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"Billions and billions served." note 

Did somebody say McDonald's?

That's probably how you got to this page — it's probably the most common "not-a-wiki-word" that appears on TV Tropes, since our wiki parser automatically converts CamelCase into article links.

But since McDonald's is such a big part of modern culture, we may as well make the visit worth your while. (Would you like fries with that?)

It all started in 1954 when Ray Kroc, a milkshake mixer salesman, found out that one of his customers bought many more mixers than usual for a business. He traveled out to San Bernardino, California to find that two brothers, Richard and Maurice McDonald, ran their diner at an amazing rate, serving way more customers than a usual restaurant should by the simple expedient of not making each burger to order; instead of putting veggies and condiments according to each customer's preference, every burger was made to a more-or-less uniform standard to maximize efficiency while the restaurant had a condiment bar where customers could then add ketchup and mustard on their own. He pitched them the idea of creating McDonald's restaurants all over the U.S. and the McDonald's Corporation was founded the next year. By 1958, McDonald's had sold 100 million hamburgers. By 1960, Kroc bought exclusive rights to the McDonald's name, then went out of his way to drive the McDonalds' later establishment out of business. The story of Kroc's takeover is dramatized in the film The Founder.

1963 saw the creation of the restaurant chain's most famous mascot, a clown called Ronald McDonald. The character was later given his own fantasy world for the commercials in the 1970s, McDonaldland. The creation of the long running advertising campaign originally involved Sid and Marty Krofft Productions using their H.R. Pufnstuf characters, only to be told by McDonald's advertising company, Needham, Harper and Steers, that the project was cancelled. With them out of the way, the agency blatantly plagiarized the Kroffts' concept using their former crew. The Kroffts noticed, and successfully sued McDonald's. Amusingly, the results of the lawsuit didn't restrict McDonald's from using the characters, each of which quickly entered popular culture in spite of the legal trouble surrounding them.

Since then, McDonald's has added more than the original burgers, fries and sodas to its menu. Breakfast items are sold until 10:30 am on weekdays and 11:00 am on Saturdays and Sundays.note  The Filet-O-Fish was created to cater to the Catholic communities that ate no meat on Fridays during Lent (fish doesn't count). The Happy Meal and corporate Mascot Ronald McDonald were created to appeal to children. McCafé items (after the café section offered in a few countries) were added in the late 2000s to compete with Starbucks and other coffee vendors. And then, of course, there's the chain's flagship burger, the Big Mac. Its ingredients made for a snappy jingle: "Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun." (That bun is a 3-part bun, making the Big Mac a double-decker burger). The Big Mac is so well known that the number of calories in one is often used as a unit of measure (as in, "(fatty food X) has as many calories as 3 Big Macs").note  Owing to the company's global scale, the price of a Big Mac is also commonly used as a unit of comparison for purchasing power and living wages worldwide, referred to as the Big Mac Index.

The original San Bernardino restaurant has since been redesigned into a museum dedicated to the company. The oldest McDonald's still in operation is the 4th location in Downey, California, which sports an image of Speedee the Hamburger-Head Mascot and a sign proudly proclaiming that the chain has sold 500 million hamburgersnote . By the 1970s, the company buildings began including dining rooms and drive-through windows, coinciding with the addition of the now-trademark Mansard roof.

In 2008, a new "modern" store design was unveiled, dubbed "Forever Young" (or "Giant Eyebrow of Doom"). Near the end of The New '10s, another new store design was gradually rolled out, with a flat roof, muted colors, and more of a coffeehouse-style interior. They have also invested significant effort into replacing human cashiers with self-service checkout screens.

The quality and nutritional value of the food served is debatable—if nothing else, it sets the floor that everyone else has to do better than to be in the restaurant business—but no one can deny that the ubiquity of this fast food restaurant (over 30,000 in 119 countries) has a significant impact on human culture.

Until the mid-2000s, McDonald's also owned Donatos Pizza and Boston Market (a "fast casual" chain specializing in rotisserie chicken), and was at one point the largest investor in Chipotle Mexican Grill, which enabled much of the latter chain's early growth.

The corporation operates a fully-furnished, constantly updated to the latest store model but entirely fake restaurant in Southern California which is offered to film and TV productions as well as used for almost all of their own commercials (worldwide). Chances are, when you see a McDonald's on TV, it's that one.

Due to the company's wide scope, it has produced many works (most frequently advertising) with tropes of their own.


You deserve some tropes today!:

  • Animated Adaptation: The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald (example here)
    • There is also the rare Ronald McDonald and the Adventure Machine (here) along with The Adventures Of Ronald McDonald: McTreasure Island (here).
  • Animate Inanimate Object: These show up in commercials a lot, and not just food. One commercial from the 70s had talking trash cans, while commercials from the 90s suggested everything in Ronald's house was alive, including furniture, utensils, and even his big, red clown shoes. (Which he got from the Tooth Fairy for some reason.)
  • Artifact Title: The Mc10:35, a popular secret menu item, got its name back when establishments stopped serving breakfast each day at 10:30 AM, opening up a brief window where one could buy both breakfast and lunch using a leftover Egg McMuffin and a McDouble. The name became an artifact in 2015 when the Egg McMuffin was added to the all-day breakfast menu, thus meaning it is possible to get a Mc10:35 anytime after 10:30. It stopped becoming this when the menu was discontinued due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
  • Boring, but Practical:
    • As mentioned in the description, their entire business model was built on this, making uniform burgers to increase the restaurants' efficiency.
    • Their most popular menu item for a long time has been the Filet-O-Fish sandwich, largely because observant Catholics in the United States couldn't, at the time of the sandwich's introduction, eat meat on Fridays, and still can't during Lenten Fridays. It's little wonder that McDonald's advertises the daylights out of the Filet-O-Fish at locations near Catholic churches during Lent. The number one definition for the Filet-O-Fish on Urban Dictionary even refers to it as "the Catholic Big Mac".note  It's also become popular among Muslims, because the sandwich's ingredients just so happened to meet halal guidelines (whitefish is basically always halal;note  beef and chicken are technically only halal if slaughtered correctly,note  although plenty of Muslims in the West ignore that).
  • Burger Fool: But of course.
  • Captain Ersatz:
    • MaDonal in Northern Iraq, as well as Matbax.
    • Ronald McDonald himself. In the Washington DC area Bozo the Clown made appearances at local McDonald's bringing in massive crowds. When the show was canceled, the actor who played Bozo, Willard Scott, became the first Ronald McDonald, appearing in three local TV commercials for the local McDonald's franchisee. Scott would later go on to greater fame as the weather reporter for NBC's Today show.
  • Catchphrase: "RAN RAN RUU!" for Ronald in Japan.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
    • The McDonaldland characters outside of Ronald haven't been seen in years. Even Ronald himself barely appears in new ads.
    • Mac Tonight in America, as a result of an injunction obtained against McDonald's by the Bobby Darin estateexplanation . His last commercial appearance altogether, in ads for Singapore and China, was in 2007.
  • City Shout Outs:
    • In 2007 the company aired a commercial featuring Mac Tonight promoting that the restaurant is open for all 24 hours. Near the end, he namedrops whatever city the ad is broadcasted in. In this particular version, he says, "Chill out, Singapore!"
    • McDonald's also spoofed this trope when they brought out a line of Indian-themed food in their UK branches. Their commercials were filmed in the style of a 1970s cinema ad for local Indian restaurants. These were very, very cheaply made; they'd film one scene inside a generic Indian restaurant set and then tack on a voiceover —obviously recorded in a different session- and a static image giving the actual name of the place and usually some directions. The McDonalds ads reproduced the effect faithfully, grainy footage, cheesiness and all.
  • Covers Always Lie: The food never looks as good in real life as it does in ads. The reasons why boil down to McDonald's using some techniques that just barely pass as "telling the truth" in order to not run afoul of false advertising laws. They find only the biggest/best examples of the food, the lighting is intentionally made up to make it look better, all of the ingredients are placed on one side (as opposed to placed in the middle, like the employees are trained to do), and several of the flaws are outright removed with digital editing.
  • Crunchtastic: Early ads featuring Ronald McDonald called him "the world's newest, silliest and hamburger-eatingest clown!".
  • Defector from Decadence: Canada's first Ronald McDonald, Geoffrey Giuliano, became a vegetarian activist and submitted testimony against the company during the McLibel case.
  • The Dinnermobile: In 1991, McDonald's released a line of flip cars based on Tiny Toon Adventures in their Happy Meals. Two of these toys included Buster Bunny driving a car shaped like a carrot and Hamton J. Pig driving a car shaped like a submarine sandwich (with tomato-shaped wheels).
  • Donut Mess with a Cop: This McCafe commercial consists in a horror movie parody with the Running Gag of every character constantly taking a sip of coffee all the time; the exception being the Sheriff, who is always seen eating a donut.
  • Dub Name Change: In Japan Ronald McDonald is called Donald McDonald, in deference to the lack of a clear "r" sound in Japanese. It’s quite interesting to note that the first English teacher in Japan was an American named Ranald MacDonald.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • Early locations were walk-up stands with no seating. The signature Mansard roofs didn't come until the early 70s.
    • The very first McDonald's opened in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant, and sold hamburgers alongside tamales, chili, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and barbecued pork, beef, and chicken sandwiches, all of which were served on china plates and with silverware. However the restaurant was not profitable and so in 1948 it was retooled into a burgers-only restaurant, with potato chips, coffee, pie, and sodas added to the menu. Fries and milkshakes joined the menu a year later.
  • Fight for the Last Bite: One a commercial had Ronald and Hamburglar compete in a video game over the last fry in their meal.
  • Flawed Prototype:
    • The company introduced mozzarella sticks in November 2015, likely to compete with Arby's, the only other notable fast food chain on the market to sell mozzarella sticks. In January 2016, the company received customer complaints due to the cheese sticks supposedly missing mozzarella, the key ingredient. In not a long matter of time, the company was sued for allegations over the cheese sticks containing "fake" mozzarella. The item was quickly discontinued, thus being a limited time offer. The problem was that the restaurant didn't properly train the cooks how to prepare them — mozzarella sticks need to be fried, but for a shorter time and at a lower temperature than french fries. It wasn't that the mozzarella sticks didn't contain any cheese; it's that the cheese inside of them boiled away into the oil because it was too hot.
    • The Filet-O-Fish was test-marketed in 1963 alongside the Hula Burger, an invention of Ray Kroc that had a slice of pineapple instead of meat. Both were targeted towards Roman Catholics who didn't eat meat on Friday during Lent. The best-selling of the two was, unsurprisingly, the Filet-O-Fish, which became a staple of McDonald's menu; the Hula Burger, which some claimed "tasted like styrofoam", was quietly discontinued and is now an obscure oddity.
    • In an attempt to compete with Burger King's onion rings, McDonald's introduced Onion Nuggets in the 1970s. They were pulled after poor sales in only four test markets, but McDonald's would go on to revisit the "nugget" concept in the 1980s with the much more popular Chicken McNuggets. Since then they've flirted with selling onion rings, but only during limited time offers.
    • For a couple of years, as part of introducing a more fine dining experience, they introduced self serve checkouts where you can build your own gourmet burger with style of bun, number of Angus patties, toppings and sauce, how much, and served tableside (a trend you may still find today.) These were eventually phased out by a more streamlined gourmet range available at drive through.
    • Several concepts have attempted to compete with Burger King's Whopper:
      • The McDLT (1984), which came in a box that had the hot burger patty on one side and the toppings on the other (the idea being that the toppings would stay cool and fresh while the burger itself was hot). A chicken variation was also available. It was retired in 1990 due to concerns over its styrofoam packaging.
      • The McLean Deluxe (1991), a low-fat burger which replaced most of the fat with carrageenan but otherwise identical to the McDLT. Quietly dropped in 1996.
      • Their "adult" menu (1996) included the Arch Deluxe (a "premium" burger with higher-quality toppings), a grilled chicken sandwich, a fried chicken sandwich (replacing the McChicken) and a larger fish sandwich. This whole line was intentionally targeted at adults, with ads featuring children repulsed over the food. However, this burger line was one of the biggest flops in fast food history; despite spending about $200 million dollars in advertising, the Arch Deluxe was a massive failure. The reasons why were largely because there really wasn't that big of an audience for a premium burger from McDonald's, many of the franchisees weren't interested in buying tons of new ingredients that could only be used on one sandwich, and the aforesaid ads with repulsed children gave off the wrong impression. That said, the Filet-O-Fish permanently adopted the larger size; the grilled and fried chicken sandwiches were simply renamed; and the McChicken came back. Some of the "adult" menu concepts were retooled into the Big N' Tasty (2000-2011), which was also nearly identical to the McDLT, and the Angus line of burgers introduced in 2006 and phased out in 2013.invoked
      • The phase-out of the Angus Third-Pounder burgers had less to do with lack of market appeal and more to do with McDonald's need to streamline its production process; the new "Quarter Pounder Burgers" line that replaced the Angus burgers do not require an additional grill dedicated to them, since they're made with the same 1/4-pound (precooked) meat patties used in their regular and Double Quarter Pounders.
    • The McAfrika (beef, cheese, tomatoes and salad in a pitta-style sandwich) was a product that wasn't exactly bad, but a victim of bad timing and a bad name. It was sold in Norway exclusively, in honor of the 2002 Winter Olympic games. Seeing as Southern Africa was undergoing a famine at the time where starvation was causing a bad death toll, a place promoting fast food sandwiches seemed incredibly poor judgement, especially when you consider that Norway is one of the world's wealthiest countries. They apologized, and tried to make amends with donation boxes in their restaurants, but they didn't learn their lesson; it returned for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, and got the same response.
    • They tried pitching the McSpaghetti in Italy, thinking they'd go for having one of their traditional foods served in some fast food place. America wasn't impressed either, as it took too long to prepare and wasn't all-too good, compared to "spaghetti with ketchup". (A version of it is fairly popular in the Philippines, however.)
    • The Filet-O-Fish has always been a hit, but other than that, they've had no luck with seafood. Case in point, the McGratin Croquette, designed with Japanese markets in mind. It was sort of a combination of chopped shrimp, mashed potatoes, and deep fried macaroni made into a patty and fried hamburger style. Japanese consumers were clearly put off by it. Back in the West, 1993’s McLobster met a similar fate due to the difficulty of promoting something as expensive as lobster as a casual option (although it briefly re-emerged in Canada in the early ‘10s).
