It to commit suicide to take them down. On the other hand, this strategy can completely backfire against enemy heroes that have a means to save themselves by flying back up the cliff, like if the person being charged was Pharah, Sombra, Genji, or Mercy.
  • Reinhardt Bowling.^ExplanationA Cliff Charge performed against a group of enemies stunned by his Earthshatter is called this because of its resemblance to bowling. Helped by the fact that his charge "pins" enemies.
  • All aboard the Rein Train/German Locomotive.^ExplanationAs Reinhardt is nearly unstoppable during his Charge, moves very fast, and causes lethal damage if he smashes another hero against a wall with it, getting hit by him has been equated to being hit dead-on by a freight train or locomotive engine. Videos of gameplay clips on Youtube which showcase this ability usually also edits in train noises/klaxons for good measure.
  • Worth it. ^ExplanationIf a cliff charge ends up killing both the target and Reinhardt himself, expect the charging Reinhardt player to type "Worth it" in the chat.
  • "Su-perman." ^ExplanationUsing a Cliff Charge to tackle an exploding D.va mech off the cliff to save one's team is often affectionately compared to the legendary climax of the aforementioned movie. Some fans have gone so far as to even edit the scene with Overwatch's characters. (Spoilers in the link, obviously.)
• PRECISION GERMAN ENGINEERING! ^ExplanationOriginally a tagline by German car manufacturer Volkswagen, but has since been adopted by Reinhardt as one of his voice lines, agreed to be one of his most quotable catch phrases. Used mostly as a response to seeing a Reinhardt doing something mechanically implausible and ridiculous, like pinning a mid-air target.
  • Ascended when, on April Fools Day 2017, a chat filter was added specifically for Reinhardt players where the message "gg all" was translated into "GG ALL!!! PRECISION GERMAN ENGINEERING!!!"
• Reinhardt's amazing hair ^ExplanationA bit of pre-fight banter between Pharah and Reinhardt has them both reminiscing about an old poster that Reinhardt appeared on, where he apparently had excellent hair. Come the Uprising event, we actually get to see the poster, and his hair is indeed amazing◊, with many players wanting it to be made into a skin. Come Blizzcon 2017, Blizzard announced that they will get it in the form of Crusader Reinhart.
• Prince Charming ^explanationAfter the release of the Honor and Glory short, comparisons were quickly made between Reinhardt and a certain other animated, overconfident blonde.
• Reinhardt was a noob ^ExplanationThe Honor and Glory short showed that, when he was younger, Reinhardt used to be an overconfident Leeroy Jenkins who was prone to charging ahead of his allies and leaving them to fend for themselves. Perhaps not coincidentally, this is something that a lot of bad or rookie Reinhardt players tend to do. The jokes about Reinhardt once being an abrasive noob who didn't know how the game worked write themselves.
• "Die With Glory"^ExplanationThe second line of the motto of the Crusaders, which Reinhardt says to his master right before the latter's Last Stand. Teammates have taken to saying this to a Rein player who Charges into a sure-death situation (such as pushing a deadly ult away from his team or taking someone with him over a cliff).
• Goatee Thor ^explanationTake Chris Hemsworth as Thor and give him a goatee, and you get what Reinhardt looked like in the Honor and Glory short.

Roadhog

• How to Roadhog ^ExplanationRoadhog in general. With his skills in dragging you in, and his shotgun with a deceptively long range, things like◊ this◊ tend to show up on how overpowered he is.
  • Team + Roadhog ^ExplanationRoadhog tends to be a High-Tier Scrappy due to the fact that despite being classified as a Tank, the hero also dishes out enough damage to be considered a high Offensive threat. As a result, Roadhog will appear on almost any team competitively, because of how many roles he's able to cover. It gets even worse in 3 vs. 3 matches, where Roadhog's self-heal turns him into a devastating survival monster because the reduced number of players makes his self-healing much harder to overcome.
• Streetpig ^ExplanationSimilar to the Trashmouse meme, people call Roadhog nicknames made up of synonyms to the two words that comprise his name. Streetpig is the most common, but some call him Pathpiglet.
• GET OVER HERE! ^ExplanationRoadhog's signature move of pulling enemies towards him with his hook is virtually identical to Scorpion's. It's not uncommon to see Roadhog compilation videos with this line edited in.
• Roadhog's interdimensional hook ^ExplanationRoadhog's V1 Hook is notable for having a lot of weird and glitchy interactions, often hooking his opponents through walls, floors, or in a few special cases (for example, if you managed to hook a teleporting Sombra just before her hitbox changes position to where her teleporter exit is), even across the entire map.
  • You were out of position/He punishes bad positioning. ^ExplanationFrom a post on the forum defending Roadhog's hook + shotgun one hit kill combo, saying that Roadhog punishes "bad positioning", it quickly became a meme when other users pointed out that "bad positioning" could very well mean "were anywhere within twenty meters of Roadhog", "turned around a corner/chokepoint he was guarding", and the like.
  • "Roadhog is broken", usually accompanied with doing something incredibly stupid, like standing in the middle of the map with no cover. ^ExplanationMockeries of various Roadhog complaint threads and chats, warranted or otherwise, which were usually titled "Roadhog is broken" or some variant.
• 2.0 ^ExplanationRoadhog's hook was changed to break if the target goes out of his line of sight, this new version being called "Hook 2.0", and the old being called "Hook 1.0". When a hook breaks, usually from something that doesn't seem like it would break it, people say "2.0" or 2.0'd".
  • 1.0 ^ExplanationConversely, if the hook stays attached even when it looks like it should've broken, people say "1.0" or "1.0'd".
• Suicide hook. ^ExplanationRoadhog jumps off a cliff, and then pulls someone in with his chain so that they die with him. Roadhog standing in front of a hole, and then pulling an enemy to fall into it, can also be considered this.
• I'm a one-man ult Generator ^ExplanationAfter the June 20th nerf to Roadhog, many fans felt like he became worthless, saying that he's only good at helping the enemy team get more ult charge now.
• "Wait, [insert minor complaint here]!? Better nerf Roadhog." ^ExplanationA carryover meme from League of Legends and Super Smash Bros., used to make fun of Blizzard's poor balancing decisions revolving around some of the characters. In the June 20th patch, Roadhog was hit with a nerf that some fans found unnecessary, and even his detractors found to be too harsh, turning him into a Low-Tier Letdown. A similar thing happened to Genji in the early days of Overwatch 2 when he was nerfed despite the problem child of that era undoubtedly being Sojourn, who remained untouched for the entirety of season 1.
• "Don't worry, the carry's here" ^ExplanationA reference to popular Twitch streamer TimTheTatMan, who (in)famously pulled a Self-Destruct into a position that killed 3 of his teammates shortly after saying the phrase, causing his team to lose the game. This phrase is said when a Roadhog hooks an enemy's Self-Destruct into a spot where it kills more people than it would've otherwise.

Sigma

• WHAT IS THAT MELODY!? ^ExplanationSigma‘s most well-known Catchphrase, in reference to the mysterious tune he hears playing in his head. The fandom has taken to making images of him frantically asking about any particular song with this exact question.
• “RIP to Sigma, but I’m different.” - Zarya^ExplanationZarya’s Ultimate creates a miniature black hole that sucks enemies up, with no adverse effects. Meanwhile, Sigma did pretty much the same thing in his lore… and was promptly driven completely insane, in addition to being given horrifying gravity powers. Needless to say, there have been many jokes either making Zarya out as an Inexplicably Awesome Memetic Badass who’s immune to gravity, or portraying Sigma as a hapless Butt-Monkey who Can't Get Away with Nuthin'. Sometimes extended to the rest of the cast, since they can get sucked up by Zarya’s ultimate and casually walk off the effects after a quick respawn, in stark contrast to the Nightmare Fuel that Sigma experienced in his backstory.
• Sigma Balls^ExplanationGiven how the name Sigma is just one letter off of the infamous “Ligma Balls” meme (and a different letter off the variant "Sugma"), it was only a matter of time before this joke started running rampant among fans. His primary weapon actually being a pair of balls sealed the deal.
• Sigma’s Feet^ExplanationSince Sigma floats around the battlefield instead of walking, his default outfit doesn’t give him any sort of footwear, instead leaving him barefoot. Fans have joked that this design choice came from someone on the design team having a foot fetish.
  • Talon gave him shoes^ExplanationSo far, Sigma's "Talon" skin is the only one that depicts him as not barefoot. Fans have (jokingly) theorized that Talon was so disgusted with Sigma's lack of footwear that they made him put some shoes on.
• Due to having the same name and similar appearances, OW!Sigma is often compared to MMX!Sigma.
• Sig9^ExplanationA pun on the C9 meme (explained below). The longer a session of Overtime drags on, the shorter and shorter it takes to end the game once the point is clear of enemies. On payload maps, Sigma's ultimate lifts everyone far enough to trigger the countdown and potentially end the game before they land.
• Египетская Сигма ^ExplanationSigma looks shockingly similar◊ to Nikolai Petrovich Voronin, a Grumpy Old Man Fountain of Memes from a Russian adaption of Everybody Loves Raymond. The Russian part of the Overwatch fandom did not hesitate with comparisons between them.

Winston

• Harambe jokes are abundant.^ExplanationWhen Overwatch was gaining a huge flux of players, the incident of a gorilla named Harambe getting tragically shot was turned into a meme. Because of this, Winston is often compared to Harambe, or being considered a reincarnation of Harambe in the far future. It certainly doesn't help that the Wikipedia article once noted that Harambe's body was "donated to science".
• No aim? No brain? Winston main.^ExplanationA jab based on the common perception that Winston is a mindless character to play, due to his kit not requiring precise aiming and instead focusing on jumping into the enemy team and causing havoc.
• Winston gets no love.^ExplanationFans who ship the cast with each other tend to leave Winston out since he's a gorilla.
• Sometimes a family is two lesbians and a talking gorilla. ^ExplanationReflections has Winston prepare a Christmas family dinner, and is finally joined by Tracer and Emily in the end.
• He's not a monkey. He's a scientist! ^ExplanationOne of Winston's lines in the Recall short that's very popular to his fans and it's considered mandatory to repeat this line when someone calls him a gorilla or a monkey.
• "HI THERE!"^ExplanationThis is one of his greeting lines that tends to be quoted the most. Usually when a Winston sneaks up to someone or sometimes replacing the sound of something. Exemplified in this video.
• "How embarrassing!"^ExplanationWinston's most commonly used voiceline, with a reputation similar to that of Reinhardt's "Catchphrase!" voiceline (see above).
• Talking Ape = fine. Talking hamsters = ridiculous.^ExplanationIn combination with the below character. When Jeff Kaplan put out the development update on Wrecking Ball, he mentioned that Hammond doesn't speak, but can communicate with Winston. People took note of the Double Standard as Winston, an ape, can talk, but Hammond, a hamster, cannot, and thus this meme was born.
• MONKEYMONKEYMONKEY^ExplanationOften what players will say to or hear from their teammates when someone spots an enemy Winston in-game. Shows up at least once in nearly every episode of the Overwatch League’s “Comms Check”, which gives fans an inside look at the ramblings of the OWL players before, during, and after games. In Overwatch 2, D.va has a chance to say this when eliminating Winston.
• WINTON jump WINTON zap WINTON ult WINTON nap^ExplanationA copypasta often describing the life of Winston players: jump around, shock people, and get immediately hit with a Sleep Dart after ulting. The mispelling of "Winton" is generally mandatory.
• "Greetings!"^ExplanationOverwatch 2 added additional "Hello" lines for each character, with Winston getting an especially hearty and endearingly dorky "Grrrreetings!", which has since become something of a new Signature Line among Winston mains.

Wrecking Ball and Hammond

• "Alright gforce, roll out!"^ExplanationWhen Hammond was first announced, many people were quick to point out that he wasn't the first hamster to kick ass in a rolling mech. Since then, No Limits matches with several Hammonds will usually begin with someone saying the above catchphrase (or the ones below) in the group message function.
  • "Autobots, Transform and roll out!"^ExplanationWrecking Ball can get around the battlefield extremely quickly by rolling, and can freely change from its "ball" form to a "walker" form for precise movement and to deploy its weapons. The Transformers jokes were inevitable.
  • "I'LL KIDNAP A THOUSAND CHILDREN BEFORE I LET THIS COMPANY DIE!" ^ExplanationNot-ball-form Hammond resembles the quoted character, Mr. Waternoose.
• Wrecking Ball is a Bakugan^ExplanationHammond's mech being a sphere that can open up to transform into a battle state made it easy to connect it with the titular monsters from Bakugan.
• Talking Ape = fine. Talking hamsters = ridiculous.^ExplanationIn combination with the above character. When Jeff Kaplan put out the development update on Wrecking Ball, he mentioned that Hammond doesn't speak, but can communicate with Winston. People took note of the Double Standard as Winston, an ape, can talk, but Hammond, a hamster, cannot, and thus this meme was born.
  • Jetpack cat = too far. A hamster building and piloting a mech = fine ^ExplanationA while ago, Jeff Kaplan mentioned a character referred to as Jetpack Cat that was scrapped during development because the team felt that despite how awesome it was, it was too ridiculous for the setting. Then a few years later, they released Hammond, who some people feel is just as ridiculous, and people used this Double Standard as a rallying cry to try and convince Blizzard to bring Jetpack Cat in.
• "IT'S BIGGER! IT'S BADDER! LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, IT'S: TOO MUCH FOR MR. INCREDIBLE!" ^ExplanationThe ball form of Wrecking Ball has been noted to call similarities to the Omnidroid.
• Hamtaro. ^ExplanationSince Hammond is a hamster that runs away a lot and goes on adventures, the inevitable comparison to the main character in the anime created a bunch of memes for him.
• I CAME IN LIKE A WREEECKING BALL! ^ExplanationIt didn’t take long for people to set videos of Hammond doing his thing to this song.
• My many hours of playing Spider-Man 2 serves me well. ^ExplanationWrecking Ball's physics while using the grappling hook are similar to our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, moreso with the second PS2 game, so some people took note of that.
• Top Gear memes have come up as well. The question "Why can't Richard "Hamster" Hammond voice Hammond?" has popped up.
  • Fans of Top Gear have also suggested that two other characters get skins to complete the original trio — Winston with a skin called "Orangutan" ^ExplanationThe affectionate insult/nickname for Jeremy Clarkson and Mei with a "Retro" ^ExplanationStripy shirt, baggy jeans, and tattered sneakers skin. ^ExplanationA tribute to James May, who likes to slow things down as well.

Zarya

• "I can bench more than you." ^ExplanationThis voice line has become popular with the fandom due to Zarya's background as a body builder and her playing the Husky Russkie trope very straight.
• "I want to hug you like big fuzzy Siberian bear!" ^ExplanationAnother one of her more popular voice lines, often referenced whenever Zarya's mentioned similar to the above quote.
• "Can someone pick Zarya?" ^ExplanationAfter constant D.Va buffs led to her being played more frequently, oftentimes players on the other team will be desperately asking one of their teammates to pick Zarya (one of her counters), but at lower levels, Zarya isn't picked often or used well. Even worse, the person asking or demanding the character switch could be a "Hanzo Main" or using some other non-essential character and should probably switch themselves.
• "Give Zarya some love!" ^ExplanationMany people find Zarya's skins to be the worst of the entire group, which leads to many people wishing for Blizzard to give her some love for once. They also like to point out that Zarya got better alternate skins... in Heroes of the Storm. This sentiment has only increased after the second Nexus Challenge, where 2 of her exclusive skins were ignored, in favor of a D.Va skin from out of nowhere. It reached an odd point when the Anniversary event arrived and gave Zarya a new skin and created a Broken Base on whether it is a good skin or not.
• "I'm going for the Tobelstein!"^ExplanationZarya's ultimate callout is "Огонь по готовности!", pronounced "Ogon po gotovnosti", meaning "Fire at will". But since it's Russian, it's easily misheard in English as the quote. Eventually ascended when Blizzard gave Zarya a spray titled 'Tobelstein', which actually shows that Tobelstein is what is powering Zarya's Particle Cannon, and again when one of the items on Efe Oladele's "things to get" list was a "Miniature Tobelstein Reactor". The latter would end up contribute to it becoming fully ascended into the canon, as "Tobelstein" was indeed confirmed to be what's powering Zarya's Particle Cannon. Sigma even makes a reference to it, citing it as lackluster compared to the power he currently wields.
• "Too bad you can't hack THESE GUNS!" ^ExplanationIt originated from a tweet in a hypothetical fight between her and Sombra, referring to Zarya's bodybuilding background. Gained further notoriety with the video "hi i'm sombra from overwatch."

Damage Hero Memes

Ashe and Bob

• New Hero: Bob.^ExplanationAshe's ultimate summons her Omnic sidekick Bob, who attacks as a temporary tank character. Because of his distinctive design, a lot of viewers found him memorable, some claiming they'd be more interested in playing Bob.
• Bob sweating.^ExplanationDuring the short "Reunion", which introduces Ashe and Bob, the two take part in a duel against Cassidy, during which Bob nervously sweats a drop of oil. The clip of this is popular as a reaction image for going against terrifying odds, such as battling a nano-boosted Rein and the rest of his team all by yourself.
• American Widowmaker/Cowboy Widowmaker ^ExplanationMany fans have noticed how similar Ashe looks to Widowmaker. It doesn't help that both of them have scoped rifles as their primary weapons.
• “BOB, DO SOMETHING!!!”^ExplanationAshe’s line when summoning Bob. Generally regarded as her Catchphrase, similar to Cassidy’s “high noon”.
• Bob is better at this game than you.^ExplanationA summoned Bob can sometimes contribute more than Ashe herself, as he can do just about anything a player can, like holding a payload. Kills he gets also go to the player who summoned him, so sometimes you’ll get Play Of The Games where Ashe does nothing or dies while Bob kills a ton of enemies.
• Battery-Operated-Boyfriend.^Explanation"Bob" is often a Sexual Euphemism used to refer to women masturbating with a mechanical sex toy. Take the fact that BOB is literally mechanical, and the jokes write themselves.
• Ashe Roulette. ^ExplanationAt time of writing, Ashe almost always says the same "hey" during her "Hello" emote, and almost never says anything else. This has resulted in an entire custom game being created around this, with everyone playing as Ashe, standing in a circle, taking turns to use the emote, and killing whoever happens to say the other voiceline until only one remains.

