Whether it's because of Todd Howard's endless resurrections of a game that's pushing ten years old, or through the ingenuity of the Internet, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is one of those games that you're just never going to be rid of. And if the good folks over at r/SkyrimDadJokes have anything to say about it, that's the way it's going to be.  And since I needed 25 of these babies, I essentially know the page inside and out now.

To be honest, this is a future I think I can get behind. If only other long-lived games could get enough traction to make Dad jokes about them, maybe the world would be a better place. Maybe things wouldn't be so bad.

Meh, probably not, but we would have a bunch of terrible and funny dad jokes to laugh at, and if that's not a step towards world peace, then I don't know what is.

Maybe that lack of distinction is why I'm not a peace officer or something. People would ask me how we can all get along, and I'd tell them something along the lines of "I dunno, go look at memes together. They're funny, lol."

I would have actually enunciated each letter of the acronym, by the way.

Ya know what? I take that back. I'd make a great peace officer. Memes for everyone! So before we get down to business and I go join the Peace Corps or something, I wanted to let everyone know that I didn't come up with these jokes - I merely meme'd them and edited a few for length. The user responsible for the joke is credited in the caption, so send your accolades or your virtual spongy tomatoes that way. Enjoy!

25 It Cannot Run

via u/paprika_paradox and cloudfront.net

The one thing that got me into learning how console commands worked was that little word. Encumbrance, with the exception of Fallout: New Vegas's hardcore mode, is a bane in all Bethesda games. however, with a quick sentence you can learn anywhere, you can change that immediately and never have to worry about encumbrance again. After all, when you can carry 50 billion pounds, you really don't need a bank, do you?

Skyrim: "You are overencumbered and cannot run!"

Me: "yOu ArE OvErEnCuMbErEd AnD cAnNoT rUn!"

However, a word of warning: once you start cheating in Skyrim, it's like cheating in Grand Theft Auto - there's no going back. A lot of the challenge will be gone from the combat, but thanks to the clunkiness of The Elder Scrolls combat system, that's no big loss. Don't think of it as easy mode, think of it as time-saving mode.

It really helps for unlocking enchanting abilities, which can take the best weapons in the game and make them more powerful than you ever imagined. Also, you can rename them, making the whole process much more intimate and personal. Naming my Daedric weapon set was one of the coolest things I remember doing in Skyrim.

24 Solitude Sad Bois

via u/pollenatedweasel and Twitter

If only the rest of the Legion were as introverted as the people who guarded Solitude, as user pollenatedweasel suggests. There'd be a lot less strife in Skyrim, but 100% less chances to assassinate an emperor. The first time I made it out to Solitude, I remember being a little unimpressed when compared to Windhelm or even Markarth, but whatever. I did my quests there, got my house, and left. Not before swimming out to a boat, of course. There were important things that had to be done, you know. Things that totally did not have to do with dropping the body of an emperor into the frigid waters it was moored in. Of course not. Just a quick inspection to make sure things were in tip-top shape.

(He eliminated the Emperor)

I'm sure some people have their reasons for siding with the Legion, just as I had mine for siding with the Nords, but to me, the Legion just reminds me far too much of Caesar's Legion in Fallout: New Vegas. So it was fun to just run around and rip them apart, especially in the last battle, which still felt a little small in comparison to the numbers they had been talking about since I found out this was a sidequest — I mean issue — in Skyrim.

23 I See Ald'rhun, I See Thras...

via u/CoffeeStainedStudio and DeviantArt (JacobdoTireland)

Not saying I shipped Aela with the Redguard named Sorsha I was maining for my longest Skyrim run. I'm saying I shipped Aela with pretty much every version of the Dragonborn I created, because there's something about a lady who can treat you right and then turn into a werewolf to shred the flesh of your enemies that just checks all of my boxes.

