Let’s rewind to May 2005. YouTube was 4 months old. Viral Videos were an extremely rare thing. And somewhere in the pixelated halls of World of Warcraft, a group of players was carefully planning a high-stakes raid in Upper Blackrock Spire. They were running the numbers, discussing strategy, and meticulously prepping to avoid death by angry dragon babies.
And then it happened.
Without warning, one player, who was AFK through the entire planning phase, jumped back at his desk, broke formation, shouted his name with the ferocity of a caffeinated battle cry, and charged straight into the chaos: “LEEEEEEROYYYYYY JENKINNNNNNNNS!!!”
Everyone else? Screamed. Panicked. Died.
A minute later, as the virtual corpses piled up and the team’s carefully crafted plan lay in ruins, Leeroy delivered the now-immortal follow-up: “At least I have chicken.”
It was stupid. It was glorious. It was… internet perfection.
Within days, the video exploded. Gamers passed it around like sacred text. Forums dissected it. News outlets wrote about it. Even people who had never played WoW suddenly knew what it meant to “pull an epic Leeroy.” The phrase entered our collective lexicon. Leeroy became more than a guy in a video - he became a cultural archetype: the reckless friend who charges in without thinking, ruins everything, and somehow becomes the hero anyway.
The original video has racked up millions of views over the years, and Leeroy himself lives on - in multiple forms. Blizzard, fully aware of the lightning they’d bottled, immortalized him inside World of Warcraft as an NPC and even gave him a card in Hearthstone. South Park gave him a shoutout in their now-legendary “Make Love, Not Warcraft” episode. Leeroy’s legacy even made its way to Jeopardy! and the Smithsonian. You know, casual stuff.
But here’s where things get complicated. Like many legends, the Leeroy Jenkins story has a twist.
Turns out, the video? It was staged.
Yep. The whole thing was a skit. The raid, the strategizing, the yelling, the chicken - it was all scripted by a group of friends from the guild PALS FOR LIFE. And once you know that, it’s… kind of obvious. The voice acting, the perfectly timed disaster, the dramatic reactions. It’s all a little too good.
And yet - and this is the important part - it doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter that Leeroy was scripted. Because his impact wasn’t. His effect on gamer culture, meme culture, and internet humor was very, very real. This wasn’t a cat falling off a counter. This was a proto-meme. A digital campfire story. A foundational artifact of internet history.
Leeroy Jenkins was one of the first viral sensations to truly transcend its source material. It wasn’t about WoW. It wasn’t even about gaming. It was about chaos. It was about timing. It was about that perfect blend of ridiculousness and relatability that makes a meme stick for two entire decades.
Twenty years later, Leeroy’s name still gets dropped in Twitch chats, gaming discords, and D&D campaigns. He’s referenced in esports, high school yearbooks, and probably some confused HR team-building exercise somewhere.
Because everyone knows a Leeroy. Or is a Leeroy. Or was a Leeroy at some point. That’s why it stuck. That’s why it still slaps.
And as we look back on 20 years of “LEEEEROY JENKINS,” it’s kind of wild to realize how much the internet - and gaming - has changed since then. Viral moments today last about 36 hours before getting buried by whatever TikTok trend is next (Remember when everyone liked corn?). But Leeroy? He’s still here. Still yelling. Still charging in without a plan.
So yeah, maybe it was fake. Maybe it was a bit. But what it became? That was real.
And at the end of the day… at least he had chicken.
A little bonus for you - Here is an early take of the skit that was uploaded to YouTube 7 years ago:
