Hilarious Moments Caught On Camera At McDonald's

It doesn't happen every time you go to McDonald's. But hit up a Mickey D's dining room often enough, and it's bound to happen sooner or later. 

You'll just be sitting there, lazily dragging a rapidly-cooling french fry through a mound of sweet ketchup, debating with yourself about whether or not to have a fourth Orange Fanta to help lubricate that Double Bacon Smokehouse Burger's journey through your lower intestine, when you feel the energy in the room start to shift.

Maybe there's a disheveled customer at the front counter, in the early stages of an argument about how many cups of McNugget sauce he's entitled to. Perhaps a disoriented sorority girl has wandered in, still awake after a long night but fueled more by Jagermeister than by conscious decision-making. Voices get raised. Staff begins to cluster in solidarity. An f-bomb is dropped. And that's when you feel that familiar tingle of anticipation prickle up and down your whole body: Something's about to go down in this McDonald's.

You may not get to see every weird moment play out in person right before your eyes, but thanks to YouTube, it's finally possible to enjoy them from the comfort of your own home. Here's a collection of some of our favorite outrageous moments at Mickey D's, from drive-thru pranks, to robberies caught on camera, to irate customers that really should be at home sleeping it off. You're welcome.

As you've probably noticed, you don't see a lot of Asian Americans represented in popular media, and there may not be any arena more lacking in people of Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipino, or Korean descent than the world of corporate stock photography.

You've seen these posters so much, they've probably become almost invisible to you, almost like a web banner advertisement or the pictures of their babies that your friends post on Facebook. Wholesome, spiffy teenagers with pearly-white teeth, laughing with their friends at an unheard joke, fingers full of fries frozen in midair on the path from plastic tray to open mouth, complete with a Golden Arches logo somewhere in the corner. The posters are meant to remind you what a fun place McDonald's is, and communicate to consumers that the company shares our core community values of decentness, honesty, and properly-jelled hair.

But for regular customers Jehv Maravilla and Christian Toledo, looking up at those posters every day and seeing a lack of representation of people who looked like them became too much to ignore. Using some downright admirable graphic design skills, the pair whipped up some corporate artwork of their own using photography shot in the style of the other posters already hanging in the restaurant, but featuring a photo of themselves. How long would it take for McDonald's employees to spot the fake poster and have it removed? Longer than you might think.

If you've ever found yourself shouting your increasingly frantic request for extra pickles through the muffled, garbled speaker at a McDonald's drive-thru, you can understand how frustrating it is to not be heard when you feel like you're already screaming at the top of your lungs.  

This YouTuber decided to up the ante considerably, bringing a megaphone with him to the drive-thru and blasting his voice through the tinny speaker, no doubt thoroughly routing out the eardrums of the unfortunate staff who happened to be wearing drive-thru headsets that day. The staff seems remarkably good-natured about the experience, and they even issue a few polite chuckles at the lame jokes and the tinny amplification, especially considering the bones of their ears may never be able to properly conduct sound ever again.

For what it's worth, the real punchline may come at the end of the video, after the shouting YouTuber collects his food and drives away.

If there's one thing that never goes out of style when it comes to super satisfying YouTube drive-thru prank videos, it's watching the fish-out-of-water response of the staff as their eyes attempt to process something different than they've already seen hundreds of times that day. 

Here, you have to stand in awe of the special effects work of this YouTuber, who fashioned himself a tan upholstered suit that looks exactly like the front seat of his car. The effect is truly impressive; when viewed from the correct angles and in the right light, the driver of the car appears to vanish, creating the illusion that the car is driving itself.

Every one of these staff reactions, which range from laughter, to confusion, to out-and-out fright, will put a big smile on your face. But pay special attention to the guy at 2:36, who seems to think that if he just closes the sliding drive-thru window and starts over a few times, reality will reset and there will suddenly somehow be a driver in the car.

All we know is this: Somewhere in Toldeo, Ohio, a 25-year-old woman is probably having a hard time explaining to her fellow inmates what she's "in" for. At 6:30 in the morning on New Year's Day, presumably following a night of partying harder than we certainly ever have, this customer whipped through the McDonald's drive-thru for some life-sustaining Chicken McNuggets, only to have it patiently explained to her that a 10-piece is limited to afternoon and evening hours only. 