Also, she is literally part of a group of people called "The Companions." How are you not going to find your OTP hanging out with them? That's like going to a guard anywhere in Skyrim and not expecting to get a Scandinavian accent out of them. However, it's also important to remember that The Companions were also very effective blacksmiths, so I would imagine that they could make some excellent leashes if need be. Or some steel doggy bones.

Steel Doggy Bones sounds like a great name for if The Companions decided to make a metal band. 

Oh, and if you're not getting this, the woman in the photo is a werewolf. That's the thing with The Companions. They're all werewolves. Can I do that? Can I mention that without having to post a spoiler warning? I mean, the game is seven years old now. Can I please say that without "spoiler-ing" someone? No?

...Well, I'm still gonna.

22 A Dumb Pun? In A Dad Joke? No Dah!

via u/fairieswearboots and silvergravy.com

Full transparency here, I thought High Hrothgar was a person for about the first 20 hours of Skyrim I played. Then I actually started some of the story quests and found out it was a mountain. Things changed then, but not drastically. I just named every Greybeard I came across "High Hrothgar" in my head and I didn't really have to change much. High Hrothgar is where all of the High Hrothgars live.

How High is High Hrothgar? It's pretty up there. 

Quick side note, but did anyone, after getting the full version of the Unrelenting Force shout, change it? I could not bring myself to switch it out, even though I was getting all of these other cool shouts. The ability to shoot enemies over cliffs, and just generally away from me, was pretty much invaluable. Especially since I ended up being a stealth archer like everyone else and gave myself more time to snipe guys out from a distance.

Also, I didn't know which picture to put behind these words, so I decided to throw back to the Horse Logic memes from way back when this game first came out. Because everyone knows that the first time we all tried to scale a mountain on a horse, we made like Idina Menzel and ended up defying gravity.

On a horse.

21 I Didn't Touch You! Are You Calling Me A Lyre?

via u/flossedaly and skyrimming.com

Now, Skyrim's bards don't really have anything on the ones you can find in Dungeons and Dragons, but they're still pretty entertaining for the first couple of towns you visit, until you realize that you've essentially hit the limit of songs they know. Think of them as the basic radio in the Fallout games, just a lot harder upgrade via mods. With FO, you just need to get a mod that adds more songs to the radio.

That procedure would be a bit more intense in Skyrim, since the "radio" station is a series of musicians dotted across the towns and taverns of the land. The songs you might add (to the NPC's actual sound files, no less) would be out of tone for their character if you were to speak to them directly.

Nevertheless, this is a great joke because loot and lute rhyme. I'm sorry I got off track there for a minute, but if we can't talk about modding in an article about Bethesda games, then we just have to talk about the game itself, and that's just sad, really. I mean, you can play it in a pinch, but once you've played with mods, there's really no going back.

20 Let Me Pick Your Brain

via u/concordia_chaos and NexusMods.com

I get what user Concordia_Chaos is trying to do here, but seriously, all it takes is one mod and you'll only need one lockpick for the rest of the game. I mean, I'm not saying that lockpicking isn't fun the first twenty times you have to do it. I'm saying that lock picking becomes a rage-inducing busywork you're forced to do about the 3,000th time you do it, and a waste of level up points forcing you to be able to pick higher-level locks.

I got a bone to pick with all these locks I have to pick.

Also what I'm saying is that Nexus Mods is the best website to make Bethesda games so much more fun than they actually are. However, I can't really blame Bethesda other than for a chronic case of the game developer's eyes being far too busy for their time frame. They all feel like blank canvasses, essential video game engines that are open for improvement. It feels like when a game like Skyrim or Fallout 4 comes out, the devs shipa rough draft to get workshopped by essentially everyone who plays it. They make sure that the game's source code is open and accessible, telling the community essentially "If you don't like it, make it better yourself."

And they always do. Tip your Nexus Modder next time you visit — they deserve it.

