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Wayne’s World (1992) is a classic comedy because of its satirical take on corporations vs. artists and the media culture of the early ‘90s. More than that, it extracted two iconic Saturday Night Live (1975) characters and put them in front of the masses, complete with a milieu of silly catchphrases and jokes that would carry through the cultural lexicon for years.

Though the film’s relevant underpinning keeps its beloved status in tact, whether or not the jokes that encouraged big chuckles in 1992 still work today is another story.

Wayne’s World plugged a number of expressions into American vernacular, most notably the ever-popular “not!” following a statement. “Not” was huge. Everyone said “not.” People of all ages, all classes, all areas, said “not” so much that by the end of the 1990s, it was so platitudinous nobody ever wanted to hear it again. The use of “not” is a joke that was born with Wayne’s World and died with Borat (2006), the latter portraying it as something so culturally dead that only a Kazakhstani immigrant could still find it funny. And that was almost a decade ago.

Equally outdated is “do you have any Grey Poupon?” This was shouted from car windows by youths and teens all through the 1990s and not once since. (Yet somehow, watching it come out of the goofy mouth of Mike Myers still inspires a smirk.)

Retaining more relevance is “that’s what she said,” a phrase that fell out of practice for years but found resurgence in modern humor thanks to its monstrous overuse by Michael Scott on The Office (2005). The phrase now lives with a bit of a stigma—use it properly, and it’s gold. Use it wrong, and it’s done.

The funniest bits in Wayne’s World are the ones speaking to the film’s self-satire, such as the montage of product placement plugs from Reebok to Nuprin. Though modern viewers might wonder what Nuprin is (it’s little, yellow, different!), joking about product placement will forever be relevant. Wayne’s World predicted the nature of film and television moving forward with that one, as product placement has only grown in prominence since 1992.

Of course, Wayne’s World is also ripe with the sort of primitive “poop joke” humor that still fills the bulk of modern comedy film scripts, such as Garth (Dana Carvey) poignantly stating, “If Benjamin were an ice cream flavor, he’d be pralines and dick.” That basic brand of low-brow comedy will forever be funny to the type of viewer who found it funny in 1992, and has never and will never appeal to others.

Humor is, of course, subjective. It is impossible to say with any certainty whether something is funny or not regardless of its age. However, it is reasonable to suggest that, in the case of Wayne’s World, being able to remember 1992 with any type of clarity would likely contribute to the film’s lasting humor. While its pop culture-heavy cultural jokes are almost guaranteed to not appeal to younger modern audiences, the nostalgic recollection of the source of those jokes certainly maintains the film’s humor among older viewers. Wayne’s World doesn’t have the same timeless comedy structure of many older classics. Its humor is rooted too specifically in the era of its release to be accessible to those who don’t remember the time. The details of the generation aren’t just the context, they are its foundation, and matter to one’s appreciation of the material. Basically, if it was funny to you in 1992, it likely still is. If you weren’t alive yet, it will almost certainly fall flat.