Personally, I think there's a good case for it, since as this tweet points out, there have been an explosion of 'random' memes about the guy in recent years, from the ones about him dying horribly to the Wario apparition and the 'I've won, but at what cost?' thing:
in some sense, he's become like Shrek or the Bee Movie; the focus of every joke around and the very definition of 'randomness' for people on social media.
Still, what do you think? Has Wario become gaming's equivalent to Shrek?
And if so, is that a good or bad thing for our beloved series as a whole?
I would say yes, he's kinda become the thing nintendo defaults to when they want to create a franchise and dont know how well it will do, and the same happened to shrek.
He became the Chris Farley of gaming if you consider his debut during the early 90s, even his business suit and hairstyle in WarioWare Gold are similar to the movie cover of TommyBoy. I'm more baffled that Living with Wario has gone viral 6 years after its crew lost interest and moved on.
I dunno, I don't think I'd call him as much of a meme as Shrek personally. There's alot of similarities in how they're played, so I can see how the argument can be made (Popular and well-regarded character used in random and amusing ways) but the memes surrounding Wario don't engulf him and overtake the character. It's more atkin to the amount of memes with Spongebob, where the memes haven't taken on a life of their own.
The 'Shrek is Life' etc memes and stuff really show hw deep those memes can go sorta thing.
I'd say Waluigi would be more comparable to Shrek, meme wise. A character who is actually more notable because of meme culture. Memes actually define Waluigi and make up a greater majority of his popularity at this point, to the point that he's generally considered a "Meme-pick" for Smash, comparable to Goku or Shrek himself.
I wouldn't consider him "Gaming's Shrek" whatever that's supposed to mean. He's just become a popular target to meme which happens with lots of characters for a variety of reasons. Personally I think it's cool, Wario won't be overshadowed by Waluigi through memes alone anymore. I agree with Kamicciolo, Waluigi is closer to Shrek in terms of his internet popularity than Wario.
If you think Wario has become the Mario universe's ultimate meme character, Waluigi would like to have a talk to you, for he is the ultimate MemeLORD whom we shall all praise and worship.
But to be seriously though, Wario lately has become a popular subject for some quite decent memes, and I think that's a great thing, as it might make people want to look into Wario and his franchise a little more, and distinguish him a bit from both Mario and Waluigi.
And for the people saying that he might end up a joke character that nobody knows except for the memes, I don't think that's going to happen, as Wario is, much more so than Waluigi, already a firmly established character that many people love.
