20 Years Later, This Grand Theft Auto Quote Remains Undefeated in Gaming History

Imagine setting up your PlayStation 2 back in 2004 for your very first playthrough of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. That year cemented the franchise as a genuine cultural titan, with San Andreas eventually surpassing 27 million copies sold. Yet, nobody starting the game two decades ago could have predicted that a single line from its introductory moments would evolve into a pervasive internet meme over a decade later.

The opening cinematic of San Andreas welcomes players back to Los Santos through the eyes of Carl “CJ” Johnson, who has spent the last half-decade on the East Coast. His homecoming is abruptly derailed by corrupt law enforcement officers who shake him down and abandon him directly inside hostile rival territory.

Faced with this predicament, Johnson delivers his iconic prelude to the gameplay: “Ah shit, here we go again.”

How a Grand Theft Auto quote resurfaced after a decade

It took more than ten years for this seemingly ordinary piece of dialogue to find new purpose. Back in 2015, YouTube creator ZMOONCHILD uploaded a brief three-second clip featuring the infamous line. The video gained immediate traction, racking up over 80,000 likes and thousands of comments. Viewers quickly repurposed the snippet into relational jokes, applying captions such as “me every Monday at school” and “When Luigi enters the mansion for the 3rd time.”

Viewers quickly repurposed the snippet into relational jokes, applying captions such as “me every Monday at school” and “When Luigi enters the mansion for the 3rd time.”

Later that same year, a forum member named Sentinel Driver shared a screenshot from the video within a thread on GTA Forums, marking its debut as a standalone reaction image. Over subsequent years, the snapshot spread rapidly across Reddit and Instagram, customized with endless variations of personal text. “Ah shit, here we go again” solidified itself as the ultimate shorthand for confronting familiar, exhausting circumstances—ranging from mundane daily frustrations to brutally difficult video game boss fights.

By 2019, the quote reached its absolute peak in internet culture.

Ascending to viral meme status

On April 3, 2019, X user @ChaoticGeekCG published a dedicated green-screen edit of the San Andreas opening sequence, featuring CJ alongside the famous line. Providing a clean green-screen asset allowed creators to seamlessly layer CJ into countless alternative backdrops and scenarios. Data from Know Your Meme indicates the post pulled in over 1,700 retweets and 5,200 likes within its first week. Similar green-screen templates migrated to TikTok, where a single variation was incorporated into more than 10,000 unique uploads.

The meme eventually cycled back to its roots within the broader Grand Theft Auto community, serving as the go-to expression on Reddit to voice exasperation over endless delays surrounding Grand Theft Auto 6. By March 2026, the joke even breached mainstream political discourse when White House officials integrated the San Andreas line into an official post on X. Titled “OPERATION EPIC FURY,” the video combined gaming footage with combat clips from Iran, drawing intense backlash both online and across major media outlets.

Source: Polygon