Kung Fury

2015viral videoclassic

Published September 4, 2026

Kung Fury is a Swedish short film written and directed by David Sandberg, released free on YouTube on May 28, 2015, that parodies 1980s cop movies with time travel, dinosaurs, and a kung fu cop who punches his way through Nazi Germany to fight Hitler. Funded by a runaway Kickstarter campaign, the 30-minute film racked up 10 million views in its first four days and spawned one of the defining viral video events of 2015.

youtube viralnostalgia memesso bad its good memesmid 2010s memesabsurdist humor memes

Overview

Kung Fury is a 30-minute short film built as a love letter to (and send-up of) 1980s action cinema, jamming kung fu cops, hackers, Vikings, Nazis, arcade robots and time travel into one absurd run time1. The title character is a Miami police officer in 1985 who gains supernatural martial arts powers and travels back to World War II to assassinate Adolf Hitler, who has rebranded himself as the "Kung Fuhrer"2.

The tone leans hard into VHS-era kitsch, complete with tracking lines, synthwave scoring and deliberately overcooked dialogue. Alongside protagonist Kung Fury there is a triceratops partner named Triceracop, a Thor cameo, and a music-video interlude built around David Hasselhoff performing the film's theme song2. The whole project came out of Swedish writer-director David Sandberg's own YouTube channel, Laser Unicorns1.

Origin & Background

Platform
Kickstarter (funding) / YouTube (viral spread)
Creator
David Sandberg
Date
2015

David Sandberg, a Swedish visual effects artist and music video director, shot early Kung Fury footage himself before turning to crowdfunding. In December 2013 he launched a Kickstarter campaign, using the material he had already filmed to cut a trailer that would sell the concept to backers3. Sandberg had also been posting production stills and updates to Reddit, building a small audience for the project ahead of the campaign3.

The Kickstarter trailer was uploaded to YouTube, where it drew millions of views and pushed the campaign well past its original $200,000 goal3. By the time funding closed, more than 17,000 backers had pledged over $680,000 to finish the film2.

How It Spread

After a Cannes Film Festival screening earlier in the month, Kung Fury dropped free on YouTube on May 28, 2015, and hit more than 10 million views within four days1. Vanity Fair ran a launch write-up under the headline calling it "the best movie ever," pointing to the Hasselhoff soundtrack cut "True Survivor" as a key hook2.

The rollout was staged. On April 16, 2015, Laser Unicorns began releasing teaser videos, starting with the "True Survivor" music video featuring Hasselhoff, which pulled in more than 14 million views by June 20153. Reddit was a major amplifier throughout: an /r/movies thread announcing the film's arrival scored 5,342 points at 94% upvoted, and Sandberg later ran an AMA on the same subreddit as "Kung Fury"3.

Coverage in outlets like Vox and Vanity Fair framed the short as a case study in how a Kickstarter-funded passion project could turn into a full-blown internet event, comparing its pop-culture-stuffed appeal to Adult Swim's "Too Many Cooks"12.

Frequently Asked Questions

Kung Fury

2015viral videoclassic

Published September 4, 2026

Kung Fury is a Swedish short film written and directed by David Sandberg, released free on YouTube on May 28, 2015, that parodies 1980s cop movies with time travel, dinosaurs, and a kung fu cop who punches his way through Nazi Germany to fight Hitler. Funded by a runaway Kickstarter campaign, the 30-minute film racked up 10 million views in its first four days and spawned one of the defining viral video events of 2015.

youtube viral nostalgia memes so bad its good memes mid 2010s memes absurdist humor memes

Overview

Kung Fury is a 30-minute short film built as a love letter to (and send-up of) 1980s action cinema, jamming kung fu cops, hackers, Vikings, Nazis, arcade robots and time travel into one absurd run time1. The title character is a Miami police officer in 1985 who gains supernatural martial arts powers and travels back to World War II to assassinate Adolf Hitler, who has rebranded himself as the "Kung Fuhrer"2.

The tone leans hard into VHS-era kitsch, complete with tracking lines, synthwave scoring and deliberately overcooked dialogue. Alongside protagonist Kung Fury there is a triceratops partner named Triceracop, a Thor cameo, and a music-video interlude built around David Hasselhoff performing the film's theme song2. The whole project came out of Swedish writer-director David Sandberg's own YouTube channel, Laser Unicorns1.

Origin & Background

Platform
Kickstarter (funding) / YouTube (viral spread)
Creator
David Sandberg
Date
2015

David Sandberg, a Swedish visual effects artist and music video director, shot early Kung Fury footage himself before turning to crowdfunding. In December 2013 he launched a Kickstarter campaign, using the material he had already filmed to cut a trailer that would sell the concept to backers3. Sandberg had also been posting production stills and updates to Reddit, building a small audience for the project ahead of the campaign3.

The Kickstarter trailer was uploaded to YouTube, where it drew millions of views and pushed the campaign well past its original $200,000 goal3. By the time funding closed, more than 17,000 backers had pledged over $680,000 to finish the film2.

How It Spread

After a Cannes Film Festival screening earlier in the month, Kung Fury dropped free on YouTube on May 28, 2015, and hit more than 10 million views within four days1. Vanity Fair ran a launch write-up under the headline calling it "the best movie ever," pointing to the Hasselhoff soundtrack cut "True Survivor" as a key hook2.

The rollout was staged. On April 16, 2015, Laser Unicorns began releasing teaser videos, starting with the "True Survivor" music video featuring Hasselhoff, which pulled in more than 14 million views by June 20153. Reddit was a major amplifier throughout: an /r/movies thread announcing the film's arrival scored 5,342 points at 94% upvoted, and Sandberg later ran an AMA on the same subreddit as "Kung Fury"3.

Coverage in outlets like Vox and Vanity Fair framed the short as a case study in how a Kickstarter-funded passion project could turn into a full-blown internet event, comparing its pop-culture-stuffed appeal to Adult Swim's "Too Many Cooks"12.

Frequently Asked Questions