What is Its Dangerous To Go Alone Take This?

It is a catchphrase and image-macro format taken from Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda that grew into a stable piece of online vocabulary during the late 2000s[3].

Where did Its Dangerous To Go Alone Take This come from?

The line is spoken by an old man in Nintendo's 1986 game The Legend of Zelda, and its earliest recorded internet reuse is a May 17, 2004 YTMND page tiling the scene from the game[2].

What does Its Dangerous To Go Alone Take This mean?

In the game, the old man is warning Link that Hyrule is not safe unarmed. Online, the caption is used to jokingly offer the viewer an animal or object as a small gift, in the LOLcat tradition of pictures like the 2007 Dangerous Kitten repost on I Can Has Cheezburger[1].

How do you use Its Dangerous To Go Alone Take This?

Either caption a photo of something cute or useful being held out to the camera with the full Zelda line, or edit the original screenshot so the sword in the old man's hands is swapped for a different item, following formats collected on sites like Urban Dictionary and image-macro archives[3].

Is Its Dangerous To Go Alone Take This still popular?

It settled into a long-running classic. Image-host Macrochan already listed more than 50 entries for the caption by March 2014, and the format kept picking up new versions across Reddit and image boards through the 2010s[2].

Its Dangerous To Go Alone Take This

2004image macroclassic

"It's Dangerous to Go Alone! Take This" is a catchphrase from the 1986 Nintendo release The Legend of Zelda, spoken by an old man handing Link a wooden sword. Online, it became an image-macro caption for pictures of animals or objects offered to the viewer, plus an exploitable format where people edit the sword in the original screenshot into other items.

zelda memes catchphrase memes exploitable templates early internet memes nintendo memes

Overview

The meme has two main shapes. The first is a plain image macro where a cute animal or a small object is shown being held out in an outstretched hand, with the Zelda line pasted on top so the picture reads as a small gift to whoever is scrolling, in the LOLcat-style tradition1. The second is the exploitable version: the original in-game frame of the old man and Link, edited so the sword the old man is holding gets swapped for anything from a red ring to a hamster with a knife taped on its back2.

Its Dangerous To Go Alone Take This grew from a single line of NES dialogue into a stable piece of online vocabulary, picking up an Urban Dictionary listing and dedicated image-macro archives built around the phrase3.

How It Spread

The image-macro form began surfacing in December 2006 with "Dangerous Kitten," a photo of a meowing kitten cupped in someone's palm captioned with the Zelda line. Early copies of the file actually carried an embedded virus, which is where the nickname came from, and the original creator is not known. On February 9, 2007, the Dangerous Kitten macro was reposted to I Can Has Cheezburger, taking it out of underground image boards and into the mainstream LOLcat audience.

From there the format kept spreading. On May 9, 2008, DeviantArt user Kevin Bolk drew a comic in which the old man tries to hand Link a red ring instead of a sword. A December 2009 Project After Forums thread pulled together more variants, including a hamster with a knife taped to its back and an edit of the old man handing over a Mudkip from Pokemon. FunnyJunk added a scuba diver holding an inverted shark by the nose in August 2010, and in June 2011 Dueling Analogs highlighted a real-life troll poster with removable wooden swords bolted onto it. Reddit picked it up as well: on April 20, 2013, r/gifs user 7venDividesZero titled an animated GIF comic with the phrase and pulled more than 11,900 upvotes before it was archived, and by March 2014 image-host Macrochan already carried over 50 hits for the caption, making Its Dangerous To Go Alone Take This a fixture of image-board humor.

How to Use This Meme

There are two common approaches. The first is to caption a photo of a cute animal or a small object held out to the camera with the full line "It's dangerous to go alone! Take this," posting it as a small gift to the viewer in the LOLcat-adjacent tradition. The second is to edit the original Zelda screenshot itself, keeping the old man and Link in frame but swapping the wooden sword for whatever suits the joke, from a coffee mug to a Pokemon character to something specific to the community you are posting in.

Frequently Asked Questions

References (3)

Its Dangerous To Go Alone Take This

2004image macroclassic

zelda memes catchphrase memes exploitable templates early internet memes nintendo memes

Overview

The meme has two main shapes. The first is a plain image macro where a cute animal or a small object is shown being held out in an outstretched hand, with the Zelda line pasted on top so the picture reads as a small gift to whoever is scrolling, in the LOLcat-style tradition. The second is the exploitable version: the original in-game frame of the old man and Link, edited so the sword the old man is holding gets swapped for anything from a red ring to a hamster with a knife taped on its back.