    • Mighty Wings, buffalo wings they pitched in 2014 with the Super Bowl in mind, could well have been a lesson for corporations about the danger of overstocking. While consumers didn't consider them bad as far as chicken wings went, they really didn't stand out against other brands of buffalo wings, and certainly not worth the dollar a wing price tag that was slapped on them. Even after lowering the price to 60 cents a wing in order to liquidate the ten tons of wings the company had in stock, they never broke even.
    • The Chopped Beefsteak Sandwich (a steak sandwich with onions and tangy steak sauce) was another idea that failed because of the price. Most critics and consumers from the 70s remember it as delicious. Thing is, the $1.29 price tag (at a time when the regular burgers were 40 cents) made it unaffordable to the average customer, and it was discontinued.
    • A similar problem was the Roast Beef Sandwich, introduced in 1968 to compete with Arby's. Though it sold well, the menu item required equipping every location with a meat slicer, an expense that would prevent the sandwich from ever turning a profit. Executives discontinued the sandwich as soon as they realized this, and never brought it back.
    • Another concept that never took off was McPizza, which was tried in only a few markets in the late 80s-early 90s, being discontinued due to a combination of high costs to gain the equipment to serve it properly, and the long preparation times, which was especially troublesome for people ordering through the drive-thru. It was, however, more popular in Canada, being introduced in 1992 and continuing to be served as late as 1999. As of today, you can only get McPizza at the "World's Largest Entertainment McDonald's" in Orlando, Florida.
    • Salad Shakers were introduced in 2000 as a fun new way to eat salad (out of a plastic cup with a clear dome lid), Salad Shakers needed to be shaken up after adding in the dressing in order to distribute it. Though the concept worked (plenty of people do the same thing with plastic containers every day for lunch), they were replaced by Premium Salads (served in regular bowls) in 2003.
    • Despite CEO Ray Kroc insisting that McDonald's never sell hot dogs (he viewed them as unhygienic), some McDonald's stores nevertheless have sold hot dogs in the past. One summer during the 2000s, for instance, they briefly sold half-smokes as part of a summer-themed line of foods; they were dropped not long after. Midwest restaurants do sell Johnsonville bratwurst as a seasonal item.
    • They have also tried concept restaurants to varying degrees of success. Among these were:
      • McDonald's Express (small locations with limited menus, often found in convenience stores, airports, malls, and Walmart stores). A few are still around, mainly Canadian Walmart ones.
      • A few "Mini Mac" locations with drive-thru and walk-up windows akin to Rally's/Checkersnote  Surprisingly for such a failed concept, three (West Los Angeles, California, Bay City, Michigan, and Pueblo, Colorado) are still open.
      • They tried drive-thru-only locations again in The '90s with the "McDonald's Classic" concept, which was similar to "Mini Mac" but built in a more retraux style that vaguely resembled the walkup stands of old. As with "Mini Mac", a handful are still open.
      • McDiner, which was obviously a diner-style restaurant. These existed in Indiana and Kentucky from 2001 to 2004, when they were converted to standard McDonald's restaurants.
      • Yet another limited-menu version called McSnack operated for a few years. One was in Crossroads Mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota; one in Janesville Mall in Janesville, Wisconsin; and one in La Jolla, California. Notably, the St. Cloud store didn't even sell burgers, just nuggets, desserts, and breakfast items.
      • McDonald's designed the "McStop", a combination gas station, restaurant, hotel, and strip mall in Lakeville, Minnesota in 1986. While the entire complex is still operational, the McStop branding has been removed. Coincidentally, the motel on the complex was itself a Flawed Prototype: it was a "no-frills" concept tested by Days Inn and called "Daystop". (The motel has since changed to a Motel 6.)
  • Follow the Leader:
    • If McDonald's has done it (fish sandwich, chicken nuggets, play places, Happy Meals, salads, Angus burgers, high-end coffees), chances are that many fast food chains have copied. Even if they weren't the first to develop something (for instance, Burger Chef was actually the first chain to have kids' meals), their version is usually the example that every other chain follows.
    • Going the other way, the Big Mac is a clone of Big Boy's "Big Boy" burger (two patties, extra bun in the middle, secret sauce).
    • McCafe was started to cash in on the success of Starbucks.
    • Burger King actually lampshaded this in one ad.
    • The new Happy Meal mascots' silly, chaotic nature is meant to cash in on the success of the Minions from Despicable Me.
  • Food Porn: McDonald's certainly pushes it hard in the commercials. Fun fact: When you see the burgers on TV, the pickles stick out the side so the viewer can see them. If you're actually working at McDonald's, the pickle goes in the center of the burger so that it can get bitten into from any direction. In much the same vein, sandwiches prepared to be filmed in a commercial have their sauce carefully pipetted in so it can be seen in the final footage.
  • Freshman Fears: One commercial from the 1980s called "First Day", has a boy encounter all kinds of problems on his first day of high school, including being the shortest person in gym, running afoul of the hall monitors, and attending the wrong class. The accompanying song also discusses this trope in the lyrics.
  • Frivolous Lawsuit:
    • They're rather infamous for this, frequently taking other businesses to court for trademark infringement, typically for including the prefix "Mc" or "Mac" in their names. They once sued a Scottish café owner called McDonald, even though the place had been in business for over a century. Keep in mind that because of the way trademark laws work (at least in the US), McDonald's must take possible infringers to court, or at the very least threaten to do so.
    • There's also the infamous McLibel trial when the corporation went after two activists distributing pamphlets denouncing what they considered its destructive and harmful business practices. In doing so, the activists chose to fight in court and McDonald's found itself publicly humiliated in the courtroom attempting to defend claims that were patently ridiculous when put under cross-examination on the stand. This included its marketing claim that everything it sold was nutritious; the opposing lawyer backed the company into a corner forcing to claim that includes the soft drinks, because they have water. Eventually, the court fight was a draw: the judge declared that McDonald's credibly refuted some of the claims of the activists, but others held up. However the entire debacle was definitely a Pyrrhic Victory for the company due to the Streisand Effect.
    • On the other side, the oft-repeated Stella Liebeck case was against McDonald's. You know, the one where the woman spilled hot coffee over herself while driving, sued, and won millions of dollars? The whole story, though, is a lot more nuanced: the coffee McDonald's served was at 180-190°F (82.2-87.8°C); Liebeck's attorneys argued is way too high and made the coffee defective because it was just too plain hot to serve, or because it was too hot to serve without a prominent warning about the dangers, or both.note  Also, Liebeck wasn't even driving the car (it was her grandson's Ford Probe, who had pulled over to let her add cream and sugar) and had the cup between her thighs because the car had no cupholders,note  she was wearing cotton sweatpants which absorbed the hot liquid and kept it next to her skin, which caused her to end up with 3rd-degree burns—some of which were in some very sensitive areas (think: if you spill hot coffee from a cup held between your thighs in a cramped car, where would it go?)—and needed over a week in the hospital (during which time she lost nearly 20% of her weight) and two years of further medical treatment, and they initially tried to settle for $20,000 to cover medical expenses (the company initially responded with just $800). The trial itself saw the jury award Liebeck $200,000 in compensation and $2.7 million in punitive damages, but the judge cut this down to $640,000 and they later settled out of court.
  • Gone Horribly Wrong: Some of their advertisement and promotions have ended up backfiring over the years.
    • Their promotion for the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in 1984 had Mickey D's run a "If the U.S. wins, you win!" promotion. Customers were given a scratch card with an Olympic event on it; if the U.S. won a medal in that event, the customer would get a free Big Mac (for the athletes winning a gold medal), fries (for silver) or drink (for bronze). McDonald's mostly offered it for events Russia usually swept up in. However, they did all this before Russia announced they were boycotting the Olympics that year in retaliation for the United States' boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics (in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan). Without the Soviet Union and their allies (America's biggest rivals at the Games), this led to the American team winning a lot more medals than they would have otherwise, including more than twice as many gold medals as the previous Olympics (83 in 1980, compared to 34 in 1976). As a result, McDonald's had to give away a lot more free food than they expected, and they lost money on the promotion. The whole thing was parodied in the The Simpsons episode "Lisa's First Word", where the same thing happens to Krusty Burger in-universe. Meanwhile, McDonald's (and the business world in general) learned a very valuable lesson: never run a promotion that relies on factors outside of your control.
    • In Hong Kong, a Snoopy promotion in 1998 proved to be much popular than expected, with lines snaking around blocks because people wanted to own a complete set of Snoopy wearing traditional clothes from around the world, with many purchasing Happy Meals and immediately throwing away the food just to get the toys. This bottlenecked business so badly that stores began designating registers for use by customers who wanted to eat and those who just wanted the toys.
    • The famous annual Monopoly promotional giveaway event was successfully rigged by Jerome P. Jacobson and Jerry Colombo for 6 years between 1995 and 2000; the fraud was finally uncovered in 2001, with that year's edition of the game being halted. The story was chronicled in the 2020 HBO documentary McMillion$.
    • The notorious Hello Kitty promotion in Singapore in 2000 was another case of a promotion being a little too popular. Trying to cash in on the Japanese craze, they started giving away the toys with Extra Value meals, only to find hundreds of people lining up for them before the stores opened. Traffic jams formed leading to the restaurants. Most threw the food away simply to get the toys, and there was even a riot at one Boon Keng outfit with seven customers injured. While McDonalds' and Sanrio profited excessively from the promotion (2.8 million toys were sold during the promotion), McDonald's had to apologize to the public, make special reparations, and hire security guards until the promotion ended. The same thing previously happened several times in the US in the late 1990s when the Happy Meals gave away Beanie Babies, thus leading to massive lines, people throwing away food just to get the toys, and rioting.
