'#NoBarbenheimer' Trends As Japanese Moviegoers Protest Barbie's Nuclear Bomb Memes

Sometimes, memes have consequences. Warner Bros., the studio behind Barbie, has issued an official apology over memes that promoted Barbie using imagery linked to the atomic bomb and the film Oppenheimer, which offended some moviegoers in Japan.

The Barbenheimer phenomenon, which helped both films earn massive returns at the box office in the United States, has joined the two films forever in the public consciousness.

In the weeks leading up to and after the film's release, Barbie's official American account interacted with Barbenheimer content in a number of tweets, replies and posts on social media:

Some fans in Japan, where the two nuclear bombs were dropped by the United States 78 years ago this week (August 6th and August 9th, 1945) took issue with it, arguing that it is not okay to joke about nuclear weapons.

To demonstrate what they meant, some Japanese posters created "Barbie-ified" edits of 9/11 so that Americans could understand how Barbie-fied edits of mushroom clouds made them feel.

Immediately, posters pounced on these 9/11 memes, complete with pink smoke as the hashtag "#NoBarbenheimer" trended online.

Barbie attracted controversy in Vietnam earlier this summer over a map that appeared to validate Chinese territorial claims in the ocean off its coast.

The controversy in Japan is a second tough landing for Barbie internationally. The studio's official apology is a bid to soothe nerves and show respect ahead of the movie's release in Japan on August 8th.