Few anime that debuted in the 2000s are as iconic as Yu-Gi-Oh! In both America and Japan, the series struck a perfect balance between strong writing and blatant merchandising that helped it become a major hit, and 25 years later, Yu-Gi-Oh! is still incredibly popular and is easily one of the biggest anime franchises in the world, especially when it comes to the real-life card game.
When something gets as big as Yu-Gi-Oh! does, that naturally leads to fans making memes about it out of both their love for the series and a desire to make fun of some of the weirder aspects, and sure enough, Yu-Gi-Oh! has plenty of iconic memes that stand out as some of the biggest in all of anime. A few of those memes especially stand out, and each one does a perfect job of highlighting why Yu-Gi-Oh! is still held in high regard after so many years.
10 Characters Saying “You’ve Activated My Trap Card!”
One Of The Most Oft-Repeated Lines In Yu-Gi-Oh!
In the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, one of the types of cards duelists use in duels is called a Trap Card. While there are plenty of exceptions, especially in the modern state of the game, Trap Cards can’t be activated on the turn they’re set, and as such, players use them during their opponent’s turn to either stop their strategies or quickly recover when they’re put in a tough situation.
The dramatic nature of Yu-Gi-Oh! typically results in characters often saying some form of the line, “You’ve activated my Trap Card!” whenever one is played. That’s plenty funny on its own, but the hammy nature of the “You’ve activated my Trap Card!” line has led to it being used as a joke in other fandoms when someone wants to talk about tricking another person, and it’s to the point that the joke has even transcended its origins to some respect.
9 Everyone Explains What Pot Of Greed Does
The Most Common Card In The Yu-Gi-Oh! Anime
With Yu-Gi-Oh! being a card game anime, characters always have to explain what their cards do when they play them so both their opponents and the audience understand what’s going on. This will happen even with cards people have seen countless times, and the repetitive nature of that is often as annoying as it is hilarious.
No card better capitalizes Yu-Gi-Oh!’s writing quirks than the card Pot of Greed. Pot of Greed is a card nearly every character in the anime uses, yet characters still feel the need to explain what it does whenever they play it, even if their opponent has also played Pot of Greed. The way Yu-Gi-Oh! characters constantly explain the effects of Pot of Greed, one of the biggest staples of the game, has created one of the biggest jokes in the fandom, and it persists, even with the card being banned in real life.
8 Joey’s Creepy Chin
Joey's Most Recurring Gag In Yu-Gi-Oh!
Joey Wheeler, known as Katsuya Jonouchi in the manga and Japanese dub, is one of the main characters of Yu-Gi-Oh! and one of the anime’s main sources of comedic relief. Joey will almost always be either making a joke or on the receiving end of one, and that’s especially the case in the anime, which often used its filler scenes to inject more comedy into the story.
The comedy of Joey’s character was always great, especially when it came to visual comedy. A recurring gag in the anime was for Joey’s chin and face to suddenly get creepily detailed whenever he was trying to be intimidating, and not only has it been a major source of redraws over the years, but even Western media like The Amazing World of Gumball has referenced Joey’s creepy chin, and it all comes together to show just how iconic a joke it’s become.
Joey's creepy chin gag is reportedly based on Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki.
7 The Way The Yu-Gi-Oh! Anime Completely Spoiled Joey’s Death
Meme From Yu-Gi-Oh! Episode 128
In any anime, it’s unfortunately common for episode titles to completely spoil what’s going to happen in an episode. Whether it’s a new power the protagonist gains or the outcome of a major battle, anime will often spoil events with little hesitation, likely in an attempt to draw in viewers and further boost their ratings for the week.
Anime spoiling themselves was especially common in the ’90s and 2000s, and Yu-Gi-Oh! was no exception. In the original Japanese, the episode where Joey is killed by Marik is titled, “Jonouchi Dies”, and if that weren’t bad enough, the spoiler for Joey’s death in Yu-Gi-Oh! comes immediately after the episode preview going on about how he can’t give up. Yu-Gi-Oh! voice actors have made countless jokes about it over the years, and it’s easily one of the most notorious examples of the classic cliche.
6 Yu-Gi-Oh! Characters Holding “Invisible Guns”
A Frequent Part Of Yu-Gi-Oh!'s Censorship
4Kids Entertainment was infamous for heavily censoring their licenses, and Yu-Gi-Oh! was no exception. Whether it was blood, violence, or partial nudity, Yu-Gi-Oh! was constantly hit with censorship to make it more appropriate for children, even though the original anime was geared more towards people of all ages, but specifically teenage boys.