    • History repeated when they tried to capitalize on the sudden spike in demand for their long-discontinued Szechuan McNugget sauce, thanks to it getting a Colbert Bump from the show Rick and Morty. Again, they vastly underestimated just how much demand there would be; hundreds of fans (many of the Loony persuasion) lined up for what turned out to be an allocation of only 20 packs per restaurant, and most places didn't even receive that. Again, Mickey D's had to apologize, and promised to reintroduce the sauce again on a bigger scale.
  • Grandfather Clause: When Ray Kroc took over, a "mandatory updating" clause was added to the franchise agreement so that the restaurants would always be upgraded to the latest model. Those who signed their franchise agreements with the McDonald brothers were exempt from this clause, so they kept their 1950s "Golden Arches" design; a few remain standing to this day, including the oldest still-operating McDonald's in Downey, California (est. 1953). A few nonstandard locations were also grandfathered, such as the 18th century Denton House in New Hyde Park, NY that was converted into a McDonald's in the 1980s (making it a McMansion), and the 19th century Frontier House in Lewiston, NY which housed a McDonald's from 1977 to 2004.
  • Hypocrite: McDonald's was seen as this when back in 2013 nearing Christmas they advised their employees to avoid eating junk food and lectured them about the consequences of eating foods high in fats mainly because it can make them unproductive and hurt the company's image.
  • Insistent Terminology: The infamous 1985 introductory commercial for the McDLT has a young Jason Alexander using the phrase "lettuce and tomato hamburger" three times over the course of sixty seconds, as though it was a separate special category of hamburger and was a phrase that everybody used.
  • It Will Never Catch On:
    • According to the BBC documentary The Men Who Made Us Fat Ray Kroc thought super-sized meals would fail because no one at the time ate such large portions of food, especially for lunch (he figured either no one buy them or they would skip the next meal due to being full). Incidentally, the idea came from the guy who created different-sized popcorn portions for movie theaters.
    • When Richard McDonald first came up with the idea for the Golden Arches, he and his brother Maurice had to interview at least four architects before they could find one willing to use them in a building design. The first one objected to the arches, the second one wanted to modify them and the third one told the brothers that if they were to tell him what to do, they may as well do it themselves.
  • Japanese Ranguage: McDonald's was forced to change Ronald McDonald's name to Donald McDonald in Japan for the reason that native Japanese speakers would find "Ronald" almost impossible to pronounce.
  • Kids' Meal Toy: The iconic Happy Meals feature toys based on licensed properties, as well as the Original Generation McDonaldland characters. The restaurant has had so many that it's warranted its own page.
  • Last of His Kind: Ronald McDonald is probably the last genuinely positive example of a clown left in the popular consciousness, but he's subject to a lot of Memetic Mutation thanks to being the spokesman for a controversial company, and, well, just because he's a clown.
  • Let's Meet the Meat: Played straight in many ads. Subverted by the singing fish, who isn't very happy about being made into a sandwich and the rest of his remains mounted on a wall.
  • Limited Wardrobe: Ronald McDonald and the rest of the McDonaldland characters almost always wear the same outfits.
  • Lint Value: This Dollar Menu commercial.
  • Live-Action Adaptation: There was McDonald's Family Theater in the 90's with Ronald only serving as the host who appears before and after the main story. Fast forward to the mid-2000's with McKids Adventures where Ronald is the host once again and has little screen-time to make way for the titular McKids gang.
  • Magical Clown: Ronald McDonald is called "The world famous magical clown". In one commercial, he uses his magic to turn the cloud above a sad girl's head into a ball of sunlight.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Japan also has a female mascot, who has bright red hair and wears basically a dress version of Ronald's outfit. Head-Tiltingly Kinky to some...
  • Non-Ironic Clown: The lovable Ronald McDonald. He's even the trope image.
  • Not Helping Your Case: In response to "McJob" being added to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, then-CEO Jim Cantalupo tried to claim that McDonald's is a better career choice than most people assume by claiming that over 1,000 franchise owners had started out in the kitchen. Except that McDonald's and its franchises had over 400,000 total employees at the time, so the math doesn't exactly work out in their favor.
  • Nutritional Nightmare: Since the 2000s, McDonalds has had a long history of trying to combat their image as one of the faces of American obesity, in part due to the documentary Super Size Menote . They began to offer healthier options in order to try and appeal to the growing health concerns over the years, but for the most part the only thing that ever really stuck was the salads. In modern times, McDonalds puts a lot more emphasis on their McCafee line than their burgers, specifically trying to take a chunk of the coffee drinker market due to decreasing burger sales.
  • Open Secret: Like many other fast food chains, McDonald's has many secret menu items. Most merely consist of mixing existing items, such as the Mc10:35 (an Egg McMuffin combined with a McDouble), the "McGangbang" (a McDouble and a McChicken), etc. Others consist of putting other items on an existing sandwich, such as the "Poor Man's Big Mac", which is just a McDouble with the ketchup and mustard replaced with Big Mac sauce and lettuce added, thus creating a sandwich with all the ingredients of a Big Mac (save for the three-layer sesame seed bun) for less than the price of an actual one.
  • Out of Focus: All of the mascots save for Ronald McDonald. Grimace appeared in a commercial for the Monsters vs. Aliens toy promotion in 2009 and the Hamburglar was revived for an ad campaign in 2015, though.
    • Ronald himself became out of focus after the rise of Minion-esque Happy Meals.
    • While Ronald has remained out of focus for the time being, the rest of the mascots are starting to make a comeback in The New '20s. Grimace, Hamburglar, and Bridie had toys made of them for the "Adult Happy Meal" promotion, while Grimace made a return to the spotlight for his birthday promotion in 2023. The latter led to the infamous Grimace Shake, which quickly spawned a viral TikTok trend that boosted McDonalds' sales by 10.3%.
  • Overcomplicated Menu Order: The Drive Thru Rap from YouTube (made even worse when rapped at full speed):
    I need a double cheeseburger and hold the lettuce don't be frontin son no seeds on the bun we be up in this dive thru order for two gotta craving for a number nine like my shoe need some chicken up in here in this dizzle for rizzle my nizzle extra salt on the frizzle Dr.Pepper my brother another for your mother double double super size and don't forget the..... FRIES.
    • The 1988-89 "menu song" ad campaign, which featured a customer rattling off every item of the then-current McDonald's menu to the tune of "Life is a Rock (but the Radio Rolled Me)". A slightly different version was used in Canada, as well as a French version in Quebec.
  • Product Placement: Sort of - they sponsor many major sports events, such as The World Cup and the Olympic Games.
  • Refuge in Audacity: A rumor popped up in the late 1970's that McDonald's used ground-up earthworms in their hamburgers, a hoax which Ray Kroc deflated just by pointing out that nightcrawlers cost four times as much per pound compared to ground beef.
  • Repetitive Name: In Japan, Ronald McDonald is known as Donald McDonald; the reasons for this are discussed in Dub Name Change above.
  • Retraux: Many restaurants in the 1980s and 1990s were built in a faux-fifties style. Some of them were even built to have only drive-thru and walk-up service, like the earliest ones. The McDonald's near Charing Cross Station in London once had a beautiful Art Deco interior, but is now a bland modern design.
  • Repurposed Pop Song:
    • The '60s Lovin' Spoonful hit "Do You Believe in Magic?" was used in a few commercials featuring Ronald.
    • Donna Summer's "She Works Hard for the Money" was remade into "She gets more for her money, 'Cause McDonald's treats her right."
    • Mac Tonight was created as part of a campaign advertising McDonald's staying open at later hours in the 1980s. His signature song of the same name was a rewrite of the popular standard "Mack the Knife" — specifically, the version sung by Bobby Darin (who Mac's image was loosely based on). Unfortunately, this came back to bite the company (see Chuck Cunningham Syndrome above).
    • (Buh-duh bah-bah-bah!) "I'm Lovin' It" (the current slogan) was originally a Justin Timberlake song.
    • Reunion's "Life Is a Rock (but the Radio Rolled Me)" was used as the basis for the "menu song".
    • Another jingle, "Glad You Came", comes from the eponymous song by The Wanted.
  • Rhyming Names: The chain's primary mascot is named Ronald McDonald.
  • Science Wizard: Ronald is a Magical Clown and a Gadgeteer Genius, creating a number of inventions such as time machines in some of his commercials.
  • Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: "I Like to Scare Myself" - one of multiple songs that were packed with Happy Meals in the eighties - involves this.
  • Too Smart for Strangers: The second commercial seemed to be trying for this, but instead, it just comes off as incredibly creepy.
    Boy: My mother told me never to talk to strangers.
    Ronald: Well your mother's right as always, but, I'm Ronald McDonald! Here, give me a McDonald's shake!
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Of at least two United States Presidents. Bill Clinton and McDonald's were pretty much inseparable in popular culture during his years in power thanks in part to a memorable "Saturday Night Live" sketch.note  Donald Trump is known to be a fan as well and often posted images of himself enjoying McDonald's meals on the campaign trail to social media. Once elected President, the White House cook had to learn how to make a replica Quarter Pounder with cheese because Trump frequently requested it for a meal. Trump also infamously served a huge McDonald's feast to the NCAA Champion Clemson Tigers during their 2019 White House visit.
  • Un-person: The company's official history gives more credit to the McDonald brothers than it did prior to Ray Kroc's death, but still glosses over things like the fact they had already begun franchising before Kroc entered the picture.
  • We Don't Suck Anymore: They seem to be doing this in 2015, though a lot of it is actually more "We never really sucked, it's just you believed a lot of crap and lies about us. Here's why they're not true."
  • Writers Cannot Do Math: When the UK McDonalds introduced a "Pound Saver" menu (8 items for £1 each), they promoted it as "40,312 combinations". This was presumably supposed to be the number of ways of ordering from the Pound Saver menu a meal consisting of 2-8 items once each, but for some unfathomable reason they worked it out as 8!-8. The correct calculation is 28-9, the total of all combinations minus 1 for the "combination" consisting of no items and 8 for those consisting of only one — a much less impressive 247.note 

