About

"It's a Nice Gun, I'll Give You That. But the Engraving Gives You No Tactical Advantage Whatsoever" refers to the memorable quote said by the 2004 video game Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater character Naked Snake in his exchange with Revolver Ocelot. Starting in November 2019, the quote has been used as a snowclone, with the words "gun" and "engraving" being replaced.

Origin

On November 17th, 2004, action-adventure video game Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater was released.^[1] In one cutscene of the game, the main protagonist Naked Snake has an exchange with Revolver Ocelot, remarking that engravings on his gun provide him no tactical advantage (shown below).

It's a nice gun, I'll give you that. But the engraving gives you no tactical advantage whatsoever. Unless you were planning to auction it off as a collector's item. And you're forgetting one more basic thing… You don't have what it takes to kill me.

Spread

The quote saw limited use in the gaming community, often being used as a copypasta and a title for posts. For example, on December 15th, 2017, Redditor^[2] Jetpack_Joker posted a GTA Vrecreation of Revolver Ocelot, titling the post with the quote (shown below, left). On February 5th, 2018, iFunny^[3] user Zanji reposted an image of Ai Kizuna captioned with the copypasta, gaining over 40 smiles (shown below, right).

The quote did not see major recognition until on November 10th, 2019, iFunny user CPTbutters posted a dubbed "Nice Cock" meme, utilizing the quote as a snowclone. The post received over 3,900 smiles in six months, with multiple reposts of both the image and the macro on Instagram,^[4] iFunny,^[5] Tumblr,^[6] Reddit^[7] and other sites in the following months.

The post prompted further use of the quote as a snowclone; for example, on January 28th, 2020, Redditor^[8] Sir_Ryan_of_Matthews posted a meme which received over 13,300 upvotes in /r/pcmasterrace in four months (shown below, left). On April 26th, 2020, Twitter^[9] user @PTSDGuts2 posted a meme that received over 1,900 retweets and 9,400 likes in two weeks (shown below, left).

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References