Bastion

• Bastion salt/Salt-powered robot^ExplanationBastion is infamous for being one of the harshest Skill Gate Characters, being an inexperienced team's worst nightmare. As a result, there are players who get angry at it and players who laugh at players who get angry at it, with some joking that Bastion is a salt-powered robot ("salt" being gaming slang for player anger, more specifically the "salty" Berserker Tears of angry players).
  • Please nerf Bastion^ExplanationBecause of the above, many players, at least during the open beta and early on in the game's release, would demand to Blizzard that Bastion be nerfed.
  • We'd recommend you try countering Bastion as Hanzo, Genji, or Widowmaker.^ExplanationThe official Overwatch Twitter account's stock response to angry players demanding to the account that Bastion be nerfed.
• TRIGGERED^ExplanationDuring his animated short, Bastion has PTSD-like responses to sounds and images that remind him of the Omnic Crisis. This led people to make references to a preexisting meme that is usually used to mock people who claim to be triggered by anything that makes them slightly uncomfortable.
  • Vietnam War flashbacks.^ExplanationAnother preexisting meme that became associated with him after the short and for the same reason.
• Destroy that stupid salt bot!/Protect the precious cinnamon bot!^ExplanationBastion's short is beautiful, tear-jerking, and makes it a very big Woobie, but it's still a pain in the ass to deal with in-game.
• Point and click adventure ^ExplanationA reference to a notion, usually by its victims, that playing Bastion only involves pointing, aiming, and mowing down the enemy team.
  • Left-click POTG. ^ExplanationAs above; the resulting Kill Streak often gets Play Of The Game, and is often derided as an easy shortcut to it.
• Bastion Assassin^ExplanationThe successful act of a Bastion player sneaking up on an enemy's flank or rear before opening fire on them. Sometimes taken further by photo editing Bastion with assets from Assassin's Creed.
• "Skynet Became Self-Aware at 6:00 pm Eastern Time, February 28th, 2017"^ExplanationThe Season 4 re-work significantly buffed Bastion into a nigh-unstoppable Killer Robot, which lent itself easily to Terminator references (made even easier since a Robot War is literally part of Overwatch's plot). The line above is a paraphrasing of the titular cyborg's exposition of how the machines took over, which players feel befits Bastion's Game-Breaker status.
  • (Second) Omnic Crisis^ExplanationAn alternate name for the Bastion meta.
• Hammer Tech ^ExplanationSome players have pointed out that Bastion strikes a very similar appearance to the Hammer Drones from Iron Man 2.
• El Presidente. ^ExplanationThe name given to Bastion when a team's strategy revolves entirely around shielding and healing it, making it akin to a president and their protection detail. Also known as 'Protect the President!' or, when Bastion is sitting atop a moving payload, 'The Pirate Ship'.
• Sniper Smurf ^ExplanationA player by the name of Snipersmurf hilariously "justifies" their status as a Bastion main by spamming an extremely NSFW pre-recorded speech in voice chat. The speech became a copypasta and began trending within a short amount of time after being posted.
• Infinite Artillery Strike ^ExplanationOverwatch 2 provides Bastion a new ultimate in the form of firing 3 artillery strikes down upon its enemies. However, an exploit was discovered days after release where instead of just 3 artillery strikes, it was possible to chain the ultimate non-stop to the point of basically dropping infinite artillery blasts all around the map. The exploit was so bad that it caused Bastion to be removed from the game entirely until the bug is fixed.
• Gingerbread Bastion ^ExplanationA Gingerbread Man skin for Bastion was released during the Winter Wonderland 2022 event for the price of only a single Overwatch coin. Needless to say, this decision caused quite a stir within the community, with plenty of jokes abound including the fact that if purchased, players' coin counts would forever be doomed to be an odd number.

Cassidy

• "It's high noon..." ^ExplanationCassidy's trademark line when he activates his ultimate, which can one-shot you if he has line of sight on you — it's become one of the most quotable lines in the game and is usually accompanied by a picture or gif of people running away. It should be noted that many iterations of this meme make reference to 12 PM, but actual high noon, more formally known as solar noon, is the point at which the sun is at its highest point of the day, and may not necessarily be at 12 PM.
  • "It's high moon..." ^ExplanationThe Horizon Lunar Colony map sparked an explosion of this joke.
  • Would you look at the time?◊ ^ExplanationAfter the beta, Blizzard put out some player statistics, including the bemusing line "High noon rolled around 5.7 million times a day".
  • "It's high NOOT" ^ExplanationBasically, NOOT NOOT was everywhere when Overwatch was released. Considering puns like Supernootrual and Nootella had been created, everybody knew this was coming. Sometimes accompanies a generic Deadeye play or just for memes. An example can be seen here.
  • Now an Ascended Meme! A later voiceline has been added as follows when announcing that his ultimate is ready: "You know what time it is." In addition, Mei also has an interaction where she asks Cassidy what the time is; he catches on to that one quickly.
• "FUCK MCCREE" ^ExplanationAfter the late July patch buffed Cassidy (then named McCree) back into High-Tier Scrappy status, lots of players went right back to hating him all over again. The sentiment was capstoned into a fan-made rap song taking voice samples from Winston, Reaper, and Tracer with surprisingly catchy music and lyrics.
  • McCree? Fuck that guy. ^ExplanationPlayers usually say this during situations where Cassidy (then named McCree) could use something such as a buff, new skin, etc. This phrase was originally coined by Youtuber Spumwack. Later took on a different meaning after the Activision-Blizzard scandals and the character was renamed, now being used as a response to his then-namesake being affiliated with the misconduct allegations.
• Yare yare, it's high noon. ^ExplanationA crossover meme between Jotaro's catchphrase from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and Cassidy's catchphrase. Cassidy is voiced by Matthew Mercer (Jotaro in the anime's dub) in English, and Jurota Kosugi (Jotaro in the original Japanese version of the OVA) in Japanese. So he's Jotaro in two different languages! Joseph is sometimes also compared to the same character, due to tricking Santana into staring at a reflection of the sun at high noon (as well as both having a nice hat and Manly Facial Hair). The JoJo dub eventually shouts back to this by having Jotaro in the last episode literally say "It's high noon."
• Is that a McDonalds meal? ^ExplanationUsually a joke reaction to any Portmanteau Couple Name with almost any and all ships involving Cassidy, (then named McCree). Try listening to McHanzo, McGenji, McTracer, McReaper, McMercy, Mc76, McPharah, McSombra, McMei… you get the idea.
• Using High Noon to reload^ExplanationPopularized by streamer aimbotcalvin, players have joked how real pro-level Cassidy players, instead of using his Deadeye — his ultimate — in the way it was designed, use it only to instantly cancel it for a glorified, split-second reload. Considering how Deadeye is normally considered underwhelming for an ultimate, fans joke that this is the "correct" way to use it.
• "Cassidy's Chinese cowboy impression is so offensive that Reyes' stomach ulcer practically explodes and he is unable to ask Cassidy to stop being so fucking racist." ^ExplanationCassidy's Lunar New Year skin is eerily (and hilariously) reminiscent of this◊ infamous Super Mario Bros. meme. Naturally, edits ensued.
• ThiccCree^ExplanationA meme that got passed around after a patch to the PTR which gave Cassidy (then named McCree) an extra 50 HP, raising it from 200 to 250. However, this health increase was removed before the patch containing it went live.
• All Seeing Deadeye^ExplanationAlong with the aforementioned ThiccCree, Cassidy received a buff to his Deadeye ultimate that no longer locked his aim in place while using it, meaning players can look around the map to find more targets.
• "McCree? Who's that?"^ExplanationIn October 2021, his name was changed from McCree to Cassidy to distance the character from the fired Blizzard employee whom he was originally named after. Afterwards, fans started jokingly referring to "McCree" as an Un-person, whether to celebrate the changes or mock them.
  • "McCree? Is that a new Hero?!"^ExplanationMany fans and players continued to call Cassidy by his old name, often from forgetfulness or spite. Others would then pretend that they'd never heard of that character before.
• Ryan.^ExplanationVideo Gamedunkey jokingly said that it is his new name.

Echo

• Echo being a damage hero brought a few memes, especially considering she was created by Dr. Liao to show that humans and Omnics can live together in peace. These range from wondering why Liao would create another deadly robot, to the reaction of her colleagues when she tells them that the peaceful Omnic will have a Death Ray, to posting "The whole world will learn our peaceful ways, by force!" clips.
• "Only a Shimada can control the dragons!"^ExplanationIn the "Dragons" animated short, Hanzo says — in no uncertain terms — that only members of the Shimada family like him and Genji can wield the power of the Shimada Spirit Dragons. As a result, Echo's Ultimate allowing her to mimic Hanzo and Genji's Dragonstrike/Dragonblade has led to more than a few jokes about either Hanzo being full of it or Echo somehow qualifying as a Shimada.
  • "Laughs in Duplication Module"^ExplanationA typical response to the meme above, although it is also sometimes said in reference to anything unique about another character, as well as Echo outperforming an enemy Hero with the Hero's own abilities.
• Echo: "Personality synchronization: 100%. Good to be back." / Blizzard: "No."^ExplanationAs the first new character introduced in 8 months, as well as one teased for more than a year before that in the "Reunion" short, Echo was immensely popular upon launch. Unfortunately, during this time, Blizzard had just introduced a refined "Hero Pools" system that banned characters for a week based on their use on the live servers. This meant that Echo was eligible for banning (and subsequently was) only a few days after being introduced. This was met with a lot of controversy and backlash from both the professional and casual sides of the fanbase, who made fun of what they considered a tone-deaf decision by quoting Echo's spawning voice line, followed by her being silenced or banned by Blizzard immediately afterward.

Genji

• Following Tracer's lead, Genji's butt has also become quite memetic, in part due to this comic.
• "Is that a pro Genji?!" ^ExplanationFrom this Videogame Dunkey video, usually used to sarcastically mock unskilled Genji players, though it's gradually shifted to showing up sometimes if a clip simply has Genji in it.
• Like Hanzo, his Japanese voice lines, which he doles out in greater frequency than Hanzo does, has made him something of a memetic figure, with some jokingly calling him a "weeb" / "weeaboo" character alongside his brother.
• Carrot. ^ExplanationGenji's younger self, with his orange scarf and spiky green hair, has caused many to note his resemblance to a carrot.
• "I need healing."^ExplanationA bad Genji can easily end up out of range of his healer(s), who are, in turn, fed up with being notified that he "needs healing"… from halfway across the map, or when he's lost maybe 10 HP at best. On top of that, Genji's a Glass Cannon, meaning that if he has taken enough damage for a healer to be necessary, he's probably about to die anyway. This got a shot in the arm when "Gency" started getting Ship Tease, with the irony of the least healer-friendly character being paired up with the main healer being remarked upon.
• Genji, get on the payload!^ExplanationIn addition to overreacting to losing a small amount of health by spamming "I need healing," Genji players in particular are stereotyped as ignoring the payload they're supposed to be pushing in favor of trying to show off and rack up eliminations. And then complaining about needing healing when they're half a map away from the payload that the healer is on.
• "MADA MADA."^ExplanationSimilar to Hanzo's "Sake!" line, Genji players like to spam this particular voice line whenever they can.
• RULES OF NATURE! ^ExplanationGenji's design and aesthetic similarities to Raiden have not gone unnoticed by the fans, and as such, the track "Rules of Nature" from the latter's game tends to a be popular choice for highlight videos and a general battlecry. His Blackwatch Genji skin◊ has only encouraged this meme even further.
• Genji's "Hanzo phase". ^ExplanationGenji's Blackwatch skin is much Darker and Edgier than his default appearance and is his chronological appearance back before he was at peace with his cyborg nature. This broody, self-loathing point in Genji's life, aided by his left arm and pec still being organic, has been dubbed Genji's "Hanzo phase" for bearing similarities to his brooding brother, Hanzo. The phrase is used in context as how someone would say they're in their "Emo Phase".

Hanzo

• Hanzo's ultimate, combined with his Calling Your Attack tendencies, have spawned the following poem.
  Roses are red, violets are blue
  RYUU GA WAGA TEKI WO KURAU!
  • Acknowledged: On the official Overwatch Instagram account, there is a picture of Hanzo about to unleash Dragonstrike in Dragons with the following poem:
  Enemies are red
  Allies are blue
  RYUU GA WAGA TEKI WO KURAU!
• Hanzo is Nick Dean. ^ExplanationHanzo's "Young Hanzo" skin (the blue recolor in particular) bears more than a passing resemblance to Nick Dean from The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius.
• Hanzo's chicken legs ^ExplanationPlayers assumed that Hanzo's legs were prosthetic because of how slim his ankles are. After the Devs confirmed that they're not and he just has delicate ankles, chicken leg jokes have been everywhere.
• Hanzo being a Furry. ^ExplanationHanzo's Okami and Lone Wolf skins, combined with how they change his dragon-based ultimate into two howling wolves, added with multiple wolf based phrases when the skin is in use, has led to the conclusion that Hanzo is a furry.
  • This belief saw a revival (and possible ascension) when in 2024, Hanzo received an emote of him doing, of all things, a cat-like Faux Paw gesture, including licking his "paw", which caught on for how frankly bizarre it was for someone like Hanzo to be doing.
• Making jokes about Hanzo's arrows killing people with headshots while missing them entirely.^ExplanationFor easing the usage of it and balance purposes, Hanzo's arrows have a hitbox far greater than an actual arrow would imply. Rest assured that people are still not gonna be happy watching themselves die on a killcam from Hanzo headshotting them with the actual arrow being shown to fly past their head by around a foot, or while they were actually behind a corner.
  • "Simple geometry." ^ExplanationTied with the joke above, one of Hanzo's abilities, "Scatter Arrow", is also prone to unintentionally kill random targets. This line is usually used to poke fun at it. It reached an Ascended Meme status after Moira used the line in her gameplay trailer.
    • "Simple Geology" or "Simple Algebra" or "Simple Differential Calculus"^ExplanationMocking the above line by substituting it for other scientific or mathematical fields.
• "Hanzo Mains"^ExplanationHanzo has an extremely high curve of Difficult, but Awesome, with good Hanzos capable of killing entire teams solo, but BAD Hanzos missing every shot and getting overshadowed in kills by Mercy, thus being considered The Millstone. Unfortunately, a lot of players pick him in an attempt to show off how "MLG Pro" their skills are, meaning that you're likely to have at least ONE Hanzo player in every Competitive mode game, and they'll usually be the latter type, so an instant-picked Hanzo on a team creates a lot of salt. As a result, "Hanzo Mains" have become a catch-all term for bad teammates on forums and social media regardless of hero, since they embody every bad habit a teammate can have. It's so widespread a gaming streamer's kid got in on it — receiving a teacher's note for calling another student a "Hanzo Main" (even though the teacher admitted to not knowing what it meant other than "clearly meant as an insult").
  • "X mains Hanzo and complains about Team Comp in chat."^ExplanationA way of calling someone an inconsiderate jerk (and a noob on top of that). Hanzo's power comes from his killing potential, and he has no essential utility to any team otherwise, and since Hanzo's a high-skill-floor hero, players who can't deal as much damage as a simpler DPS hero should be the first one to switch instead of complaining about it.
  • "Spamzo"^ExplanationA nickname for low-skill Hanzo players who will often lack (or just not use) fine aiming skill, and will just spam arrows towards an enemy or group of enemies and hope for the best.
  • "Hanjo" ^ExplanationYet another nickname for bad Hanzo players. Bacontotem is a former Overwatch player who, from the beginning of Competitive Mode to his retirement in August 2018, deliberately fell to the lowest rank on competitive in every season, playing as Hanzo in every match and only responding to other players with the phrase "i hanjo" to keep his rating at 1 (or <500 in Season 4 onwards, when the game ceased showing exact rating below 500 SR).
• SAKE! ^ExplanationFor some reason, this one voice line is the most used voiceline associated with Hanzo, even if he's not shown to be a heavy drinker (he drinks, but not to an exaggerated extent). Became an Ascended Meme in a voice dialogue he has with Cassidy after the Oasis patch, in which Cassidy says he tried sake and felt it didn't have enough bite, and the two argue over what drinks are better. It also leaks to Reinhardt, who in the Anniversary event got a similar voice line about his favorite drink: "BEER!" Needless to say, those lines get spammed together a lot.
• Hanzo's undercut/piercing. ^ExplanationHanzo's brief appearance in the Reflections comic showed him sporting a new outfit and look, including what appeared to be an undercut hairstyle and a nose bridge piercing. Fans took note.
  • Hipster Hanzo ^ExplanationThe nickname given to Hanzo's look that's appeared in Reflections, with fans occasionally portraying him as a hipster.
• Stop playing Hanzo/Dunkey was right! ^ExplanationAdding onto the "Hanzo Mains" above, it's not uncommon for people to call out others for picking Hanzo in team comp and playing him, even if that player is actually doing fairly well as him. The other name for it comes from this Video Game Dunkey video, which documents the whole thing, and another video inspired by it which also depicts it. The maker of the video, Zylbrad, proclaims "Dunkey Was Right!" and other variations throughout the video.
• Hanzo is into vore.^ExplanationFans joke that because of his "Let the dragon consume you!" line that he says when a friendly Hanzo uses his Ultimate, that Hanzo is a vorarephile.
• The Shimada Titty. ^ExplanationA meme partially shared with Genji, Hanzo normally wears a kimono that leaves his left pec out, much to many fans' amusement and/or admiration. Later on, a half-armored Genji was featured in "Uprising"◊ also with his left pec out, leading to a theory that this is a tradition shared either as brothers or with their Shimada clan.
• Talon stalking Hanzo. ^ExplanationWith Doomfist taking an interest in Hanzo and Widowmaker offering to make a deal with him, jokes have started about how the members of Talon constantly stalk Hanzo asking him to join them, to Hanzo's increasing annoyance. It was exacerbated in Retribution where Genji 8 years ago explains that Talon tried to recruit their father as well.
• "Hanzo, you did ok." ^ExplanationBased on a clip where streamer itsDeviatoR took out 7 enemy players and countered four ults in about 30 seconds, and was told by a teammate that he merely did "okay". The quote's often used when good Hanzos are mistaken by their own team as underperforming.

Junkrat

• "He could be your waifu! He has a sensitive side."^ExplanationA reference to a line from this video, usually quoted in Junkrat's defense about how lovable and excitable he is.
• Trashmouse ^ExplanationSince Junkrat's name is just two words smashed together, people will call him nicknames made up of synonyms, Trashmouse being the most common. Other examples include Garbageweasel and Dumpstergerbil.
• "Spam Junkrat"/"Spamrat"^ExplanationA derogatory term for people who constantly pick Junkrat and then have a weak performance with him. Many inexperienced players tend to just spam his Grenade Launcher randomly in the hopes that its high damage will instantly kill a target, despite the projectiles being generally easy to avoid with experience.
• Sexy Junkrat ^ExplanationJunkrat's "Lounging" emote has him sprawled out in a typical "Draw me like one of your French girls" way. Many players have found very creative ways of using this emote in actual gameplay, such as by hiding in bushes or confined places on payload tracks/control points, stalling enemies until he's found, making it stand out among the various sitting emotes.
• [Visible confusion] ^ExplanationSometimes during the character select screen, Junkrat will start to concernedly look around for no clear reason. This led to jokes about how he's either suffering from PTSD-induced flashbacks or is reconsidering his life choices.
• Try to die. ^ExplanationOn the loading screen, there are tips on how to play certain characters better; for Junkrat, the tip is to die surrounded by enemies to utilize Total Mayhem. The fans joked that it was Blizzard's way of subtly telling Junkrat mains to kill themselves.
• Triggered. ^ExplanationIf someone steps into Junkrat's trap, the notification text is 'Triggered'. It somehow often gets mistaken as getting 'triggered' with horrific flashbacks (similar to the same-named meme by Bastion, see above) if one gets stuck in the trap.
• When you light the fuse ^ExplanationThe Junkertown map trailer follows the adventure of Junkrat and Roadhog planning to send a disguised bomb to the queen to kill her. Junkrat tries multiple times to light the fuse with a half-baked plan, only for Roadhog to put it out and make him do some more planning. When Roadhog finally approves of the plan, the face Junkrat makes is interesting, to say the least.
• I'm getting the feeling they have a Shieeeeeld Generator! ^ExplanationA glitch in April\May 2018 would cause characters to repeatedly announce an enemy's shield generator. Junkrat's reading of the line quickly became the most memetic.
• We live in a society… ^ExplanationJunkrat’s new skin for “Storm Rising” is him in a clown costume. It didn't take long for many to start making "Gamers Rise Up" jokes.
• "I've got an idea!" ^ExplanationIn the trailer video for the Junkertown map, after he and Roadhog get kicked out, Junkrat there are "two things that solve every problem", those being money and explosives. He proudly and loudly announces that he has an idea before the video zooms into his eye. The resulting meme usually replaces Junkrat's plan with an explosion either from real life or some other piece of media.

