11 Years Ago Today, Call of Duty Gave Gamers One of the Dumbest Memes

It’s wild to think that a single button prompt could define an entire era of gaming, but that’s exactly what happened back in late 2014. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare wasn’t another yearly release in the juggernaut franchise. It was the dawn of a new age. Jetpacks, futuristic exosuits, and energy weapons promised to shake up the aging formula. Some players loved the verticality and speed, while others felt the franchise had strayed too far from its roots. But no one could have predicted that the thing people would remember most from Advanced Warfare wouldn’t be the intense campaign or the high-octane multiplayer. No, instead, it would be a funeral scene.

That’s right. Eleven years ago, Call of Duty gave birth to one of gaming’s most unintentionally hilarious moments: “Press F to pay respects.” A solemn cutscene designed to honor a fallen soldier became the stuff of meme legend, forever immortalized in online culture. Players were supposed to feel grief and reverence. Instead, the prompt to press a single key to “pay respects” felt awkward, forced, and oddly sterile, like the game was trying to gamify emotion. The internet wasted no time turning it into a joke, and to this day, it’s still referenced whenever someone wants to make light of tragedy in the most tongue-in-cheek way possible.

When Call of Duty Made Mourning a Button Prompt

Advanced Warfare launched on November 4, 2014, though some players gained access early through preorders on November 3, meaning this is right around the anniversary of when the world first collectively pressed “F.” The campaign itself wasn’t bad. It had some genuinely interesting moments, strong performances, and slick visuals for its time. But the infamous funeral scene early in the game overshadowed everything else to a ridiculous level. No one could have predicted it would, at the time.

The sequence in question was meant to be emotional. Your character attends a military funeral, paying tribute to a fallen comrade. As the camera pans, a prompt appears on-screen: “Press F to pay respects.” It was supposed to be symbolic, a way to make players feel connected to the moment. Instead, it broke immersion instantly and hilariously. A heartfelt scene suddenly felt like a quick-time event for sadness.

The moment was too literal and too mechanical, and players instantly recognized how absurd it was. The sad thing is that the interactivity wasn’t even necessary for the scene. It was already powerful as is. Yet, it was used, and the Internet caught wind. Within hours of launch, screenshots were everywhere. Social media lit up with posts about it. The meme spread like wildfire, and the internet had found its next punchline and punching bag.

In hindsight, it wasn’t the intention that made it memorable but its tone-deaf execution. Advanced Warfare wanted to show it could be serious, emotional, and cinematic, much like its Hollywood-inspired predecessors. But the scene proved that not every emotion translates through button prompts. Actually, thinking about it, no real emotions would translate well through a button click. You can’t just assign empathy to a key bind. Yet, in its failure, it succeeded in creating something else entirely: a timeless meme that continues to live on long after the exosuits were retired and the servers went dark.

Press F to Immortality

“Press F to pay respects” has transcended gaming in ways even its developers couldn’t have imagined. What started as a clunky attempt at player immersion became a universal shorthand for mock sympathy. Someone posts about spilling their coffee? Press F. A favorite streamer wipes during a raid? F in the chat. It’s become the internet’s go-to response for any situation where words feel unnecessary or too formal. It’s ironic, it’s playful, and it perfectly captures the dry humor that defines online culture.

That’s part of the beauty of it. The meme lives in that perfect intersection between sincerity and absurdity. Sometimes people actually mean it when they type “F.” Other times, it’s pure sarcasm. But either way, it’s a shared language among gamers. A relic of a time when quick-time events ruled single-player campaigns and emotional storytelling was still finding its footing in the FPS genre. Even non-gamers recognize it now, which says a lot about how deeply it has embedded itself into pop culture.

Looking back, it’s easy to laugh at how silly the whole thing was, but there’s a strange kind of respect owed to it, too. “Press F” reminds us that the gaming community doesn’t consume content in silence. What was once a misstep in emotional storytelling became a symbol of how players take ownership of their experiences. It’s a snapshot of the internet’s ability to remix and repurpose even the most serious moments into something universally understood, funny or not.

Advanced Warfare might not have been everyone’s favorite Call of Duty, and its futuristic experiment didn’t define the series in the long run. But its most awkward moment outlived the entire game. Eleven years later, people still know exactly what to do when tragedy strikes online or their favorite streamer crashes and burns in a video game. They type “F,” hit send, and move on with a grin. Sometimes the dumbest things last the longest, and “Press F to pay respects” is living proof of that.