The customer reacted in only the way that someone fueled with McNugget-denial rage could be expected to: By reaching through the open drive-thru window and attacking the employee in a flurry of punches and scratches, who fights back by trying to pull her up out of her car and through the open window by her hair. The customer is released, and the window closed, but it's not over yet: The irate customer hurls something through the window, shattering the glass and resulting in a vandalism charge. Happy New Year!

We all know the feeling... you need one last snack before you head home for some sleep, and decide that a 10-piece box of Chicken McNuggets is just the kind of fuel you need to help continue your journey home. When you arrive at McDonald's, however, you find the lights off and the parking lot vacant, and so, for no good reason whatsoever, you give the drive-thru window a little jiggle, just to make sure that your eyes aren't deceiving you. 

For this motorist in Columbia, Maryland, that cursory little window check resulted in a jackpot: An unlocked window at a closed McDonald's. She starts by trying to play it cool, reaching through the window to help herself to a pour of stolen soda, before going whole-hog and climbing through the unlocked window to investigate further. After snagging another soda and then spending 20 full minutes prowling around the restaurant stealing everything that wasn't bolted down, including cash, food, and empty Happy Meal boxes, the thief seems to realize that she's being videotaped, and pulls her shirt up over her head in a futile attempt to help hide her identity, before passing some more stolen stuff out the window and then waltzing right out the front door.

If you've ever tried to earn a living in the spirit-crushing salt mines of the foodservice industry, whether that's at a fast food place like McDonald's, the sandwich counter at a busy deli, or at a more formal full-service restaurant, you've probably realized one thing: Customers, very often, are the worst. 

That's what makes this clip such a cathartic moment for anyone that's been at the receiving end of any manner of customer nonsense. She's not asking for any trouble. She's put her little McDonald's visor on, brushed the hair out of her face, and punched in for another day at the drive-thru window, just like every other day. She doesn't need these YouTube bros, who have swapped out the horn in their car for a high-powered truck air horn, blasting noise and shoving a camera in her face to record her reaction. She didn't ask for it, she doesn't need it, and SHE'S NOT HAVING IT.

It's not so much her irritated reaction that we find so funny; it's the almost offhand manner in which she dismisses her would-be tormentors. There's no yelling, no carrying on, no jumping up and down; a simple flip of an open soda into the passenger compartment and the quiet sass of a slammed-shut drive-thru window door is enough to communicate just how over it she is.

Usually, when we're dining in at McDonald's, we try and ease through the ordering phase of the interaction as smoothly as possible, with a minimum of words and eye contact exchanged with the kid at the counter. Not this guy. He orders like a boss.

At the Times Square McDonald's in New York City, what starts with a simple request for two Big Macs and two apple pies rapidly escalates into a full minute of McDonald's-themed freestyle, with full musical accompaniment from a nearby boom box. To his credit, the kid taking the order tries to keep up, through some ever-escalating lyrical gymnastics ("Lemme get a McFlurry, two of those, one M&M and one Oreos; I want everything on the Dollar Menu, and a burger with jalapeños..."), before ultimately giving up and staring open-mouthed and helpless at his register.

By the end of the video, a manager has stepped in to check on what's going on, and the rest of the staff seems pretty delighted by the impromptu performance. We just love happy endings.

Baltimore, Maryland is home to a new hero. His name is "Traffic Jam Jimmy," and he's not going to let a little thing like being broadcast on live television get in between him and his fish sandwich. One snowy morning, after Jimmy had been out on the roads giving reports live from the field on the traffic conditions during an epic snowstorm, he got a little peckish, and tried to swing through a McDonald's for a quick snack, just as the Fox affiliate switched back to his live feed. 

Traffic Jam Jimmy was caught red-handed on his dashboard camera, trying in vain to order a Filet-O-Fish during breakfast hours, as thousands of house-bound viewers watched. Jimmy took it all in stride and continued his report, imploring viewers to "stay put," before pulling up to the next window to pay for his order.

