"Riku just Riku, common variety Nopon."
Given how memetic Xenoblade Chronicles 3 ended up being, it's no surprise that this also extends to its story expansion, Future Redeemed.
- Alvis is a liar.Explanation With the base game revolving around the Forever War between Keves and Agnus, people began mocking Alvis' parting words from the original Xenoblade that, "all life will walk towards the future, hand in hand," and joking that he lied. The meme was mostly forgotten about after the game came out, but came back with a vengeance after Future Redeemed teased Alvis not only returning, but returning as an antagonist... sorta.
- Alvis and Shulk's divorceExplanation Running off of 3's ending implying Rex married all of his Blades, and the return of Alvis, fans joked that Shulk and Alvis had the same kind of relationship and that their conflict is the result of petty relationship drama. Relatedly, when A's design was first revealed, fans initially joked that A was a Shulk/Alvis daughter the same way that Mio and Glimmer were implied to be Rex's, and that A was part of a custody dispute.
- Alvis and Shulk's vow renewalExplanation (SPOILERS) The person many assumed to be Alvis in previews is revealed to be an Empty Shell named Alpha, while A is a being made of Alvis' Living Memory and is thus the "real" Alvis for all intents and purposes, with Shulk even outright referring to A by "Alvis" at the end. In contrast to Alpha, Shulk and A are very fond of one another and share moments that can be interpreted as subtextually romantic in nature, which fans declared as triumphant validation of all the interpretations, both the jokes and the more serious ones, about them being a couple in the first game.
- Family reunion gone wrongExplanation Likewise given that Alvis is a "sibling" of Pyra, Mythra, and Malos, fans have made jokes that the reason Alvis turned evil was because because Rex had sex with his sisters, or because Rex killed Malos.
- "Tell me why!"Explanation Shulk's exclamation to Alvis at the start of the first Future Redeemed trailer, while reflective of Shulk's constantly inquisitive nature, was picked up by the fandom for its specific choice of words to memetically make Shulk a fan of the Backstreet Boys, with some fans even applying the lyrics of "I Want It That Way" to the tragedies that have plagued Shulk and Rex's lives prior to the events of 3.
- Xenoblade CrusadersExplanation The third part of a series that has the protagonist from the previous installment join the main party as a Kid Hero All Grown-Up. Comparisons to Shulk and Rex with Joseph Joestar are inevitable.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 4 will have senile Shulk and Rex.Explanation Relating to the above meme, Since JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, the fourth installment of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, has Joseph as a senile old man, a few have joked that the same will happen to Shulk and Rex for the fourth installment. Even though Shulk and Rex perform a Heroic Sacrifice at the end of the game, it is stated that they’re Not Quite Dead, so who knows?
- "Common variety Nopon" my ass.Explanation After his secretive nature was implied in 3 proper, Riku was shown briefly in the trailer for Future Redeemed to have been around during the early years of Aionios and later to be the enigmatic Seventh Founder of the City in the game proper. With this being his only appearance in the trailer, fans inevitably began speculating again about his true nature, noting that his claim of being a "common variety Nopon" was Blatant Lies all along. As it turns out, he's technically not actually lying about that in the literal sense, but few people are buying it anyway.
- Riku where he shouldn't be.Explanation A continuation in which Riku is photoshopped into photos of either real or fictional events, like the assassination of JFK, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus (with bonus points for being not too far off from Xeno canon if you include Xenosaga) and so on, or replacing the Riku of Kingdom Hearts with the Nopon or vice versa.
- Alvis is XehanortExplanation The release date trailer has not one, not two, but three characters (and possibly more, since the jury's still out on Riku) who either are Alvis, could be Alvis, or are at least somehow related to Alvis. This led to comparisons between him and the long-time Big Bad of Kingdom Hearts, who was infamous for having many alternate selves.
- They/Them AlvussyExplanation While A looks and sounds like a feminine Alvis, and is listed as female in the game's coding, official materials and in-game dialogue go out of their way to avoid using any kind of pronouns at all for A (at most using impersonal epithets with gender-neutral language), and A is later indicated to be nonbinary and stand somewhere between male and female, thus inheriting this meme from the explicitly-nonbinary Juniper.
- "I'm feeling full of beans!"Explanation One of Matthew's battle quotes, which became a meme largely because players believing that they are mishearing the quote as such. However, "feeling full of beans" is an actual expression, meaning feeling exuberant. Nevertheless, fans are happy to take this literally and portray beans as Matthew's Trademark Favorite Food.
