From Mass Effect to Bioshock – game quotes that outlive the games themselves

A Reddit thread asked players to share the video game lines that have stuck in their heads for years. Javik, the last Prothean from Mass Effect 3, took the top spot by a wide margin. Commenters quoted him again and again, each time slightly differently, as if recalling it from memory:

Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer.

Players also remember the farewell of Mordin Solus from the same game almost word for word. The Salarian scientist gives his life to spread the genophage cure and gets out one last line: "Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong."

Mass Effect 3 came out in 2012, and the scene still shows up on lists of the most powerful deaths in games.

Skyrim, with its long string of fetch quests, can also hit with sudden depth. The ancient dragon Paarthurnax, a former lieutenant of Alduin and now the Dragonborn mentor, asks: "What is better? To be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?"

One player admitted they never expected this from their "cool dragon game" and vowed never to hurt their "based dragon grandpa," no matter how hard Delphine and the Blades push for his death.

The monologue from the Citadel gunnery sergeant in Mass Effect 2 stands in a category of its own. He explains to recruits why nobody eyeballs a shot in space.

A 20-kilo slug accelerates to 1.3 percent of the speed of light and hits with the force of a 38-kiloton bomb. The physics holds up, too: the kinetic energy formula gives roughly 36 kilotons, and a missed shot just keeps flying, potentially ruining someone's day ten thousand years later. His conclusion is worth remembering:

Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space!

Then there are the lines that have long since broken away from their games. "Would you kindly" from the 2007 BioShock sounds like plain politeness until it turns out to be a trigger phrase for mind control. Jack had been following Atlas' orders the whole time, and so had the player, who dutifully followed the route.

Meanwhile, "I used to be an adventurer like you, until I took an arrow to the knee" from Skyrim and the garbled "All your base are belong to us" from the European Mega Drive release of Zero Wing have become folklore, quoted by people who never played either game.