19 This Joke Is FIRE

via u/CyanPancake and DeviantArt (dirtbiker715)

Man, this joke is hot. I mean, really. I read this joke and I got a little steamed under the collar. I will say that after I talked about this to my colleagues, people got really heated at what I had to say, telling me that they were sick of my Skyrim dad jokes, that I was going to make them blow their tops. I told them to chill out, but they just raged on, hot and heavy, until I was finally burnt to a crisp, and even my laptop felt a little singed.

Is that enough fire puns for this entry? No? Strap in.

I know you might all be warming to how I'm tackling this entry right now, but I assure you, by the time I'm done talking about this article, you'll have flames shooting out your ears by the sheer amount of hot trash I'm going to spew in this entry.

For some reason, all flame atronachs are female, which kind of lends to their "hotness," as it were. I don't know if there are male flame atronachs, but since all atronachs have some root in the Daedra, you could say that there's some... "spicy" extradimensional action going on over there to bring these things into being.

And it is muy caliente.

18 This One Got Me All Choked Up

via u/whirlertodd and Reddit

We must love the venerable Whiterun guard. He was the first person we ever bribed to get out of trouble that time we "accidentally" pickpocketed an NPC when our finger slipped on the keyboard. He was the first one who told us he took an arrow to the knee. He told us where the Jarl is stationed and who to talk to in town. We owe him so much. With the exception of the guy who busted us out of custody when we were about to be executed, they were the de facto introduction to everything we would come to know about Skyrim.

What does a dyslexic town guard say? No Golly-Laggin'!

Sure, we'd get a little tired of his one-liners as we darted past them while running up to the Jarl's villa, and sure they made us mute the game while we were walking around town because THEY WOULDN'T SHUT UP. But in those much later levels, as we were felling dragons in one single sneak attack from our arrows, we kind of get nostalgic for the days when the fear of a few of them retaliating kept you from making that annoying priest of Talos shut up for good. But after we hit level 20, heard "PRAAAIIISE TALOS" for exactly the four-hundredth and eighty-second time, and couldn't take it anymore. The fun part was watching his body fly through the air as we shouted it into Oblivion.

17 Everyone's First Pack Mule

via u/PitayaPower and cloudfront.net

Good old Lydia. After Aela and I became OTP forever and ever, she just kept the home fires warm at our little shack in Whiterun. However, it was a while before I followed up on completing The Companions' storyline, so I had Lydia for quite awhile. She was like a homely Punchbot - no real personality, but really effective in a fight.

YAH, MULE, YAH!

She never fell permanently, even during the time I decided to go after a giant because they looked big and doofy. I was skyrocketed into the air by his massive bone club, and Lydia was just over there taking a knee, even though she got hit by the exact same move I did. Then the mammoths came, and things just got disrespectful. Thank Talos the loading screen popped up before I could see what they planned to do with their tusks and my limp, sad little body.

However, in those times that I did have her with me and we survived, she was wonderful out of combat, since she held all of the junk I didn't want to, and let me run through a whole dungeon before I needed to fast travel to offload or vendor the trash I found.

16 This Joke Caused A Riften My Relationship

via u/PitayaPower and Reddit

Yeah guys, I hear you already. This is a Whiterun guard, and not a Markarth guard. I'm not going to reinstall Skyrim just so I can run over to Markarth and screenshot a dude from the town. They all have the same darn voice anyway, who cares which guard I use?

Hmmm.., what do I remember about Markarth? Oh yeah, It's the one carved into the mountain. Essentially a dwarf city, if the dwarves of Tamriel actually existed in Skyrim in a form other than weird, abandoned, technologically-advanced underground ruins. It was a pretty interesting place, if I remember correctly, with a really nasty cult and other influences permeating it. However, I always favored the houses you got at Solitude or Windhelm, myself. Elucidating on that, I do want to say that even though I think Skyrim isn't exclusively for the Nords, it's not for the Empire even more.