Pop culture references to McDonald's:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • The 1993 Rocky and Bullwinkle Taco Bell commercials featured a jab at McDonald's by having Boris Badenov running a burger restaurant called MicBoris and Rocky and Bullwinkle thwarting his schemes by ordering tacos from Taco Bell while claiming that "burgers are boring".
  • Australian-based restaurant Grill'd came under fire for an animated 2021 ad where a sketchy Ronald McDonald lookalike was trying to peddle broken toys to a pair of children, many decrying the ad as inappropriate because of the commercial starting with the Ronald McDonald expy opening his coat in front of the children while viewed from the back and ending with his pants falling down while he's nailed to the wall with Grill'd flags, his privates censored by being obscured by the Grill'd flag on one of the burgers given to the kids by Grill'd's anthropomorphic burger mascot.

    Anime and Manga 
  • The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You:
    • The restaurant is mentioned indirectly in Chapter 24 while Kurumi explains how her appetite can be easily stimulated.
    • Naddy is shown to frequent a McDonald's location, inviting Chiyo there on one occasion, and she sets up a stand based on the restaurant in a bonus page.
  • Azumanga Daioh briefly mentions McDonald's just after Osaka is introduced, where she confirms to her classmates that people in the Kansai region call it "Makudo" rather than "Makku"; depending on the localization, this may appear as "Mickey D's" or just "McD's". The same manga also features a copycat location in the form of Magnetron Burger, which isn't seen in the anime adaptation but is still alluded to.
  • The Devil is a Part-Timer! has the fomer Demon King, Maou working at MgRonalds, an explict spoof of McDonald's. It serves as a major recurring location in-story as the workplace for Maou and supporting character Chiho Sasiki. A running gag is how Maou acts like rising up the corporate chain will help him take over Japan, treating his job as Serious Business.
  • An OVA of Tamagotchi has Mametchi, Memetchi, and Kuchipatchi helping Hamburgertchi at a McDonald's.

