Meaning
What does Call of Gruty mean?
Call of Gruty refers to a parody combination of the Call of Duty video game franchise and the name of the protagonist from the Despicable Me movies, Gru.
Photoshop edits of the fictional game’s cover, as well as parody trailers and gameplays on YouTube are a common joke online similar in nature to Waluigi’s Taco Stand.
Origin
What's the origin of Call of Gruty?
While the exact origin of “Call of Gruty” is not clear, an early post containing the joke was uploaded to iFunny on April 10th, 2018, by epicjesterman_2018.
That meme contained a photoshop edit, that resembles an Xbox release of the video game, which later became widely spread.
Another early “Call of Gruty” post, containing the cover can be linked to the upload of u/_Shrubs on Reddit on September 14th, 2018.
Spread & Usage
How did Call of Gruty spread?
Reposts and iterations of the meme emerged in early 2019, however the popularity of “Call of Gruty” started skyrocketing in the summer of 2019, following the YouTube upload of CaidenCrazyPants on July 12th, 2019, titled I played Call of Gruty Early.
Following this, “Call of Gruty” memes swarmed the internet on Reddit, iFunny, me.me as well as YouTube, with parody trailers, merging the audio footage of Call of Duty trailers with scenes from the Despicable Me movies.
Flash and mobile games also started appearing online and on Google Play in 2021.

External resources
- iFunny – CALL OF GRUTY
- Reddit – Call of Gruty is better than Call of Duty : _Shrubs
- Google Play Store – Call Of Gruty