#Ronald McDonald appears if you say ‘canceled clown’ in Burger King mirror

As part of a Halloween publicity campaign, Burger King has summoned the mascot of its rival fast food chain:

“Four years ago a particular clown was abruptly cancelled by his employer,” reads the text on a trailer Burger King released Monday on its Swedish YouTube channel. The clip then cuts to black and white security camera footage of customers walking into a restaurant bathroom and recording themselves saying “cancelled clown,” three times into the mirror.

The words trigger the lights to turn off and for Ronald McDonald to appear in the mirror — causing horrified customers to make faces in the dark and run out of the bathroom, according to the rest of the trailer.

To create the prank, the chain installed voice-recognition software in the bathrooms, Business Insider reported.

“Do you dare to make him appear?” the trailer asks. “Summon him and you might be rewarded,” teases the video description.

The spooky trick is a riff on the “Bloody Mary,” urban legend. According to folklore, saying “Bloody Mary,” in a mirror repeatedly makes a ghost appear and cause any number of kinds of pain and suffering to the chanter.

The 2020 Halloween stunt is only the most recent in Burger King’s campaigns taking a bite out of McDonald’s.

In 2017, in another jab at Ronald, the chain offered free Whoppers to anyone dressed up like a clown for their “Scary Clown Night.” In 2019, Burger King went after McDonald’s following its failed bid to trademark “Big Mac” in Europe, with Burger Kings’ Swedish operation revamping its menu to have an entire section called “Not Big Macs,” including options such as “Like a Big Mac but Actually Big,” “The Burger Big Mac Wished it Was” and “Anything but a Big Mac.”

The trolling has also gone in the other direction. In 2017, a McDonald’s street sign placed directly outside a Burger King outlet urged customers to make a U-turn, reading: “You’ve just passed us.”