Predator

The original film set the template the whole series still runs on: an invisible extraterrestrial hunter picking off human prey with thermal vision, wrist blades and a shoulder plasma cannon1. Sequels moved the fight out of the Central American jungle and into a near-future Los Angeles in Predator 2 (1990) starring Danny Glover1, and later to an alien game preserve in Predators (2010). The mandibled Yautja design stayed close enough across films that fans could recognize the silhouette from a single frame.

Online, Predator became a long-running fandom rather than a single meme format. DeviantArt hosts close to 700,000 pieces of Predator fan art, and dedicated communities on Reddit and Tumblr trade stills, cosplay, edits and crossover art with the Alien series2. Urban Dictionary even carries slang built from the first film, including 'pulling a predator', meaning to open fire wildly with a heavy weapon in the general direction of an unseen threat while your squad screams and curses around you3.

Predator content online tends to fall into three lanes: cosplay and prop builds of the Yautja mask, thermal-vision or 'get to the choppa' edits pulled from the 1987 film, and crossover art pitting the hunter against Xenomorphs or other franchises. Fan videos on YouTube often recreate the invisibility shimmer effect using rotoscoping or After Effects and drop the creature into new settings, as the Kickstarter-funded Predator: Dark Ages did with medieval Templar knights4.