- "Ow, my face!"Explanation Another one of Matthew's battle quotes that took off. Funnily enough, unlike the previous example, this is a Mondegreen; Matthew is saying "Out of my face!", but his accent makes it sound like he's saying "Ow, my face!"
- Windows Error Noise GlimmerExplanation Glimmer's Flare Aria has her strum her weapon with a sound effect that resembles the Windows error noise. As a result fans like to portray her attacking as spamming Windows error messages in quick succession.
- Everyone's kid is here! Even Rotbart's!Explanation Aside from Glimmer, Nikol, Panacea and Linka, who are confirmed or hinted to various degrees to be the children of characters in 1 and 2, the first Unique Monster in the game is a large red Gogol named "Bombastic Rotbart Jr.". After all the semi-ironic crowing about Jingoistic Gigantus in the main game not being named "Territorial Rotbart", fans rejoiced when encountering the original Rotbart's apparent offspring in the game and adding it to the list of children/descendants.
- "I'm not really feeling it..."Explanation Shulk's one-liner when selecting him from the Heroes menu is an incredibly depressing Subverted Catchphrase, which many fans have used either as a forum weapon against Shulk's original Character Catchphrase, or to express their lack of energy.
- Shulk and Rex Union Combo memesExplanation Their Sword of Liberation Union Combo portrait has them as Back-to-Back Badasses with their arms crossed and smug expressions. The hilarity of this image made it ripe for meme fodder, such as crossing it over with other memes like Smug Tetsuya Takahashi Posting, Gus Fring Los Pollos Hermanos logo, various reality TV hosts, Youtube "rantsonas", the Mario Bros, or the Mythbusters.
- Blowjob BrothersExplanation Popular Fan Nickname for the duo of Shulk and Rex, after a Photoshopped version of the above image replacing the text with a popular tweet from dril took off due to the absurdity of the phrase. Often accompanied by the above picture with the Sword of Liberation text replaced with the phrase as a reaction image. It's since branched out into its own sub-memes, such as editing the text to be other obscene alliterative phrases like "Cumshot Compatriots". The latter format has since made its rounds outside the Xenoblade fandom to the point that many versions exist using characters completely unrelated to Xenoblade, such as Cloud with Sephiroth or Barret, various Fire Emblem characters, Luke and Jamie from Street Fighter VI, or even Twitch streamers like Jerma985 and Vinesauce.
- Scissor SistersExplanation A Gender Flip variation of the meme originating with Melia and Nia, it's since become a popular variant in its own right used whenever the two characters of choice are both female.
- Sometimes You Just Need Two MenExplanation Likewise it's often popular to edit said poster to feature the above images of Shulk and Rex, or to use Two Men as a Fan Nickname for them in reference to the meme.
- Blowjob BrothersExplanation Popular Fan Nickname for the duo of Shulk and Rex, after a Photoshopped version of the above image
- Deliverance BoomfistExplanation The name of Rex and Matthew's Union Combo, which went memetic instantly for how ridiculous it sounds.
- Rex's Double Spinning EdgeExplanation Many, many memes have been made about Rex and his Double Spinning Edge, such as the pros (its incredibly busted and spammable Game-Breaker status), the cons (its immense aggro generation and Rex being a fragile Glass Cannon who keeps dying), and the just plain silly (Rex having the ability to transform into a helicopter). Tom Fawkes even made a song out of Double Spinning Edge, set to the tune of the Chain Attack music.
- Phenomenal.Explanation A's completely deadpan reaction to Matthew's shenanigans has caught on with the fandom, both making for popular reaction image macros and as a catchphrase in response to someone saying something silly and Matthew-like.
- Grove Street ChroniclesExplanation (MASSIVE SPOILERS) The recreation of Klaus' world visited by the main characters in Chapter 5 has them walking through a normal suburban neighborhood. While already uncanny in it of itself, the neighborhood being structured so that it had a cul-de-sac in the end led to many memes about the cast ending up in Los Santos' Grove Street as seen in San Andreas, as well as a few photoshops mashing up Xenoblade with Grand Theft Auto.
- Na'el played Bringer of Chaos Ultimate on a PianoExplanation In one of the flashback cutscene some of the city kids ask Na'el to play songs for them on her piano, and then get meta and ask for Gaur Plains, Tomorrow with You and the overly bombastic, heavy rock, and utterly awesome theme of The ZEKENATOR; Zeke von Genbu, Bringer of Chaos Ultimate. Fans immediately latched on to how Na'el could play this on the piano and that the theme itself and its name is canon to the series
- The Lore RadioExplanation (MASSIVE SPOILERS) The Fan Nickname given to the radio playing over Na'el's speech gushing about how Alpha's proposed world is so much better and humane than Aionios. This radio however directly contradicts her claims and gives some massive lore bombs for the future of the series linking Xenogears and Xenosaga and Xenoblade Chronicles X all within one Shared Universe with the main series. (Albeit in a Broad Strokes sense) This of course led to fans freaking out about these implications, trying to focus on the radio over Na'el's speech and breakdown and memeing about both.
