Shenmue is a Sega adventure game first released for the Dreamcast in 1999, following a young martial artist who travels through Japan and China while investigating his father's death. Lines about searching for Chinese characters and locations became part of its distinctive, earnest dialogue, and short clips from the game later circulated on soundboards and in gaming edits. This line endures because its literal, matter-of-fact wording feels funny outside the story, turning an ordinary in-game search into a reusable joke about looking for someone again and again.