Lolrus

He was never a walrus. Like many things on the internet, the name was a lie—Minazo was a southern elephant seal at Japan's Enoshima Aquarium, known for one peculiar habit: clutching a blue bucket against his massive body while sticking out his tongue. He looked like he had found something precious. He looked like he would fight you for it.

Minazo died on October 7, 2005, never knowing he would achieve immortality. A year later, on July 24, 2006, YTMND user ZombiePirate resurrected him with three perfect words: "I has a bucket." By January 2007, I Can Has Cheezburger—the cathedral of LOLspeak—had canonized the image. The seal had transcended death itself.

The format was pure: statement of possession, followed by catastrophic loss. "I has a bucket." "Nooo they be stealin my bucket." It was Shakespeare for the imageboard generation. The broken grammar wasn't a bug—it was the whole point. In the kingdom of LOLcats, the seal who couldn't speak spoke for us all.

But LOLspeak had an expiration date. By 2010, "I can has" felt cringe. The bucket was empty. The meme that had helped define a movement became a relic of it, trotted out occasionally by aging millennials who remembered when the internet spoke in deliberate typos.

Minazo is survived by his bucket. The bucket remains unstolen.