Mei

• I will build a great wall. - Mei 2016 ^ExplanationBecause of her ice wall ability, a lot of people have been making Donald Trump jokes about her; case in point, this picture. (It helps that Mei is Chinese, so this meme can also allude to the Great Wall of China.)
• Mei is bae.^ExplanationMei's adorkable personality and cuddly character design caught on quickly amongst the fans. Comes from an acronym meaning "Before Anyone/thing Else", indicating a strong affection or infatuation for the labeled party on the part of the labeler.
  • Variations also exist for other characters when applicable ("Baecer", "Sombae", "Baerisa", et cetera).
• Truly the face of pure evil.^ExplanationIn contrast to the "Mei is bae" above, Mei has the tendency of freezing you in-game, then giving you a cold blank stare as she lines up the perfect shot to ram an icicle between your eyes. Originates from this comic.
  • Mei is Satan. ^ExplanationThe extension of the above, where people think that Mei's combat style may be a little too anti-fun and sadistic in making you feel helpless as she kills you, contrasting with her more pacifistic personality and cutesy look. Not to mention the game explicitly left out the ice that she shot to be stuck on her victim's head. This led Mei to be referred to as Satan, just like Teemo in League of Legends.
• I'm a simple man. I see Mei dying, I upvote. ^ExplanationGoing along with Mei's Base-Breaking Character status, whenever a Reddit highlight features Mei getting killed in any manner, one of the top comments will usually be this or some variation of it. The logical extreme? An entire subreddit was created featuring only clips of Mei dying.
• 冻住！不洗澡！^ExplanationMei shouts “冻住！不许走！”(dòngzhù! bùxǔ zǒu! Freeze! Don't move!) when launching her ultimate, which sounds to Chinese-speaking players like 冻住！不洗澡！(dòngzhù! bù xǐzǎo! Freeze! No shower!)
• Pat pat pat!^ExplanationOne of Mei's random lines when reloading during the "Mei's Snowball Offensive" brawl; it's quite common to see it typed into chat repeatedly during matches.
  • From the same game mode, "I'm putting a rock in this one!"
• Troll Wall ^ExplanationUsing Mei's wall to block off someone trying to do something major. A prime example is stopping Cassidy's Deadeye◊.
• A-Mei-zing ^ExplanationBased on her very punny voiceline. Since it's such a simple pun, it's near customary by the fanbase to replace the word 'Amazing' with this if the subject is about Mei.
• Wall Rocket / Chinese Space Program ^ExplanationSummoning Mei's Ice Wall underneath a corpse will result in it getting launched into the sky.
• Mei's ass ^ExplanationMei's Lunar New Year skins have sparked controversy because Mei's ass seems to jut out at an unnatural angle. Some argue that the skins are comically Off-Model.
• Mei's a fan of Anime/Ani-Mei ^ExplanationMei's dance emote being based on the Haruhi Dance from the anime adaptation of Haruhi Suzumiya has resulted in many of these types of jokes and references.
• Hong Kong Mei ^ExplanationFollowing Activision-Blizzard banning a Hearthstone player for expressing support of the Hong Kong protests, the company faced immediate backlash from the Western community to the point where the "Think Globally" and "Every Voice Matters" values at the company HQ were covered up by rogue employees, several fans began musing that it would be a real shame if at Blizzcon people began waving posters in support of Hong Kong during the live panel or Mei became a symbol for pro-democracy (with the intent of getting Overwatch Banned in China). This then transformed into making Mei a symbol for the protests, as seen here.◊

Pharah

• "Justice rains from above!" ^ExplanationHer callout line whenever she's using Barrage, which has become associated with her entire character.
  • Often shorted to "Justice rains from-aaaggh!" due to bad Pharah players' tendency to die immediately after starting the ultimate. Or even to just "Justice".
    • Parodied here.
  • Weather girl Pharah ^ExplanationDue to her ultimate voice line, "Justice rains from above!", players started portraying Pharah as a weather forecaster, for example "Today's forecast — Cloudy, with a chance of JUSTICE!" This was given a nod with her Winter Wonderland voice line "Want to know the forecast?"
  • "Justice rains from below/behind/the front/the side/the ground!" ^ExplanationThe common strategy with Pharah's ultimate is to use it from a high above location, but occasionally, a player will use Pharah's ultimate at ground level, which suddenly makes her "Justice rains from above" one-liner look really out-of-place.
• Pharah's Armor ^ExplanationIn the Olympic Games 2016 promotional material, everyone received some nifty sports attires, except for Pharah. Jokes about her never wearing anything else in all future updates have already been made. Further jokes have been made on how she was somehow allowed to play basketball in her armor and that she wears 24-Hour Armor.
  • Pharah-less Armor ^ExplanationFollowing the reveal of Pharah's 2018 halloweeen "Enchanted Armor" skin, which effectively turns her into an empty animated suit of armor, some have joked that you're more likely to see the armor without Pharah in it, then you are to see Pharah out of her armor.
• Friendly Pharah Boost ^ExplanationThe discovery that people can stand on top of Pharahs of the enemy team has led to many "what the hell?" moments where the Pharah will carry opposing players up into the air, and let them shoot down on people from above.

Reaper

• Edgelord ^ExplanationDue to how ridiculously edgy Reaper is, he's often portrayed by fans as something of an overgrown Emo Teen who regularly frequents Hot Topic. Fans also like to come up with equally ridiculous and edgy player names for Play of the Game screens with Reaper. There's even a Twitter account dedicated to collecting screenshots of them.
• Reapfield ^ExplanationReaper as a lazy ghost cat a la Garfield who loves to snooze and kick gremlin Hana off the table.
• Latino Reaper ^ExplanationMany fans love playing up the Latino part of Reaper's Latino-American heritage. This includes him angrily correcting butchered Spanish to his Latina mother being his ultimate weakness.
  • Ultimate Ready: LA CHANCLA. ^ExplanationHouse slippers (la chancla) are a common discipline tool in Hispanic households. Associating their use with Reaper and later Sombra is a cultural joke amongst the fans.
• Beyblade ^ExplanationWith Ana's Nano Boost or Lúcio's Amp It Up + Speed Boost (only the latter after a patch), Reaper's Death Blossom attack gains such a boost in speed that Reaper becomes a spinning top of death, not unlike a beyblade.
• "Ah yes, Reaper..." ^ExplanationReaper is a very common word used in many other villain names, including Mass Effect's immortal race of sentient starships, who many characters in that game dismiss with Air Quotes. Which intersects nicely with Reaper's own issues that he hates being dismissed.
• Fixed a bug allowing Reaper to Shadow Step to unintended locations. ^ExplanationReaper's Shadow Step has a history of bugging players into unintended positions, such as stuck in a corner or falling off the map. This is such a prominent problem that it shows up under Bug Fixes in almost every patch update due to Blizzard not being able to keep up with the sheer amount of problems with it.
• Reaper the hardcore Halloween fan (and tailor). Also sometimes extends to Reaper's hobby being sewing/designing clothes.^ExplanationIn the Halloween comics, he is revealed to have made his own — very elaborate — Headless Horseman costume. Fans immediately jumped on the idea of him treating the holiday, and costume design, as Serious Business; this usually extends into jokes about him having made his Reaper outfit and the uniforms for Overwatch and Talon as well.
  • Exemplified in this comic.
• Some-BODY ONCE TOLD ME THE WORLD IS GONNA ROLL ME^ExplanationReaper's special Halloween Highlight intro — which shows him breaking out of a coffin — has sparked numerous memes inspired by Shrek's (also memetic) introductory scene. Case in point.
• THICC REAPER ^ExplanationReaper's model has some very thick thighs. Fans◊ have◊ noticed.◊
• Reaper doesn't know how to reload. ^ExplanationReaper throws away his shotguns when he runs out of ammo instead of reloading, despite having shotgun pellets strapped onto his chest. This has led fans to believe that he doesn't know how to reload.
  • Reaper doesn't care for the environment. ^ExplanationReaper is a Card-Carrying Villain who litters everywhere he goes by leaving hundreds of empty shotguns lying around.
  • Reaper's infinite supply of shotguns^ExplanationReaper also seems to have an unlimited amount of shotguns that he pulls out from his coat. Many like to joke that he either has a magical ability to create shotguns or that Talon has been spending more money on his shotguns than in other activities.
• Evil Dad ^ExplanationIn the same vein as Dad: 76 (see below), Reaper being the Team Dad for Widowmaker and Sombra, generally much to their consternation, but Christmas 2018 was a exception as witnessed by Doomfirst and Moira. This is often extended to Cassidy as well for when they were both in Blackwatch.
• Reyes' shrug◊^ExplanationReyes' shrug from the "Uprising" comic became very popular with fans as soon as it was featured, quickly becoming an exploitable reaction image among fans.
  • "I'm not the one with the statue."^ExplanationReyes's line associated with the above-mentioned shrug. Fans took to showing Overwatch-Era Reyes as constantly bitter about Jack's statue outside of Overwatch HQ, using the statue to poke fun at him whenever the opportunity presented itself.
  • Officially an Ascended Meme as of the Overwatch One Year Anniversary update, with Reaper gaining a number of unlockables based on it, namely a victory pose, a spray, and an emote. And yes, he has the shit-eating grin if you're using the Blackwatch Reyes skin.
• Reyes' original voice.^ExplanationIn the limited-time Uprising Event, players were actually able to hear Gabriel's voice before he became Reaper; many fans were surprised by how light it was compared to the gravelly, deep voice of Reaper.
• Comparisons between Reyes and John Freeman.^ExplanationAs many fans have noticed, Blackwatch Reyes bears an uncanny resemblance to the main character of one infamous Half-Life Troll Fic written by squirrelking (or rather, its machinima adaptation by djy1991). Many jokes and comparisons were made as a result.
• Least Racist Reaper^ExplanationSentence-mixing one of Reaper's in-game voicelines ("Black's my lucky color.") with certain other voicelines may result in him saying combo that makes him sound like a Politically Incorrect Villain who discriminates against black people like in this video

Soldier: 76

• We're all [X] now. ^ExplanationSoldier 76's trademark line "We're all soldiers now" has become fairly popular, especially on the Overwatch subreddit.
  • Ascended with Mei's Snowball Offensive brawl — 76 served as an announcer of this mode, and one of his voice lines was "We're all scientists now..."
  • “We're all gay now.”^ExplanationThe “Bastet” text story established that Soldier: 76 is Straight Gay and was in a relationship with a man named Vincent prior to the Omnic Crisis. Similar to Tracer’s “The cavalry’s queer!”, jokes of this nature have been common.
• Aimbot ^ExplanationHis ultimate, Tactical Visor, makes it so that none of his shots miss for a few seconds.
• Dad: 76. ^ExplanationSoldier: 76 is portrayed as an overbearing father figure for the team.
  • Though coincidental, this meme was reinforced when a weekly brawl event where everyone plays as 76 happened to run during Father's Day.
  • Ascended a few times, with several event sprays portraying him in this light (such as playing golf or as a Grumpy Old Man in a sweater and rocking chair), as well as this added interaction with Tracer:
  Soldier: 76: You need to slow down. Think about your actions.
  Tracer: [mockingly] Okay, dad.
  • Ascended again in the Anniversary event where Soldier: 76's new voice line is "I'm not your father!" His dancing emote from the Anniversary event can be taken as very dad-like as well.
  • Ascended even more with his Summer 2017 skin, which has stereotypical suburban dad fashion filled with Incredibly Lame Puns. The 2021 Summer Games event also added a highlight intro of Soldier: 76 cooking on the grill.
• “Move! I’m gay!”^Explanation”Bastet” contained a lot of new lore for Ana, as well as a sneak peek at a new skin. However, the fandom took far more interest in the reveal in that same story that Soldier: 76 is gay, leading to jokes about 76 stealing the spotlight from Ana and references to the linked video.

Sombra

• Have you tried making music out of it?^ExplanationIn the scramble to decode the Sombra ARG, certain players went absolutely nuts, going as far as to make music based off of a random pattern in the sky of the Dorado map (which it turns out wasn't even a clue). Suffice to say, the meme spread across /r/Overwatch quickly. One of Sombra's unlockable emotes, "Amused", makes reference to the pattern.
• つ ◕◕ ༽つ SOMBRA TAKE MY CONNECTION SPEED ༼ つ ◕◕ ༽つ^ExplanationOne hint in the Sombra ARG led players to a website with a slowly rising percentage. People began offering to lend her their internet speed to get the next clue sooner.
  • つ ◕_◕ ༽つ GIFF SOMBRA ^ExplanationA popular spin-off used to express desire for a Sombra reveal.
  • Espresso ^ExplanationThe text change in the Sombra ARG led to a string of clues that eventually led to the president of Lumerico's email. Most of the messages available to read were about an espresso machine that needed replacing.
    • つ ◕_◕ ༽つ☕ GIFF ESPRESSO ^ExplanationCombining this meme with the つ ◕_◕ ༽つ GIFF SOMBRA meme above.
    • Sombra planted the espresso machine.
    • Bastion is the espresso machine. ^ExplanationBecause the url for the Lumerico website was obtained by decoding a message that Bastion beeped in morse code while looking at a specific object in Dorado, people joke that Sombra planted Bastion in Dorado under the guise of a coffee machine so that players could get the message. Now an Ascended Meme.
    • Sombresso
• Sombra's already been released! ^ExplanationWhen it was first hinted that Sombra was the next character, and could turn invisible, jokes quickly surfaced about her already being in the game, but not perceptible.
• "It was Sombra."/"DAMMIT SOMBRA!"^ExplanationWhen something weird or freaky happens (such as a glitch or characters dying/not dying at questionable times), players have taken to blaming Sombra and her invisibility and hacking powers.
• (Player) switched to Sombra (was Mei)^ExplanationA player recorded himself trolling teammates by manually typing in "switched to Sombra (was X)" into the game messages. Players who are not paying attention might miss the colon and believe that an invisible Sombra actually is in the game.
• "Where's Sombra?!"^ExplanationAs noted, the Sombra ARG had a 3-month-long countdown and many players deduced that the countdown would end on Oct. 18, 2016 and speculated that this would be the day Sombra was finally released. Oct 18 came, and a patch was released… that didn't include Sombra.
• Many players have taken to calling her "Sombrero". ^ExplanationCoincidentally, "sombrero" is Spanish for "hat", which, in computer science, refers to the kind of ethics under which a hacker operates, be it black (purely malicious), grey (breaking laws or typical ethical standards, but lacking malicious intent), or white (purely ethical).
• "Boop!"^ExplanationSombra's reveal trailer has her tap Katya Volskaya, as well as the camera itself, on the nose and say "Boop!" in a cute way. Immediately after the trailer revealed, "Boop!" emerged as a meme. This has a different context to Lúcio's "Boop."
  • Now an Ascended Meme as of the Christmas event, which adds "Boop" as an unlockable regular voice line for her.
• Sombra's toe shoes.^ExplanationSombra seems to be wearing shoes with individual toes; many jokes have been spawned from this.
• Gremlin Sombra.^ExplanationGremlin Sombra is the Evil Counterpart to Gremlin D.Va, a stereotypical, basement-dwelling, asocial hacker addicted to Doritos and Mountain Dew. Often with Reaper acting as an exasperated father figure like Soldier: 76 is for D. Va.
• Sombra hacked her profile. ^ExplanationSombra's Older Than They Look for being a 30-year old woman, couples being a hacker with a sketchy background and has to hide from a powerful organization, led to many fans suspecting that her official profile isn't her real information.
• Ultimate Ready: LA CHANCLA. ^ExplanationBegan as a joke associated with the Latino Reaper meme. Sombra has since inherited this meme.
• Sombra the Explora ^ExplanationA lot of people have joked that as a child, Sombra looked like Dora the Explorer.
• Propaganda is useless! ^ExplanationA common mutation of Sombra's Ultimtae one-liner "¡Apagando las luces!". (It does suit her, given that she functions like a spy (thus dealing in information) and is fighting a conspiracy.) Another common mutation is "Your gondola's useless!" or some variant of it. The "Propaganda is useless" version was briefly ascended for April Fools 2022.
• ILLUMINATI ^ExplanationThe last shot◊ of Sombra's origins video revealed a serious piece of lore about the setting, specifically that there seems to be a single party behind much of the series' events.
• "The door." "SOMBRA!" ^ExplanationDuring the Infiltration short, at one point, Reaper commands Sombra to open a door for him. So she does, before immediately shutting it in his face, causing him to exasperatedly growl her name. This scene became insanely popular almost immediately, leading to countless jokes being made about Sombra trolling Reaper in other similar ways.
• Sombra hacks Genji/Zenyatta/Bastion/Etc. ^ExplanationDue to her proficiency with hacking technology, many jokes started popping up based around Sombra hacking some of the more robotic members of Overwatch and forcing them to do ridiculous or demeaning things (such as making McCree hit himself with his left hand, or making Zenyatta swear in front of Genji).
  • Sombra tied Cassidy's shoelaces together. ^ExplanationSombra's Hack ability disables all its target's abilities. While this makes sense for some high-tech themed abilities, fans have taken to coming up with tongue-in-cheek explanations for how it works with more mundane abilities like Soldier 76's sprint or Cassidy's forward roll.
• Some players have taken up blaming Sombra for whenever servers go down/players randomly disconnect in the middle of a game. This grew in popularity with a repeatedly-reported event where the PTR network broadcasted in all chats the word "Boop" before the servers went down moments later.
• QUICK! SEARCH FOR SOMBRA CLUES! ^ExplanationThe desperation for finding clues of her character during her painstakingly long ARG was so prevalent, fans shout this in comments of newer Overwatch videos, even after she was officially revealed and released.
• The wait was not worth it. ^ExplanationDue to Sombra's Low-Tier Letdown status, as one of the weaker heroes of the Overwatch pack apart from her ultimate, many have stated that the long wait for Sombra to be released just wasn't worth it.
• Fake Offensive Hero ^ExplanationBecause of Sombra's inability to dish out enough damage to be considered an Offensive Hero, plus her Hack ability being seen as very useful because it makes healthpacks replenish much quicker while also denying the enemy from getting them, many believe that Sombra should instead be classified as Support.
• BEEN HERE ALL ALONG ^ExplanationOne of the various voicelines that Sombra uses to announce her presence to enemies after decloaking. This has naturally led to a lot of jokes that Sombra would be much more effective at being a "stealth hero" if she kept her mouth shut. This was patched, resulting in the below meme:
  • _{been here all along.} ^ExplanationIn an update to the game's Public Test Region in March 2017, a change was made so that enemies can only hear Sombra's coming out of cloak voicelines if they're in her hacking radius. This has led to jokes about her finally learning to be quiet/stealthy.
  • Bean here all along^ExplanationMentions of "Been here all along" will usually be accompanied by this phrase and this picture, presumably because of Sombra's accent.
• You thought it was your PotG, but it was me, Sombra! ^ExplanationIn a combination with the "It was me, Dio!" meme from Jojos Bizarre Adventure, this basically sums up Sombra's "Hacking" Highlight/PotG intro, in which the game shows another player's PotG intro briefly, player name and intro of choice and all, only to cut out to reveal that the real PotG goes to Sombra.
• The mating cry of the Sombra. ^ExplanationA meme prevelant in fancomics, Sombra is often written with a specific laugh (often as "Ohohohoho!") among several different artists. The phrase was coined by Kimlinh Tran who often voices Sombra in various fandubs.
• [horrendous flipper sounds] ^ExplanationWhen it was revealed that Sombra's summer 2017 skin would be a scuba diver outfit, many people made jokes about Sombra wearing swimfins all the time, especially when invisible and revealing her location because of the shoes.

