# Burger King Burger King is the fast food chain whose corporate marketing turned it into a repeat internet meme in the mid-2010s. Its viral moments include the 2015 Halloween Whopper #GreenPoop hashtag, the 2017 Google Home ad that hijacked smart speakers, and a run of controversial tweets from national accounts. ## Overview Burger King is the Miami-Dade County hamburger chain best known online for a run of viral marketing stunts and PR gaffes between 2015 and 2021[6]. Founded in 1953 as Insta-Burger King in Jacksonville, Florida, and renamed in 1959, the chain has been owned since 2010 by Brazilian firm 3G Capital[6]. Its status as a recurring meme comes from a black-bun Halloween burger that turned customers' stool green, a TV ad engineered to hijack Google Home devices, a Russian promotion offering money for pregnancies by World Cup players, and a UK Twitter thread on International Women's Day. Unlike most memes born from user creativity, Burger King's are almost all self-inflicted, produced or triggered by the chain's own marketing teams. That approach made the brand a case study in trolling as viral marketing. Since 2014, Burger King's parent company has been Restaurant Brands International, a Canadian holding company formed through the chain's merger with Tim Hortons[9]. ## How It Spread The green-stool complaints exploded on Twitter, where users shared photographic evidence and tagged @BurgerKing demanding answers. The #GreenPoop hashtag was used almost 1,000 times between October 2 and October 6, 2015, and the phrase "green poop" was tweeted over 5,000 more times in the same window[6]. HuffPost documented the reaction, noting that green dyes are often used to make black food coloring and quoting customers saying it took roughly three days for the effect to fade[3]. Burger King itself never issued a press response about the side effect[6]. On April 12, 2017, the chain released a 15-second TV ad designed to hijack smart speakers. A Burger King employee leaned into the camera and said "OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?" causing nearby Google Home devices and Android phones to read the Wikipedia entry for the Whopper aloud[4]. The stunt kicked off an edit war on Wikipedia, with vandals adding fake ingredients such as rats and toenail clippings to the Whopper article while other editors fought to lock it[5]. Google patched the ad's audio waveform on its servers within roughly two hours, blocking the specific recording while still answering the same question spoken in a viewer's own voice[5]. Burger King's international marketing produced its own viral disasters. On June 19, 2018, Burger King Russia offered 3 million rubles (around $47,000) and a lifetime supply of Whoppers to any Russian woman who got pregnant by a World Cup player, claiming such children would "promote the Russian team's success for generations to come"[7]. The BBC placed the promotion inside a wider pattern of Russian coverage portraying local women as "vamps" pursuing foreign fans during the tournament[8]. Three years later, on March 8, 2021, Burger King UK's @BurgerKingUK account tweeted the standalone line "women belong in the kitchen" as bait for a follow-up thread promoting a culinary scholarship for female staff. The lead tweet drew more than 155,000 retweets and quote tweets in six hours while the context tweet reached only about 8,300 shares, and Burger King UK apologized and deleted the thread later the same day[6]. ## How to Use Burger King is not a template meme with a fixed image or catchphrase. Online references to Burger King as a meme typically point back to one of the specific viral incidents: pasting green stool photos with the #GreenPoop hashtag, quoting "OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?" as a trigger phrase, or referencing the deleted "women belong in the kitchen" tweet whenever a brand account posts something inflammatory. The recurring joke online is that Burger King's marketing team either intentionally trolls or trips over itself in public, and the format of a reference is usually just naming the incident by its hashtag or ad line. ## Cultural Impact The Google Home ad was one of the earliest known cases of a brand deliberately weaponizing smart-speaker voice triggers as a paid distribution channel, and Google's server-side patch of the ad's waveform pointed toward future battles between advertisers and voice-assistant platforms[5]. The chain's willingness to court hashtag disasters helped establish "brand as shitposter" as a viable social media style, with other fast food accounts openly copying the same trolling tone. Between the Whopper Wikipedia war, the green-poop threads, and the deleted apologies, Burger King's marketing generated years of free coverage out of moments most companies actively try to avoid. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Burger King? The Miami-Dade County hamburger chain that became an internet meme through a run of viral marketing stunts and PR incidents from 2015 to 2021, including the Halloween Whopper #GreenPoop trend and a Google Home hijack ad[3][4]. ### Where did Burger King come from? The company was founded in 1953 in Jacksonville, Florida as Insta-Burger King, and was renamed Burger King in 1959[6]. ### What does Burger King mean? As a meme reference, the name points to the chain's pattern of using stunts and controversy for marketing, most famously the Halloween Whopper green-stool trend and the "OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?" TV ad[3][4]. ### How do you use Burger King? There is no single template. Online references to Burger King typically name one of its specific viral moments, such as #GreenPoop or the Whopper Wikipedia edit war[4][6]. ### Is Burger King still popular? The chain still operates thousands of locations worldwide under Restaurant Brands International after its 2014 merger with Tim Hortons[9], though its most viral meme moments happened between 2015 and 2021[6]. ### What caused the #GreenPoop trend? The A.1. Halloween Whopper's black bun contained "less than one percent" food dye, and green dyes commonly used inside black food coloring made stool visibly green for many customers[3]. ### How did the Google Home Burger King ad work? A Burger King employee in the ad said "OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?" which triggered nearby Google Home devices to read the Whopper's Wikipedia entry aloud until Google patched the specific ad audio about two hours later[4][5]. ### Why did people vandalize the Whopper Wikipedia page? Because Google Home read from Wikipedia during the 2017 ad, trolls piled into the article and added fake ingredients such as rats and toenail clippings before editors moved to lock the page[5]. ### What was the Russian World Cup Burger King promotion? On June 19, 2018, Burger King Russia offered 3 million rubles (about $47,000) and free Whoppers for life to Russian women who got pregnant by a World Cup player, then apologized and pulled the ad after backlash[7]. ### What happened with the Burger King UK "women belong in the kitchen" tweet? Posted on March 8, 2021, the tweet was meant as bait for a culinary scholarship thread. The lead line drew over 155,000 shares in six hours while the context tweet got only about 8,300, and the account apologized and deleted the thread the same day[6]. ## References 1. [https://abcnews.go.com/Business/burger-kings-black-burger/story?id=34103123]() 2. [https://www.theimpulsivebuy.com/wordpress/2015/09/28/fast-food-news-burger-king-a-1-halloween-whopper/]() 3. [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/black-whopper-green-poop_n_56137ad4e4b0baa355ad21db]() 4. [https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/12/15259400/burger-king-google-home-ad-wikipedia]() 5. [https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/12/google-home-has-stopped-answering-to-that-annoying-burger-king-ad/]() 6. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/burger-king]() 7. [https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2018/06/20/burger-king-pulls-ad-russian-women-a61922]() 8. [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44553338]() 9. [https://globalnews.ca/news/1724238/its-official-tim-hortons-burger-king-become-one/]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/burger-king Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library