How a Call Of Duty Cutscene Changed Internet Lexicon (2024)

The Call of Duty series has been seeing massive success with its most recent decision to reboot the immensely loved Modern Warfare series, and while there is debate over which CoD game is the best of the series, most fans won't disagree that the mid-2010s saw many of the least enjoyed Call of Duty titles released. While titles like Ghosts and Infinite Warfare saw lower sales than the more respected Black Ops series, Advanced Warfare was a lower-performing CoD title that managed to do what the others didn't: influence the way people speak online, even to this day.

Any CoD fans who played through Advanced Warfare's campaign -- or anyone who spent time online when the game released -- would've been familiar with the infamous "Press F to pay respects" key prompt that showed up during what was intended to be a somber scene of a friend's funeral. The prompt was a widely ridiculed part of the game's storyline, spreading far beyond the gaming community to become a part of the way that people expressed sympathy -- sometimes sincerely. Despite being the fourth-best reviewed CoD title of the 2010s, the game is still more remembered for the awkward cutscene than any actual gameplay.

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Press F Represents a Meme in a More Natural Form

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What makes "Press F to pay respects" stand out among many other media-related memes is that it requires little to no knowledge of where it comes from or the context in which it was originally created. Most jokes in online circles require knowing the material the joke comes from (or in the case of a film like Morbius, specifically not watching it). "Press F" contains all the context needed in just the screenshot of the game, where the player is facing a coffin with the famous line displayed in the center of the screen. No one needs to know whose funeral it is, or which game it came from in order to find it funny.

Another reason "Press F to pay respects" has survived far beyond the lifespan of the game that created it is likely its unintended nature. Most major companies today tend to embrace and promote memes of their own work for marketing, such as the Spider-Man pointing memes, but Advanced Warfare's infamous cutscene was never intended to stand out as much as it has. The apparent sincerity of the scene makes the meme far more authentic rather than an intentional bid by the developers to create a viral moment, which made it all the easier for everyone to be able to laugh at it.

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Why It's Unlikely Another Video Game Meme Will Be as Widespread

With how much online culture has shifted since the release of Advanced Warfare, it's unlikely that any meme will be as ubiquitous as "Press F." While companies like CoD publisher EA can still fail tremendously to capitalize on memes, it's a lot more common to see them embrace and join in on the jokes. It can be fun to see developers able to laugh at themselves, but with companies more inclined these days to attempt to ride viral trends for publicity, mainstream acceptance of once-niche jokes will oftentimes spell the end of it. In a post-Wendy's Twitter social media landscape, most online users see brand embracing in a far more cynical light.

The overall harsher view of brands makes moments like "Press F To Pay Respects" a viral meme that can't be recaptured. When even Nintendo is referencing memes of their own characters, it becomes a lot less likely for viral jokes to avoid being co-opted by brands, removing a lot of the fun that comes with making jokes at a game's expense. While it's almost guaranteed that future Call of Duty games will spawn memes of their own, it's unlikely that anything will become as common across the internet as "Press F to pay respects."