Now that I'm thinking about it, the markers you'd find in some of the nastier places in Markarth would be... a little gross to use. It's probably better to not think about that and just enjoy the stupid pun. People's usage of "ink" in Markarth might be a little more intense than most of us would be expecting. Most of us except Namira, that is.

15 He's A Biter

via u/mitchwilkinson and Reddit

The superior Skyrim DLC, Dawnguard, gave you so much more than you thought you needed when it came to vampires in Skyrim. Lycanthropy was explored rather thoroughly with The Companions quest line, but vampirism was a little less... cool. Only being able to travel at night without worrying about being subject to terrible buffs and, pre-Dawnguard, having people turn hostile to you when you feed means that you're not going to be making any friends anytime soon. Lycanthropy had no such drawbacks, and all you were weak to was ranged stuff, since you had none yourself and could only rush in a straight line to close distance. Losing the bonuses from resting was also a pain too, as was not being able to get down with my spouse.

Serana, I miss you. Please come home.

Dawnguard addressed a lot of these problems, fixed them, and gave us a sick quest line to follow, which ended up introducing us to the mesmerizing Serana to boot. I was very sad when I found out I couldn't marry her, even though my heart was already committed to Aela. Ah well. We all have those unrequited loves, whispers of a time gone by where my companion and true love was a vampiric necromancer capable of laying waste to my enemies in a way no other companion could ever hope to match. It's so common, I'm surprised there aren't more love songs written about it.

14 Blue-Collar Wizardry, Local Legion 4231

via u/Zanguez and ytimg.com

Did anyone use magic in Skyrim other than just to try it before becoming a stealth archer? Or maybe just to get the Soul Trap spell so you could keep your weapons enchanted? However, the mages you fought in Skyrim were always good for target practice before you took out their big, burly counterparts. Unless they got the jump on you somehow, most casters in the game couldn't step to even someone with a one-handed weapon and a shield. It was no match when they were at equal levels. A more powerful mage might have been able to blast through a weaker melee character's defenses. But if your fighter was more powerful or at the same level, and if they had some ability to become an archer, then the game was over before it began.

Oh, I got my first-level offensive magic spell! ...Aaand I'm a Zippo lighter.

You gotta love the undead in this game, too. All their grunts and groans, but some of the most powerful among them were able to use dragon shouts of their own, knocking you on your behind just as easily as you could do to them. I remember my first run-in with a Draugr Deathlord when I was like level fifteen or so. It did not go well. I thought that all Draugr were mindless zombie skeletons that simply charged at me with nothing but cold blue eyes and weaponry. I was so wrong.

13 Demonic Dad Jokes FTW

via u/phantom-scribbler and ytimg.com

I mean really - depending on the certain Daedric Prince we're talking about here, being "seized" is right up their alley. Also depending on the Prince, seizing the day is more literal and far more... tyrant-y than that phrase is commonly meant to imply. What I'm saying is, making jokes about the Elder Scrolls' version of devils can get you in all kinds of trouble if you do it where they can actually hear you.

The armor set pictured there is, of course, the Daedric armor set, forged from the very lifeblood of these devils. It's intended to be the strongest armor in the game, but not necessarily the stealthiest. You're not supposed to get it until much later in the game, but like everything in Skyrim, there's always a way around it. You can farm Daedra hearts, the main materials needed to forge the armor and weapons, just a few moments after you start the game at a not-too-far-off ruined Daedric temple. From there, you can fast travel back to Whiterun and make up your end game goodies, steamrolling your enemies as they charge at you with no real rhyme or reason.

Even though it felt like cheating, it felt great running around with the best weapons in the game when you hadn't even completed the Unrelenting Force shout, didn't it? Also, it made everything you picked up easily vendorable, as well, since most other drops couldn't touch you.

