The phrase comes from the Call of Duty series, where the AC-130 is a powerful killstreak reward announced by a radio voice when a player calls it in. The real AC-130 is a heavily armed United States Air Force gunship, which adds to the weight of the warning in game. As clips from Modern Warfare circulated online, the callout escaped the game and became a meme sound for anything arriving with excessive force, spawning edits across YouTube, TikTok and gaming soundboards.