I'm Commander Shepard

About

I'm Commander Shepard, and This Is My Favorite Store on the Citadel is a popular line of dialogue spoken by Commander Shepard in the 2010 Bioware video game Mass Effect 2 when giving an endorsement to an in-game store in exchange for a discount. The line became a popular catchphrase in Mass Effect memes including image macros, in snowclone Advice Animal style memes and YouTube remixes the year of the game's release.

Origin

On January 26th, 2010, the second entry in the Mass Effect series of video games, Mass Effect 2, was released in North America. Early in the game, the player character Commander Shepard is given the option to advertise for their favorite store to get discounts from it. If the player chooses to do so, Shepard is recorded by the shop clerk saying, "I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite store on the citadel." The player can do this at multiple stores, resulting in the audio clip playing whenever you enter one, humorously making it appear as if Shepard endorses every store as their favorite.

On February 4th, 2010, YouTuber^[1] DigBickPlaya uploaded footage of the scene, garnering over 130,000 views in 11 years (shown below).

Spread

The scene quickly became a favorite among Mass Effect fans, resulting in memes, particularly image macros, referencing it. Many of these used the Advice Animal format style, showing an image of Shepard's head in the center surrounded by text with a variation of the phrase "I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite store on the citadel" with "store" and "citadel" often changed.

On January 31st, 2010, Giant Bomb^[3] forum user LeBart replied to a thread discussing the funniest moments from Mass Effect 2, writing, "Going from store to store on the Citadel, and hearing this every time:" followed by an image macro with Shepard's head saying, "I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite store on the citadel" (shown below). This is the earliest known Advice Animal style "I'm Commander Shepard" meme.

The scene also resulted in a number of video edits on YouTube. On February 5th, YouTuber^[4] shadowtrooper21 posted a video of the above image macro combined with Shepard's voice clip from the game, garnering over 200,000 views in 11 years (shown below, left).

On February 8th, YouTuber^[2] Dowza uploaded a video remixing the clip in which Shepard claims that a number of properties are his favorite, garnering over 123,000 views in 11 years (shown below, right).

Beyond Advice Animal memes, the phrase also became popular in Demotivational Posters and more general image macros (examples from 2011 shown below, left and right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References