12 Por Que No Las Dos?

via u/orwhaleca

There are a few great puns in dragon tongue's name for those who can absorb the souls of the dragons they slay in combat. As if taking down a dragon wasn't enough of a feat in and of itself, imagine being able to take that essence and use it to your advantage. There's really no way that it couldn't avoid a joke.

User orwhaleca5 gives us this great little joke. And don't worry, these jokes only get worse as it goes forward, guys. But that's the beauty of dad jokes: they're so awful that you just can't help but giggle at their simplicity. They're an acquired taste, but when they're in a flavor you already enjoy, it gets a bit easier to swallow.

What do you call it when more than two Dragonborn are acting as a waitstaff at a restaurant? Tresvahkiin. 

Speaking of swallowing, I always wondered if the soul that the Dragonborn sucked up after defeating the dragon had any kind of flavor to it. And if there were different flavors for the different types of dragons in the game. I wonder if normal dragons taste like tortilla chips, while more powerful dragons taste like steak or maybe a fine, aged wine in the case of a legendary dragon. I dunno, just spitballing. Living in your headcanon is fun sometimes.

11 RuPaul's Draug Race

via u/phantom-scribbler and tespostcards.wordpress.com

You will never be able to tell me I did not write the perfect headline for this joke.

That said, this is one of my favorite jokes in this article. combining the fabulousness and larger-than-life attributes with the rasping voice and plodding gait of the undead draugr from Skyrim is something that makes such little sense that I can't help but laugh at it. But they sound similar, so this works. Also, how can you not picture the draugr in the photo there in a fancy dress and heels now? If you can, you're a better person than I am.

YAAAAASSS QUEEN SLAYYYYYY (The Dragonborn)

I remember the first time I took on a draugr. I had read nothing about this game, I was plodding around with my original half-orc character, and found myself in a tomb at the bottom of a little pit. I had seen the people on the walls, and when they crawled out to greet me with a quick "RRRAAAAHHHHGG" and took a swing at me, my Vicodin-ridden brain just could not handle it and I jumped a little in my seat. I then ruthlessly tromped that zombo's behind back to its rest. Maybe I played with its corpse a little bit out of spite, but I can't really remember.

Oh yeah, did I mention I first got into Skyrim while recovering from getting my tonsils taken out at age 20-something? They say it's a lot worse to have them taken out when you're older, and by golly are they right. I couldn't sleep because I was in so much pain, so I did what anyone else would do, and played Skyrim. It helped.

10 I Told This Joke and Was Immediately Told to Go Elsweyr

via u/phantom-scribbler and ytimg.com

Everyone loves the Khajit in Elder Scrolls, but it was in Skyrim that the highest meme potential was unlocked. Generally high-pitched, nasally voices in a somewhat foreign-sounding accent combined with only a few stock phrases that weren't completely story-related made for a pretty memorable, only somewhat annoying cast of characters.

But honestly, user phantom-scribbler gives us a pretty interesting thing to think about: what would an anthropomorphic cat look like when it turns into a werewolf? I mean, the obvious answer is that it just turns into a normal werewolf, but that's no fun. I just want to see a combination of cat and dog, and I'm not just talking about the Nicktoons version.

Seriously guys, I just want to see what a were-cat-wolf dog cat person would look like. Please, show me. I must know. 

Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to be finding something like that in the annals of DeviantArt with the amount of time I've allotted for it. Which is precisely about fifteen seconds. I say I'm interested in things, but then I get distracted by something and forget about it. I understand it to be one of my best qualities since I never actually spend too much time on one thing. That's how you get successful, right?

9 Next Week's Forecast is Up in the Sky(rim)

via u/TheWalkingTeddyBear and Twitter

The venerable Skyrim guard was arguably the first meme to come out of Skyrim, and probably the longest-lived. I never knew that they had more depth to them than whatever was necessary to take an arrow to the knee, but the good folks over at SkyrimDadJokes are here to show us that yes, in fact, deceased horses can be paddled to the extent that it becomes funny once more.

