Burger King Piccolo

About

Burger King Piccolo or Piccolo Goes To Burger King refers to a series of memes depicting Dragon Ball character Piccolo at the fast-food restaurant Burger King. The meme began in 2016 when a photograph of someone in Piccolo cosplay standing outside the restaurant was posted to Tumblr, inspiring redraws and memes referencing the original over the following years, often seeing an increase in interest around May 9th of every year, known online as Piccolo Day by fans of the series.

Origin

Toys R Us Piccolo

A precursor to the trend is an image of a man in Piccolo cosplay standing in front of Toys R' Us, which was posted to Facebook^[7] on December 18th, 2014 by Knightmare (shown below). The man in the cosplay is deputy sheriff Michael Wilson, who dressed as Piccolo and went to the store to pay off everyone's layaways for Christmas, as reported by Anime News Network.^[8] The image is occasionally used in tandem with Burger King Piccolo in memes.

Piccolo Goes To Burger King

The earliest online reference to Piccolo at Burger King is a stop-motion YouTube^[1] video made using Dragon Ball toys by Rashawn King where Piccolo works at a Burger King, uploaded in July 2015, gaining over 9,300 views in six years. On August 24th, 2016, Tumblr^[2] user hst-3220 posted a photograph of a person in detailed Piccolo cosplay standing outside of Burger King, gaining over 16,400 notes in five years (shown below). This is the earliest known upload of the image.

Spread

On April 29th, 2020, Twitter^[3] user @bkpiccolo, a parody account referencing the image, posted a video consisting of the photo with added music, gaining over 456,000 views, 34,000 likes and 10,000 retweets in a year and a half (shown below). A longer version of the video was posted to YouTube^[4] the next day, gaining over 56,000 views in the same span of time.

The meme saw an increase in interest as Piccolo Day 2020 neared, which takes place on May 9th every year. On May 5th, Twitter^[5] user @SailLaser1 posted a redraw of the photograph in the style of the DBZ manga, gaining over 14,600 likes and 3,600 retweets in a year and a half (shown below, left). On May 8th, Twitter^[6] user @SrojamDraws posted another redraw in the style of the anime, gaining over 17,200 likes and 4,700 retweets in the same rough span of time (shown below, right).

On May 10th, YouTuber Cartoon Fight Night posted a video featuring both Piccolo at Burger King and Toys R' Us, gaining over 9,400 views in a year and a half (shown below, left). On July 31st, YouTuber XplodingTrees posted an animation inspired by the meme, gaining over 8,900 views in the same rough span of time (shown below, right).

On September 13th, Redditor Chrisisthename120 posted an animation based on the meme to /r/nanogenix,^[9] gaining over 214 upvotes in just over a year. On January 13th, 2021, YouTuber^[12] Sun.MP2 posted a version animating the meme with sprites from a DBZ Super Nintendo game, gaining over 5,200 views in 11 months (shown below).

On March 20th, Instagram^[10] page dank_memes_melting_screens and Facebook^[11] page Eric's Creamy Memes posted an image using Burger King Piccolo as a representation of one of the four types of people during a fire alarm, gaining over 21,300 likes on the former and 2,900 reactions and 2,800 shares on the latter in nine months (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References