    Comics 
  • In a story arc of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Fat Freddy finds himself in Scotland. Feeling hungry, he walks into an establishment with the name MacDonald's over the door to find, to his disgust, it doesn't serve burgers— only whiskey, beer and stale potato chips.
  • Judge Dredd had the infamous "Hamburger War" in the "Cursed Earth" story arc. Published during the late The '70s, it involved Dredd stumbling across a literal fast food war between the Burger King Creeps from Burgerville and the McDonald's Marauders from McDonald City. Surprising no one, the owners of these trademarked characters did not take kindly to their inclusion in this tale.note  The publisher IPC decided to settle the copyright issue out of court and retract the storyline from later reprinted editions of "The Cursed Earth" before things got out of control. However, the year 2014 brought a change to UK copyright law allowing these comics to be printed again.

    Documentary 
  • Super Size Me is a documentary where director Morgan Spurlock spends thirty days eating exclusively at McDonalds to demonstrate the effects of fast food on American diet, interspersed with segments from fans and critics of the company.
  • Featured heavily in The Men Who Made Us Fat.
  • McMillion$ is an HBO series discussing the infamous Monopoly promotional event scam from 1995-2000, in which a disgruntled employee deliberately rigged the event in his circle of friends' favor for half a decade.

    Fan Works 

    Film 
  • In Pulp Fiction, Jules and Vincent discuss what a Quarter Pounder with cheese is called in France. It's apparently called a "Royale with Cheese" and a Big Mac is called "Le Big Mac". note 
  • In Coming to America, Akeem finds work at a fast food restaurant called McDowell's. Since McDonald's actually exists in the film's universe, the similarity is heavily lampshaded. Ironically, the McDowell's building was a dressed-up Wendy's.
  • In Dark Shadows, Barnabas awakes in 1972 after having been buried for 196 years, and the first thing he sees is a golden arches sign. He thinks the "M" stands for "Mephistopheles".
  • In the film Richie Rich, the title character has his own operating McDonald's in his family's gigantic mansion.
  • The 1988 film Mac and Me is an ET-like movie that features lots of Product Placement for McDonald's. In fact, one big scene takes place in one during a birthday party! Guest starring Ronald McDonald As Himself.
  • One of the kids in SpaceCamp talks about building a McDonald's on the moon in case an astronaut gets a "Big Mac Attack". Same kid later mentions a guy he knew who could hold his breath for a long time by thinking about eating french fries.
  • Mooby's of The View Askewniverse is an obvious parody. Clerks II is set almost entirely inside one.
  • An odd reference in Scotland, PA, a Black Comedy Setting Update of Macbeth in a rural fast-food restaurant in the 70s. After Joe and Pat murder Duncan and take over his restaurant, they rename it after themselves: McBeth's. They even use a giant letter M as their logo.
  • The live action film version of The Flintstones has RockDonald's, where "dozens and dozens" have been served. Some McDonald's stores were even redone to RockDonald'ses to help promote the film., and RockDonald's featured heavily in TV ads for both McDonald's and the film itself.
  • Sleeper - in 2173, Woody Allen's fugitive character (formerly a health food store owner) has been assimilated into society. He leaves a McDonald's with the sign reading "Over 795,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Served".
  • Time After Time - time traveler H.G. Wells looks for food at a McDonald's in current-day San Francisco - unfamiliar with modern food, he parrots the order of the guy in front of him until. to his relief, he sees tea on the menu and finds out fries are 'pommes frites'. Later, on a date, he comments the food is much better than 'that Scottish place'.
  • Bye Bye Love, a mid-90s comedy about divorcee fatherhood, starring Paul Reiser, Randy Quaid and Rob Reiner, and underwritten by the Golden Arches. As per Mac and Me above, Product Placement abounds, but without the Narm that makes M&M So Bad, It's Good, this film is completely unmemorable.
  • The Fifth Element features two police officers getting their lunch at McDonald's in the mid-23rd Century. At least until Korben accidentally spills it over them in a sideswipe and they end up crashing into one of MickyD's garbage trucks.
  • The Founder is a 2016 film starring Michael Keaton and Nick Offerman, among others, which dramatises the story of how Ray Kroc discovered McDonald's and took it over. Yes, the title is ironic.note 
  • Has become Future Slang in Mad Max: Fury Road. The idea of a place where you can eat as much as you want seems incomprehensible to the War Boys except as a heavenly afterlife.
    Nux: I was awaited in Valhalla. They were calling my name. I should be walking with the Immorta, McFeasting with the heroes of all time.
  • Tamagotchi: Happiest Story in the Universe! has cups with the McDonald's logo at Celebria.