Symmetra

• Troll teleporter.^ExplanationA tactic griefers use to troll their teams is to place Symmetra's teleporter at at the edge of a cliff so that any teammates that try to use it fall to their deaths.
• "Gee, Symmetra, how come Blizzard lets you get TWO Ultimates?" ^ExplanationOne of Symmetra's biggest reworks is that she is now the first hero to be able to have two Ultimates (her old one Teleporter and the added Shield Generator) and is able to choose which one to activate.
• Microwave.^ExplanationUsed to refer to both her Sentry Turrets and her Photon Projector's left-click, which both sound similar to microwaves and can fry enemies down as fast as one.
• Hook, Cook and Dook.^ExplanationA variant of the above Microwave that includes a Roadhog and a Torbjörn: The two builders set up their sentries in a room next to a doorway, the former around the door itself and the latter in a nearby corner or a flanking route. Once ready, Roadhog Hooks anyone outside the doorway into the room, Symmetra's sentries Cook and Torbjörn's turret Dooks (the turret makes a "Dook" sound when it fires) the unfortunate victim.
• Six Symmetra Stack ^ExplanationSymmetra's shield generator gives 75 additional health to the team and stays up unless it is destroyed or refunded. Because the generators stack, if there are 6 generators out, then each Symmetra will have around 700 health, turning the entire team into pseudo-tanks.
• "It's my reality now." ^ExplanationThis phrase is commonly used while running six Symmetras, in reference to how powerful the rework has made her. The phrase "My Reality" comes from the title of one of her Highlight Intros.
• Symmetra sitting down at carnage.^ExplanationSymmetra's Sit emote makes her sit down in an extremely classy way without giving a damn about the chaos ensuing around her. Lots of people would've instead make her sit down in what would become a Highlight/Play of the Game moment, and pretend that she was just sitting classily while everyone else was busy killing each other or get killed with her already set-up turrets,
• W + M1 Symmetra ^ExplanationA common joke amongst current or former TF2 players where Symmetra runs around like a Pyro remaining locked onto her enemy target with her Photon Projector to drain their health down until they eventually die off.
• The true enemy of humanity is… ^ExplanationSymmetra's opening quote is easily snowcloned. By default, it's 'disorder'. Then it gets mispelled with "This order (of any type of delivery food, commonly pizza, like if you had the wrong order)" or "This soda". Afterwards, they tend to get replaced with anything, even if it doesn't rhyme with "disorder"
• Deathball ^ExplanationThe strategy to have Symmetra stick her Sentry Turrets onto a basketball found in the starting spawn room, and then carrying it towards the enemy team using her Photon Projector. Not to be confused with the type of team compostion known as "deathball".
• Carwash ^ExplanationThe strategy of setting all turrets in one choke point is known as "Setting up a carwash", popular enough to associate with Symmetra. And eventually ascended when Symmetra receives one voiceline for the Anniversary event where she said she's setting up a carwash.

Torbjörn

• Torbjörn wins Play of the Game By Doing Absolutely Nothing ^ExplanationMore precisely, he earns play of the game with a well-placed turret, but then the replay shows what he happened to be doing elsewhere while the turret was slaughtering the other team, making it hard to tell what he did.
  • Lazy Torbjörn ^ExplanationTorbjörn remains in his sitting taunt while his turret does all the work. Bonus points if Play of the Game is achieved doing this.
• MORUTEN KOOOOOAAAAA!!! ^ExplanationTorbjörn's ultimate, in Japanese. While the English one was already pretty hammy, this one really goes all-out, and the fans have pretty much rolled with it.
  • The Brazilian Portuguese Voice Acting is also impressive. ^ExplanationHe says "Núcleo Fundido", which is exactly what Molten Core means; however, the similarity the second word has to a curse is bound to invoke jokes on it. Spoiler-tagged for decency: it resembles "Núcleo Fodido" (and the first "o" usually sounds like an "u" would), which actually means "Fucked Up Core".
• Dwarf Fortress ^ExplanationTorbjörn has the body of a dwarf, and his main purpose in-game is to build turrets to "fortify" the area he protects and giving armor to his teammates to give them extra protection against enemy fire. Whenever a team rolls with all Torbjörns, the name is bound to be dropped by someone.
• Torbjörn's hot wife ^ExplanationUpon the Reflections comic being released, it was revealed that Torbjörn, a diminutive and hard-featured man past middle-age, is married and very much in love with a beautiful woman.
  • Damn Torbjörn and his 87 kids. ^ExplanationFandom exaggerating Torbjörn's large number of children (of whom there are 'just' eight), with 87 being the agreed-upon number.
  • Torbjörn's potent molten nut milk. ^ExplanationSemen, obviously. Taken one step further as of the Halloween Terror 2018 update, as Torbjorn has been reworked with a new Ultimate that fans have begun calling "Molten Nut".
  • Fäúx-Swêêdïsh spélléd lìkë sõ.
  • Has recently extended to "Torbjörn's hot daughter" ^ExplanationThe "Honor and Glory" short gave the first proper look at Brigitte, Reinhardt's squire and one of Torbjörn's daughters. The fandom, to put to it lightly, found her to be insanely hot. Needless to say, there have been many jokes about it, as well as the fact that she looks so good when her dad is… well… Torbjörn.
• Aard Vark pays off.^ExplanationHis default voice line, "Hard work pays off", tends to be misheard as Aard Vark, given his unusual accent.
• Part of an interaction between Lúcio and Torbjörn, in a video by Lúcio's voice actor, Jonny Cruz. The interaction has become a fan-favourite to quote.
  "Thanks, Torbyurbyurn!"
  "IT'S TORBJÖRN!"
  • Another earlier interaction between the two from the same video, also occasionally quoted.
  "You're a dwarf, right?"
  "I'm not a dwarf."
  "He's a dwarf."
• Overwatch Engineer ^ExplanationWhile comparisons to TF2 aren't exactly uncommon, such as Tracer being the Scout, Mercy being the Medic, Pharah being the Soldier, Widowmaker and Hanzo being the Sniper, Zarya being the Heavy, Junkrat being the Demoman, and Sombra being the Spy, most will agree that Torbjörn shares the biggest similarities to a class from TF2. In fact, the armor Torbjörn provides goes as far back as being a similarity to the Team Fortress Classic Engineer, who had the ability to repair damaged armor.
• Torbjörn is responsible for all the in-game voice lines. ^ExplanationIn the Uprising comic, it's revealed that "the cavalry's here" (Tracer's catchphrase) was actually a sarcastic comment he made, and she just decided to roll with it. Some players created scenarios which show that everyone got their signature voice lines from Torb, including absurd voice lines such as Hanzo's Ultimate line◊.
  Torbjorn: "Why do people keep on using things I say as catchphrases?"
  Reinhardt: "Hmm... catchphrase..."
• Happy Leif Erikson Day! ^ExplanationOctober 9 is the official date of Leif Erikson Day, as well as the release date of the Halloween Terror 2018 patch that contained the Torbjorn rework which buffed his kit immensely. Torbjorn also has a Viking-themed skin related to the Halloween event.
• “Too hot for you?”^ExplanationTorbjorn’s Summer Game 2019 skin puts him — a squat, fat, hard-featured middle-aged man — in a fairly revealing outfit with nothing but swim trunks.
• Head Turret ^ExplanationMany players got a kick out of the 2024 April Fools Joke. Torbjörn was suddenly able to build his turret on people's heads, which turned his turret into a mobile sentry gun that can fire at enemies while it's being carried around by other people.

Tracer

• Jokes about butts being censored, covered, or offending people. ^ExplanationDuring the beta, someone on the Battle net forum posted a complain that one of Tracer's pose was oversexualised and didn't fit her character at all, which sparked heated debates before Blizzard changed the pose to one that placed less emphasis on her butt. There have been few complaints since and you may be accused of beating a dead horse or pushing a faux controversy for upvotes if you make another reference about it.
  • Hell, Tracer's ass is a full-blown meme in and of itself. It's even bled over into Heroes of the Storm with her debut there.
  • One Redditor's cheeky PotG featured the camera suddenly shifting to Tracer's behind in full view, which ended up being replicated quite a bit under the term "showbutting," though it isn't completely exclusive just to Tracer.
• "Cheers, luv! The cavalry's here!" ^ExplanationTracer's Catchphrase, which, considering her personality, ends up getting spewed a lot, catches on very quickly, so 'Cavalry's here' is connected a lot with Big Damn Heroes moments, which can be pulled off in-game, even if you're not using Tracer for it.
  • Referenced with Junkrat's semi-mocking line "Cheers mate! The cavalry's here!", which leads Tracer to angrily shout Hey, That's My Line!
  • "Cheers, luv! The cavalry's queer!" ^ExplanationA phrase that got passed around upon the reveal in the official comic "Reflections" that Tracer's in a relationship with a woman, followed by Overwatch writer Michael Chu confirming on Twitter that Tracer is a lesbian.
• Tracer wears Crocs. ^ExplanationTracer's shoes have small holes in them, reminding some people of the shoe brand.
• Tracer's new skin. ^ExplanationSo far, Tracer has had a skin from every event, and currently holds the title of hero with the most skins in the game (with many Legendaries) due to being the game's mascot. Therefore, whenever an event is mentioned, Tracer getting a skin is also mentioned
• Flight Attendant Tracer.^ExplanationTracer's Cadet Oxton skin has drawn many comparisons to a flight attendant uniform, mostly due to the hat she wears.
• "What ya lookin' at?" ^ExplanationHer Establishing Character Moment in the cinematic trailer involves her blinking in from out of nowhere to say this to an unaware Widowmaker as the latter looks through her scope. The line struck a chord for how much it embodies the character and has since been referenced in in-game dialogue between them and in one of her sprays, and the community has taken to adopting it as an unofficial second Catchphrase for her, usually in the context of her being particularly mischievous.
• "Ever get that feeling of déjà vu?" ^ExplanationShe has a chance to say this upon activating her Recall ability, and it's gained some traction as a response/accompaniment to discussions perceived as covering old material, retelling the same stories, or just a general feeling of, well, déjà vu.
• "Her name isn't the only thing she 'traces'." ^ExplanationIn professional art, "tracing" refers to copying over another artist's work line-for-line and stealing credit for it. In combination with "Tracer" being her name, the Uprising event revealed that Tracer "stole" her catchphrase from Torbjorn. This has led to jokes that Tracer's entire career is a lie built from aping other characters' creations.

Venture

• Venture eating rocks^ExplanationAs soon as their design and overall "underground explorer/driller" theme was first revealed, fans made note of Venture's visibly chipped teeth and came to the logical conclusion that not only did they probably damage them on something work-related, it was specifically because Venture has tried eating rocks before, and likely still does.
  • Venture counters Sigma^ExplanationContinuing the line of logic, many fans joke that Venture should inherently counter Sigma based on how if the latter were to hurl one of his boulders at Venture, they would simply eat it whole.
• Chomper in Overwatch???^ExplanationVenture's ability to tunnel through the earth while leaving a Worm Sign and surface beneath their opponents for an ambush are all traits shared with the Chomper from Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare, so comparisons began almost instantly.

Widowmaker

• The fact that a bizarre glitch caused Widowmaker to become visibly curvier when activating her goggles◊ has led to rashes of Internet jokes about how Talon is clearly full of perverts. Her neckline has only fueled the fire.
• "SPAI-DAIRZ"^ExplanationIn the opening of the "Alive" short, Widowmaker says "When I was a little girl, I had a fear of spiders" in a very thick French accent. This is often imitated or parodied by players, in particular the way she pronounces "spiders".
• So I fired, and I missed. Then I fired again, and I missed.^ExplanationWidowmaker players have a tendency to miss a large amount of shots, which reminded many of a certain Game Grumps quote. Became especially popular after an imitator re-enacted the quote.
• 43 shots, 1 kill. ^ExplanationAnother way to illustrate their terrible accuracy.
• Step on me. ^ExplanationWidowmaker got a new highlight intro with the Winter 2016 event, where she holds a mistletoe above her head before punching the camera to the ground and stepping on it. Many, many players liked it.
• Emily? Amelie? COINCIDENCE?!^ExplanationFollowing the reveal that Tracer has a girlfriend named Emily, Widowtracer fans have noticed how similar her name sounds to Widowmaker's real name, Amelie, with a joke that it might be a sign that Tracer secretly lusts for Widowmaker.
• Bonjour from the other side!^ExplanationA joke by Widowtracer fans that Widowmaker, upset that Tracer has a girlfriend, sings an Adele song with her own lyrics. Most likely originating from this comic.
• "Widow, can you switch?"^ExplanationBecause Widowmaker is one of the characters with the highest skill floors in the game, most dread when someone picks her and does badly with her. This type of comment is not uncommon when someone picks Widowmaker in Competitive mode.
  • "GG Widow"^ExplanationWidowmaker also tends to get blamed for losing a match, even though more often than not the player performed well, but their team didn't.
• "Get Down Mr. President!!!"^ExplanationIt's quite common to see instances where a Widowmaker is aiming at a target, only to end up killing a completely different character who just happened to jump right in front of her as she pulls the trigger — giving the impression that the dead character was Taking the Bullet for the intended target.
• Smugmaker.^ExplanationWidowmaker's delightfully smug and haughty facial expressions during the Alive animated short made for fantastic reaction images online, particularly on Image Boards. Popular Overwatch streamer MOONMOON_OW quickly adopted the meme as his stream's signature emoji.
• Widowmaker's House.^ExplanationChateau Guillard is apparently the mansion in which Amelie resides in. When it was revealed as a map for Overwatch, many jokes were made about Widowmaker complaining about people ruining the thousand-dollar rug or Hanzo and Genji feeling sympathetic about random strangers fighting in their homes. Somewhat ascended since one of Widowmaker's killing quotes in Chateau Guillard is "Please leave."
• Hon hon hon. ^ExplanationWidowmaker is occasionally depicted as having the 'stereotypical memetic french laugh'◊.

Support Hero Memes

Ana

• Ana Amari: Team Grandma
  • Which makes Reinhardt the Team Grandpa/Grandpa Rein. Yes, this game now has a team mom and dad^note Mercy and Soldier: 76 and team grandparents.
  • Cookie Rifle! ^ExplanationCombining Ana's status as team grandma with her Healing Shiv gameplay, many people have speculated that her rifle shoots actual cookies and/or other snacks as appropriate.
  • Ana the Obnoxious In Law. ^ExplanationBefore Ana's reveal, a popular pairing was Pharah/Mercy. Now that Pharah's mother has been unveiled, and also being a Support to boot, safe to say that Ana might not quite like her daughter shacking way too much with another Support and either demands explanations from Mercy or quality time with Pharah, sometimes to embarrassing results.
• Who's the father? ^ExplanationIt's become clear with Ana's introduction that she was very close with her old teammates, Reinhardt, Jack Morrison (Soldier: 76), and Gabriel Reyes (Reaper). In her Origins trailer, all of them are standing right next to her in the picture depicting her, Pharah, and the other Overwatch members before its downfall. People took the joke and ran with it… to its natural conclusion. No mention has been made of Pharah's father at all, so now what started as a joke has escalated into a full-on shipping war and rumor mill.
  • And now we know the answer: None of the above. Word of God says his name's Sam, and that he's the guy Pharah was shown eating with in Relections. He's Canadian, First Nations, and a public servant, but not military. That's about all we know.
• FRICK YES, GRANDMA CANDY! ^ExplanationOne comic featuring Gremlin D.Va (see above) features Ana as a doting grandmother who slips Hana some candy and playfully cautions her to not tell her mother, leading to the quote from Gremlin D.Va.
  • Now an Ascended Meme with the Halloween update, as Ana was given a "handing out candy" emote.
• Go the F**k to Sleep!◊^ExplanationAna's Sleep Dart ability renders an opponent helpless, and can interrupt ultimate abilities that could otherwise result in teamwipes such as Genji's Dragonblade or Roadhog's Whole Hog.
• I'm a DPS Ana. ^ExplanationSeveral posts have been made on Reddit about people who play Ana, a healing character, and refuse to heal their teammates or use sleeping darts. "DPS Ana" is often used as a term for anyone who picks a support hero and refuses to do any supporting.

Baptiste

• "The P is silent" ^ExplanationBaptiste's name is pronounced "Bah-teest" in his Haitian-French tongue (but not in the English version). Thus, some purists are quick to correct people that call him "Baptist" or "Bap-teest".
  • Silent Pee
• Demo-Medic ^ExplanationThe passing resemblance that Baptiste bears to the Demoman did not go unnoticed by TF2 players.
• "If I controlled Overwatch, I would want Fortnite and Marques Brownlee" ^ExplanationSome fans like to think of Baptiste as a futuristic Will Smith.
• Everyone is gay for Baptiste ^ExplanationBaptiste is undeniably good looking, and many fans were quick to express their attraction to him within minutes of his release.
  • Babe-tiste
• Thicc Baptiste ^ExplanationSimilar to the THICC REAPER meme, many fans noted that he has quite the hourglass figure, complete with thick thighs and a nice ass.
• *muffled* I NEED HEALING ^ExplanationBaptiste’s Desert Ops skin is decorated with neon green lights, some of which resemble Genji’s helmet. Fans caught on quickly.
• Walking Health Pack^ExplanationBaptiste’s “Combat Medic” skin from his Reunion Challenge event dons him in white armor from head to toe with red and blue accents. Fans have noted the strong resemblance to the health packs found around the maps in-game. There’s also been jokes about Healthpack Baptiste being Genji’s dream guy to tie in with the famous “I Need Healing” meme.

Brigitte

• Torbjörn's hot daughter.^ExplanationBrigitte is considered very attractive, especially compared to her dwarf-like father.
  • "She protecc she attacc but most importantly she thicc"^ExplanationIn Jeff Kaplan's Developer Update video that explained Brigitte and her kit, he describes her as a Support/Tank Hybrid, meaning that she's well-rounded in Defense and Damage. And of course, fans had been clamoring about how attractive she is ever since the "Honor and Glory" video.
• Jetpack Cat ^ExplanationIn her Origin Story, Brigitte is shown practicing her engineering skills on the family cat, outfitting it with a jetpack of her design. Fans immediately found this So Cool, It's Awesome and wanted "Jetpack Cat", who was already a case of What Could Have Been, to become playable.
  • When's Jetpack Cat?
  • So… no Jetpack Cat?
• It's not Bridget! ^ExplanationA very common joke amongst the player-base is trying to pronounce the name "Brigitte" right. A lot of first attempts go with Bridget, which is obviously not correct.
  • Brigeta ^ExplanationSome fans decided to combine the common pronunciation and the actual pronunciation of her name to sound like that of the Prince of All Saiyans.
  • Baguette^ExplanationThe inability for most players to properly pronounce her name has resulted in many just using "Baguette" as a substitution.
• STUNNED ^ExplanationWhen she was first released, Brigitte's Shield Bash ability was an almost unblockable, near-instantly cast ability on a mere 5-second cooldown with a massive hitbox. The general increase in crowd-control abilities came to a head with her introduction, combined with the ease-of-use and obnoxiousness her stun had, and the spread of clips like this, players would often mention being stunned in a way whenever she was being discussed.
• DPS/Tank/Support combo ^ExplanationBrigitte is a support/tank hybrid and had a 155-damage burst combo that allowed her to quickly dispose of anything that isn't a tank. Naturally, players referred to her as a combination of every role.
  • Raid boss ^ExplanationHer tankiness from her Inspire, Barrier Shield, and Rally, meant that taking her down required multiple teaming up on her. The difficulty in killing her, the main tactic of damaging her being "attack in the downtime after baiting out attacks (abilites in this case)", and what was essentially an "Instant Death" Radius, made many people compare her to a raid boss.
• I LOVE TEAMMATE/TEAM MEI/TEEN MEN ^ExplanationHer Ultimate voice line has spawned several Memetic Mutations such as these.
• Forum Brigitte / Forum X ^ExplanationIn an interview, Jeff responded to complaints about Brigitte's abilities with the term "Forum Brigitte", because complaints on the forums were the most common and often hyperbolic. He claimed that, if the complaints were to be believed, "Forum Brigitte" was capable of 1v6ing entire teams by herself. However, this statement only ignited more arguments as people either thought they were on point or that Jeff (and Blizzard) were horribly out of touch with the reality of balance. Since then, the term "Forum X" has been used both to mock complainers and defenders of a particular character. Depending on the context, "Forum Genji" (for example) can make fun of people whining about the character or those who "overlook the broken parts" of his kit.
• IMAX Shield ^ExplanationSeason 4 of Overwatch 2 gave Brigitte a rework for her ultimate, Rally, now making her shield much wider in length and able to stun during its duration, with fans comparing the expanding shield to the width of an IMAX screen.

Illari

• Killari^ExplanationIllari is one of the most DPS-centric Support heroes yet, and upon release immediately established herself as being one of the most lethal. Frequent jokes that she is just a misplaced Damage hero like Sojourn or Soldier: 76 are naturally abound.

Lifeweaver

• Wife Leaver^ExplanationA common Fan Nickname based on flipping his title around. Perhaps non-intuitively, it's very rarely interpreted or used to describe him as being someone who leaves his own wife — rather, he causes wives to leave their spouses (or husbands to leave their wives) because of his incredibly charming looks.

