Why does Zilean hate armored bears (Volibear)?

Question

When I play as Volibear and at the other team has a Zilean, both champs get a buff.

Volibear gets:

Chronokeeper Hater: "Not even Zilean could keep an armored bear out of the League of Legends".

While Zilean gets:

Armored Bear Hater icon with the text: "In my day, we would never have allowed an armored > bear into the League of Legends."

What are these buffs referring to?

Answer

This is a developer in-joke, similar to how the 3 ninja champions obey the Inverse Ninja Law, or that Leona's passive deals 1 less damage to champions with sunglasses.

In this case, you first have to know that Zilean is named after developer Tom "Zileas" Cadwell, and Volibear is named after Travis "Volibear" George. These buffs are tongue-in-cheek references to a long-standing forum faux-feud (or maybe real feud? Who knows?) about the plausibility and desirability to add an armored bear champion to League of Legends.

Zileas was against it, and Volibear was (clearly) for it.

It's pretty crazy.

The Forums got pretty riled up too.

Check more discussion of this question.

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