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STOP RIGHT THERE, TROPER! Take a look at these The Elder Scrolls memes and see if any are familiar to you.

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Please add entries in the following format:

• The name of the video game or company.
  • The meme. [[labelnote:Explanation]]The explanation behind the meme, if necessary.[[/labelnote]] ^Explanation Like this.
  • Further mutations and successor memes, if any.

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Recurring:

• [remain silent] ^Explanation The Dark Brotherhood quests in Oblivion and Skyrim often give you the option to not say anything in response to an NPC's dialogue. The NPC will react accordingly.
• "Khajiit has wares, if you have coin." ^Explanation Standard stock line of Khajiit salespeople. Usually paired with pictures of actual felines.
  • "Khajiit stole nothing... Khajiit is innocent of this crime." ^Explanation Another stock line, typically paired with pictures of actual felines in cages or being dragged away.
• Fishy Sticks ^Explanation A forum in-joke that's referenced Once per Episode. Basically, it's tradition to give newcomers to the official forum a "fishy stick" in the form of this image ◊. Bethesda was amused by it and has thrown in various in-game references.
• "C0DA makes it canon." ^Explanation C0DA, a comic written by Michael Kirkbride, was about, among other things, the nature of Elder Scrolls canon, in that it is deliberately contradictory and open to the interpretation of the community, particularly in the matter of fanfiction. The absurdity of the comic leads many to use this phrase as a response to shitposts and memes.
• It just works. ^Explanation Todd Howard used this phrase during the gameplay reveal of Fallout 4. Fans have begun to use this phrase to refer to how buggy the recent Bethesda games have been.

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Daggerfall:

• HALTHALTHALTHALTHALTHALTHALTHALTHALTHALTHALT! ^Explanation City guards cry "Halt!" while chasing you. Committing a crime will result in a lot of city guards chasing you.

Morrowind:

• Game of the Year. All Years. ^Explanation The Game of the Year edition of the game was still being sold in stores some 10-12 years after it came out, so people ran with it. As of 2018, it has been made a backwards compatible title on the various virtual stores, so it will always be available.
• YOU N'WAH! FILTHY S'WIT! DIE, FETCHER! ^Explanation Insults the native Dunmer use in battle. They stick out due to the frequency you'll hear them along with the fact that they're made up curse words. Carried over into later games.
• We're watching you, scum. ^Explanation A classic "greeting" used by Ordinators.
• The Morrowind Strut. ^Explanation The odd walking animation, which spawned several youtube videos. There is even a mod for "Shoes of Extravagant Swag" which will play 'Stayin' Alive' when the player character walks in them.
• The Lusty Argonian Maid ^Explanation One of the in-game books is a So Bad, It's Good excerpt from a cheesy pornographic play by resident Chivalrous Pervert Crassius Curio. It was so popular with fans that it's been included in every game since, then got sequels in Skyrim.
• "With this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed. Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created." ^Explanation A message you get if you kill a character who's essential to the plot. Morrowind doesn't have "essential" NPC protection, so you can very easily kill someone you weren't meant to and get this message a lot.
• "Why walk when you can ride?" ^Explanation A common catchphrase from the NPCs that offer Silt Strider Transport.
• "Mournhold. City of Light. City of Magic" ^Explanation A common catchphrase from the NPCs in Mournhold.
• The 36 Lessons of Vivec debuted in Morrowind and features the especially memorable line "Reach heaven by violence" repeated in several of the sermons; after being popularized as a reference as a recurring line in Kill Six Billion Demons, "Reach heaven through violence" has shown up in a lot of varied places since.

Oblivion:

• STOP! YOU VIOLATED THE LAW! Pay the court a fine or serve your sentence! Your stolen goods are now forfeit!
  • STOP RIGHT THERE, CRIMINAL SCUM! No one breaks the law on my watch! I'm confiscating your stolen goods, now pay your fine or it's off to jail! ^Explanation Both lines said by the Imperial Guardsmen when they catch you after you've committed a crime.
    • STOP RIGHT THERE, CRIMINAL SCUM! YOU'VE VIOLATED MY MOTHER! ^Explanation A rather (in)famous variation of the above line, coming from a Gamer Poop video, combining two different sentences.
    • THEN PAY WITH YOUR BLOOD! ^Explanation This is said if you resist arrest.
  • Goddamn telepathic guards. ^Explanation When you're caught commiting a crime, somehow every guard in the region immediately knows you're a criminal upon seeing you, even if you flee all the way across the map.
• BY THE NINE DIVINES! THERE'S BEEN A MURDER! ^Explanation Often said directly after you kill someone and take about two steps away from the corpse.
  • BY THE NINE DIVINES! ASSAULT! ASSAULT! ^Explanation Usually shouted if the player attacks a friendly NPC.
  • "The body is still warm. There is a killer about." ^Explanation Another line that the guards say upon finding a dead body, which they will often say just after they kill someone themselves.
• BY AZURA! BY AZURA! BY AZURA!! IT'S THE GRAND CHAMPION! ^Explanation The line comes from a particularly annoying NPC called the Adoring Fan who follows you around sometimes and can't be killed.
• I heard the Fighters' Guild is recruiting again. ^Explanation Basically a Welcome to Corneria. Players can expect to hear it a lot.
• I saw a mud crab the other day.
  • Loathsome things, I hate them.
  • Did you steer well clear of it?
  • Goodbye. ^Explanation The system that generates chatter for the NPCs is a bit eccentric, and often repeats itself and throws together odd conversations.
• "CHEESE! FOR EVERYONE!" ^Explanation One of Sheogorath's lines when you successfully complete a quest for him. He's a fairly Mad God ("Wait, scratch that! Cheese fer no one! That can be just as much as a celebration if you don't like cheese, true?!").
• Powdered deer penis. ^Explanation Weebam-Na lists off the menu of a failed restaurant, ending the list with "Rat ragu with powdered deer penis." Fans were quick to make the "penis" part of the line a meme.
• "Oblivion NPC dialogue in a nutshell" ^Explanation Comedic YouTube videos making fun of the aforementioned Artificial Atmospheric Actions by setting awkward dialogue from movies, tv shows and other sources to Oblivion music.
• NI-NI-NI-NI-NI-NI-NI-NI ^Explanation In the Shivering Isles DLC you meet a bizarre Argonian who shouts this while running around in circles.
• I don't know you and I don't care to know you! ^Explanation In Cheydinhal, you meet a corrupt guard who will say this to you. Due to a Good Bad Bug, he will continue to say this phrase when he is in a conversation with an NPC.

Skyrim:

• "... then I took an arrow in the knee." ^Explanation The guards of major settlements tend to say "I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow in the knee." quite a lot. This has been exploited.
  • People are getting tired of it.
• FUS RO DAH! ^Explanation The words for the "Unrelenting Force" shout, which can be used to send just about anything flying with one's voice. Literally means "force balance push". Often used in videos that show someone or something getting knocked over. For example, this video.
• KA... ME... HA... ME... HA!!! ^Explanation The master-level shock spell in the destruction tree, Lightning Storm, looks like an electrical variant on the (semi) trope-naming Kamehameha from Dragon Ball.
• Let me guess, someone stole your sweetroll. ^Explanation Another quote from the guards. This is actually a reference to previous Elder Scrolls games, where the multiple-choice character creation option would ask you what you would do if someone stole your sweetroll. It's nodded at in Fallout 3, another Bethesda game, in which at the start, a bully attempts to steal your sweetroll.
• Did you see those warriors from Hammerfell? They've got curved swords. Curved. Swords. ^Explanation Those guards are at it again. The ones in Whiterun will sometimes comment on the Alik'r warriors in the city who do indeed carry curved swords, which the guards find fascinating for some reason. Inexplicably, you can also hear it from guards in the other cities where there aren't any Alik'r warriors at all.
  • Don't let yourself be fooled by a pretty face. You're better than that. ^Explanation A quote by Kematu, the leader of said Alik'r warriors, if you side with him over Saadia. Lobbed at players that are accused of being Distracted by the Sexy.
• "Something you need, you miserable wretch?" ^Explanation A common greeting from NPC's that you've managed to royally piss off, usually by stealing something from them or killing a friend of theirs. Most famously used by the merchant Elrindir if you murder his brother Anoriath for the Dark Brotherhood.
• People don't want to be sword.
• "Do you get to the Cloud District very often? Oh, what am I saying? Of course, you don't." ^Explanation A common quote from Nazeem. Considered particularly grating since the 'Cloud District' is just the area around Dragonsreach, which you can not only get to very easily and have to go to several times in the main quest including the first time you visit Whiterun, but may be exactly where you're standing when he says this.