Lúcio

• Look at this team! We're gonna do great! ^ExplanationOne of Lúcio's start of round quotes, often contrasted to a incredibly lobsided/poor team composition, usually with 4+ snipers and no tank/support.
• Here comes DAT BOI!^ExplanationLúcio's Animal Motif is frogs, which has led comparisons to the "here comes dat boi" meme.
• DOROPPU ZA BEETO!!^ExplanationLúcio's ultimate in Japanese.
• Lúcio's Soundwave ability has been affectionately called his "boop" ability by fans due to how it sounds (not to be confused with Sombra's memetic "Boop"). Ascended by the Uprising event, which added Boop as a new voiceline for Lúcio.
• Boostio! ^ExplanationSimilar to "Boop", this has become the unofficial way of referring to a situation where Lucio accidentally gets Nanoboosted by a friendly Ana. Ascended by the Uprising event, which made it so that Lúcio has a rare chance of yelling it after being nanoboosted.
• Worst Achievement — Whenever a highlight features Lúcio Soundwave-ing multiple targets into Bottomless Pits to their deaths, if they're not doing it while wall-riding, commentators will exclaim something along the lines of "Please tell me you already have 'The Floor is Lava!'" ^Explanation"The Floor is Lava" requires the player to kill (not eliminate, kill) 3 enemies while wall-riding in a single life. Booping multiple groups of enemies is ideally what you want to do, but a situation like that is already rare, so if it happens and you're not wall-riding, other players will call you out for wasting a perfect opportunity.
• "Can't stop, won't stop!" ^ExplanationLúcio is one of the best heroes at disputing points, given his mobility and small hitbox. This voice-line is usually referenced when a Lúcio starts annoying the enemy team.
• "♫ Movin' with the payload! ♪"^ExplanationA sing-songy phrase an attack-side Lúcio will sometimes say when sticking to the payload. This phrase is usually associated with the stereotype that Lúcio players are the only players that actually remember to stick to it.
• Lúcio is a living magnet ^ExplanationIn numerous highlights and videos, Lúcio is often the most likely candidate to get instantly taken out by something intended for someone else, usually by getting hooked by a Roadhog or getting charged by a Reinhardt. It's also jokingly assumed that every nanoboost usually finds its way into Lúcio one way or another.
• "Lazy Lúcios Don't Know How to Speed Boost" ^ExplanationLúcio has one of the most basic kits in the game, with his passive heal especially tempting for players who don't like playing support to just leave on as they skate around. Players typically don't use his Speed Boost at all (although, some will at least Speed Boost their team from the spawn), despite it being his most useful ability for team efficiency.
• "Lucio-Oh's." ^ExplanationLúcio's "Cereal" spray◊ features some in-universe Character Celebrity Endorsement in the form of the titular cereal. Many fans are annoyed it's not named the less awkward "Luci-oh's," with more fans taking it to more comedic heights than others. This one ended up ascended as for the Anniversary event, Lucio's new voiceline include promoting Lucio-Oh's. And as of November 2018, has become reality with Kellogg's producing a real Lucio-Oh's.
• "Lu-ci-Oh" ^ExplanationDue to how Lúcio's name is spelled, it draws similarities with the card-game based franchises that people started using his name as a pun that links both franchises.
• Lúcio is sunshine (boy) ^ExplanationLúcio's extremely friendly and sunny disposition makes him often described as 'sunshine (incarnate)'. Occasionally comes with a Flanderization of how he can do no wrong (in addition that you'll find it very difficult to portray him as the wrong side in his conflict with Vishkar) and everyone will be compelled to befriend him because he's just that sunny.
• "Hippity Hoppity Get Off Of My Property" ^ExplanationDue to Lúcio's Animal Motif being a frog and his ability to do some of the most reliable knockback in the game with his alt fire, often sending the enemy team careening into pits, this phrase has cropped up in the titles of several Plays of the Game associated with Lúcio. People are hoping this eventually makes it into the game. Bonus points for this being exactly what happened in his lore, driving out Vishkar from his turf at Rio.
• S-Class Tier ^ExplanationBefore Mercy 2.0 and the power of Resurrect as an ability, it was pretty much a universal agreement amongst the players that when it came to tier power-rankings, Lúcio would be alone at the top due to how important his Support abilities are for the team to succeed; he's the only character able to consistently heal multiple people simultaneously as well as the only character that can speed-boost other characters.
• Freeform Jazz ^ExplanationHis Anniversary Skin replaces his songs with two types of Jazz, a Soft Jazz/Piano Ballad for his Healing Song and a Freeform Jazz Remix with Trumpets notably blaring for his Speed Song. Comparisons were inevitable.
• Ya like jazz? ^Explanation As soon as it was revealed Lúcio's Anniversary skin was called "Jazzy" and his songs were replaced with two types of Jazz music, it was obvious this Bee Movie meme would spread to Overwatch.
• $30 emote ^ExplanationLúcio's legendary "Dance Party" emote was released as part of the OWL All-Access Pass, which cost $30. Due to the low quality of the features the Pass offered, people would say the pass was only bought for the attached cosmetics, and there were player who bought the Pass only for this emote. Because of that, whenever the "Dance Party" emote is seen, people will inevitably say this.
• 🐸 A C C E L E R A N D O 🐸 ^ExplanationDuring Overwatch 2, Lúcio received several new additions to his in-game voiceover, including shouting "Accelerando!" while boosting his speed buff. The line has weirdly caught on among Overwatch streamers as a copypasta, probably due to Lúcio's usual enthusiasm combined with the fact he's mispronouncing it (saying "a-CHELL-uh-RAHN-doh" rather than "ack-SELL-uh-RAHN-doh")
• Ajax^ExplanationA term used to describe whenever Lúcio gets killed while casting Sound Barrier and before it goes off. Named after Alex "Ajax" Jackson, a former pro Overwatch player who during the grand finals of season 3 in the 2018 Overwatch Contenders had infamously miserable luck dealing with this, getting three Sound Barriers stuffed in one map.

Mercy

• HEROES NEVER DIE! ^ExplanationMercy's trademark line when she activates her ultimate that allows her to revive her dead teammates has become quite quotable.
  • ...For a price. ^ExplanationIf she is wearing a Devil or Imp skin, this line is added on.
  • My servants never die! ^ExplanationMercy's line when arriving in the Junkenstein's Revenge Brawl. The Witch Mercy skin gained this line around the Sombra patch.
  • Mercy vs Warwick^ExplanationMercy popularized the phrase HEROES NEVER DIE. Meanwhile, at League of Legends, Warwick's update had him say HEROES ALWAYS DIE. Needless to say, that phrase from Warwick is often plastered together with Mercy's phrase, and she's very often unamused.
• Mercy: Team Mom ^ExplanationMore often than not, playing Mercy has been compared to babysitting very Too Dumb to Live children, often having to deal with teammates who die very quickly when she's not around. Fans have taken this interpretation to make Mercy out to be◊ one salty support, often mirroring the feelings of her players.
• Drunk Mercy ^ExplanationGiven how Mercy is one of the nicest characters in the game, some fans like to think that she can be quite grumpy if she ever gets drunk. And when drunk, Mercy either complains about how no one appreciates her work as a support character (see directly above) and/or becomes wildly flirtatious, usually towards whomever the fan ships her with. You can also expect some depictions of her singing karaoke.
• Mercy is an evil witch/vampire/immortal. ^ExplanationA comment from Mei and Ana's Overwatch photo show that Mercy has barely aged in two decades. Combined with her implied involvement in what is agreed to be Reaper's botched resurrection, some fans have decided that Mercy's not the angel she appears to be. Whether she's evil or not is still on the board, but one of the senior game designers, Michael Chu, went out of his way to confirm that Mercy does indeed age.
• Her pistol does a surprising amount of damage! ^ExplainationIt's common for many Mercy players to notice the amount of damage their blaster puts out and to point this fact out, as often as possible. Eventually, it became a mocking line towards Mercy players. It's true, though, as the Caduceus Blaster puts out 100 damage a second. It's not recommended that Mercy gets used entirely for that reason: at the end of the day, she's way too squishy for it to be used as anything other than a last resort, especially with her being such a target.
  • Pea Shooter ^ExplanationA common Fan Nickname toward's Mercy's pistol, which shoots out tiny pea-sized pellets.
• NO MERCY RUN/HARMACIST ^ExplainationVideos of Mercy pulling off incredibly aggressive killstreaks are popular due to the humorous incongruity with her normal playstyle.
  • Battle Mercy ^ExplanationA derogatory term for Mercy players who spend way too much time either shooting things with her pistol or damage buffing their favorite hero and aren't paying attention to teammates that are low on health.
• Mercy main, btw. ^ExplainationA phrase used to mock stereotypical Mercy players' Never My Fault attitude, blaming the team for not protecting them and not acknowledging their mistakes.
• "Blizzard Hates Mercy" ^ExplanationA patch revealed to be in the works in October 2016 explained that there would be a universal 25% Ultimate build nerf applied to all characters. Mercy players all made a collective groan. Mercy is the character in the game most dependent on her Ultimate, meaning that a 25% increase would theoretically affect her worse than any other character. This led to Mercy players raging at Blizzard for their beloved character being further nerfed after she had already become a low-tier scrappy. With the fact that Zarya's ultimate was buffed to disable movement abilities of trapped targets (stopping, among other things, a Mercy from escaping from Zarya's Graviton Surge to a nearby ally), the sentiment has resurfaced.
• "Dear Mercy, I NEED HEALING." ^ExplanationDuring Reflections, Genji writes a letter that is read by Mercy. The content of the letter is unknown, but implied to strengthen the Gency ship. However, fans ran wild with interpreting the content, commonly joking that Genji was actually complaining at Mercy for not healing him, or other things. It also goes in tandem with the similar meme with Genji, considering that Genji's panel is at the top-left corner while Mercy's is at the bottom-right, and Genji was at the Shambali Monastery, Nepal, while Mercy was in a warzone at an unknown location.
• Mercy the Cosplayer ^ExplanationThe popularity of Mercy's skins has some fans imagining her as a cosplayer who enjoys wearing increasingly elaborate costumes.
• Find the enemy Mercy! (even though there isn't one) ^ExplanationPeople sometimes warn their teammates about an enemy Mercy waiting for an opportunity to resurrect when the enemy team doesn't have one, as a way of scaring their team.
• No Mercy, No Win ^ExplanationAfter Mercy's 2.0 rework, she became seen as a must-pick character at virtually all levels of play. During the 2017 Overwatch League, teams that chose not to run a Mercy in any game were considered "throwing" (losing on purpose) by the stream chat and forum-goers. And the results usually spoke for themselves.
• "The rework was a success" ^ExplanationAfter a rework that moved her Resurrect ability from her Ultimate to a regular ability with a long cooldown, Mercy became a massive Game-Breaker and required a huge number of balance changes over the course of the next two years (currently 14 nerfs from where she started, more than any other character in the game has ever received). The last nerf — reducing her healing from 60 to 50 per second — resulted in Mercy nose-diving into having the worst winrate of any support (or almost all heroes for that matter) and vanishing almost entirely from higher ranks. Players unhappy with her redesign or current state in the meta have taken to mocking Blizzard's insistence that the rework put her in a healthier state.
• Just click the head LOOOOOOL 4Head ^ExplanationAround the time Mercy got her nerfs at the end of January 2018, a video was made whose point could be summarized as "Mercy did not need nerfs and pros just needed to figure out how to counter her". The video in question had very poor arguments which could be easily debunked by people who had played the game enough or at a competitive level. Eventually, it made its way to xQc, who proceeded to point out all the flaws in the uploader's argument, one of which was that the counter to Mercy was to "click on her head", where he responded with this, spawning the meme in question. This meme is jokingly used in response to someone having trouble dealing with a hero or game mechanic.
  • Just [do X action] LOOOOOOL 4Head^ExplanationThe meme eventually made its way outside the realm of countering heroes, and later, the Overwatch fanbase, to jokingly trivialize any difficult and/or complex task.
• "I've seen that one before..."^ExplanationMercy's "Dr. Ziegler" skin bears a strong resemblance to a certain fan-made skin that had been used by the community for almost a year by that point... for a porn animation. Cue jokes about Blizzard stealing ideas from porn artists.
• Bring Back Pink Mercy ^ExplanationThe widely-beloved Pink Mercy skin was only temporarily available during Blizzard's tie-in campaign with the Breast Cancer Research Foundation in 2018, and has yet to return to availability. Not a day goes by without fans begging for its return; the demand is almost always found in fancam replies to any tweets from official Overwatch Twitter accounts, no matter how irrelevant to the post itself.
• Mercy Offers a Hand/"We are compassion."^ExplanationA scene from a trailer where Mercy offers to rescue a girl stuck in rubble, which became a meme representing her as someone or something saving someone else, although it is sometimes replaced with an image of Demoman pointing a gun◊ if it isn't actual help.

Moira

• Weeaboo Moira. ^ExplanationMoira's Bird Run, Kamehame Hadoken, Flash Step, Anime Hair (resembles Hisoka), shouting something that sounds like "Omae wa mou shindeiru", and having sprays that showed her doing Gendo pose (Plotting), Picard's facepalm (Facepalm), Tetsuo's arm mutation sequence (Self-experiment), and even more Dragon Ball Z references (Power Level) made fans suspect her of being a closet otaku. Her flowy costumes, especially the "Minister/Oasis" skin, also resembles that of a futristic Shinto Priest. Some even jokingly suggested that her reason for getting into genetics was out of a desire to make anime real, and her grudge against Mercy is due to her discovering Moira's closet hobby.
• Evil Mercy. ^ExplanationNot only is Moira the evil healer for Talon, but her outfit is a derivative of Mercy's Valkyrie suit. It's also confirmed that she was the one who mutated Gabriel into Reaper, something most fans theorized was Mercy's doing.
  • Mercy's Archenemy. ^ExplanationFans decided that due to their very similar natures, fulfilling the same role on teams, and Moira "stealing" the credit for Reaper's birth, Mercy and Moira absolutely hate each other. Various comics, shorts, and other fan content have been created to demonstrate that, despite Mercy's Team Mom and All-Loving Hero reputation, the mutual hate between them runs even deeper than Soldier/Reaper, Tracer/Widowmaker, or Winston/Doomfist. One pre-start dialog you'll hear when Mercy and Moira are on the same team is Mercy snarling at Moira, "Describing your work as 'unethical' would be a kindness.", to which Moira coolly retorts, "But the true question is whether or not you can deny my discoveries. No, I didn't think so." And then, of course, there are those who ship them. Which was also encouraged by voice lines added in the Echo patch which has Moira offer Mercy a place in Oasis, which Mercy refuses.
• Piss Beam. ^ExplanationWhen Moira was revealed at Blizzcon 2017, many fans realized that when she healed her teammates, it looked like she was spraying them with a certain… fluid.
• Straight out of Paladins/Battleborn. ^ExplanationComparisons between Overwatch and Paladins (and before, Battleborn) were insanely common. Moira's pointy, leaner aesthetic had players note she resembled Paladin's leaner aesthetics (as well as Seris' orb-esque projectiles) and Battleborn's pointy, dark design for the Jennerit-aligned females.
• David Bowie. ^ExplainationHer "Glam" skin made her resemble David Bowie. One of her sprays is an expy of Bowie's pose from Labyrinth.
• Kamehameha Beam. ^ExplanationIt didn't take long for players to point out that Moira's ultimate is basically her performing the Kamehameha from the Dragon Ball franchise.
• Long range beam sniper Symmetra. ^ExplanationOne of the Dinoflask production made Jeff say that they've extended the distance of Symmetra's beam, at which it locks on and makes her a long range beam sniper. With the change on Symmetra, Moira's is the only one who has a lock-on primary attack, and does actually have a very long-range beam as her ultimate.
• Moira is a goth. ^ExplainationHer dance emote that was released has been commented that it looks exactly like this dance, making jokes that Moira is into the goth and industrial subculture.

Zenyatta

• Calling his orbs "balls".
• Zoomyatta/Speedy Zendalez/ZenGottaGoFast ^ExplanationZenyatta received a buff to his Ultimate that makes him move much faster during that state. In conjunction with Ana's Nano Boost (before the nerf) or Lúcio's Speed Boost, this allows him to zip to any given location in the span of about 1 or 2 seconds. The Sonic comparisons have already been made.
• EMBRACE TRANQUILITY, MOTHERFUCKER!^ExplanationDue to his high damage capability for a Support character as well as the seeming Gameplay and Story Segregation that comes from being a peaceful monk in an online FPS, fans have taken to interpreting his personality as being far more aggressive and forceful despite still spreading a message of peace and acceptance. Taken even further after that patch that buffed his shields and altered his damage output and Orb abilities. You can also exchange this with his ultimate, like "EXPERIENCE TRANQUILITY, MOTHERFUCKER!"
  • Comparisons to this clip of Futurama are also common.
• Zenyatta wins all snowball fights.^ExplanationShortly before the winter event, people started joking that Zenyatta would be a master at snowball fights due to his playstyle being built around throwing balls at people and his tendency to become Multi-Armed and Dangerous. Reinforced by his appearance in the Reflections comic, which indeed showed him holding snowballs in each of his Transcendence arms.
• Died to Widow ^ExplanationBefore Zenyatta got his health buffed, Widowmaker had the power to one-shot Zenyatta, even if it was just a body-shot. As a result, it was quite common in the killfeed to see a Widowmaker sniping a Zenyatta.
• Transcendence Hold ^ExplanationA tactic commonly employed by low-skill Zenyatta players wherein they activate Transcendence (which makes Zenyatta invincible and heals all allies within its radius for a whopping 300 health/second) when they are by themselves in order to stall a point or hold the cart. This is widely considered the absolute worst use of an extremely powerful Ultimate and should only be used if it's the absolute last option to prevent a loss. And since Zenyatta can't attack while using the Ult, then the enemy team can just get into position to instantly kill him when it ends. He can also get charged out of the way/off a cliff by Reinhardt or booped off the map by Lucio/Pharah, since it doesn't make him immune to knockback.

Miscellaneous

Esports-related memes

General

• "LUL NA Ult" ^ExplanationIn competitive tournaments, North American (NA) Overwatch players are not seen to be as strong as European (EU) players. One of the commonly-believed reasons is bad Ultimate usage, which reduces their usefulness in comparison. As such, "NA Ult" is thrown around as an insult toward any player who uses a badly-timed, poorly-aimed, or otherwise ineffective Ultimate.
  • "ArHan LUL" ^ExplanationAn offshoot of the above meme, used to refer to DPS player Arhan of the Houston Outlaws, who was renowned for having a strong Genji showing in the Overwatch World Cup and for his subsequently infamous slump where he would often waste Dragonblades in a losing fight or in situations where there were no enemies. Thus, his name is often thrown in alongside "NA Ult" whenever a Genji player uses a badly-timed or otherwise ineffective Dragonblade.
  • "EscA LUL" ^ExplanationAnother offshoot of the above meme, used to refer to ex-Lunatic Hai DPS player EscA, who became known for questionable Pulse Bomb usage, rarely getting any kills in team fights. His name is often thrown in alongside "NA Ult" whenever a Tracer player uses a badly-timed or otherwise ineffective Pulse Bomb, though the standards are higher compared to both the above two memes and the J LUL K E meme below, as Pulse Bomb is hard to stick.
• C9 LUL ^ExplanationA case of Never Live It Down for pro team Cloud 9. What they did was forget to capture the objective three times, which cost them the game. The first time, they forgot to retake the objective after winning the teamfight, the second time, C9 member Mendo got off the point at a crucial time, while the third time they didn't assign someone to stay on the objective because they were too occupied with avoiding D.Va's Self Destruct. "C9" is thrown around when a team forgets to capture/contest the objective during crucial moments.
  • Z9 LUL ^ExplanationA mutation of the C9 meme which can be used to describe any situation, created from the misuse of the original C9 meme.
  • It's reached the point where often Twitch chats spam "C9 LUL" any time a team simply loses under close or normal circumstances, with varying levels of sincerity. That's right, using a meme improperly has itself become a meme.
• I used to [X], but now I [Y] ^ExplanationOne of the most common chants seen within chat during tournaments, and usually combined with the BlessRNG emote. It was created to praise the Cloud 9 player Gods ('I used to be an atheist, but now I believe in Gods'), but countless variations of the formula are used to cheer on and occasionally make fun of players.
• Plat Chat^ExplanationA common insult of Twitch chat during Overwatch E-Sports matches, particularly with Overwach League, when the chat makes fun or insults the players for supposed mistakes, but not fully understanding high-level play, such as not understanding what a "tactical suicide" is.

