I Must Break You

Submission 1,642

About

I Must Break You is a quote said by the character Drago in the movie Rocky IV during his fight with Rocky. In the movie, Drago is about to fight with Rocky when he says the phrase, signaling his intent to not only beat Rocky, but destroy him. The character, played by Dolph Lundgren, is known for these types of phrases, with his other phrase "If he dies, he dies" similarly going viral for its blunt, hardcore nature.

Origin

Released on November 27th, 1985, Rocky IV features the character Drago as an overly serious Russian antagonist for Rocky. Said near the end of the movie, the phrase shows the sincerity of Drago's approach to the fight and the main conflict of the movie. On November 1st, 2014, the scene where the quote is said was uploaded to YouTube^[1] via the channel Samuel Helgabond, where it gained over 484,000 views in 10 years (shown below).

The quote became used online as a meme and a reference to the movie in the later 2010s, being used in various contexts to show that something must be broken. On July 7th, 2018, the Redditor^[2] /u/wadeybb uploaded the image of Drago saying the phrase to the subreddit /r/memes. In this version of the meme, the context is added to show that it is the OP's kids during summer break who are saying the phrase (shown below).

Spread

Over the following years, different variations of the meme were made using the phrase, often while maintaining the wording of breaking something. On April 17th, 2021, the Redditor^[3] /u/Dinoman1993 uploaded his own variation that he claims to have made shortly after watching Rocky IV_, which is an "_Undertale":https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/undertale meme, with the reference being to how the game itself breaks the fourth wall often (shown below).

On May 16, 2022, the Redditor^[4] /r/KingOfCranes uploaded another gaming-themed variation of the format. Using the gaming trope that differently colored textures are often used by developers to show what is breakable within the game, in this version, uploaded to the /r/memes Subreddit, Drago is saying that he must break a different part of the wall texture that doesn't match the others (shown below).