Leeroy Jenkins
A World of Warcraft guild meticulously plans a raid — and then Leeroy Jenkins, back from making chicken, bellows his own name and charges in alone, wiping everyone. "At least I have chicken" became the internet's shorthand for glorious reckless abandon.
The video, uploaded May 11, 2005 by the World of Warcraft guild Pals for Life, is a small masterpiece of comic construction. The guild spends long minutes planning an assault on the Rookery in Upper Blackrock Spire — percentages of survival are calculated, roles assigned — while the player Leeroy Jenkins (Ben Schulz) sits away from his keyboard preparing food. He returns, hears none of it, screams his own name like a war cry, and charges straight in. The plan collapses instantly, the whole raid dies, and Leeroy delivers his immortal verdict: "At least I have chicken."
It escaped the game almost immediately. Jeopardy! made it a clue, How I Met Your Mother and The Daily Show referenced it, and "doing a Leeroy" became universal slang for charging in without a plan. Blizzard leaned all the way in: a trading card in 2006, an in-game achievement named for him in 2008, and a legendary Hearthstone card that keeps the charge alive for new generations of players.
In December 2017, Schulz and the video's recorder, Ben Vinson, confirmed what many had long suspected — it was staged from the start. They released an earlier take and explained they'd assumed it was so obviously satire that nobody would believe it was real. The reveal didn't dent the legend at all; if anything, it confirmed the video for what it always was: a perfectly written joke the whole internet got to be in on.
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