The Cyberpunk 2077 character creator memes are over, and this one wins

We've seen plenty of Cyberpunk 2077 memes pop up in the past few weeks, with everyone from Elon Musk to Squidward supposedly being "created" in the game's character creator.

But the video above by Tony Ivonin on YouTube takes the Cyberpunk 2077 character creator meme and puts it into orbit, thanks to some great animation and lots of video game references. The "secret character creator" purports that you can (eventually) play Cyberpunk 2077 as Shrek, but just getting to that point is half the fun.

Not only is it a convincingly animated video (except that we can't rotate our characters using the mouse on PC, though I'm guessing we all tried), there are lots of great video game references and jokes packed into the two minute video.

In the video, loading the "secret settings" opens a whole new bunch of options. The Nostalgic setting brings up Master Chief, Lara Croft, and Claude from GTA 3. Next you can toggle the Swimming option from Off (Claude couldn't swim) to Still Off (which brings up Vice City's Tommy Vercetti, who also couldn't swim) to On (which brings up CJ from GTA: San Andreas, who actually could swim). Funny!

The Genius option lets you play as Rick Sanchez, while ticking it up to the next level summons Pickle Rick, naturally. Setting Genius to Endless takes a while before it loads a reverent facsimile of Kojima, complete with angelic harmonies and god rays shining down from heaven. And naturally there's a Meme setting, which can be adjusted according to Shrekness. It's just hard getting him to stop dancing.

If only it were real! Sigh. On the plus side, a new mod actually lets you change the looks of your Cyberpunk 2077 character after you've created them. You won't look like Shrek, but at least you can finally get a haircut.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.