The Best Gaming Memes Of 2021
It's been 20 years since the famous "All Your Base" meme blew up on the internet, and gamers are still going strong in 2021, creating memes from their favorite games. For the uninitiated, Merriam-Webster defines memes as "an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media." In other words, meme creators make jokes out of combinations of images or videos from pop culture, including video games.
Even though there are some memes only true gamers understand, many memes in 2021 have combined pop culture and current world events with video games. In some ways, gaming memes gave people something to laugh about, helping to bring people out of the dark year of 2020 and into a fresh beginning. A few specific topics dominated gaming memes in 2021, but there's a little something for all gamers in the following roundup of memes.
Bernie Sanders infiltrates games
After Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders appeared at the January 2021 Presidential Inauguration wearing hand knitted mittens and a worn brown puffy coat, a new meme was born. Suddenly, Sanders appeared everywhere, photoshopped into various TV shows and movies, masked face looking on disapprovingly.
One video took the meme to previously undiscovered heights by modding Sanders into a number of games, including Skyrim. YouTuber and modder ToastedShoes most notably altered Resident Evil 7 to include Sanders as every member of the Baker family. The result was unsetting and surreal. As one fan explained, "Jokes aside what really sells the scare factor even though it's frickin Bernie is the IDGAF posture." In the video, Sanders scooted around the Baker home in a folding chair, which felt equal parts terrifying and hilarious, and gamers ran with it, suddenly inserting Sanders into every game they could.
For instance, meme-happy gamers also put Sanders in Lady Dimitrescu's mansion, building excitement for the new Resident Evil 8 and adding fuel to the fire of another popular meme in 2021.
Lady Dimitrescu towers over other memes
In some ways, Lady Dimitrescu feels like she's always been part of the horror gaming community, looming over all other memes. From the moment the tall, sexy vampire appeared on the scene in a trailer for Resident Evil Village, fans began to make memes celebrating her. After gamers demanded more information about Lady Dimitrescu, Resident Evil 8 developers obliged, handing out details about her shoe size and tall stature. Still, gamers wanted more content, so they continued making their own.
Memes featuring Lady Dimitrescu are made up of equal parts adoration and humor. For example, one gamer posted a picture of Lady Dimitrescu's back, complete with the punny caption, "Lady Dimitrescu's back-story seems really interesting and substantial." Other meme-makers joked about how they'd run away from Lady Dimitrescu in delight, playfully pretending to be scared.
The mix of fear and fun makes Lady Dimitrescu ripe for meme creation. She inspires terror through her commanding stature and murderous claws, but Lady Dimitrescu's statuesque figure also invites desire. This combination of feelings made Lady Dimitrescu queen of the memes in 2021 — and queen of many gamers' hearts as well.
Mercy wants to speak to your manager
Mercy caused a stir in early 2021 when a new Overwatch skin made her look a bit like a pop culture stereotype. Many gamers began discussing Mercy's new hairstyle, an angular black bob that looked similar to a haircut many jokingly associate with bossiness and privilege. Yes, Overwatch developers gave Mercy a "Karen cut."
A limited time character skin for Mercy, titled "Camouflage," depicts her with the aforementioned haircut and a skintight black jumpsuit, black wings floating out behind her. Many gamers connected Mercy's new 'do with the Karen meme/stereotype, which often refers to entitled women who demand special treatment in a variety of situations.
Karen memes aren't new, but Mercy's inclusion in them is. One player posted a meme saying that Mercy wanted to speak to a manager, while another put an Overwatch twist on the meme by saying Mercy wanted to speak to a "main tank." While Mercy's personality doesn't necessarily fit with the Karen stereotype, her new haircut and the memes that followed provided some much needed laughs in 2021.
Snoop Dogg rage quits and becomes a meme
Snoop Dogg loves video games, but sometimes even he gets overwhelmed and needs to take a break. After streaming the first half of a Madden game, Snoop Dogg angrily slammed his controller down and stormed out of the room, leaving Twitch open on his computer. For 8 hours.
Not ones to miss an opportunity, gamers began creating memes that imagined Snoop Dogg playing other games, like Skyrim, Minecraft, and even an uncooperative PlayStation 2. In fact, meme-makers made Snoop Dogg quit pretty much every video game and anime under the sun for their own enjoyment. The incident turned out to be meme gold.
Snoop Dogg has a history of over the top responses to video games. In 2019, he aggressively responded to an interviewer after his team lost a Madden game. When the interviewer asked how he felt after the loss, Snoop Dogg sarcastically fired back, "How the f*** you think I feel?" The incident was in good humor though, with Snoop Dogg feeling more frustration with himself than the interviewer. Overall, Snoop Dogg continues to give the gaming community sound bites and clips to mine for memes well into the future.
GameStop's stock becomes a meme
Things got weird in early 2021 when GameStop began trending unexpectedly, its stocks driven to extravagant values by Redditors seemingly bent on causing chaos in the market. After things cooled down a bit, GameStop stocks began to rise again, causing another wave of panic. Congress even became interested in the debacle, and demanded to know what was going on.
Many news outlets called undervalued stocks that suddenly began selling at higher values "meme stocks," because many saw the entire process as a joke. Investors that flocked to the market because of Reddit or Discord forums had an interest in buying GameStop stocks because it would be funny to do so, news outlets maintained. When Tesla CEO Elon Musk joined in to joke about the situation, it drew even more eyes to GameStop's soaring stocks.
The entire event in and of itself is something a meme, inspired by a group of people obsessed with internet culture, but it also produced amusing images as well. Some memes imagined pop culture takes on the event, with memes drawing inspiration from things like Wolf of Wall Street and Harry Potter. The internet used its voice, both in actions within the stock market and via memes, and GameStop stock may never be the same.