There Is Simply No Way To Anticipate What Mel Gibson's 'Fatman' Is About

Occasionally, a video goes viral not for its humor, but for its stunning, tonally-jarring subject matter that is only revealed by the end of the video. In 2019, social media was agog at a beautiful short film documenting the course of a man's life, only to be slapped in the face when it turned out to be a Subway ad. A few months later, a similar phenomenon happened when a commercial touted the myriad technological innovations made by women throughout history, only to reveal itself as an ad for the (kind of patronizing) board game Ms. Monopoly.

Yesterday, social media got another taste of the twist-ending viral ad when a commercial for Mel Gibson's upcoming movie Fatman made the rounds. The ad dropped on Wednesday, but yesterday, most of Twitter discovered it thanks to a tweet by Ringer writer Claire McNear, who wrote, "nothing can prepare you for the moment you realize what the movie's about."

Indeed, the trailer plays its cards close to the chest for the first 45 seconds. We see Mel Gibson as a grizzled old man shadowboxing in his snow-covered home. He describes being shot at by punks. The American military comes to enlist his aid, to which he, very anti-hero-like, says, "This is a one-time deal gentlemen." Then we see a snot-nosed child receive a lump of coal for Christmas and it hits:

Mel Gibson is Santa Claus.

Turns out, Fatman is a dark comedy where Santa Clause is locked in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with an assassin (played by Walton Goggins) hired by the coal-receiving twelve-year-old to kill Santa.

Once the video began circulating on Twitter, viewers were left with their mouths agape at the concept.

Fatman drops "in theaters" (we'll see about that) on November 13th and comes out On Demand and Digital the 17th. Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals.