McGenshin

Submission 42,388

Part of a series on Genshin Impact. [View Related Entries]

About

McGenshin or Genshin Impact McDonald's is a social media trend that involves users making memes which unite Genshin Impact characters and McDonald's fast-food restaurants in various ways, most notably in profile pictures of Genshin Impact characters wearing McDonald's hats and headsets. Originating from a viral meme posted on Reddit in February 2021, the trend achieved viral spread in the game's community in mid-April 2021.

Origin

On December 2nd, 2020, Redditor anoffdutyhooker posted the earliest found McDonald's-themed Genshin Impact meme, editing a photograph of McDonald's ordering machine over Zhongli's Dominus Lapidis pillar. The post received over 4,100 upvotes in the /r/Genshin_Memepact^[1] subreddit in six months (shown below, left).

On February 11th, 2021, Redditor -Valstrax- posted a meme in which a Big Mac burger was edited over Zhongli's Planet Befall meteor, with the image captioned "This Is Your Order" (a play on Zhongli's quote "I Will Have Order"). The post (shown below, center) received over 2,300 upvotes in /r/Genshin_Memepact^[2] in three months. On February 12th, Redditor^[3] dragen000 posted a response meme that gained over 1,400 upvotes in the same period (shown below, right).

On April 9th, 2021, TikTok^[4] user soloutv posted a Genshin Impact McDonald's Ice Cream Machine edit that received over 327,100 views and 78,600 likes (shown below, left). On April 10th, 2021, TikTok^[5] user albedoiism posted a video containing 15 images of Genshin Impact playable characters with McDonald's hats and headsets edited onto them, with albedoiism suggesting they should be used as profile pictures. The video received over 45,200 views and 8,300 likes in one month (shown below, right).

Spread

In the following days, albedoiism uploaded several videos with McDonald's profile pictures for characters that did not appear in the original post.^[6]^[7]^[8]

Starting on April 10th, users within the Genshin Impact community on TikTok set the images created by albedoiism as their profile pictures. On April 13th, Discord^[14] user synx#0001 posted albedoiism's video to Genshin Impact Official Discord server, promoting the spread of trend.

On April 13th, 2021, gimmick Discord^[9] server McGenshin Official was created by Discord user Woah_Bingus#1308, gaining nearly 450 users in one month. On the server, users partook in roleplaying of humorous McDonald's scenarios with Genshin Impact characters, as well as submitted memes uniting the game and its characters with the fast-food chain (examples shown below, left and right).

On April 20th, 2021, Twitter^[10]^[11] users @TlNYYUN and @kleevior created threads in which they posted McGenshin profile pictures created by albedoiism and other users and other memes within the trend. The tweets received over 730 retweets and 1,800 likes and 140 retweets and 550 likes, respectively. Later that day, Redditor^[12] lxotong posted a collection of McGenshin profile pictures.

On April 23rd, Redditor asaness posted a meme that highlighted the viral spread of McGenshin profile pictures within the game's community (shown below). The post received over 4,500 upvotes in /r/Genshin_Memepact^[13] two weeks.

Deku Working at McDonald's

Deku Working at McDonald's refers to a series of memes and videos depicting My Hero Academia character Izuku Midoriya (aka Deku) losing his quirk and then working at the fast-food restaurant McDonald's as a cashier, which is based on the controversial ending of the manga series in mid-2024.