    Literature 
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: When Arthur has to come to terms with the destruction of Earth, he realizes that it's simply too big for him to comprehend. So he tries to think about the destruction of England, then McDonald's, and finally settles for being sad about never getting a Big Mac again.
    • In Mostly Harmless, it is discovered that an alien race has been observing humanity for years, and building up a huge addiction to McDonalds on the way.
  • Good Omens features references to Burger Lord and their mascot, McLordy the Clown. As well as what happened when Burger Lord agents tried to visit France.
  • 1632: Grantville's McDonald's is taken over by the Committee of Correspondence, who use it as a headquarters for their quest to spread American-style political values across Europe. As the Committees spread across Europe, they take the "Freedom Arches" with them.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In an episode of Red Dwarf, where the crew answer a distress call turning out to emanate from a long-dead female crew, Rimmer looks down at the skeletal remains and wails that they've got as much meat on them as a Chicken McNugget. The "Mc", though visible from Chris Barrie's lip movements is notably muted, due to fears of legal action. It was reinstated for the Remastered version in 1998.
  • "WacArnold's" on a skit from Chappelle's Show.
  • McDoggles from Pizza.
  • An episode of All in the Family had Archie talk about franchising the bar he recently acquired. He compares it to McDonald's, saying he'll have "The Golden Archies" and a sign that says "Over two million boopabloops served". (This was A Very Special Episode where Archie was hopped up on pills.)
  • Married... with Children:
    • "Three Job, No Income Family" has Al (and later Peg) working at a spoof called "Burger Trek" to make more money.
    • Another episode has Al trying to file a police report with an apathetic operator, and when he tries to go over his head to contact the mayor (who he doesn't even who they are), he is given the name "McCheese".
    Al: Well, you're in trouble now, buddy; I voted for him!

    Music 
  • American singer-songwriter Dean Friedman released the song “McDonald’s Girl” in 1981, which was banned from airplay on The BBC for mentioning a commercial brand name; Friedman claims this led to him being dropped by his record label. Barenaked Ladies frequently covered the song in live shows early in their career, and a live recording became a local radio hit in their hometown of Toronto in late 1991 and early 1992. Another cover version by vocal group The Blenders was a hit in Norway in 1998. In 2011, McDonald’s licensed The Blenders’ version for an advertisement.
  • Mark Knopfler's song "Boom, Like That", is all about Ray Kroc's turning McDonald's into a franchise, and his less than nice techniques. (After he bought them out, the original McDonald brothers started a new restaurant. Kroc put a McDonald's across the street and ran them out of business.)
    The competition, send them south; they're gonna drown, put a hose in their mouth.
  • In one of his songs, Doctor Steel sings that he has a "Ronald McRaygun".
  • Mitch Benn, in a song for The Now Show, suggests one possible reason for a fall in McDonald's share price.
  • In John Conlee's "Common Man", the title character offers to take his date to McDonald's since he's not a fancy guy.
  • Wesley Willis' "Rock & Roll McDonald's"
  • "I'm no supermodel/I still eat at McDonald's, baby/But that's just me."
  • Massacration did a song called "Grand Pedido" for a McDonald's ad.
  • Electric Six have "Down at McDonaldz" / "Down at Down at McDonnelzzz" as the song has been seen listed both ways. Either way the song is clearly about McDonalds
  • "Weird Al" Yankovic mentions he could take a girl out for a "Mickey D's" in his parody of "Whatever You Like" by T.I..
  • Pearl Jam has a "...I make a right after the arches stinking grease and bone" throw in in the song Lukin

    Newspaper Comics 
  • McArnolds is the Funky Winkerbean equivalent.
  • In one Calvin and Hobbes strip, Calvin is bored from the length of time it's taking for the coals to cook burgers to heat up. His dad gives him a long "Lesson of the Day" Speech about the importance of waiting and slowing down. Calvin just asks if he should just go to McDonalds.
  • In the early 2000s The Boondocks Huey and Caesar spent many panels mocking the McDonalds hip hop marketing campaign.
  • An early Bloom County strip has Milo and Limekiller less than impressed with the insistent theme-naming of McDonald's fare:
    McDonald's counterman: Hi folks! Welcome to the home of Ronald McDonald and Mayor McCheese! So what kind of McMunchies would you like? How about an Egg McMuffin? Or an all-beef McFeast? Or maybe our newest treat...Chicken McNuggets! McYummy!
    Milo: [turning to leave] Let's get a McPizza.
    Limekiller: McFine with me.

    Tabletop Games 
  • One of the main factions in Unknown Armies is the Mak Attax, a magical cabal largely composed of McDonalds employees. The sourcebook describing them is titled "Break Today" after the advertising jingle. For legal reasons, the name of the company is never mentioned in any Unknown Armies book; where necessary, it is referred to as 'the Scotsman'.

    Web Animation 
  • McBusters is a trilogy of animated web videos that serve as a Whole-Plot Reference to Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II with the McDonaldland mascots, depicting Ronald McDonald, Hamburglar, Mayor McCheese and Mac Tonight as hunters of monsters based on the Fry Guys and McNugget Buddies, which they fry up and serve as fast food after capturing.

    Web Original 
  • The Onion
  • The Adventures of Dr. McNinja begins with the "McBonald's" fast food restaurant chain.
    • Originally, it actually was the actual McDonald's, with Ronald himself as the villain of the first arc. It and every subsequent reference and reappearance of the clown and restaurant were quietly replaced with Donald McBonald to prevent any possible legal issues when printing books.
  • Brad Jones has tried two McDonald's Open Secret menu items on his Brad Tries... segment; the Mc10:35, a combo of the McDouble and the Egg McMuffin (which he found kind of bland), and the McGangBang, a combo of the McDouble and the McChicken (which he found pretty good, and kicked himself for not trying it sooner). He's since done a video on the McRib (which he already loves, and mostly did because it was commonly requested and to compare it to the Burger King BBQ Rib Sandwich), and made up his own secret menu item in another video: The McRibMac (replacing the beef patties in a Big Mac with a split in half McRib).
    • A different segment of his, 80's Dan, discussed the McDLT. Turns out it's a bad idea to eat a burger that's been in a time capsule for twenty years.
  • A Running Gag in Joe Loves Crappy Movies is replacing actors in bad movies with The Grimace to make them better. He also tends to get stabbed a lot.
  • Early strips of Kevin & Kell had Lindesfarne work at a lawyer friendly version of McDonalds, McRoughage, a fast food join catering to the herbivore members of society. Rudy tried to extort money (and a year's worth of customers for him to eat) from them by cybersquatting on every possible web address McRoughage could use to force their hand. They responded by changing their name to McFiber instead.
  • The McRoll. A dance mix of the Japanese Ronald commercials set to Flandre Scarlet's popular theme U.N. Owen Was Her?. For some reason, it has become more popular than the original song. In fact, there are quite a lot of variations of the McRoll that involve songs other than Flan's theme.
  • Joel Maxwell starts working at one in this strip. He sucks up so well he gets transferred to Moscow.
  • During the second part of the Lovers' Arc in Vaguely Recalling JoJo, Jotaro Kujo is ordered by Steely Dan to ask for a smile from the cashier at a McDonald's.
  • The Creepypasta Don't Go to the Old McDonald's attempts to explain their remodeling in the early 2000s to become more adult-oriented, and describes the existence of an Old McDonald's that miraculously survives in the middle of nowhere. The old branding was cursed, as all of its stores experienced a supernatural phenomenon one way or another. The surviving site that the protagonist visits has long been abandoned after an unexplained catastrophe struck it, killing off all of its employees and patrons in brutal ways. The culprit is none other than Ronald McDonald himself, or rather, a demon who bears his likeness.
  • Joeseppi discusses the restaurant in one of his In a Nutshell videos.

