Snark at the moon

Destiny’s deadpan Dinklebot delivers meme gold

We’ve just heroically shotgunned our way through Skywatch, taken down several waves of Hive baddies, and blasted a powerful Wizard into space dust. The least our wee robot pal could do is try to sound enthusiastic.

Maybe Game Of Thrones star Peter Dinklage was having a bad day in the recording booth, but his performance as friendly Guardian tech-compass Ghost in Destiny’s public alpha was flatter than a steamrolled pancake. The hilarious syrup on top of this stack of vocal mediocrity? A mission called ‘The Dark Within’, in which P. Dinky closes out a frantic firefight by snoring the immortal line “That Wizard came from the moon.”

Cheesy writing and laughably lacklustre delivery combined to create the perfect internet memestorm. Dance remixes. Fan art. Even Bungie-approved T-shirts made an appearance, to the delight of Guardians everywhere. Sadly, all unintentionally hilarious things must come to an end in the name of quality, and the beta build came with newly-recorded lines from Dinklebot. But the MMO shooter is nothing if not excellent at preserving its history (those whispers in the once-noble Loot Cave, anyone?), and it was soon discovered that the line had been sneakily added back in with The Dark Below expansion. There were even rumours that Tower vendor Eris Morn could be heard cracking wise about the lunar lunacy…

Dinklebot was eventually patched out completely in favour of Nolan North’s likeable Light – but we’ll always have the memories. And the T-shirt. And, until September, Dinklebot’s most famous line will pop up as an Easter egg in the Age Of Triumph in-game event.