In the early days of memedom, before hardly anyone even knew what YouTube was, a different pop culture legacy was beat to the ground.
Exactly 10 years ago, Napoleon Dynamite released to theaters, bringing national attention to tater tots, introducing many of us to the liger and dominating the conversational speech of every American child aged 11 to 17.
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At some point in the months following its theatrical run and DVD release -- ask anyone who was a middle schooler in 2004 -- Napoleon Dynamite became the most important film of our young lives. Your opinion of the movie didn't matter, but you did need to have a thorough understanding of the script just to communicate with other children. In short, there was simply no escaping it.
Napoleon Dynamite was released on DVD on December 21, 2004.
Below, we've compiled the biggest cultural impacts and, put more bluntly, things that were pummeled to the point of obscurity in the aftermath of Napoleon Dynamite.
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