Grimace Shake Trend

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Part of a series on Grimace's Birthday / Grimace Shake. [View Related Entries]

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About

The Grimace Shake Trend, also known as the Grimace Shake Incident and Grimace Shake Death, refers to a series of parody horror videos that depict people dying or going insane after drinking the McDonald's Grimace Milkshake. The meme trend was started by TikToker @thefrazmaz in mid-June 2023 and went viral later that month, most notably on TikTok and Twitter where it inspired other videos of people dying after drinking the shake, as well as a fan art trend in which artists draw characters drinking the shake then dying.

Origin

On June 13th, 2023, TikToker^[1] @thefrazmaz posted a video in which he takes a drink of the McDonald's Grimace Shake, a limited-time item in celebration of Grimace's birthday, then cuts to a scene of him lying on the floor dead with the purple drink around his mouth, garnering over 1.7 million views in two weeks (shown below).

On June 25th, other TikTokers began to make similar videos. That day, TikToker^[2] @reecenator661 posted a slideshow of various people acting dead after drinking the shake, calling it the "Grimace shake incident," garnering over 970,000 views in two days. Some of the highest-viewed examples of the trend uploaded that day include videos by TikTokers^[3]^[4] @_loganross and @wheresxander, garnering over 6.5 million views and 5.9 million views, respectively, in two days (shown below, left and right),.

Spread

The trend continued to spread throughout June 2023 as more people mimicked the original viral video. On June 26th, 2023, TikToker^[5] @armiepcharmie, an actor from the film Beau Is Afraid, posted a version of the trend that gained over 119,000 views in a day (shown below, left). The video was reposted by Twitter^[6] user @ColmaSatchel that day, writing, "the Beau is Afraid kid is cooking something on tiktok," garnering over 8,200 likes in a day. That day, TikToker^[7] @snackgoon also posted a video doing the trend, garnering over 4.3 million views in a day (shown below, right). Later that day, Twitter^[8] user @SneakySquid99 shared a video of a TikToker doing the trend that garnered over 30,000 likes in a day.

That same day, Twitter^[9] user @GarbageHomo posted an image of a Grimace Shake, writing, "ART CHALLENGE draw ur oc/favourite character drinking the grimace shake then fucking DYING," garnering over 60,000 likes and 2,400 quote-retweets in a day. The trend inspired numerous works of art under its quote-retweets and comment section depicting characters drinking the shake and then dying (examples shown below).^[10]^[11]^[12]

McDonald's Acknowledges Grimace Shake Trend

On June 27th, 2023, McDonald's (and, by extension, Grimace itself) appeared to acknowledge the Grimace Shake Trend, posting the tweet^[13] below which earned over 80,000 likes in three days. Grimace seemed "horrified" in the picture, according to some, such as NBC News. The meme was also posted to Instagram,^[14] garnering over 292,000 likes in three days.