- Nonbinary Ally RexExplanation After a cutscene in Chapter 3 that can be interpreted as Rex walking in for the purpose of explaining the concept of nonbinary gender to the audience, it's become popular to depict Rex as a fervent defender of the nonbinary community who will show up to state the use of "they/them" pronouns for characters such as F.F., Testament, and Kris, and defend them from anyone who tries to discriminate against them with his newfound muscularity and Double Spinning Edge. Others will post the screencap of Rex walking towards the camera without explicit context as an unconventional coded way of coming out as nonbinary, or use the image to flood the comments of transphobes as an implied rebuttal and form of "ratio"-ing.
- Finally, Rule 5 of the Salvager's Code.Explanation Continuing off the existing meme, fans have joked that the fifth rule must have something to do with respecting others' pronouns and defending the rights of nonbinary people, coming up with various rhymes to do so.
- "Crashing Origin into Colony 9?! How long have you been in the force?!"Explanation (MASSIVE SPOILERS) During the ending, freeing Origin from Alpha's clutches causes it to careen into Colony 9, resulting in the ocean expanse seen in the main game. While the sight of an iconic location such as Colony 9 being destroyed is genuinely saddening, fans have veered it into Crosses the Line Twice territory by applying Colonel Vangarre's most iconic line to the scenario.
- Noah threw everyone into the ocean.Explanation (MASSIVE SPOILERS) When Riku first shows Lucky Seven to Matthew, he mentions how his "Masterpon" Melia forged Lucky Seven with Origin metal and the souls of people very important to her — and since the only member of the first game's main party seen in 3 or Future Redeemed aside from her is Shulk, then it otherwise heavily implies that the rest of the party's souls are stored inside Lucky Seven. Not only that, but Matthew's gauntlets are revealed to have Pyra/Mythra's Pneuma Core embedded within them, and since those gauntlets are implied to have been reforged at some point into Noah's sheathe for Lucky Seven, it basically means that come the events of 3, Noah is now wielding a sword with the souls of major characters from the first two games inside of them. The memetic part of this is that at the very end of 3, Noah ends up throwing Lucky Seven and its sheathe into the ocean — thus he presumably and unknowingly threw away the souls of the first game's party sans Shulk and Melia, as well as Pyra and Mythra. As a result, fans began memeing about the potential reactions of Shulk, Melia, Rex, and Nia to finding out that Noah threw their friends away into the ocean without a second thought.
- How many Monados in this picture?Explanation (MASSIVE SPOILERS) The reveal that Matthew's fists have Pneuma's Core Crystal (and the implication that the Sword of the End has Logos' Core Crystal) have led to fans declaring that anything with an Aegis Core counts as a Monado — including the Aegis themselves. Arguments over how many Monados are in Future Redeemed immediately cropped up, generally by showing a random picture of some of the characters captioned with "How many Monados in this picture?" (at minimum: A's Blade. At most: A themself, A's Blade, Matthew's Blades, Shulk's artificial Monado, Rex's Blades, Glimmer herself, Glimmer's Blade, and N's Blade).
- Linka's cringefail parentsExplanation With the knowledge that the extremely chaotic pairing of Zeke and Pandoria ended up having a daughter as straight-laced and strategic as Linka, it's become a popular genre of fanart and fanedits to depict her as being frustrated at the incredibly goofy antics of her Amazingly Embarrassing Parents.
- The Trinity Processors are all into men.Explanation Stemming from the observation that all of the Trinity Processors have some form of either subtextual (Malos toward Jin, Alvis and A towards Shulk) or textual (Pyra and Mythra towards Rex) attraction to male characters, it's become popular to create fanart making fun of this fact, such as showing the three bonding over this shared interest, depicting Klaus as a yaoi fan or troll who deliberately manipulated their programming to make it so, or Pneuma and Malos using their influence to steer Alvis into following suit.
- Stingr-AExplanation A's name is a homophone for the Japanese word for "stingray" (鱝/エイ, ei), thus it's become a Japanese fandom meme to depict A as a ray fish and for A's cape to be the equivalent of fins, or for stingrays and manta rays to otherwise be A's Animal Motif.
