internet memes in general are a weak attempt at humor
why make your own joke when you can just take an existing one and re-purpose it for the situation?
anyway, the example in the OP is actually fine
Honestly, that's the thing that bugged me most about Guacamelee! The artstyle was unique, and ripe for building a vibrant world of luchadores, with some of the ones on the posters all over the cities being possible characters for a sequel or something.
We got enough of that to make it clear there was potential for DrinkBox to go hogwild with this universe, but instead they focused on making in-game ads for memes and references to other video games, with posters for "Crazy Wolf Tequila" or "El Link" littering the map. I'm fine with a few of those references, of course; it honestly would have been fine if they were used sparingly, and when applicable (The luchador based on Strong Bad was perfectly fine, and fit the game's motif. The luchador based on Mega Man only served to say "Remember this
other game you probably like?"). I really want them to go back to that series and give it a do-over, emphasizing elements that make the game "Guacamelee!" and not just "that game with the memes in it," because the amount of potential it had to build a fresh,new world was astounding.
At least Guacamelee has the excuse of being an Indie game that was trying to establish an "in" with the people playing it, though. I don't know if having a "doge" reference in a random book in a Zelda game serves any purpose except to invoke some groans. And I know this is far from a new trend, but at least when, say, a Goon wrote the NPC dialogue for Pokemon Diamond & Pearl, and threw in a few Something Awful references, it was subtle enough that I missed most of it. I only batted an eye at the line "My Pokemon is Fight," and even then, I chalked it up to a translation error. There were SA memes in there, but people who weren't into Goon culture couldn't see anything weird with the dialog; it still worked, but the references just added another level to it. This is clearly referring to something, and in 5 years when Doge has been lost in the annals of the Internet, and some future kid who just got into Zelda decides to go back to this game, (s)he'll just wonder why the book's grammar suddenly falters.