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| U MAD BRO? One Does Not Simply Guy is a featured article here on Teh Meme Wiki |
| “ | Elrond: The ring cannot be destroyed, Gimli, son of Gloin, by any craft that we here possess. The ring was made in the fires of Mount Doom. Only there can it be unmade. The ring must be taken deep into Mordor and cast back into the fiery chasm from whence it came. One of you must do this. Boromir: One does not simply walk into Mordor. Its black gates are guarded by more than just orcs. There is evil there that does not sleep. The great eye is ever watchful. It is a barren wasteland, riddled with fire, ash, and dust. The very air you breathe is a poisonous fume. Not with ten thousand men could you do this. It is folly. |
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| Boromir warns to the Council of Elrond about difficulty of entering Mordor. | ||
Description
"One does not simply walk into Mordor", also known in snowclone as "One does not simply X" and "One does not simply X into Mordor", or in character as One Does Not Simply Guy is a quote from the 2001 epic high fantasy adventure film Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, directed by Peter Jackson. The line has gained popularity as a meme which is used to imply that a task is difficult or impossible to actually do. It was quoted by Boromir, casted by Sean Bean.
Origin
Lord of the Rings
The phrase “One does not simply walk into Mordor” originated from a scene in Peter Jackson’s 2001 film adaption of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. In the scene, the Council of Elrond reveals that the One Ring must be destroyed by being thrown into the fires of Mount Doom, a volcano deep in the territory of Mordor. Boromir then points out the difficultly of the task by saying, “One does not simply walk into Mordor."
Web usage
As a Snowclone
In the “One does not simply X into Mordor” snowclone, the word “walk” is typically substituted with another verb which is often related to the subject of an image. The variation "One dos not simply walk into Y", swaps “Mordor” with another location that has relevance to the situation depicted in the image. One of its first instances in image macro form was posted in a Something Awful thread with the caption "One does not simply / drive into Mordor" on January 16th, 2004.
Popularity
On May 3rd, 2004, the Something Awful image macro was used in a YTMND page titled "Drive Into Mordor". On September 10th, 2005, a "more cowbell" mashup YTMND was created titled "One does not simply cowbell into Mordor", which received over 21,000 views within seven years. On June 21st, 2006, an image macro with the caption "One does not simply Telnet into Morder" was posted on the Internet humor blog My[confined]Space. On February 28th, 2007, an image of Boromir riding a cat with the caption "One does not simply / Tank Cat into Mordor" was posted on the humor site I Can Has Cheezburger.
Google Maps later implemented a reminder that one cannot simply walk into Mordor on their walking directions from a Wisconsin address masked as the Shire to an address masked as Mordor in Illinois. The meme has continued to spread on Tumblr, Memebase, Reddit, and Facebook.
On August 2015, the animated television show Gravity Falls referenced the meme in one of its episodes. Wherein after the mayoral candidate Stanford Pines answered poorly to interviews, he was met with mocked and negative approval, which can be seen at the 0:50 mark.
Trivia
- Another one of Boromir's lines, "They have a cave troll", has also became an internet meme.
- The search for its phrase started in December 2005, when a gif of the phrase was circulating the web. It was picked up again in October 2006, coinciding with Rick Santorum explaining the Iraq war with a Mordor analogy.