Tournament-specific

• The D.Va Ditch^Explanation During the Overwatch 2017 World Cup group stages, D.Va's mech being destroyed would almost always have her run to the zero-gravity area on Horizon Lunar Colony and throw herself off the cliff to her death. Jokes began circulating over the massive pile of D.Va corpses that were steadily stacking up on the moon's surface.
• "Saebyeolbe had Harmony Orb"^ExplanationTeam USA's Tracer player, sinatraa, was shut down quite frequently by Team South Korea's own Tracer player, Saebyeolbe. During one of the former's personal streams, he said that he was shut down because Saebeyolbe had Harmony Orb, and he didn't. This, combined with sinatra's reputation of being very cocky and rather egotistical at the time, made this a source of mockery for him.
• SPEC MOOWE^ExplanationIn the 2018 Overwatch World Cup Incheon qualifier, Team Hong Kong, despite their very weak performance, had a talented player named Moowe. Moowe got several impressive kills as Widowmaker, but the camera was very rarely on him. The meme came from Twitch streamer and Dallas Fuel coach Jayne, who asked his chat to spam "SPEC MOOWE" (Spec = Spectate) with the BabyRage emote in the PlayOverwatch chat.
• The Aero Copypasta:^ExplanationIn the 2018 World Cup, Team USA became a source of mockery after they heavily hyped up their potential semi-final match against South Korea, before dropping out 3-1 in the quarter-finals after an upset loss to Team UK. This quote made by the Team USA coach Aero became an instant copypasta.
  No offense to those that are there, but I think the state of EU is a perfect example of lacking coaching/strategy preparation.
  Goats and tanks are beatable, but it takes good understanding and most importantly, discipline. I think EU is an incredibly undisciplined region. Most of the coaches in EU are newer. They'll catch up, but they need time.

Overwatch League

• Florida Mayhem: The Meme Team^ExplanationFlorida Mayhem has many meme-worthy things about them, such as their uniforms and their on-stage walkouts.
  • McDonald's uniforms^ExplanationEach hero got uniform recolors for all the teams in Overwatch League, with the uniforms for Shanghai Dragons◊ and especially Florida Mayhem◊ getting attention due to their prominent red and yellow colors, which had many fans associating with McDonalds.
  • TviQ the Bus Driver^ExplanationDue to the Mayhem lacking in funds compared to other teams in the league, several cost-cutting measures had to be put in place. This included the fact that TviQ, a DPS player for the Mayhem, was in charge of driving the team bus to and from the arena for every match so that the team didn't have to allocate more funds to pay a full-time bus driver. Once word got out of this practice, it very quickly became a Never Live It Down moment for the Mayhem, often seen as a microcosm of fan complaints about the team's poor play and questionable management decisions during its inaugural season. The meme also saw a resurgence when TviQ was one of the only surviving members of the inaugural roster after a massive offseason overhaul, leading to jokes that the team needed to keep him around since they still didn't get a bus driver.
• Although Florida Mayhem had the "Meme Team" title for a while, Philadelphia Fusion became a Fountain of Memes by the end of the inaugural season.
  • This is how we do it in Philly^ExplanationThe Fusion's now-deleted roster reveal video of the same name rapidly became Bile Fascination for its terrible acting and green-screen effects, and the titular quote (said by Carpe of all people) became the go-to phrase to mock the team. In fact, even the desk talent and casters made a parody of it. After the league started proper and the team outpaced expectations, the same quote also became a Badass Boast to celebrate unorthodox strategies and victories.
  • The Meme Specialist^ExplanationAnother one from the Fusion, who earned a lot of mockery for hiring a 'Meme Specialist' before the league started. However, given that they are often considered to have one of the best social media presences of all the teams, the joke is often used in a more positive light today, as people realised they were probably on to something.
  • Carpe is a fish^ExplanationCarpe is often the butt of jokes stemming from his name. Frequently recurring ones include wondering how a fish could play Overwatch, claiming that Carpe is at a disadvantage on any map above sea level, and blaming any errors by his team on the financial drain that is Carpe's aquarium. Carpe himself has many fish-related emotes on his personal Twitch channel, and the team occasionally makes fish jokes inolving him.
  • Poko-bomb^ExplanationPoko, an Off-Tank player for the team, had exceptional stats with D.Va's Self-Destruct, an ultimate that is very easy to avoid. He would very frequently get multikills with it, to the point where he had 41 kills in ''only 3 matches''. Multikills with it became synonymous with Poko, and were eventually called "Poko-bombs".
  • Merciless neptuNo^ExplanationneptuNo is the Fusion's main support player, and he became known for his very aggressive Mercy plays. He would use her rather weak weapon, the Caduceus Blaster, quite often in matches, and would usually get multikills with it, as seen here, here, and here. The production team even showed his "Battle Mercy" stats in one of the streams, and they are quite impressive◊, and by the end of the season, he had the most kills as Mercy out of all the Mercy players in the league.
  • MVP Chef Heidi^ExplanationFusion hired a chef by the name of Heidi Marsh early into the inaugural season. The exposure she got, plus her high quality cooking being posted on social media, led to people saying her food played a huge part in the Fusion's performance being so good.
  • #pdomjnate^ExplanationThe hashtag used by the Fusion until the inaugural playoffs due to a spelling error became a small source of mockery for the team.
  • The Fusion treehouse.^ExplanationPhiladelphia Fusion's team house in LA has a treehouse, and Sideshow, one of the League's analysts, stayed in there for a week. The updates he would post on social media about his life in the treehouse, as well as trying to enter the team house itself (which he wasn't allowed to do), led to their treehouse reaching meme-status.
  • Snillo's walkout game^ExplanationAt one point, the Philadelphia Fusion got in on the In-N-Out meme mentioned below with a video, also linked below. In the video, Fusion President Tucker tells snillo to improve his walkout game. In one of their next matches, he did just that, and it became known as the best walkout until LA Valiant topped it in stage 4. This meme was a fine example of Philadelphia Fusion's antics.
  • CAN'T KILLO THE SNILLO^ExplanationA very catchy phrase used when snillo displays an incredible performance, helped by his high stats each game where he plays.
• The NYXL, as the league's top team, is bound to get some running jokes:
  • Universal Choking Sign^ExplanationThe NYXL, despite being dominant during group stages, have a reputation for falling short during crucial playoffs. This trend had its origins in the team's predecessor, LW Blue, who had a similar reputation for dominating stages and sinking during the playoffs. This reputation came back in full force during the Season 1 Playoffs in which they suffered an upset loss to the Fusion, and again during Season 2's Stage 1 Playoffs, in which they lost to the Seoul Dynasty for the first time during the regular season, which has lead many to conclude that the team is simply cursed. The "Universal Choking Sign" claim comes from Monte during an episode of Watchpoint.
  • Sandbagging^ExplanationThe term refers to teams that intentionally play below their limit, either to hide strategies during less competitive games, or because they don't believe they need to play at their best to beat their opponent. The NYXL are often suspected of doing this in certain matches, and their aforementioned reputation for choking when it matters makes it a very common joke to use against the team.
• Sneaky SoOn^ExplanationSoOn, a DPS player for the Los Angeles Valiant who mains Tracer, has managed multiple times to sneak in and capture the point while the enemy team was distracted, most notably in Valiant’s game versus that Dallas Fuel, in which the Fuel won the team fight, took up good defensive positions, and then didn’t look at the payload and SoOn was able to sneak it through the checkpoint.
• Big Boss Pine^ExplanationPine, a player for New York Excelsior, quickly gained a reputation for being nigh-unbeatable, especially on control maps, due to his stellar play on Cassidy and Widowmaker. This reputation quickly reached memetic status, helped by the casters referring to him as “a living highlight reel” and “big boss Pine.”
• JJonak is a support in the sense that you don’t need healing if all your enemies are dead^ExplanationJJonak, a Zenyatta main who plays for New York Excelsior, is known for his incredibly, hilariously violent (and deadly) approach to playing the character, who is supposed to be a peaceful monk. He frequently outdamages both of the dedicated DPS on his team, leading to jokes about how he would have won the Omnic crisis or stopped the assassination of Mondatta.
  • "Support is not someone who heals allies. Those who find and destroy the source of harm to your allies, that is the true support." ^Explanation A meme that basically means the same as the above sentence, this phrase is initially created as a parody motivational poster quote describing Kharazim from Heroes of the Storm, but is not adopted to describe Zenyatta as a whole, in particular Jjonak.
  • The JJonak Nerf ^Explanation Following up on the above, a PTR patch in April 2018 included a Nerf to Zenyatta's alternate fire mode, slowing the individual projectiles' rate of fire down, and making it harder to score kills at longer ranges. Within moments of this nerf being revealed, The reaction from many on the official forum was to jokingly suggest that this nerf is entirely due to JJonak being too lethal.
• Profit and Flipping the Bird^ExplanationLondon Spitfire's Profit gained infamy for an incident in which he flipped off his facecam during a soundcheck unaware that it was being broadcast, and received a $1,000 fine for it. Very few people let it go.
• Jacob "JAKE" Lyon, player/coach of the Houston Outlaws and former League caster, is an enormous Fountain of Memes within the pro scene.
  • J LUL K E^ExplanationYet another offshoot of the LUL NA Ult meme above. Before OWL, JAKE is known for gaining controversy because he was throwing several games in competitive. JAKE is also well known for his large amount of playtime on Junkrat. After many fellow players hyped him up as one of the best DPS players in the league, any moment of underperformance resulted in that quote being spammed. Very quickly it became a response to any Junkrat pick regardless of player, which given that the League started in a Junkrat-friendly meta was a lot. Later on, it became pretty much mandatory for the Twitch chat to spam J LUL K E regardless if JAKE or Outlaws if playing, to the point that it's almost guaranteed that the spam-tracker in r/CompetitiveOverwatch's post-game threads will feature J LUL K E as one of the top spams.
  • Jakerat^ExplanationAnother response to a Junkrat pick, regardless of whether or not it's JAKE. Is also used to say JAKE is one with that rat because controversies aside, most people agreed that JAKE is one of the best, if not the best Junkrat player in OWL so far. The player in question has embraced the meme entirely, as shown when he was asked what his favorite map is. He responded with Junkertown, the reason being "it's [his] ancestral homeland."
  • For the J LUL K E and Jakerat memes, this became acknowledged by the League (JAKE himself is aware of this for quite a while) on a video played during New York Excelsior's match against Houston Outlaws in stage 2 of season 1. On that video, Saebyeolbe and Pine tells the fans that whenever JAKE comes out, spam the chat with J LUL K E. The end of that video even have this pic◊ appearing.
  • Jake's Tracer skills.^ExplanationIn stage 2 of season 1, because the Mercy nerfs are only included to the League starting from that stage, there's a considerable meta change that used to consist of a Mercy-reliant composition into a Dive composition. One key component of Dive comp is the need to have a good Tracer player. Outlaws arguably got hit the hardest by this, as not only they rely a lot on the Mercy comps in stage 1, they also didn't have a dedicated Tracer player in their squad. This forces Outlaws' DPS player to practice using Tracer, and their lack of experience with Tracer shows. Especially for JAKE, since he's often being chosen as Outlaws' Tracer player. It didn't help that JAKE had an infamous tendency to kill himself with the Pulse Bomb. Thus, memes of Jake's tracer skills starts to pop up. To JAKE's credit, he did acknowledged that he's one of the weakest Tracer players in the League.
  • Jake is mad because he is bad.^ExplanationDuring one of xQc's stream, xQc had someone named Bry in the same team as him. Bry then started screaming in the team chat that JAKE is mad because he is bad multiple times. This would led to copy-pasta memes of what Bry said, usually used in the same way as the J LUL K E meme.
  • It's 4 am. Jake is in my house. He has a Rip-Tire.^ExplanationLater on in the same xQc stream, xQc found Bry in the same team again. This time, Bry started screaming in the team chat that JAKE is in his house and he has a knife before suddenly leaving the match. This would led to copy-pasta memes of JAKE being in someone's house, with the knife sometimes being accompanied with Rip-Tire because of JAKE's (in)famous reputation as a Junkrat main, and Bry mentioning a Rip-Tire in a subsequent encounter. It didn't help that JAKE himself got involved with this tweet, which is also where the "It's 4 am" bit was first added to the meme. Overwatch League eventually acknowledge it with this bit◊ during Outlaws' game against LA Gladiators in stage 2 of season 1.
• X GivePLZ Take GivePLZ My GivePLZ Y^ExplanationA common way for people to support a team or player is by typing this in the chat, with X usually being the team/player name and Y is usually related towards whoever X is. Commonly used towards Shanghai Dragons, Carpe, and Florida Mayhem: Dragons' variation of this, "Dragons Take My Energy", is mostly used as a pity and supportive sign from the fans due to their infamous ongoing loss streak, Carpe's variation of this is "Carpe Take My Water" due to the fish jokes mentioned above, while Florida's variation uses "McDonald's Take My Order" due to their color palette resembles the colors McDonald's used as well as their Meme Team status among the fans.
• PLEASE KILL COOLMATT PLEASE!!!^ExplanationDuring week 5, day 1 events of Stage 1, Overwatch League plays a video about Dallas Fuel's problems with communication due to having team members from multiple countries. At one point in that video, Effect can be seen screaming that particular line in a very desperate tone, seemingly pissed off that his team is unable to kill coolmatt from Houston Outlaws. Since then, it led to jokes about Effect's desire to finally be able to kill coolmatt, such as anyone able to kill coolmatt will bring justice to Effect or Effect rewarding bounties for anyone able to kill coolmatt. Alternatively, some use this meme by keeping the line but replacing "coolmatt" with whatever the meme creator wants.
• Paid Actors^Explanation''Counter Strike: Global Offensive commentator Sadokist has been critical of the League, and at one point infamously accused the Blizzard Arena crowd of being paid actors. 'Paid Actors', or Paid Anything for that matter has become a common joke to explain anybody showing enthusiasm at the league. Other variations include "Paid Cosplayers" when two girls dressed as "LA Gladiator: 76" and the "Valiant Valkyrie" were given camera time, and "Paid Announcers/Commentators" For the Lulz. "Paid Musicians" popped up when Philadelphia Fusion player Snillo arrived to the Stage 3 match against the Boston Uprising by following behind a marching band.
• "Let (Character) do (Ability)"^ExplanationFan-made signs from the audience end up sneaking into the back of the commentators booth during halftime and post-game analysis. The signs often catch the attention of both the commentators and Blizzard themselves. Such famous suggestions like "Let Torbjorn Wallrun", "Let Zenyatta Walk", and "Let Mercy Use Two Guns!" were met in response with Blizzard's animators showing Torbjorn modded with Genji's animation kit, Zenyatta actually walking while remaining fixed in his default meditation stance, and Mercy modded with Reaper's animation kit so she fired dual shotguns. This has since been met with more outlandish suggestions like "Let Roadhog Self-Destruct".
• Fissure, the most handsome, the best main tank, greatest in the world. Who is better than Fissure? Nobody^ExplanationFissure, back when he plays for London Spitfire, posted this◊ in Spitfire's Discord channel. Fans caught on to this and this particular line has since becoming the standard copy-pasta meme for Fissure, usually used in a Badass Boast manner.
• LA Valiant and In N' Out Burger^ExplanationMidway during Stage 2 of season 1, Los Angeles Valiant posted this video entitled Last Chance. In that video, Noah Whinston, the owner of LAV, took Agilities to an In N' Out parking lot to tell him he had one and only one shot to play again in the main team. This video was met with a rather huge backlash from the fans. Fans have since used In N' Out as a mockery meme towards their management. It's also used as a term towards players that are getting benched/kicked/have its status threatened. Other OWL teams also joined the fun at mocking LAV for it, such as this parody video made by Philadelphia Fusion.
• JJonakstrong/Swole Photoshops of OWL Players^ExplanationAs mentioned above, JJonak from NYXL is known for being ridiculously deadly with Zenyatta. Before NYXL's game against Dallas Fuel in Stage 2 of Season 1, one fan decides to edit JJonak's face and NYXL's logo into this picture of Bradley Martyn. This particular edit, known as swoleNak/JJonakstrong, quickly gained popularity by the fans; but it wasn't until Fissure posted his own variation of the meme on his Twitter account that it escalated into many variations, always involving replacing JJonak's face and the team logo (if it's not an NYXL player) of the original edit and often times changing the shirt color into whatever team color that the player used in the photo plays with, such as JJonak's teammates Pine◊ and Libero, Ado and Geguri from SHD, Kariv from LAV, and Ryujehong from Seoul◊.
• aKm time unit^ExplanationIn Dallas Fuel's match against San Francisco Shock in stage 3 of Season 1 on map 1 (Temple of Anubis), Fuel player Dylan "aKm" Bignet who played Genji in that round somehow managed to charge a single Dragonblade in 3 minutes 44 seconds. That means he somehow managed to deal less than 400 damage trying to charge his Dragonblade. Fans mocked him pretty hard as a result of this. In addition, people in Reddit then creates the aKm time unit, with 1 aKm equals to 3 minutes 44 seconds in real time, in which they had a field day with using the aKm time unit as a time measurement the following day in both the r/competitiveoverwatch's match thread and a thread about someone in Inven who made an aKm time unit GIF.
• JEFF JEFF JEFF JEFF^ExplanationA track that plays frequently during breaks is "Sonhos Ômnicos". At around 1:07 of the track, the music sounds like a robotic voice saying "JEFF" over and over, and people tend to spam "JEFF JEFF JEFF JEFF" in the chat when the soundtrack plays and reaches that part, occasionally accompanied by the MrDestructoid Twitch emote.
• JEFFPACITO^Explanation Like the above "JEFF JEFF JEFF JEFF" meme, one of the songs played during intermission heavily features a spanish guitar. Fans immediately latched onto the meme pertaining to the Despacito song and gave it the Overwatch spin.
• Dream was the mistake, Mistakes was the dream!^ExplanationAfter Boston Uprising's star DPS player Johnathan "DreamKazper" Sanchez had been kicked out of the team following sexual misconduct allegations, people were expecting them to fall down the ranks, because there wasn't much faith in his replacement, Mistakes, partly due to him seeing barely any playtime. That turned out not to be the case; Mistakes was able to not only fill the large shoes left behind (with Widowmaker) but also excelled on vital heroes DreamKazper not good at such as Sombra, and Boston Uprising ranked even higher in the standings for that stage (Season 1 Stage 3), with Boston eventually finishing stage 3 undefeated. Fans like to say this after Boston Uprising prove themselves, or when Mistakes makes big plays.
• Disney!^ExplanationThe first day of the season 1 playoffs was also the day that announced that OWL would be broadcast on ABC and ESPN. After the first round of the London-LA finished off, twitch streamers were presented a commercial spelling out very specifically how the the game's map modes work and function in the game. The advert was clearly designed to introduce Overwatch to outside players, and it was obvious to the chat that Disney paid to have this made.
• DJ KHALED!^ExplanationThe 2nd day of Overwatch Finals started off with DJ Khaled "performing" live to the audience. The Twitch chat all agreed this was one of the most cringe-inducing performances ever. Random shots of the audience showed people staring at their phones in boredom. Khaled himself barely did anything more than scream his own name while he played the music that he produced but barely had any lyrical involvement with before moving to other musicians such as DMX and Bruno Mars. The Twitch chat was begging for it to "STAAAAAHP!"
• As a representative of the Toronto OWL franchise...^ExplanationDuring the first off-season of the Overwatch League, there was a person going around claiming to be from the then-unnamed Toronto OWL franchise. Once the official announcement was made by the actual Toronto OWL representatives, people on social media parodied it on threads talking about any rumors/announcements of the franchise.
• GIFT PASS PLZ.^ExplanationSeason 2 of Overwatch League introduced the All-Access Pass, which has the long-awaited function that allows fans to spectate their favorite player. Unfortunately, it required a Premium Twitch account, which not only cost money but there are some countries where Premium Twich accounts are not given to the audience. This has led to many audience members begging for the All-Access Pass in Twitch Chat. Some seriously, some parodied those audience.
• I WAS HERE^ExplanationThe hype for Shanghai Dragons breaking their season-long losing streak had been long-anticipated, and when it finally happened in early season 2 against Boston Uprising, the live chat went nuts with celebratory spamming of "I WAS HERE". The line now pops up in general whenever a team wins against all expected odds, especially under very thorough circumstances.
• "Overwatch League is Anime"^ExplanationAn in-joke based on an (admittedly partially sardonic) comment by former caster Montecristo in late 2018 on how for various reasons, he believed "Overwatch League is not an anime". This provoked widespread parodies adapting the Overwatch League in an anime style (which Monte himself would later take part in).
  • "There are no redemption arcs."^ExplanationOne additional piece of longevity was the aforementioned remark in Monte's tweet. The rest of the 2019 season ended up pulling no shortage of surprising comebacks — Shanghai Dragons' ascension all the way up to Stage 3 dominance, Washington Justice going from the worst-ranking team in the league to becoming impressively dominant in Stage 4, and San Francisco Shock being kicked to loser's bracket from a C9 during the Season Playoffs, then clawing back up to win the whole thing, just to name a few — and fans have long joked about them being proof that disproves Monte's sentiment.
• ​🔶CRUNCH TIME🔶^ExplanationOn the first day of season 3, during the league's transition from Twitch to Youtube with different production crew, some of the presentation went haywire, most infamously with the banner for the Cheez-It-sponsored "Crunch Time" segment appearing over the entire screen during the middle of a live match. Fans were left both annoyed and amused, and it's become regular to spam the line during breaks or during the actual Crunch Time.
• NO CHIPSA = NO WIN ^ExplanationPhilip "ChipSa" Graham was picked up by the Philadelphia Fusion in early 2020, which came with a lot of hype due to his popularity as a Doomfist one-trick streamer, but he infamously received almost zero playtime on the big stage, partially due to the rest of the roster being very stacked anyway (his only action was a match in May 2020 against the Vancouver Titans, whose outcome was already near-unanimously decided upon before it even began). Due to his following, virtually any time the Fusion shows weakness, fans blame it on ChipSa's absence, jokingly or otherwise.
• VIOL2NCE ^Explanation Minki "Viol2t" Park is already known as an excellent flex support, but during his debut set in 2021 for the San Francisco Shock, he was subbed into the damage role, a choice whose initial concerns were immediately alleviated as he turned out to be an utterly terrifying McCree. It's led to further jokes that based on the notoriously stacked Shock roster, having a support player be on par with the team's actual DPS players is one hell of a way to reestablish dominance.
• Welcome to the Chengdu Zone^ExplanationThe Chengdu Hunters are a fan favorite for being one of the most off-the-wall and experimental teams in the league, always eager to pull out wildly unexpected strategies and team comps, but they're also infamous for being just as wildly inconsistent in terms of their winrate. The mythologized "Chengdu Zone" — first coined during season 2 (their debut season) when the Hunters faced the then-enormously-dominant Titans in Stage 1 and were suddenly matching the Titans blow for blow in GOATS — is the domain where the teams are seemingly random, neither wins nor losses are guaranteed, and nothing makes sense.
• Breadsticks^ExplanationFollowing the Vancouver Titans' tumultuous loss of its acclaimed roster in the early 2020 season, the team had since become the league's resident butt of jokes due to the severe underperformance of the new roster that was scrambled together to replace them (mostly consisting of Contenders players untested for the big league). The organization remained hopeful for a redemption entering the 2021 season, with one promotional deal with Pizza Hut Canada optimistically offering free breadsticks if the Titans ended up taking things to a game 5. Tragically, the Titans continued to flounder even with roster updates, and the disappointment of them still being unable to secure match wins became unintentionally paralleled by the disappointment of no free breadsticks. Once they won their first match in over a year during August against the Boston Uprising, breadstick emoji spam from virtually everyone in the scene was abound.
• Super MTD^ExplanationStanding for "main tank difference" (or "main tank diff"), MTD is a general metagame term to describe the gap in superiority between the opposing main tanks of each given game, in turn often used as a self-congratulatory boast. The term picked up an additional life of its own around 2020-2021 thanks to Matthew "super" DeLisi — two-time OWL champion, MVP runner-up tank player for the San Francisco Shock — often making wild boasts surrounding the term, leading many to spam "MTD" whenever he pops off or when he's getting trounced by the enemy tank.
  • Super's Big "WHAT?!" ^ExplanationDuring the Shock's first match against the Houston Outlaws in the 2021 season, the Outlaws' new main tank, Myung-heum "JJANGGU" Cho, quickly established himself by managing to shatter the entire Shock thanks to a split-second positioning error from Super, setting a precedent that lasted for the rest of the series. In addition to being another case of Super getting MTD'd, his priceless reaction to JJANGGU's shatter was caught on live facecam and quickly became viral.
• Kevster face reveal ^ExplanationKevin "kevster" Persson was an active Overwatch contender since 2018 and was signed onto the LA Gladiators in 2020, but somehow managed to have avoided revealing his face, receiving neither an official headshot or facecam until June 2021. It's been joked by fans, and even the Gladiators and the League themselves that perhaps Kevster's placeholder avatars are his actual face.
  • Kevster is an AI ^ExplanationAn additional rumor is that he's actually some kind of faceless AI pretending to be an Overwatch player, a joke usually paired with how suspiciously generic his name of "Kevin Persson" sounds. Even with his official face reveal in 2021, cue many jokes of him being a really advanced AI-generated image.
• nice memp^ExplanationDuring a match between Houston Outlaws and Washington Justice, Assassin used his Sombra EMP only to hit absolutely nobody, prompting Danteh to type out "nice memp" in the in-game allchat (contrary to popular belief, "memp" doesn't mean anything, it seems to have just been a typo of "EMP"). Following this, "nice memp" is a common spam for whenever a Sombra player completely misses or otherwise gets little to no value from their EMP.
• Carl^ExplanationDuring the offseason "Shock vs. The World" tournament in 2021, casters had a for-fun segment between games of drawing league players and logos, with Matt "Mr. X" Morello putting out a sketch which was supposed to be the Vancouver Titans logo. This little character — affectionately nicknamed "Carl" by the community apropos of nothing — has since become a recurring meme and unofficial mascot to the OWL, even to the point of receiving an official merch release.
• Illegal move^ExplanationDuring the opening week of the 2022 season, Florida Mayhem demonstrated plenty of interesting rollouts and routes throughout the new Overwatch 2 maps, but got in a bit of trouble for doing a crazy Teleporter/Ice Wall combination to vault the entire team over a building and onto the unsuspecting Paris Eternal, which was dubbed an "illegal move" (specifically breaking a rule against using "exploits of known bugs", including map-based movement exploits). While the Mayhem weren't seriously harmed by this violation (they simply had to replay the map and won again without the maneuver), the decision was controversial among viewers, and it's often become common to spam any intense-looking movement techniques as similarly "illegal".
• The Toilet Bowl^ExplanationThe nickname given to the 2020 season's Week 3 match between the Boston Uprising and Houston Outlaws, the two teams speculated to be the weakest of that season at the time. Both teams' performances were widely viewed as So Bad, It's Good, and the term "Toilet Bowl" has come to be a broader E-Sports term for matches where both sides are giving hilariously terrible performances.

Other Memes

Beta and Previous Versions

• The Asian Update. ^ExplanationA joke about Overwatch three characters introduced at Blizzcon 2015, D.Va, Mei and Genji, who are all from Asia.
• Onlywatch. ^ExplanationAs in, "you can't play, only watch". The initial beta of the game released in late 2015 was released to only popular streamers and Youtubers, despite the high amount of people claiming that they would love to play it. The beta had a notoriously low amount of people in it, with many growing upset with Blizzard for their lack of allowing people in. These events led to the nickname "Onlywatch" as an insult towards Blizzard over this issue.
• Overwatch withdrawal ^ExplanationAfter the game went out of open beta, fans have been clamoring for it to be released. Many fans making jokes about feeling like drug addicts, or linking to this Spongebob video.
• 20 tick. ^ExplanationThe fact that Overwatch servers had a 20 tick rate at release, meaning that it refreshed only twenty times per second, was derided by veteran FPS players as this lent itself to poor reading of player input. Blizzard released an update setting servers and clients to 60 tick on 12 August 2016—though it dynamically scales back if it detects a player's connection can't handle the increased bandwidth requirement.
• Fall 10th ^ExplanationIn a video that Star made about his first impressions after a closed gameplay session in 2015, he mentioned how he was not made privy to the date of the upcoming closed beta, just that it was going to be in the fall, sardonically giving the date of "Fall 10th." Became an Ascended Meme with one of the movie posters in the attacking spawn on Hollywood listing its release date as Fall 10th.

