Video Games

The best 2024 Olympics video game memes we’ve seen so far

They all deserve a gold medal

Josh Broadwell

GLHF

Video game memes and the Olympics probably don't swim together in your mind often, as the only thing the global sports celebration usually has in common with games is when Mario and Sonic turn up. 2024 is a bit different, though, as a small handful of events captured the imaginations of game-loving internet dwellers and inspired some pretty creative spins on the shooting competition in particular.

Unsurprisingly, most of the memes are about Yusuf Dikec, the Turkish pistol shooter who showed up in a T-shirt with one hand in his pocket and casually helped Turkey win its first Olympic medal in shooting. What made Dikec stand out aside from his laid-back approach to a high-stakes sport was how much of a contrast he was to Kim Ye-ji, one of the Republic of Korea’s contestants who wore special glasses and looked just plain cool with their backward baseball cap.

Then there was Choe Daehan, also representing the Republic of Korea, wearing a suit and taking a stance that folks wasted no time likening to an anime character’s behavior.

Anyway, the internet loves them now and, naturally, started turning them into memes as soon as possible. We've rounded up some of the best Olympics video game memes we've seen so far below.

Best 2024 Olympics video game memes

Twitter user airbagged reposted a shot of Choe Daehan and said they’re convinced Death Stranding creator Hideo Kojima was directing the event, and vigwingly jokingly said Kojima is already “five paragraphs deep” in Kim Ye-ji’s DMs. I say jokingly, but Kim does look like the kind of person Kojima would love to build some kind of eccentric story around. Too late for Death Stranding 2, probably, but hey, who knows.

There’s also a Metal Gear meme, because of course there is.

Myu060309, a self-described illustrator, created this fantastic poster for a fictitious “Paris Olympic Shooting” animated movie. No, that’s not technically a video game, but it is very cool.

Geo_AW put Ben Beckmann’s coat on Dikec – that’s a One Piece reference – and Reddit user Little-Purpose269 did exceptional work by putting Persona 5’s gun UI around Dikec.

Yusuf Dikec with the Persona 5 gun UI in front of him
Lookin' cool, Dikec / Little-Purpose269

Easily one of my favorites is this animated sequence made to look like a Tekken 8 cutscene from BuffGigas on Twitter, where a dual-wielding Kim Ye-Ji takes on a Tekken-ized version of Dikec that looks about twice his real-life size.

And another is this set of Disco Elysium-inspired illustrations from Luiisiki, who did a bit of storytelling with their posts. Harry Dubois is Dikec, fighting intrusive thoughts and, hopefully, winning, and Kim Kitsuragi as Kim Ye-ji, passing a skill check with flying colors, as you’d expect from the sergeant if you've played it. And you should, since it's one of the best RPGs out there. 

One I’m surprised there weren’t more variations on was Bloodborne. Twitter user Vixit_art gave Kim Ye-Ji some Yharnam glasses and stylish headgear and put them opposite a Dikec in fairly casual garb by Bloodborne standards. There’s even a Freaky Little Thing in the middle, holding the Olympic torch.

The FFXIV community also surprised me by not turning anyone into a Machinist – or if they did, Twitter’s cooked algorithms didn’t show me – so I made a little effort myself. The default, unmodded character creator even has a hairstyle remarkably similar to Dikec’s, if you overlook the Miqo'te cat ears. And that massive Machinist gun.

That all came from just the span of a few days. The 2024 Olympics run through Aug. 11, 2024, so here’s hoping we end up with plenty more memeable moments before then.

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Josh Broadwell

JOSH BROADWELL

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