All your base are belong to us, often shortened as AYBABTU, was one of the first popular Internet memes. It emerged from a Japanese shoot-'em up arcade game called Zero Wing from 1989. In the English version of this game, “All your base are belong to us” appeared in the opening scene, as a bad translation for “all of your bases are under our control”. This kind of bad translation is popularly called engrish, which often can be found on east-Asian signs, known for their wrong grammar and spelling. There's even a website called engrish.com, where there are many examples of this. The meme probably became so popular because it was one of the first of its kind reaching media.
Since Google Insights only shows charts from 2004, I couldn't find a proper graph of the meme's popularity before that. The AYBABTU-phrase first became popular around 1998/1999 on the Rage Games forums. In 2000 a video response to this meme was posted on Overlock.org, as maybe the first video response on the Internet in history. In 2000 it spread widely on online discussion forums (as TribalWar forums and SomethingAwful), as animated pictures of street signs, banners, package labels, etc. “All your base are belong to us” really became mainstream in 2001, when it also got a lot of attention in the media, both on television and in newspapers:
There are great numbers of photos and video responses of this meme on YouTube and different photo- and discussion forums. Some examples:
A video combined with another meme; Chocolate Rain:
AYBABTU combined with the Philosoraptor, an advice animal meme:
Many of the animated All your base pictures were photoshopped. This was relatively new at the time, and it contributed to establish this tool as the main medium for memes.
Sources:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=all%20your%20base%20are%20belong%20to%20us
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/all-your-base-are-belong-to-us
http://www.flixxy.com/internet-meme-all-your-base.htm
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