Of all the ways Yu-Gi-Oh! was censored, nothing stood out more than the English dub’s handling of guns. Naturally, every instance of guns in Yu-Gi-Oh! was cut out for being inappropriate for children, but all 4Kids Entertainment did was cut the guns out while leaving the rest of the scenes in tact, so Yu-Gi-Oh!’ English dub repeatedly had scenes where characters were randomly pointing at others when they were originally holding guns. Yu-Gi-Oh!’s “invisible guns” have been a source of mockery for years, and there’s no better showing of how weird the English dub was.
5 The Shadow Realm
One Of The Most Infamous Dub Edits To Yu-Gi-Oh!'s Script
Another major result of Yu-Gi-Oh!’s censorship was the creation of the Shadow Realm. While the villains would simply kill people whenever they won a Shadow Game, the English dub censored that by creating the idea of people only having their souls sent to the Shadow Realm, a mysterious dimension of darkness meant to be analogous to hell.
The fact that 4Kids Entertainment would censor death to the point of contrivance was one thing, but the Shadow Realm became a major meme in Yu-Gi-Oh! because it ironically came off as a far worse alternative to death due to essentially being a kid-friendly version of hell. For years now, it’s been common for anime fans to joke that someone is sent to the Shadow Realm when they die, and overall, it’s easy to see how that caught on as well as it did.
4 Yugi Summons Exodia Against Kaiba
Meme From Yu-Gi-Oh! Episode 1
As any fan of Yu-Gi-Oh! will know, the series opens with Yugi dueling against Kaiba after Kaiba sent Yugi’s grandfather to the hospital through the shock of his solid vision holograms and destroyed his Blue-Eyes White Dragon card. Kaiba quickly overwhelmed Yugi with his own trio of Blue-Eyes White Dragons, but at the last second, Yugi assembled the five pieces of Exodia and turned things around with an instant win.
Not only is the entire scene of Exodia’s summoning and the dialogue Yugi and Kaiba share incredibly iconic, but in recent years, the imagery of Kaiba’s expression after Yugi defeats him with Exodia has splintered off into a separate meme that’s used as a template meme revolving around online comebacks. Every part of the scene is incredibly memetic, and it coming from the first episode perfectly shows that Yu-Gi-Oh! was always meant to be iconic.
3 Yami Yugi Uses Berserker Soul Against Weevil
Meme From Yu-Gi-Oh! Episode 162
During Yami Yugi’s duel with Weevil in season 4, Weevil, assured of his victory against Yami Yugi, taunted Yami Yugi by pretending to rip up the card housing Yugi’s soul, but that was a big mistake on his part. Yami Yugi would ultimately win by using Berserker Soul, a card that let him attack Weevil directly multiple times, and he was so angry that he kept beating on his lifeless body until Tea stopped him.
In both English and Japanese, Yami Yugi’s voice actor did an incredible job of conveying the absolute fury he was meant to be feeling as he assaulted Weevil, and the score and overall direction accompanying it helped to sell the intensity of it even further. The scene is a major meme for both English and Japanese fans, and overall, it’s easily the best moment to come out of season 4.
2 Yami Yugi Cries Over Yugi’s Sacrifice
Meme From Yu-Gi-Oh! Episode 158
After Yami Yugi, against Yugi’s wishes, activated the Seal of Orichalcos against Rafael, he gave Rafael a run for his money, but ultimately lost due to a last-minute comeback from Rafael. Yugi was forced to sacrifice himself to keep Yami Yugi from losing his soul, and the episode ended with Yami Yugi crying for Yugi and, in the English dub, saying that it should have been him who lost his soul, not Yugi.
While Yami Yugi’s reaction to Yugi’s sacrifice is supposed to be a scene of tragedy, Yami Yugi’s line of, “It should have been me, not him!” has become a meme for the opposite reasons with people using it to express jealousy that someone is getting something they don’t have, usually something sexual in nature. It’s a fairly recent meme, and it’s proof positive of how much relevance Yu-Gi-Oh! has managed to maintain in modern day.
1 Chazz Princeton’s Dramatic Crossroads Card
Meme From Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Episode 47
Near the end of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX season 1, Chazz falls in love with Alexis and steals the spirit keys in a misguided attempt to get Alexis to go on a date with him. Chazz and Alexis ended up having a duel over the spirit keys, and near the end of the duel, Chazz played a card called Dramatic Crossroads in what he saw as a symbolic way of making Alexis return his feelings for her.
Dramatic Crossroads depicts a person having to make a choice between two paths, and over a decade since its debut, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX’s Dramatic Crossroads card became a major meme template in the 2020s where people used it to showcase making hilarious decisions. It got so popular that people didn’t even know it was from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, and that level of popularity makes it the biggest meme from the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, by far.