Meanwhile, back in the studio, the news anchor was unable to hide her hysterical laughter. "Jimmy, I told you we were coming back to you," the anchor laughed, wiping tears from her eyes.

Alcohol is a powerful drug. What else could otherwise convince a fully-gown person, with no known history of athletic prowess in advanced gymnastics, that she will be able to flip backwards over a McDonald's counter and land safely on the other side? 

Spoiler: She can't.

As her friends urge her on, the girl wanders over to the counter, sitting briefly on the edge before kicking her feet up and over her head and falling off the back side of the surface, arms flailing helplessly in midair and clearing out the register and receipt printer in one smooth motion.

We've watched this video a few times now (don't be too impressed; it's only 25 seconds long), and there's one main question we keep coming back to: Even though the video ends in spectacular failure, what would have success looked like? In other words, what exactly was the goal here in the first place?

We're posting this video mostly to serve as a warning to anyone who thinks it might be a good idea to get falling-down drunk, put on a cowboy hat, and head down to the local McDonald's to crawl around on the floor and verbally harass teenaged girls. 

Don't underestimate the raw strength and power of dads defending their brood. Though we may be sitting their calmly in our windbreakers, looking all docile and nonthreatening, start messing with our daughters and the situation is gonna get all Papa Bear, pretty darn quickly.

After a few shouted verbal warnings by the annoyed father to knock it off, he finally stands up and with all of the care and attention you might afford a cloudy day or a pesky fly at a picnic, and knocks the drunk off his feet, sending him flying three feet across the room, before crashing into a trash can. Score one point for the superhuman strength of the protective dads of the world, and zero for the annoying, babbling drunks.

It's a question that's crossed all of our minds, when confronted by the fancy ordering kiosks at McDonald's, or when putting together the custom burger creation of our dreams using the Mickey D's app. What if you ordered a cheeseburger, and then in the customization menu, asked them to hold the bun, the meat, the ketchup, the mustard, the pickles, and the onions? Would you really receive a cardboard container with a single sad slice of cheese inside?

At this McDonald's at least, the answer seems to be "yes." Though there's a shot of the receipt, we can't quite make out the total cost for this burger-hold-the-burger, but it appears to be less than a dollar. This is also one of the rare video clips where it's not so much the creativity of the prank itself that's funny, or imagining the reaction of the line cooks forced to navigate the customizations; it's the laughter and sheer joy of the kids who pulled off such a dopey idea that's infectious.

If you're anything like us, you may find yourself a little preoccupied with a few of the unaddressed questions this video seems to gloss right over. For example, during the interminably long introduction (which we've skipped past — you're welcome), you may find yourself wondering, "Wait, how did a 14-year-old kid get his hands on a $1,000,000 Lamborghini," or "Why is going to McDonald's the best thing he can think to do next?" 

The car, a Batmobile-esque assemblage of lightweight carbon fiber, air scoops, and three-point harnesses, is hardly outfitted for road use, let alone a cruise through the drive-thru. In order to keep the car's weight down, it doesn't even have a passenger seat, and in order to keep the driver from being decapitated, there aren't even windows that open all the way. The nonplussed McDonald's employee makes do, however, passing the brown paper sack of deliciousness through the tiny access panel carved into the middle of the driver's-side window, while the engine of this muscle machine revs with the throaty, growling fury of 10,000 rabid cougars trapped in a metal trash can.

We admit, we're ending this roundup of McDonald's outrageousness on a bit of a quiet note. But we kind of admire the understated simplicity of this clip. A well-dressed, well-groomed, carefully-coiffed gentleman, sitting alone, listening to or watching something on his iPhone, acting like eating an order of Chicken McNuggets and french fries USING A KNIFE AND FORK is the most normal and totally-not-at-all-crazy thing in the whole world.  

There's no witty commentary. No splashy graphics. No musical score. No snarky remarks. No giggling. No judgment, except for the judgment implied by a stranger committing your behavior during a private moment to video and uploading it to YouTube. Just a dude, cutting his already bite-sized food into even smaller pieces to make it easier for his little delicate baby mouth to chew, living his life the way he thinks it should best be lived, onlookers be damned. It's an example we should all aspire to, dontcha think?