From Labubus to Wicked: For Good, 2025 produced lots of unforgettable memes, trends, and topics. Here’s some of the most viral of 2025.
In April, the Minecraft Movie came out. The hype for this movie was so much that it had people screaming “chicken jockey” in theaters. The memes sprouted from this movie certainly helped its virility in theaters, as they grossed about $958 million globally. Videos went viral of theaters all screaming chicken jockey and sometimes even throwing popcorn as it was said in the film.
Another favorite film was KPop Demon Hunters, its popularity making it the most streamed original title in the history of Netflix. Some of the dances and songs from the film went viral, influencing many other mainstream shows, like Saturday Night Live, to reference the movie.
We all know it, we all either hate it or love it. 67 was a meme that really had no meaning, no matter what meaning people tried to apply to it. It originated from a song, but it’s not usually connected back to it and instead connected more back to the “67 kid.” Annoying or not, it was inescapable.
You’ve probably heard of Labubus, which were another viral item. These collectible plushies were often put on bags, sort of as an accessory for fashion, in a way. Labubus were so popular people were rushing into stores to get them, which of course, as most trends did, sprung up bootlegs. Even these bootlegs went viral in a way, people calling them “Lafufus” and saying they had their own charm.
Dubai chocolate was a trend that would often be paired along with the aforementioned Labubus. What Dubai chocolate really is is a chocolate bar filled with kadayif and pistachio cream. Since this food was trending so much, every store wanted a cut, and soon enough, every store was selling some sort of Dubai chocolate (even if not authentic), and every tourist trap had their Dubai chocolate Labubu matcha.
A lot of trends, once they reached peak popularity, were coined as “brainrot” or slop, which in turn, sprouted even more trends.
“Steal a Brainrot” was a game on Roblox that used characters from Italian Brainrot, which was a confusing array of AI generated images with words in Italian to accompany them, which somehow became viral and a common meme, though they didn’t make much sense to their users.
Other games that went viral were Deltarune Chapters 3 & 4, along with Hollow Knight: Silksong. Both of these games released very close to each other, but both managed to sell thousands of copies due to the long wait for them to release, games like Deltarune selling many more copies than official Nintendo games on the Switch 2 shop.
A bit of a controversial trend of 2025 was generative AI, which got much better than it previously had been. AI generated videos, memes, images, “art”, scams, and anything you could think of was trending. In 2025, AI became much more accessible than it was in previous years.
But what were our favorite (and least favorite) trends from 2025? “67 was probably my least favorite, it was just so annoying,” responded Abigail Wake, seemingly a common theme for a lot of people.
Overall, 2025 has been an eventful year, one filled with lots of impactful trends and interesting happenings. Here’s to hoping 2026 will be the best year we’ve had yet!
