The Fast Food Lettuce Controversy That The Internet Will Never Forget

The last thing you'd want on your flame-grilled Whopper is, well, whatever's on the bottom of someone's shoes. But that's what some customers could have gotten from an Ohio Burger King if it wasn't for the online sleuths who traced an image of two shoes planted in buckets of lettuce back to the restaurant. The picture, now more than a decade old, endures online as an infamous meme and a reminder that few things online are truly anonymous.

The "Burger King foot lettuce" photo was first posted to the imageboard 4chan in July 2012 alongside the caption, "This is the lettuce you eat at Burger King." Within minutes, users had extracted the geo-location info from the image file — something the uploader had neglected to remove or simply didn't care to — and found that it really did originate from a BK in Mayfield Heights.

Soon enough, the town's Facebook page was flooded with reposts of the image, and local news outlets began to investigate. By the time reporters got a hold of the restaurant's management, they discovered that three employees had been fired over the staging of the foot lettuce photo. Burger King corporate responded to press requests with some deflection, saying that the BK in question is independently owned and operated by a franchisee (and thus responsible for the actions of its own staff). But the uproar over the shocking image turned the whole story into one of the internet's longest running jokes, forcing food brands to consider how they approach social media.

The meme's infamy hit its zenith when it ended up in a countdown video narrated by the unmistakable voice of Canadian YouTuber Chills. Chills, who also goes by Dylan, posted the video "Top 15 Mysteries Solved by 4Chan" to his "Top 15s" channel in late 2017. The opening segment of the video is now synonymous with the photo — "Number 15: Burger King foot lettuce. The last thing you'd want in your Burger King burger is someone's foot fungus. But as it turns out, that might be what you get." It even has its own Genius page, breaking down Chills' "spoken-word" voiceover line by line (of course, the annotations are all tongue in cheek).

Chills, who posts videos across two YouTube channels, typically covers found-footage horror clips from around the internet, from alleged ghost sightings to natural disasters. But his coverage of 4chan mysteries, which has racked up more than 8 million views, remains a fan favorite. Many comments on the original video read like tourists seeing a famous monument for the first time, marveling at "those four beautiful words." Searching "Burger King foot lettuce" on YouTube brings up tons of remixes and parodies — one clip that just contains the foot lettuce portion of Chills' video has nearly 2 million more views than the original.

The YouTuber has leaned into the clip's popularity, repeating portions of the narration in TikTok videos, creating a music video around it, and even making a cameo in Adult Swim's "Smiling Friends" show, where he orders a "number 15" from a coffee shop. In a comment, he wrote, "This was the highlight of my entire career."

As funny as the "Burger King foot lettuce" photo and Chills' video are, it wasn't too amusing for the management at the Mayfield Heights BK where the picture was taken. In Today's 2012 report on the controversy, writer Rosa Golijan reported overhearing frantic voices after calling the restaurant: "What are you doing on the phone? Don't answer the phone!"

According to later reports, the Cuyahoga County Board of Health swooped in shortly afterward to investigate. Apparently, more than two buckets had been stepped in, but thankfully, none of the lettuce had made it into any meals. Still, public perception of the wider Burger King brand took a significant hit immediately after the incident.

It's been more than a decade, and BK's popularity and fame seem to have stabilized. YouGov polls put Burger King in the running for the best fast-food burger in America (tied with Five Guys) just two years after the foot lettuce photo was posted, and the same research group now places the brand's popularity at around 60%, where it's hovered for the past four years. Still, it's one of the many chains that has been closing locations at a steady clip.