If you don't remember, a region in Tamriel (the continent on which the Elder Scrolls games happen) is called Morrowind, and it's also the name of the third game in the series. But like all Internet Cool Guys™, I only played Skyrim, and having seen screenshots of older games, I am perfectly fine with that.

Alright, I lied. I played the second game, Daggerfall, a very, very, long time ago, back when Dune II and Wolfenstein 3D were my favorite games of all time. However, I never knew what it was, nor that it was part of a series. I just knew it as Daggerfall, but never got past the opening dungeon, having absolutely no idea what to do. I was young. I dropped a lot. Now I'm older, and nothing's really changed.

8 You Do NOT Want Cicero's Sweet Rolls, Trust Me

via u/desireewhitehall and uesp.net

I love this joke, because not only do I not get the inside joke implied when a city guard asks if someone stole my sweet roll (I did know what that joke was when I was playing Skyrim, but I've long since forgot), but hearing the phrase "sweet rolls" in an acrobatic context makes me hear those two words in the voice of Napoleon Dynamite, telling Pedro about his new skill or something.

"Hey Pedro, check out my sweet rolls!"

Also, I do want to say that the whole Night Mother questline with Cicero was probably the best storyline the base game had to offer. Yeah sure, there was the whole thing with Alduin that threatened the world and everything, but have you ever been trapped in an iron maiden with the dessicated body of a millenia-old bride of a being with power even beyond the Daedra and Aedra? It's quite something.

That being said, do you ever wonder how many times Cicero kinda... got down with the Night Mother? At least in his head, I guess. If he actually tried something, his creepy little face would've been melted into a puddle of glop faster than you can say "WE KNOW." Though, I kinda wish that would've happened. Maybe the Listener before the Dragonborn got to her might have been a little less Norman Bates-y.

7 Khaps and Robbers

via u/mastermachiavel and Pinterest

This joke is so... I'm sorry, everyone. You all deserve better than this joke. There's so much more you can be doing here, there's so much more we as a species can be doing. But instead, we're here looking at this joke.

Wait, nevermind. This joke rules, and everything the human race is doing is pretty much doomed to failure because we're inherently self-destructive and regressive to our untamed ancestors. Everything we are building is a lie, and we are only two steps away from total anarchy at any given moment. We might as well laugh at some silly jokes while we still can.

Speaking of silly jokes, I'm sure catching the escapee was a big game of Khajit and Mouse.

Do you ever wonder what region of the world the developers of Elder Scrolls decided to base the Khajit on? It's obviously nothing super concrete, because cat people aren't a real thing unless you find the right intersection of body modding and furry community forums.

And what are you talking about, I just did a gigantic 180 from what I was talking about two paragraphs ago? I don't remember anything until the previous one.

*Rick looks above and sees the first two parsagraphs.*

Oh... oh no. It's happening again. The real me is seeping into the pages once more... Help us all.

6 All I Want for This Article

via u/Zadder and wikia.com

By the time you've traversed all the holds in Skyrim, you will have taken down roughly 8 billion renegade bandit camps. And you'll hear that phrase just as many times, from bandits who think they can tangle with the champ. and after you loot the charred remnants of their camp, you'll start to wish that yes, you never should have come here. You just spent twenty minutes taking down a randomly-generated mob that could have been spent running to where you were actually going.

Oh, who am I kidding? You're playing Skyrim, you're not really going anywhere. You're just hobo-ing your way across this frigid continent loaded with vikings and dragons, netting the phattest lewt you can find and maybe helping those you come across.

Or stealing from them.

No, you're definitely stealing from them. It just depends on how much you're stealing. And if the town guards will catch you. And of course, if your victim will catch you. And if they do, are you going to be able to take them out without causing too much trouble in town?

This joke really does represent how my relationship with these jokes came around. They're all so ridiculously punny, but they're clever and work in a context that only a relatively few nerds will get it so in the end, it's just great.