Skyrim players spent years spreading an elaborate internet rumor that the game's famous arrow in the knee quote was actually ancient Norse slang for getting married and settling down.

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Skyrim players spent years spreading an elaborate internet rumor that the game's famous arrow in the knee quote was actually ancient Norse slang for getting married and settling down. It sounded incredibly poetic and romantic, but Bethesda's lead writer Emil Pagliarulo eventually had to publicly crush everyone's dreams by admitting he wrote the line in about two seconds just to give the town guards some extra flavor text. There is absolutely no historical or mythological depth to the phrase; it literally just means a guard was shot in the kneecap with a projectile weapon and had to take a desk job. It is a perfect demonstration of how gaming communities will desperately invent complex, beautiful lore to explain away completely mundane writing decisions made by exhausted developers late on a Friday afternoon