Now playing the role of Leeroy Jenkins: Texas.

[Tommy Carcetti]

For the uninitiated:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeroy_Jenkins

Leeroy Jenkins is a player character created by Ben Schulz in Blizzard Entertainment's MMORPG World of Warcraft. The character became popular in 2005 from his role in a viral video of game footage where, having been absent during his group's discussion of a meticulous plan, Leeroy returns and ruins it by charging straight into combat shouting his own name.

***
The original video was released by the World of Warcraft player guild "Pals for Life"[1] to video-sharing site Warcraftmovies on May 11, 2005.[2] The video features a group of players discussing a detailed battle plan for their next encounter while Leeroy is away from his computer, preparing a plate of chicken. This plan is intended to help Leeroy obtain a piece of armor from the boss monsters, but is ruined when Leeroy himself returns and, ignorant of the strategy, immediately rushes headlong into battle shouting his own name in a stylized battle cry. His companions rush to help, but Leeroy's actions ruin the detailed plan and all the members of the group are killed.

[gratuitous]

1. I've read where this didn't really happen, but was a gag video set up

Doesn't really matter what the provenance is, it's still funny as all get-out, and the name Leeroy Jenkins, Stupid as Hell, will be forever immortalized alongside the likes of Ethelred the Unready and Harald the Lousy.

[Tommy Carcetti]

2. Possibly.

I'm not a video gamer and have no clue about anything, but real or staged, it's absolutely hilarious as a metaphor for any number of situations.

[JHB]

8. Even if staged, this sort of thing has happened thousands of times in gaming

I don't play this sort of multi-player video games, but the same sort of thing happened in my high-school and college table-top RPG game days (Dungeons & Dragons and similar games, though I went in more for sci-fi ones).

In any big enough group, there are going to be some who are just insufferable with their number-crunching to get every fiddly little advantage they think they can get, to the point where it just grinds everything to a halt and has all the fun of watching other people take a math test.

If it goes on long enough, someone will balk and take an action no matter how dumb it is just to force an end to the calculations and get things moving again.

[Fullduplexxx]

3. Lol ... thanks this is hillarious

[jpak]

5. He was Bad Bad Leroy Jenkins...

[gratuitous]

7. Found it

The story behind the story:

I mean, they couldn't put it on the internet if it wasn't true, right?