Pepe the Frog is a cartoon frog character created by artist Matt Furie for his 2005 comic *Boy's Club*, best known for his catchphrase "feels good man." After 4chan users turned Pepe into one of the internet's most versatile reaction images in 2008, the character exploded into mainstream culture before being co-opted by alt-right groups during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, leading the Anti-Defamation League to add him to its hate symbol database. Pepe's story is one of the most complex in meme history: an innocent stoner frog that became a political flashpoint, a legal battleground, and a global protest symbol.

"All Star" is a 1999 rock song by Smash Mouth that became one of the internet's most enduring memes after its prominent use in the 2001 animated film *Shrek*. The song's iconic opening line, "Somebody once told me," launched thousands of remixes, mashups, covers, and parodies across YouTube, Reddit, and beyond. Written as an anthem for outcasts by guitarist Greg Camp, the track found a second life online in the 2010s through creators like Neil Cicierega and Jon Sudano, and the band themselves leaned into the joke.

Crying Jordan is a photoshop meme built from a cutout image of Michael Jordan's tearful face during his 2009 Basketball Hall of Fame induction speech. Starting as a niche sports forum joke around 2012, it exploded into one of the internet's most recognizable memes by 2015-2016, used primarily to mock defeated athletes and teams. The meme became so widespread that Jordan himself acknowledged it, President Obama referenced it during a Medal of Freedom ceremony, and it spawned physical merchandise including custom sneakers.

Surprised Pikachu is a reaction image pulled from a 1997 episode of the Pokémon anime, showing Pikachu with wide eyes and an open mouth in a look of shock. First used as a meme on Tumblr in September 2018 by user popokko (Angela), it became the most-used meme of that year by pairing the image with scenarios where someone is "surprised" by a completely predictable outcome. A WIRED investigation into its viral trajectory raised questions about whether its November 2018 popularity spike was connected to the Detective Pikachu film marketing, though no definitive link was established.

"This Is Fine" is a two-panel reaction image from KC Green's 2013 webcomic "On Fire," showing an anthropomorphic dog calmly sipping coffee in a burning room while saying "This is fine." Born from Green's personal struggles with depression and antidepressants, the comic became one of the most widely shared memes of the 2010s, used as shorthand for denial or forced calm in the face of obvious disaster[1]. The Atlantic called it "a work of near-endless interpretability," and its relevance kept growing through political crises, pandemics, and everyday stress for over a decade[13].

Keyboard Cat is a viral video meme featuring an orange tabby cat named Fatso, filmed in 1984 by performance artist Charlie Schmidt, appearing to play an electronic keyboard while wearing a blue shirt. The clip sat dormant for over two decades before being uploaded to YouTube in 2007 and exploding into one of the internet's most recognizable memes in 2009, when Brad O'Farrell created the "Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat" mashup format that paired the footage with fail videos as a comedic send-off.

Harambe was a 17-year-old western lowland gorilla shot and killed at the Cincinnati Zoo on May 28, 2016, after a three-year-old boy fell into his enclosure. The incident spawned one of the defining memes of 2016, mixing ironic tributes, mock-serious mourning, and the viral rallying cry "Dicks Out for Harambe" into a sprawling internet event that outlasted every thinkpiece written about it.

Grumpy Cat is the internet nickname for Tardar Sauce, a mixed-breed cat from Arizona whose permanently scowling face made her one of the most famous animals on the internet. First posted to Reddit in September 2012, her photos spawned thousands of image macros with cynical, deadpan captions and built a merchandising empire worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing deals. Tardar Sauce died in May 2019 at age seven, but her grumpy face is still one of the most recognizable meme images ever created.