Why This TikTok Of An Abandoned McDonald's Just Went Viral

As long as there have been restaurants, whether Michelin-starred or Mickey D's, there have been restaurant closures. Sometimes the restaurant properties are immediately snapped up and re-purposed, most often as a different restaurant. Every town seems to have that "revolving door" restaurant that went from being a Burger King to a KFC to a Chinese takeout to a hipster place serving up small plates of pork belly and Brussels sprouts.

Some restaurants, however, remain empty, perhaps because their location may have been what contributed to their downfall. These restaurants are the delight of urban explorers. Burger King even built an entire ad campaign out of "scary places:" shuttered restaurants that once belonged to their fast food competitors. The latest person to jump on board the abandoned restaurant video trend is TikToker Triangleofmass, whose video is going viral for two reasons. The first reason, of course, is TikTok, since YouTube is just so 20-teens. (Videos over a minute long! Can you imagine?) The second reason, though, is the interesting one: The long-closed McDonald's they filmed for TikTok as well as a longer YouTube video appears to be a creepy time capsule of sorts.

The TikTok video, while brief, nevertheless provided a pretty good peek inside the former Golden Arches. Many commenters felt this Mickey D's had apparently been frozen in time, but they failed to agree on the exact moment the clock stopped. One person asked "What in the 1988 hell was that?" but another sharp-eyed observer pointed out a paper bag commemorating the 2004 Athens Olympics. The video creator referenced the restaurant closing in 2007, revealing they found some nasty old fudge that had been left sitting in an ice cream machine for the past 14 years. They said it "looked gross" ... yeesh, we bet. (They're probably lucky it didn't crawl out and follow them home.)

A few people felt that the color scheme inside the restaurant was totally, as one commenter put it "taco bell 90s." Some wondered if this McDonald's began life as a Taco Bell, but a Snopes investigation soon dumped a cold Baja Blast on such speculation. Their past reporting confirmed that other mid-80s McDonald's were also done up in shades of pink and turquoise. The main mystery with this McDonald's, though, was expressed by the commenter who asked: "how has it not been vandalized?" You'd think some of that merch could fetch a few bucks on eBay. Would-be looters, however, will be disappointed to know that the video creator has no intention of disclosing the location of the McDonald's That Time Forgot.