• "We are but maggots, WRITHING in the filth of OUR OWN CORRUPTION!" and "Praise Talos!" ^Explanation One Nord priest named Heimskr has a very loud way of appreciation of the god Talos. This makes him, along with Nazeem, one of the most favoured characters to kill for being annoying.
  • And "LET ME SHOOOOOOOOOW YOU THE POWER OF TALOS STORMCROWN!"
• "These Skyrim mods are getting out of hand." ^Explanation On image-sharing sites like Imgur, this is a typical comment on Scenery Porn photos.
• Horses not giving a crap about physics ◊ due to the wonky behavior of mountains.
• Skyrim now on EVERYTHING! ^Explanation Skyrim's repeated appearances at E3 2017 (six years after it came out) caused a bit of a reaction, with comparisons to Resident Evil 4. Notably, this was acknowledged by Bethesda at E3 2018, with them jokingly announcing Skyrim Very Special Edition for the Amazon Alexa, Etch-a-Sketch, Motorola pager, and Samsung smart refrigerator.
• You are carrying too much to be able to run. ^Explanation You will see this message a lot in the early part of the game, especially while trudging toward the nearest town with a general store.
• I'll just create a new character with a fresh playstyle... And I'm a Stealth Archer again. ^Explanation Skyrim overhauled the Stealth system which has been in place since the series' inception, taking it from near Useless Useful Stealth levels and buffing it to damn near Game-Breaker levels. At high skill levels and with the right perks, it becomes difficult for NPCs to detect you at all, which added to the stealth combat enhancements the game brings, makes it a devastating Critical Hit Class. As such, players attempting to create new characters with different playstyles often find themselves drawn back into being Stealth Archers. Meme examples: here ◊ and here ◊.
• You cannot fast travel when enemies are nearby. ^Explanation A great source of aggravation for players attempting to travel to another location, especially as, more often than not, it's caused by a Slaughterfish in a nearby brook that the player can't even see to kill. That, or they've randomly encountered a dragon, again.
• "Then I stripped the corpse naked and threw it in the river." ^Explanation The standard ending to any story involving bandits, Thalmor agents, or anyone else a player fights. In some cases, it's actually become custom for dealing with dead NPC characters who don't disappear after being murdered, as for many, it essentially becomes a funeral.
• "A NEW HAND TOUCHES THE BEACON" ^Explanation Picking up Meridia's Beacon automatically triggers both her quest and a loud, sudden voiceover from her, ordering you to go to her temple. The beacon is spawned in a randomly chosen boss chest, making it near inevitable that you'll unwittingly pick it up in the middle of a different, far more important quest. This has made it a popular Interrupting Meme.
• Skyrim Intro Copypasta/"Hey, you. You're finally awake. You were trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush, same as us, and that thief over there." ^Explanation A series of infamous ◊ series ◊ of greentext referencing the opening of the game, usually starts off as the poster is heading somewhere on a carrier or simply closing their eyes, resulting the aforementioned opening once the poster wakes up/opened his/her eyes. Naturally, it spawns parodies and variations ◊.
  • Goddamit Todd, you did it again. ^Explanation Todd Howard, executive producer on Oblivion, Skyrim, and several Fallout games, is stereotyped as an endearing-but-odd boss along the lines of a Michael Scott who desperately wants you to buy multiple copies of Skyrim / Fallout 4 / Fallout 76 / whatever else at any cost, up to and including threatening you at gunpoint, putting you inside the game, or disguising a Bethesda game as another game.
• The Frost Troll. ^Explanation The path to High Hrothgar has a Beef Gate Frost Troll on it which can very easily kill a low-level character. You have to go to High Hrothgar to advance the main quest, and are told to go there very early in the main questline, so this can lead to a Cycle of Hurting where the Troll kills you over and over, causing it to become a bit of a Memetic Badass amongst the fandom.
• [Insert Skill] 100. ^Explanation It's popular to make screenshots of real life news stories accompanied by the appropriate in-game skill, insinuating that the people involved leveled those skills to the max. For example, "Man talks entire lesbian bar into orgy: Speech 100."
  • Illusion 100, Sneak 100. ^Explanation Similar to the above, except this is used sarcastically, in situations where With Cat Like Tread would apply (a cat hiding amongst towels, or a trail claiming to be a train).
• We Know. ^Explantion The Dark Brotherhood questline begins when you kill one of their targets and promptly get an anonymous letter saying "We Know" along with a black handprint. Letters in other works of fiction are frequently edited into the same message.
• Quicksaving... ^Explanation It's common practice for players to quicksave their game upon meeting annoying or rude NPCs so they can kill them without getting a bounty or detailing a playthrough.
• Skyrim belongs to the Nords! ^Explanation A common battle cry among the Nordic NPCs. Since most characters in the game are Nords, expect to hear this a lot.
  • I'll mount your head on my wall! ^Explanation Another memorable battle cry favoured by the native Nords.
• You'll make a fine rug, cat! ^Explanation A race-specific taunt that Khajiit will hear a lot.
