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Aragorn's “For Frodo”
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About
Aragorn's “For Frodo,” also known as Aragorn Black Gate, is a memorable quote uttered by Aragorn (played by Viggo Mortensen) from the 2003 fantasy film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The quote is used alongside a still from the scene in a multitude of formats, including object labeling memes, exploitable photoshops, image macros and as a catchphrase without the image.
Origin
The original clip the meme is pulled from is seen during the third and final Lord of the Rings movie, The Return of the King, specifically near the ending when the final battle for Middle Earth is underway and the remnants of humanity march towards Mordor to distract Sauron, thus providing Frodo and Sam a chance to sneak into Mount Doom so they can destroy the One Ring.
During the scene (featured below), members of the Fellowship are gathered around the Black Gate alongside the remaining warriors of Gondor and Rohan in what is essentially a suicide mission to provoke Sauron and his orc army into leaving the lands of Mordor. The gate then opens and the army begins to surround the forces of good as they exchange worried looks of despair. Aragorn delivers his epic speech, emboldening the warriors, and dismounts his horse before turning to his companions and drawing his sword Andúril. He then turns away from Sauron’s gaze and says, “For Frodo,” as he leads the charge and rushes into the opposing forces.
Spread
Though various images of the scene appear online several times before it was used as a meme, some of the earliest examples come from 2013. On January 8th, 2013, an unknown user on Imgur[1] uploaded an edit of the scene (shown below) with the caption “For Frodo” changed to “Yolo.”
On July 28th, 2013, Soup.io[2] (an Austrian social site) user Isjaki posted a version (seen below) referencing the death of Sean Bean’s character Ned Stark from the TV show Game of Thrones, and it was subsequently reposted by numerous users on the site.
An image macro variant (shown below) was made by an unknown user on Imgflip[3] in 2015 with the bottom text “Leeroy Jenkins!” in reference to the World of Warcraft meme and was viewed 686 times.
On Reddit, an r/photoshopbattles thread from September 29th, 2016, spawned an edited version of the scene dubbed “Star War of the Ring – Aragorn vs TR-8R.” Redditor[4] LVMagnus posted the image (seen below) in the chain and received 24 upvotes.
On June 22, 2017, another image macro meme was uploaded to the Funny section of 9GAG[5] under the title, “Who the hell is Frodo?” The post received 74 points and two comments.
The Instagram[6] account middleearth_official posted an edited version of the scene where Aragorn was swapped with Ricardo Milos (shown below) on June 2nd, 2019, and received 1,881 likes.
Redditor[7] Thabet_69 used the scene in a post to the r/lotrmemes subreddit on January 10th, 2020, depicting the use of various memes. The image (seen below) was upvoted over 40,000 times and gifted several Reddit awards.
Various Examples
Template
Search Interest
External References
[3] imgflip – Aragorn in battle
[4] Reddit – r/photoshopbattles
[5] 9gag – Who the hell is Frodo
[6] Instagram – middleearthofficial
[7] Reddit – r/lotrmemes
