somebody set up us the bomb

ops culture

Another garbled line from the same 1991 game's opening as "all your base", now shorthand for a system suddenly and catastrophically compromised.

From Zero Wing's notoriously mistranslated intro (the captain is told "Somebody set up us the bomb"), the phrase spread with the "all your base are belong to us" meme in the early 2000s. In ops culture it is affectionate shorthand for the moment an incident begins - the alarm that says something has just gone very wrong.

Also known as: they set us up the bomb, set up us the bomb, Zero Wing

← All glossary entries