Few series are as effortlessly iconic as The Lord of the Rings manages to be.

In fact, the books and movies are so good at generating these unforgettable moments that there are genuine arguments to be had among fans about which are better. Tolkien created a universe so impactful that the fandom could highlight countless scenes as timeless classics, and few would be able to disagree with them. It isn’t the quality that is called into question, but how to rank it when it is all so good.

When it comes to the movies, some of the most memorable scenes are also the most quotable, such as Gandalf confronting the Balrog in The Fellowship of the Ring with «You shall not pass!» or Aragorn telling the hobbits that they bow to no one after he is crowned as the king of Gondor in The Return of the King. From the perspective of memes, any of these one-liners are also a great way to set up a meme format that is guaranteed to be a crowd-pleaser for both LOTR obsessives and the wider internet, who have come to realize that Middle-earth is part of the fabric of meme culture itself at this point.

Even those moments that are a little less action-packed can pull their weight more than we might expect, partly because they are beloved by fans, and partly because they end up getting immortalized with the meme treatment. It is hard to say that any part of the LOTR works are under-appreciated in this way, and if they currently are, those circumstances will probably change at some point soon.