• You've committed crimes against Skyrim and her people, what say you in your defense? ^Explanation What the guards say when arresting you. Snowcloned for a variety of scenarios, usually to show disapproval of something.
  • Wait, I know you... ^Explanation If you try to speak to a guard if you have an active bounty at the hold, they will recognize you and say this before trying to arrest.
• The Sacred Chicken ^Explanation One of the many quirks of the game's AI is that, if you kill any of the chickens or other livestock in villages, every single citizen in the town will turn hostile and attack you with intent to kill. The bounty you get for it is pretty minuscule, making their reactions even more inexplicable.
• Must've been my imagination... ^Explanation The Sneak skill was revamped in Skyrim to basically become "Artificial Stupidity: the Skill"; at high Sneak levels, it's exceedingly common for enemies to not detect you even as you're peppering them with arrows, leading to bandits brushing off the arrows sticking out the back of their heads as a figment of their imagination.
• Never should have come here! ^Explanation Said by every bandit that attacks you ever. And most other NPCs in combat, for that matter.
• Cuckolding Faendal/Sven ^Explanation One of the earliest quests you can do is resolving a Love Triangle between Faendal, Sven, and Camilla in Riverwood. Whichever of the men you help becomes a recruitable companion. The issue? Camilla is a marriage option, meaning you can help Faendal or Sven get a chance at the woman they love, only to swoop in and steal her from them, all while making them follow you around and serve you.
• "I like your ass"/"You're lying, Morgan." ^Explanation Popular parody YouTuber Mans1ay3r's outro starts with a section of his L.A Noire's parody video, which contains this memetic exchange. Since Mans1ay3r's Skyrim and Oblivion Gamer Poop series are extremely popular among the TES fandom, this meme quickly became associated with Skyrim. Make any joke that originates from Mans1ay3r and someone is guaranteed to quote this exchange in response.
• Restoration is a perfectly valid school of magic, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise! ^Explanation As Colette Marence, the Restoration master at the College of Winterhold, will tell you every time you come within earshot. The question of Restoration's validity is often jokingly taken with a disproportionate amount of seriousness by fans as a result.
• What in Oblivion is THAT? ^Explanation General Tullius's uncharacteristically hammy response to Alduin's appearance in the game's intro is relatively popular as a way to express surprise.
• Kleptomaniac with a cheese addiction ^Explanation The best descriptor for the Dragonborn
• Pogodi! Pogodi! ^Explanation Extreme case of Russian Memetic Mutation for the main theme, turning it into hilarious, but strangerly coherent lyrics. ("Dovahkiin, Dovahkiin, naal ok zin los vahriin" - "Pogodi, pogodi, na chasy posmotry", which translates as "Wait a bit, wait a bit, look at your watch"). The rest of the song similary turned into quite insane, but pretty coherent Russian citizen sad tale, lamenting about his dog being fat and flea-ridden, Moscow losing its head (again), and peoples being tired of victories, but still ready to brew a coffee, while enemies are advancing unnoticed without the ring.
• "By Talos, this can't be happening!" ^Explanation Originating on tumblr ◊, the phrase is frequently used as a stock response to negative (but usually harmless or just strange) information. The actual phrase does not appear in the game, though several NPCs say "By the gods, this can't be happening"
• THE SKELETON APPEARS ^Explanation A sort of "joint" meme with Kirby, where an otherwise unrelated scene is abruptly cut short by a Skull (an item from Skyrim) suddenly appearing from a wall of flames, complete with the Skull Gang's theme song from Kirby Mass Attack blasting in the background.

The Elder Scrolls Online:

• "Transcription Error" ^Explanation Despite earlier games describing Cyrodiil, the heartland of the Empire and home province of the Imperials, as a tropical jungle, Oblivion showed it to be much more temperate. As described in the "Obscure Text" The Many Headed Talos (which Heimskr, see above, quotes from in Skyrim), the Deity of Human Origin Talos is said to have changed Cyrodiil to its current climate as a way of thanking the Imperial Legions who served him so well in life. The lore community largely accepted this explanation. However, when Online came out and showed Cyrodiil with the same temperate climate it has in Oblivion, fans scoffed. The in-game book The Heartland of Cyrodiil added fuel to the fire when it dismissed previous descriptions of Cyrodiil being a jungle as a "Transcription Error". Lore buffs largely settled on the Fanon explanation that Talos's changes were retroactive, making it so that Cyrodiil had always had a temperate climate. Since then, "Transcription Error" has been used by the fanbase to mock any changes Online (which was written and developed by a Bethesda subsidiary instead of the usual Elder Scrolls team) has made to the lore which they do not like. Example Reddit discussion here.

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Do you get to the trope district very often? Oh what am I saying, of course you don't!

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Memes/TheElderScrolls

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