The internet erupted in its typical paroxysms of glee and ridicule recently when Carl's Jr. unveiled its new ad campaign featuring Todd Gurley, the star running back of the Los Angeles Rams.As usual, the campaign features Gurley taking a much-too-big bite of a huge, sloppy cheeseburger with an equally huge and sloppy grin on his face. Unfortunately, this time the commercial featured the kind of CGI effects that usually only happen when George Lucas gets into the schnapps. The grin looks real, but the burger is obviously fake, and just kind of floats there over Gurley's mouth as he takes a supposedly satisfying bite of air. It really is some Mummy Returns-level shit.
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A GIF of the ghost bite quickly went viral, with internet folks suggesting that Gurley may have even refused to eat the Carl's Jr. burger—overall, not a good look.Carl's Jr. responded on Twitter—the perfect platform for a controversy of this magnitude—last week, saying: "Hey, a lot of things in SoCal are enhanced but Todd really did eat A LOT of Cali Classics. Available at Carl's Jr.", along with a new video of Gurley clearly eating a real burger, complete with what looks like mayonnaise smearing all over his lips.What a typically classy Carl's Jr. response. "A lot of things in SoCal are enhanced!" (Get it? Breasts!) But, when we reached out to the company asking why they would use a fake burger in the first place, the company just referred us to the aforementioned tweet. And we never had the chance to ask follow-up questions, such as, "What's with the apostrophe in 'Carl's'?" Does this chain belong to Carl's kid? Who is Carl?! Is this chain his son?https://twitter.com/CarlsJr/status/741410403305955328The Cali Classic has been quite the controversial burger for the company. As many have pointed out, it seems engineered to be a copy of the actual California classic that is In-N-Out Burger's Double Double.That's funny, using a fake imitation burger to advertise what is allegedly a fake imitation burger. A lot of layers here, people.