General

• Due to how quotable each hero is, in general, if a highlight gets posted on the Overwatch subreddit and a prominent hero has a voice that can roughly connect to it, it will be posted in the comments.
• Blizzard Presents Team Fortress 3. ^ExplanationGiven Overwatch's cartoony art style, class-based gameplay, and general lightness of tone, comparisons to Team Fortress 2 have been inevitable.
  • Hanzo, the Huntsman Sniper ^ExplanationUsers of a bow-and-arrow.
  • Junkrat, the Demoman ^ExplanationUsers of the grenade launcher.
  • Mercy, the Medic ^ExplanationThe team's primary healers.
  • Pharah, the Soldier ^ExplanationAerial fighters that shoot rockets down on their enemies.
  • Sombra, the Spy ^ExplanationStealth fighters relying on invisibility.
  • Symmetra, the Pyro ^ExplanationUp-close damage dealers.
    • Mei, the Cryo ^ExplanationGradual damage dealers with polar opposite effects.
  • Torbjörn, the Engineer ^ExplanationBuilds Sentry Turrets.
  • Tracer, the Scout ^ExplanationQuick moving, and high-damaging, classes that are fragile.
  • Widowmaker, the Sniper ^ExplanationUsers of a long-range sniper rifle.
  • Zarya, the Heavy ^ExplanationRussian tank classes.
  • Team Fortress 2 with waifus is a similar and common variant◊.
• Shooty Lesbian Simulator. ^ExplanationAn affectionate reference to the amount of female shipping that occurs within the fandom. Becomes Hilarious in Hindsight now that Tracer, the face of the game, is confirmed to have a girlfriend.
• Play of the Game parodies.
  • Changing the text of the intro◊, usually to complain about character tactics.
  Play of the Game: THIS FUCKER as Bastion in his fucking turret form
  You hear that? It's JUNKRAT giggling like Jared Leto as his murder wheel gibs my braindead teammates
  Oh shit it's fuckin' TORBJÖRN, jerking off while his turret kills my incredibly incompetent team
  Play of the Game: FUCKING HANZO Ryuu ga waga teki go fuck yourself^note Alternatively, 'Ryuu ga waga teki go fuck yourself' can also refer to POTG's by a Genji who managed to reflect Hanzo's Dragonstrike and rack up a lot of kills because of that.
  • Creating videos to send up on a character's playstyle or give non-Overwatch characters a highlight, like ones from Equilibrium or The Room.
• "Attack commences in 30 seconds" paired with various images of people staring at each other through windows and doors, most commonly a photoshopped version of the final confrontation between Lex Luthor and Gorilla Grodd in Justice League Unlimited, replacing Grodd with Winston and Luthor with another character.
• The "hello" emote every hero has. If you use it, soon everyone around you will start spamming "hello" over and over.
• The Overwatch Family Dynamic. ^ExplanationThe fandom has combined all the family-related memes above, along with some of the other popular Fanon, to make the entire Overwatch cast into a Big, Screwed-Up Family.
  • The Talon Family Dynamic/Team Talon. ^ExplanationWith Sombra finally released, fans have grouped the Talon agents as their own quirky family, similar to Team Rocket.
• Grey Grey Blue Grey ^ExplanationThis is the worst possible (and most common) outcome when opening a Loot Box - 3 Common items, shown with grey baseplates, and 1 Rare item, shown with a blue baseplate. As the rarest item obtained is usually shown third from left, the baseplate colours will be in this particular order.
  • Legendary Cash ^ExplanationIn addition to the above GGBG combo, it's seemingly just as common to get GGYG, yellow being a legendary drop, and then the legendary is cash, not a skin. It's better than getting a duplicate, but it's still noteworthy enough to be a memetic nuisance.
• NO HEALER / NO TANK HEROES ^ExplanationSome players end up in teams with poor Hero composition, such as the dreaded case of all 5 teammates going with only Offense or Defense heroes, resulting in these two Team Tips and having to pick between leaving the team without a Healer or a Tank Hero.
  • TOO MANY OF ONE HERO ^ExplanationBefore Quick Play flat-out prevented more than one member of a team from picking the same hero (instead allocating this to the No Limits mode), a Team Tip will flash showing this quote if the team has at least 3 players picking the same hero, usually a very non-optimal hero such as Widowmaker or Hanzo.
• Forced Fifty. ^ExplanationIt's become a pervasive rumor among the fanbase that Blizzard enforces a 50/50 win/loss ratio by deliberately placing players who've been on a winning streak into matches where they'll lose horribly, or vice versa.
• Fuck the red team. ^ExplanationThe game's particular version of Color-Coded Multiplayer is that you view the team you're currently on as highlighted blue and the other is highlighted red — which will make the colors suddenly switch whenever you're looking through an enemy killcam. The phrase is taken from a fan comic's tongue-in-cheek explanation of why characters are teaming up with their enemies to fight their friends. Goes into Hilarious in Hindsight considering that the rival game Team Fortress 2 has the reverse motif going on (where red is the 'winner' and blue is the 'loser'), but for Overwatch, it's the other way around.
• ME UNGA. TEAM BUNGA. ^ExplanationA tongue-in-cheek phrase used to mock people who blame their losses on their team members, carrying over from various MOBA games.
• "New meta" ^ExplanationAlso a carryover from MOBA, "new meta" is often a sardonic phrase to describe a play — usually one coming about from chance or utterly bizarre methods, such as a low-tier character wiping the team… or an incredibly crappy tactic that got a player killed.
• gg ez ^ExplanationAn abbreviation for "good game, [that was] easy," which is generally considered immature and unsportsmanlike, regardless of whether or not the batttle was easy. It became a meme after a filter was added to the game that replaced "gg ez" with randomly chosen lines from a list of various confessions of insecurity, references to infantile actions such as thumb-sucking, and compliments to the enemy team, sparking angry debates on whether or not it's an appropriate punishment for toxic douchebags, or if it's coddling thin-skinned players.
• Q to win ^ExplanationA joke amongst people who get Play of the Game by getting a load of kills by pressing Q to activate one's ultimate.
• Cassidy and Hanzo's Awkward Date Night ^ExplanationThe 2016 Halloween event features a Brawl known as "Junkenstein's Revenge", which is basically a horde mode where players must fight off endless "Zomnic" hordes. The meme comes from the fact that the only four characters that can be played are Cassidy, Hanzo, 76, and Ana, leading many people who ship Hanzo and Cassidy to joke that the latter's "dad and grandma" tagged along on his date with Hanzo.
• Trying to photobomb your enemies◊ in Junkenstein's Revenge or Retribution^ExplanationIn the Junkenstein's Revenge and Retribution PvE modes, bosses are introduced by the camera moving from your character's point of view to just in front of them as they strike a badass pose. This also means that it's possible to position your character so that they appear next to the boss when s/he shows up. The most common in Junkenstein's Revenge is generally The Witch.
• Der Eisenwalde ^ExplanationThanks in part to Blundell's memetic "I'm a sucker for medieval castles", someone on the Overwatch sub-reddit noticed some similarities betwwen Eichenwalde and the "Der Einsendrache" map in Nazi Zombies, as both take place in a ruined castle in Germany and have somewhat similar names. It didn't take long until someone put Der Eisendrache's trailer's audio over gameplay footage of Eichenwalde.
  • Reinforced with "Junkenstein's Revenge", where you're fighting in a version of Eichenwalde filled with zombie robots.
• Blizzard didn't have to be so forceful about it. ^ExplanationThis phrase, along with several other variations, was originally used by fans who were upset upon the reveal that Tracer was gay but soon became a Bait-and-Switch and then talk about Tracer's poor management of time or, most commonly, Torbjörn's large family.
  • Torb could be bi. ^ExplanationSimilarly to the above, this was a parody of a similar statement about Tracer when her girlfriend was revealed (but before Blizzard clarified she was a lesbian), sometimes phrased as the same sort of bait and switch (e.g. "Don't forget bisexuals are a thing...just because Torb's married to a woman doesn't mean he isn't also into guys!") to point out the double standard of only speculating the character in a same sex relationship might be bi.
• Often times on Reddit, titles for highlights will describe them in an amusingly overly-literal fashion, such as "Korean Teenager harasses mourning Japanese man", "Professional German bodyguard takes bullet for Brazilian musician" or "American soldier runs from an angry Australian and a South Korean terrorist."^ExplanationLikely a reference to a Junkrat Play of the Game being uploaded to PornHub with the painfully accurate title "Smokin' Blonde Aussie Delivers Explosive Load To Crowd"◊.
• "Shut up! I paid for the game!" ^ExplanationA common response to criticism in team chat, forums or social media. In short, the player being criticized defends the choices they make in-game by stating that since they paid for Overwatch, they are free to play any way that they choose. A common response to this is to point out that the other five people on the team also paid for what is meant to be a team game. Players that "main" a Low-Tier Letdown are often begrudgingly agreed with, but Trolls and Griefers who say this are almost universally mocked (except by other trolls/griefers).
• "Wrestle with Jeff, prepare for death." ^ExplanationA reference to this parody of one of the Overwatch Developer Updates featuring game director Jeff Kaplan. Now acknowledged by Blizzard.
  • Getting hooked to point 2 on Ilios. ^ExplanationFrom another developer update. This became an Ascended Meme, with Jeff quoting this phrase verbatim in the Developer Update following the original video.
  • Choke on my Lijiang Tower. ^ExplanationFrom yet another developer update parody.
• Alien Windows ^ExplanationTwo specific windows on the King's Row and Oasis stages respectively have gained a lot of attention due to the fact that they aren't the same on both sides.
• "Get on the payload!" and all variants thereof. ^ExplanationPlayers often feel as if they're the only player on the team actually trying to push or defend the payload.
  • "GET TO DA CHOPPA!" ^ExplanationIn "Retribution," the only way to end the mission is for all four players to get on the dropship at the end. Frequently, there's one or more players who will stick around and try to fight the endless waves of enemies spawning after the dropship arrives, resulting in a defeat for the entire team when they die and can't be revived.
  • Payload Princess^ExplanationA Fan Nickname used to describe the single player who's left pushing the cart all by themselves as the rest of the team are having an overextended 4v5 away from them, usually phrased as someone being forced into the boring, but necessary "payload princess duty".
• Draw-nubis/Draw-skaya/Draw-namura ^ExplanationDue to the frequency of Draws on "Assault" aka "2CP" maps, fans took it upon themselves to give such maps nicknames that better reflected their reputation.
  • Capture The Draw ^ExplanationCapture the Flag is notorious for having a very high draw rate. It is not uncommon for a match to end 0-0 because no one can hold onto the flag long enough to score a goal, and previously required anyone going for the flag to stand around it for a few seconds, leaving them open to elims and the flag never getting anywhere; this has since been changed so that flag pickup is instant but the flag is dropped if you use any mobility skills.
• "Here we go again...!" ^ExplanationMid-February 2017, Blizzard added some clues to the PTR which fans quickly speculated to tease the next hero: believed at the time to be Doomfist. Naturally, discussions of the previous Sombra ARG were brought up, with many fans deciding to set ground rules amongst themselves to avoid a similar fiasco. Rule number one being, "Don't get your hopes up about anything".
• "18 DPS/2 Tanks/3 Supports" ^ExplanationOverwatch's roster tries to mix up the standard videogame roles of Damager, Healer, Tank by assigning the characters with the titles of "Offense, Defense, Tank, and Support". Despite this, players still pick characters to fit the traditional niches. This results in "Defense" heroes like Hanzo and Widowmaker being considered high-damage "DPS" heroes while Mei is considered an unorthodox "Tank" (because her Walls block damage). It also means that only Reinhardt and Winston are considered "true" Tanks, while D.Va, Zarya, and Roadhog are used as durable DPS. Sombra is considered a high-damage Support thanks to her ability to hack opponents and health packs, and Zenyatta is called a DPS that can heal. And there's Symmetra, who (post-first rework) is considered everything but a Support due to having high damage, a powerful barrier and defensive turrets, but no healing abilities to speak of.
  • Partially an Ascended Meme after the roster reclassification in June 2018, whereas "Offense" and "Defense" heroes were indeed combined into a "Damage" class, and Symmetra was moved to that class.
• LITERALLY UNPLAYABLE ^ExplanationWhat players say when a minor error is discovered, or a small change to something popular is made. Examples: The hole in the wall in Watchpoint: Gibraltar not being an actual hole, the Pinatas in Dorado not being able to be broken by certain weapons, Mercy's "Piece of cake" voice line being redubbed.
• I WAS ON THE POINT! ^ExplanationMany matches end when one player or another feels like they shouldn't have, due to them being on the point when overtime ended. Some attribute it to the aforementioned 20-tick servers, saying that they don't register the player making it to the point on time.
• Solo Ultied / Rage Ulty ^ExplanationUsing an ultimate for the sake of killing one opposing person. Usually happens when the one using the ultimate is out to get someone, because they either know the guy… or they got angry at the opposing person for some reason, and wish to perform a rage overkill.
  • It's about sending a message ^ExplanationUsing multiple ultimates for the sake of killing one opposing person, usually with at least some of them being redundant. (Most popularly, sleep darting someone and then nanoboosting a Cassidy, who proceeds to use his Deadeye to kill them.) Then it gets taken from ridiculous to downright pointless stupidity.
• "So who should be the next LGBT character ... That's not Cassidy or Hanzo." ^ExplanationThis showed up when Matthew Mercer showed his support for the ship McHanzo in a podcast and to a degree at Blizzcon 2016. It's popular mainly on Tumblr, and usually involves Mercer asking Blizzard to make the ship canon, and then being ignored or shut down.
  • Nonfat chai latte, and one for my friend Hanzo. ^ExplanationAt Blizzcon 2016, someone asked Matthew Mercer to voice Cassidy ordering coffee, which he did. Hanzo wasn't mentioned at all in the request, but Mercer added him in anyway, leading to much Squee from the crowd and an explosion of coffee-date-based memes.
  • Cassidy and Hanzo's hideous apartment. ^ExplanationMatthew Mercer claimed that Cassidy and Hanzo are living together in an apartment in West Hollywood, and that they can't agree on how to decorate it. Fans have taken to speculating on just how ridiculous the apartment looks, with most of the blame falling on Cassidy's cowboy aesthetic.
• Troll Pick ^ExplanationBottom-tier heroes that get picked by players in competitive play are considered this, and usually results in the rest of the team calling out the player until they switch to a high-tier hero. The most common lower-tier heroes that get called out for this usually involves Torbjörn, Symmetra, Sombra, or Junkrat.
• The Defensive Class sucks! ^ExplanationAs seen on numerous websites that sort the Overwatch heroes into different tiers from best to worst, it's a common occurrence to see those that are classified as Defense (Bastion, Hanzo, Junkrat, Mei, Widowmaker, and Torbjörn) to all be near the bottom in terms of usefulness. The highest rated usually end up being Hanzo, Bastion (after he got buffed), and Mei, but even then, they're still considered in the bottom half.
• Pineapple Pizza ^Explanation Originated from this video, where Jeff Kaplan, VP of Blizzard, replied to a question asking if all Overwatch Heroes like Pineapple Pizza with a yes. It instantly went memetic within an hour, with Fans jokingly saying that Overwatch is now ruined because they all like Pineapple Pizza
  • Gordon Ramsay and Overwatch ^ExplanationLinking to this video while saying that's how the fans on the forums reacted also was pretty popular.
• "Jeph" ^ExplanationBased on this tweet featuring Jeff Kaplan posted soon after a Starbucks opened at Blizzard campus where a Starbucks employee misspelled Jeff's name as "Jeph", many fans have taken to calling him "Jeph" on forums and the subreddit.
• Dance Party! ^ExplanationThe Overwatch Anniversary added a Dance emote for every single playable character, making it possible to have an entire team with different heroes equipping the dance emotes and synchronized dancing together.
  • [X]'s dance goes with everything! ^ExplanationThere is no shortage of Youtube videos showing one of the characters' dance emote alongside several different songs that can match the dance.
• Jokes about Blizzard's aggressive takedown strategies against Overwatch porn. ^ExplanationAs it implies, Blizzard is/was infamous for a period of time where thousands of explicit videos and the like were taken down via legal notices — enough for several big-name video game sites and magazines to comment on.
• Salty Support ^ExplanationA lot of fanworks like to depict the support class, healers especially, as angry, disappointed, or just plain fed up with the other characters rushing off to their deaths while expecting the healers to keep them alive, or just receiving all of the blame. This was at least partly ascended in the Anniversary event, where three of the healers received new voice lines that can come off as condescending or passive-aggressive, such as Mercy's "You're welcome." and Zenyatta's "How... 'disappointing." The only exception is Lúcio.
• The whole Overwatch vs. Paladins ordeal, and jokes thereof. ^ExplanationPaladins is a Hero Shooter that shares a similar artstyle and class-based gameplay revolving around Payload and King-of-the-Hill/Control Point hybrids, just like Overwatch, and had its open beta around the same time Overwatch began launching. At first, this was played completely straight, with undying amounts of anger, flame wars, Flame Bait, accusations of who copied who first, and so on and so forth, but as time went on, mocking the flame wars became memetic.
  • OMG PALADINS/OVERWATCH COPIED PALADINS/OVERWATCH, THEY BOTH SHARE [incredibly mundane and common detail, such as guns, polygons, textures, and legs] ^ExplanationAs time went on, and the two games continued on their merry way, those still sore about it and continue to bring on the copycat accusations get mocked in the form of the aforementioned meme.
  • Characters that share similar designs, roles, and motifs also have their memes applied to them, regardless of actual gameplay or differences, such as Zhin (Asian sword-wielding fast-mobility damage flanker) getting MADA MADA/I NEED HEALING jokes on his reveal and ability videos.
  • VHS ^ExplanationPaladins' very own permutation of the "I Need Healing!" meme. VHS is the keyboard shortcut for the voice line of... "I need healing!" (Or "Need Healing", if you want to get technical")
  • "I Need Healing!" itself spread over, usually to mock poorly performing Flanks and Front Lines who charge in without support.
  • Chinese Overwatch.^ExplanationCritics of Paladins who saw it as an Overwatch clone and shameless ripoff gave it this moniker, based on the stereotype (and glut) of Chinese ripoffs of popular games and products to make a quick buck. It's either played straight, or used to mock fanboys. Funny enough, there has been at least one high-profile Chinese ripoff of Overwatch, a game called "Hero Mission".
    • In a similar vein, "Overwatch for poor people". ^ExplanationPaladins is free-to-play, and even its Founders' Pack is much less expensive than Overwatch.
• Before the furor over Paladins, there was Battle Born, a Hero Shooter with heavier MOBA elements, with all the flame wars that entailed. ^ExplanationBattleborn is a Gearbox-developed Hero Shooter, also with a cartoony style and class-based heroes, et cetera, that happened to have its open beta during Overwatch's closed beta. Unsurprisingly, it attracted flame wars, debates, etc.
  • Hi, Randy! ^ExplanationMonths after release, Overwatch was a runaway success, while Battleborn steadily lost players and eventually struggled to maintain a peak of 500 players during weekends on PC. Randy Pitchford, Gearbox's CEO, kept continuing to hawk Battleborn long after release - coupled with Randy's memetic status among detractors of Gearbox's practices and handling of Aliens: Colonial Marines, any positive or neutral mention of Battleborn is met with "Hi, Randy!" and/or pretending it's an adverisement for Battleborn.
  • General jokes about Battleborn being the unfortunate Butt-Monkey. ^ExplanationAs above, Battleborn's player base and overall popularity has been completely overshadowed by Overwatch - even Paladins has far more players.
  • The Battleborn Porn Subreddit. ^ExplanationSeveral months after Battleborn's release, Randy Pitchford tweeted a link to a, well, Battleborn porn subreddit. It was seen as Astro Turfing (with some believing that Gearbox's PR team tried to pull a desperate publicity stunt in the wake of Overwatch's insane popularity, citing the subreddit's then-recent creation and aforementioned dropping numbers) and/or the worst kind of Shameless Self-Promoter, combined with either a dislike of Gearbox's choice of references upon references or criticism of business practices, starting with the Aliens: Colonial Marines controversy. The subreddit was immediately bombed with links to Overwatch porn and/or posts mocking Randy.
• Horrible portmanteaus of Overwatch and its inspirations/competitors, leading to titles like "Overfortress 2", "Overborn", "Palawatch", "Palaoverborn Fortress", "Battlepalawatch", et cetera.
• Similarly, calling Overwatch "Team Fortress 2", "Paladins", "Battleborn", or "(Super) Monday Night Combat"^ExplanationA third-person Hero Shooter with an art style similar to Overwatch's, which Overwatch took some inspiration from.
• Talon loves going into unintended locations. ^ExplanationEvery hero associated with Talon has glitched out of the map into unintended locations at some point, even PTR Doomfist.
• The Left Nipple. ^ExplanationMuch like the previously mentioned Shimada Titty, there seems to be a trend amongst male characters in which they wear clothing that exposes their left pec (and, by extension, their left nipple) while the right one remains covered. It used to be exclusive to the Shimada brothers, but has taken off for other characters due to the recently released Doomfist and his similar choice of clothing.
• The Bebop Crew ^ExplanationAfter Doomfist's release, many fans made the connection between the Talon roster and the titular crew of misfits from Cowboy Bebop. Big guy with robotic arm (Jet and Doomfist), edgy loser who gets beat up a lot (Reaper and Spike), femme fatal who turns up the sex appeal and works in impractical clothes (Faye and Widowmaker), weird hacker girl (Ed and Sombra).
• Space Jam ^ExplanationA popular combination attack between Zarya and Doomfist has been going around ever since the latter was added to the PTR. Basically, Zarya sucks the enemies into one place using Graviton Surge and then Doomfist follows up by dropping down on the surged enemies with his Meteor Strike.
• Small indie company ^ExplanationUsed, mostly on Reddit, as a way to mock Blizzard for the issues with the game, such as some defaults in animations, voicelines, prevalence of lootboxes, etc... to say that Blizzard is a small company that desperately needs the money and can't afford to fix "issues people are complaining about".
• Oversalt^ExplanationA common Fan Nickname for the game, due to the game's strong tendency to inspire inter-player anger.
• Overwatch Now Playable^ExplanationBattle.net's notification whenever Overwatch finishes installing an update. It is often jokingly mentioned when any improvement is made to the game, regardless of significance.
• The moment from "Overwatch's Yule Log Featuring Jeff Kaplan" stream where he unwraps and presents a picture frame of Genji saying "I NEED HEALING" immediately became◊ exploitable◊.
• "Actually that’s a common misconception" ^ExplanationWith the increase of lore retcons provided by lead writer Michael Chu, such as D.Va not actually being a Starcraft Pro Player or Torbjörn's supposed children being actually his grandchildren where it's been implied otherwise, many people have started using this phrase to make fun of the inconsistent statements or confusing plot elements present in Overwatch’s lore.
• "Can you buy me McDonalds?"^ExplanationIn an interview, Matilda Smedius (VA of Brigitte) said that as a kid, she always had a lot of money compared to friends her age because of her voice acting (paying far more than "allowance money" than most children might have). So she treated them to McDonalds, a frequent hangout spot. The interviewer then warned Matilda that this would be all over the internet, forever. That Brigitte is canonically established to have a big appetite in "Honor and Glory" (her shirt says "I like exercise because I love eating") will likely only serve as fuel.
• THE PIE^Explanation The "Reunion" short features a number of closeups of a ridiculously delicious-looking apple pie, and the fact that Cassidy takes time to finish it before dealing with the train robbery quickly went memetic.
• Slambulance!^ExplanationCommon and highly agressive 'Death-Ball' type team composition emerging after Moira went live. Featuring Moira, Zarya, Reinhardt, and three high-damage DPS characters like Reaper or Junkrat. The goal being to move to engage the enemy team as a solid phalanx of close-range and very high damage supported by Moira's AOE healing. Named after its highly aggressive and close-range nature, 'slamming' into the enemy team.
• Italian Ferryman POTG ^ExplanationThere was a bug on Rialto that caused players to be able to get high killstreaks by simply destroying a bunch of the ferrymen (this is due to the ferrymen being based on the training bots, who are supposed to count for killstreaks). This meant that it was possible to get POTGs without eliminating any actual players, leading to some hilarious videos.
• But I got gold damage/eliminations!^ExplanationOn losing teams, some players will insist that they contributed by bragging about their gold medals, particularly ones for damage and eliminations, much to the ire of their likely-already-angry-from-losing teammates, who point out that there's more to the game than just racking up damage and kills.
• "Maybe I'll be Tracer." "I'm already Tracer!" ^ExplanationA verse from "No Mercy," a song from The Living Tombstone about Overwatch players who refuse to play support heroes. In context, the first player attempts to look for a Damage or Tank hero to play to avoid being forced to play Support, but finds almost all of them already chosen by other players on his team. Many lip-syncs of this section of the song arose after the release of TikTok, a mobile app for making short videos. However, several lip-syncs contained glaring errors, such as the actor in the video pretending to play Overwatch using controllers for consoles that didn't run Overwatch or leaving their controller turned off. Relentless parodying ensued.
• Blizzard needs to reveal/release [X] LGBTQ+ character to make up for this.^ExplanationThe timing of the release of the "Bastet" comic that revealed Soldier 76 was gay coincided extremely unfortunately with the news that 800 employees would be laid off despite the company having reached record profits. A lot of people saw the news as a cynical attempt by Blizzard to exploit a serious issue like LGBTQ+ representation as a means of distracting them from getting outraged over the latter news, which led to jokes about Overwatch using representation as a form of damage control, conveniently adding queer heroes or revealing existing ones to be queer whenever fans were disappointed with the game or the company, with the relative diversity of the supposed character corresponding to the degree of the offense.
• Jokes about new character announcements coming with bad news regarding Activision-Blizzard and vice versa^ExplanationFans have noticed that Overwatch news announcements tend to come out at the same time that some controversy for Activision-Blizzard enters the news, and thus whenever a new character is announced fans tend to joke that bad news involving the company must've also come out that day, whether it's true or not. The inverse also applies, where whenever they hear bad news about Activision-Blizzard, they joke that some kind of Overwatch announcement must have also been announced in an attempt to distract players from it. Often combined with the above meme.
• "That means Overwatch is back?" "Yes." "You're under arrest." ^explanationAfter the release of the first cinematic trailer for "Overwatch 2", many You Tube posters latched on to a possible reveal that the two cops that the Overwatch team saves from an Omnic attack in the trailer turn out to be Lawful Stupid and instantly try to arrest the team (who are canonically still outlaws) after Winston declares to them that Overwatch is back and the trailer ends, turning the whole thing into a "Shaggy Dog" Story Sudden Downer Ending Played for Laughs.
• Jokes about the quality of fan-made porn of the game.^explanationOverwatch's Rule 34 content, on top of being quite numerous, has many pieces of extremely high quality, leading to many jokes about some of these creators outshining anything Blizzard themselves made, needing to be hired, or how even people who don't play the game got into it thanks to these.
• Jokes about Overwatch 2 being in Development Hell and/or Vaporware. ^ExplanationOverwatch 2 was shrouded in controversy the very second that it was announced. Activision-Blizzard were going through the Blitzchung Hearthstone controversy, and it's been widely speculated that the entire reason that the game was announced was to distract from said controversy. Following that, almost two years passed since the announcement without a release window for the game, let alone a release date, and several high-ranking members of the dev crew such as Jeff Kaplan (Director and Lead Designer) and Chacko Sonny (Executive Producer) departed the team. This happened at roughly the same time that Activision-Blizzard was embroiled in an absolutely massive sexual harassment scandal. All of the above factors led to memes that no actual work was being done on the game.
• Overwatch 1.5 ^ExplanationFans were skeptical about Overwatch 2 almost right away, especially after it was announced that all Overwatch content would be ported to Overwatch 2. These sentiments only increased after the Overwatch 2 beta where the general consensus quickly emerged that Overwatch 2 feels nearly identical to the first game in virtually every way that matters, and that the only major changes (a switch to 5v5 and reworks to several heroes) could have been applied in a patch for Overwatch. This has led to jokes of players showing footage and screenshots of the first game and claiming that they got into the Overwatch 2 beta or hyping up minor changes, such as Bastion's new hat. It then wasn't helped by the announcement that Overwatch would be retired immediately upon Overwatch 2's release, making the second game more of a replacement than a sequel. This sentiment was only furthered when it was announced that the most significant addition to Overwatch 2, the story-driven PvE mode, was not going to be released at the same time as the PvP, and was also not going to be Free-to-Play; and then came back with a vengeance in May 2023 when the bulk of the PvE mode was cancelled entirely.
• Making money-related puns out of Overwatch character quotes and saying it's the "definitive Overwatch experience". ^ExplanationNeedless to say, the removal of lootboxes and the change to a more common Battle Pass system with more expensive cosmetic items has proven to be very polarizing among the fanbase. The backlash over the change led to people making these jokes out of sarcasm and posting them all over the comment sections of anything that the official accounts uploaded.
• "X if Blizzard had planned it"/"X if Blizzard had planned Y"^ExplanationIn the wake of the announcement that the PvE "Hero Mode" had been cancelled after spending nearly four years in development, players voiced their frustration by way of memes. Posting memes like "The Sinking of the Titanic if Blizzard had planned it" with a video of the Titanic not sinking, or "The World Trade Center if Blizzard had planned 9/11" with a picture or video of the Twin Towers not at all damaged.
• Policewoman: "Monsieur, does this mean Overwatch is back?" Winston: "No." ^ExplanationAs backlash towards Blizzard's decision to cancel PvE mode, which was the main selling point that the sequel was supposed to exist, it led to people making these types of edits to the Overwatch 2 trailer.
• "Overwhelmingly Negative" ^ExplanationAfter being released on Steam, the game quickly shot to the lowest reviewed game on the platform of all time, mainly due to Chinese gamers using the Steam release to air grievances against Blizzard (itself to do with how their long-term deal with Chinese distributor NetEase fell through between early 2023 and early 2024, and Overwatch was Banned in China for a time). This summary of the game's review score was quickly adopted as a mocking nickname for the game, with edits of the logo soon to follow.
• ^PJ ^ExplanationIn April 2024, the Overwatch community got in a hullaballoo amidst allegations that players were being abruptly banned for swearing in-game, some claiming that they've been punished for saying even more innocuous things like "nice shot" or even "gg". The uproar grew worse after the official Blizzard Customer Support Twitter account, when pressed on the subject, made several now-deleted tweets explaining the logic behind the bans claiming that profanity was a banworthy offense, all signed by one "^PJ". This quickly became a source of widespread criticism and mockery, with the name "PJ" reaching Memetic Loser status in representing unprofessional, passive-aggressive customer service, and bizarrely draconian standards regarding profanity on a T-rated game with profanity of its own (given the nature of the claims and the fact many of PJ's tweets were swiftly deleted, whether what they claimed was ever even accurate or not remains undetermined).

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DEFEAT

<TropeTan> Well played! I salute you all.—-