This Entire City Must Be Purged — High-quality Warcraft III dialogue interface screenshot with Arthas portrait and complete quote.

This Entire City Must Be Purged

2012Reaction image / image macrosemi-active

Published March 30, 2026

Also known as: Arthas' "Purge" · The Culling of Stratholme

"This Entire City Must Be Purged" is a reaction image meme built from a quote by Arthas Menethil in the 2002 video game *Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos*. The format first hit 4chan in late 2012 as a Tony Kornheiser-style reaction image, grew into a full-quote image macro by 2017, and saw mainstream Reddit adoption in 2019 before spiking during the early COVID-19 outbreak in January 2020.

warcraft memes reaction memes image macro memes 4chan memes delayed virality memes

Overview

The meme uses a screenshot of Arthas Menethil, a central character from *Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos*, paired with his in-game declaration that the city of Stratholme must be "purged" of its plague-infected population. In the game's sixth Human Campaign chapter, "The Culling," Arthas makes the grim decision to kill every citizen before the undead plague can turn them1. The image works as a reaction to any situation where someone might jokingly call for an extreme, scorched-earth response to a problem. Common setups include encountering something so terrible that the only logical answer is total destruction.

Origin & Background

Platform
4chan
Creator
Unknown
Date
2012

*Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos* launched on July 3, 2002, developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment1. The game follows Arthas Menethil's descent from paladin to death knight, with the Stratholme purge serving as the key turning point in his storyline2.

The quote sat dormant in gaming culture for a decade before someone turned it into a meme. The earliest known meme post appeared on September 30, 2012, when an anonymous user on 4chan's /fit/ board used a cropped image of Arthas as a reaction to a story about being stalked by a disheveled woman at McDonald's4. The image functioned as a Tony Kornheiser "Why"-style reaction, placed at the end of a greentext story for comedic effect3.

How It Spread

After its 2012 debut on /fit/, the Arthas reaction image circulated across 4chan boards over the next several years. Users created variations including a Glowing Eyes edit that gave the format extra visual punch3.

The format shifted in January 2017 when an anonymous /pol/ user posted what appears to be the first version using the full "This entire city must be purged" quote as the caption, making the meme more self-explanatory and shareable outside of imageboards3.

Reddit saw scattered uses before 2019, but the format didn't take off there until January 31, 2019, when Redditor Cornycash posted a Tinder-themed version to r/dankmemes. The post pulled over 12,500 upvotes within a year3.

The biggest surge came in early 2020 during the initial spread of COVID-19. The meme became a natural fit for pandemic anxiety posting. On January 26, 2020, a /pol/ thread featured hazmat suit edits of the Arthas image, blending the "purge the city" energy with real-world quarantine fears4. Multiple variations from that thread combined Arthas with hazmat gear and biohazard imagery3.

How to Use This Meme

The format typically works as a punchline reaction:

1

Present a situation, headline, or screenshot showing something alarming, disgusting, or irredeemable

2

Follow it with the Arthas image captioned "This entire city must be purged"

3

The joke lands because the response is wildly disproportionate to the setup, or sometimes disturbingly appropriate

Fun Facts

The Stratholme purge is one of the most debated moral choices in Warcraft lore. Players and fans still argue whether Arthas made the right call1.

The meme sat dormant for five years (2012-2017) in its original reaction crop form before someone thought to use the actual quote as a caption3.

*Warcraft III* shipped 4.4 million copies to retail stores and sold over a million within its first month, giving the Arthas scene a massive potential audience before memes even existed in their modern form2.

The game's modding tools spawned *Defense of the Ancients* (DotA), which created the entire MOBA genre. The Stratholme purge meme is just one of many cultural artifacts to come out of *Warcraft III*1.

Derivatives & Variations

Glowing Eyes Edit:

An edited version adding glowing red or blue eyes to Arthas for extra dramatic effect, popular on 4chan in the mid-2010s[3]

Hazmat Suit Edits:

Arthas wearing a hazmat suit, created during the early COVID-19 outbreak on /pol/ in January 2020[4]

Tinder Format:

A version framing the quote as a dating app bio or conversation response, popularized by Cornycash's r/dankmemes post in 2019[3]

Frequently Asked Questions