    Western Animation 
  • The Simpsons: Lots with respect to Krusty Burger, the premier fast-food chain in Springfield. It all starts with the restaurant's proprietor-founder, Krusty the Klown.
    • Episodes featuring specific references to McDonald's — both at Krusty Burger and elsewhere:
      • "Lisa's First Word": The 1993 episode features the Simpson family flashing back to 1983-1984. With pop culture references abounding (including one for rival chain Wendy's), the major one relating to McDonald's is a spoof of the chain's "scratch-and-win" promotion for the 1984 Olympics, where customers could win a Big Mac, french fries, a soft drink, or even a cash prize of up to $10,000 if Team USA won a medal in the visitor's listed event. Krusty Burger customers could also win food prizes or cash, but (like McDonald's in Real Life), the promotion was created and the tickets printed before the Soviet Union announced it was backing out of the Summer Games. Many of the tickets were printed to reflect events in which the USSR or another Eastern Bloc country was favored to win; with their withdrawal, the United States won many of those events, causing Krusty Burger to lose millions of dollars because they awarded more food than they had budgeted for.
      • "22 Short Films About Springfield": Chief Wiggum and Springfield's "finest" are discussing the merits of Krusty Burger vs. McDonald's, much like the "Royale with Cheese" scene in Pulp Fiction. The other Springfield officers have never heard of McDonald's, though it's stated to have over 2,000 locations in the state.
      • "Missionary: Impossible": Mr. Burns yells at Bart — thinking him to be Homer — for "taking the Hamburglar's birthday off as a holiday" in one scene. (Bart had taken Homer's place at the plant when his father went on a last-minute mission trip ... to avoid persecution by angry PBS celebrities for making a hasty pledge to get their fundraising campaign off his TV, thinking they wouldn't be able to track him down and actually make him pay it.)
      • "I'm Spelling as Fast as I Can": Krusty Burger has a national "Ribwich Tour" to taste-test the Ribwich sandwich (a pork ribette sandwich similar to the McRib) in different markets. The "Ribwich Tour" drew its inspiration from the same campaign put on by McDonald's, and when Krusty Burger pulled the Ribwich from its menu, it caused the same kind of uproar.
      • "Kiss Kiss Bang Bangalore": When Bart points out their "thermostat" is just a drawing on a wall, Homer pretends to call the repairman on a similarly-drawn telephone, and brings out a cardboard cutout of Mac Tonight to act as the "repairman".
      • "The Mook, the Chef, the Wife and Her Homer": It is revealed that Krusty pays local mob boss Fat Tony to keep rival restaurants, including McDonald's, out of Springfield.
  • In Beavis and Butt-Head, the boys work at Burger World. The establishment's logo is an upside down version of the Golden Arches, a common way to parody the franchise. The restaurant itself is a parody of Whataburger, a regional chain with locations in Mike Judge's native Texas.
  • "Weenie Burgers" in Tiny Toon Adventures and countless anime productions.
  • "McWuncler's" in The Boondocks.
  • In the German version of the Drawn Together episode "Toot Goes Bollywood", Captain Hero convinces Toot to come back to the house by offering her a coupon to McDonald's. In the original version, it was Quizno's that was referenced.
  • "MacMeaties" from Invader Zim.
  • Hercules has the "Over X amount of people served" sign placed over the entrance of the River Styx. Currently, over 5,000,000,000 and 1 are "served".
  • Episode 3 of Clerks: The Animated Series featured early McDonaldland characters Mayor McCheese and Officer Big Mac as public officials briefing the press during an apparent virus outbreak.
  • "Burger McFlipster's" in 6teen.
  • In the Season 3 premiere of Rick and Morty, Rick expresses a fondness for the promotional szechuan sauce sold during the release of Mulan while the Galactic Federation is probing his mind and Rick has to take them to a certain memory. It's a subtle hint that Rick was actually lying about said memory.
  • The Amazing World of Gumball has Joyful Burger complete with being a widespread fast-food chain in Elmore, their clown mascot, and having its secret menu burger being called the M'Guffin.
  • The subject of several Robot Chicken sketches.
    • A season one skit has a press conference where Mayor McCheese speaks of how he had to deal with prejudice from being born with a cheeseburger for a head. One of the reporters brings up allegations that McCheese pays women to go to the bathroom on his chest, resulting in the Hamburglar distracting the public with "Robble robble robble" before he and McCheese run away.
    • A sketch in "Max Caenan in: Why Would He Know if His Mother's a Size Queen" has a brief sketch where the McDonaldland gang celebrate Ronald's birthday. After Ronald makes his wish blowing out the candles on his birthday cake, Grimace gains bare breasts and Ronald remarks "Yes! Now that's a Happy Meal".
    • "Chipotle Miserables" has a trailer for a spoof of Les Misérables using the McDonaldland characters titled Les Miserobble Robble. Here, the Hamburglar was given his name by Ronald McDonald as punishment for stealing Big Macs to feed his family, looks after Birdie the Early Bird's egg after she is killed and cooked, and leads a revolt against the McDonald's employees.
    • One of the sketches in "Boogie Bardstown in: No Need, I Have Coupons" has Officer Big Mac investigate the murder of Mayor McCheese. The culprit turns out to be Birdie, who tries to seduce Big Mac so she can kill him, only to be gunned down by the immediately remorseful rookie cop.
    • A brief skit in "Zeb and Kevin Electric Hot Tub Canvas" has The Joker meet Ronald McDonald in a bar and state that while what Ronald does isn't his style, he still appreciates what he's accomplished (an obvious dig at the reputation McDonald's food has for being unhealthy, considering this is a fast food mascot being praised by a known psychotic murderer).
    • A sketch in "Kramer vs. Showgirls" has a bit where people who have seen American Pie rush over to a McDonald's for their apple pies and a lot of screaming is heard, implying they burned themselves trying to imitate the scene where Jim tried to pleasure himself with an apple pie.
    • A sketch from "Max Caenen in: Why Would He Know If His Mother's a Size Queen" has Ronald's friends celebrate Ronald's birthday. When Grimace tells Ronald to make a wish, Ronald blows out the candles on his cake, and Grimace is suddenly given breast implants. Ronald then exclaims "Yes! Now that's a Happy Meal!"
  • The Gravedale High episode "Monster on Trial" shows a very brief shot of a McDonald's ad (not a Bland-Name Product but actually reading "McDonald's") in a scene where the pages of a phone book are flipped through.


 
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