Fast food innovation can sometimes feel like a fever dream, and nobody pushes the envelope quite like Burger King. From vibrant-colored buns to outrageous flavor combinations, these unique Whopper variations have both delighted and bewildered customers worldwide. So hold onto your crowns while we look at some of the wildest Whoppers that actually graced BK menus worldwide.
The Angriest Whopper
This fiery creation from 2016 promised hellfire but delivered more style than actual spice. Sandwiched between attention-grabbing bright red buns infused with hot sauce, this Whopper featured jalapeños, fried onions, and what Burger King calls “spicy angry sauce.” While the vibrant crimson buns might have suggested extreme heat, many customers found it surprisingly tame in the spice department, which, for folks who love their food nice and hot, would have been an utter disappointment.
Black Bunned Whoppers
Japan’s Burger King went full goth in 2012 with its Kuro Ninja Whopper featuring bamboo charcoal-blackened buns, a hash brown snuggled in between, cheese, Chaliapin sauce, and a long strip of bacon designed to look like a tongue hanging out. In later versions of the Kuro burger, such as the Kuro Pearl and the Kuro Diamond, the fast-food chain blackened the cheese as well.
The Kuro Ninja Whopper eventually made its way to America in 2015 with the A.1. A steakhouse-flavored Halloween Whopper. Thailand even joined the dark parade in 2021 with BLACKPINK-inspired versions that boasted not just a black bun but a pink salmon one as well.
Chocolate Whopper
The Chocolate Whopper started as Burger King’s outrageous April Fool’s prank in 2018, featuring a wild concept of chocolate cake buns, a chocolate patty, leaves made of milk chocolate, raspberry syrup, rings made from white chocolate, candied blood oranges and vanilla frosting.
What started as a joke gained traction when Burger King Taiwan turned it into reality in September 2020, creating massive lines for their chocolate-drizzled Whopper. However, the real plot twist came when Burger King Singapore elevated the concept in April 2021. For S$6.40, brave customers could sink their teeth into a regular flame-grilled Whopper patty drowned in chocolate sauce, complete with tomatoes and onions. The result? Pure chaos in burger form. The chocolate sauce wasn’t playing around – it soaked right into the bun edges, creating a soggy situation that had food critics raising their eyebrows.
Some customers embraced this sweet and savory madness, while others wished they could un-taste it. The most shocking part? The chocolate sauce was so dominant it practically put the beef patty in a headlock, making you wonder if you were eating a burger or a dessert gone rogue. Taiwan Burger King
The Green Bay Whopper
Wisconsin’s cheese-loving culture inspired this dairy-loaded creation in 2018. Available at just six locations, this Whopper came stacked with an incredible eight slices of cheese. At $4.95, it proved too much for some customers to handle, with many unable to finish the cheese-heavy monster. Fortunately (or unfortunately?), the Whopper was only available at six Burger King locations and for a limited time, too.
Kyoto Whopper
Rice is an essential component of Asian cuisine, with many considering a meal incomplete without it. In 2024, this culinary innovation by Japan’s Burger King, known as the Kyoto Whopper, took this Asian sentiment very seriously, ingeniously marrying traditional and contemporary elements by pairing a flame-grilled beef patty with a rice one.
Along with the usual lettuce, tomato, and onion, this unexpected combination is enhanced by a sophisticated dashi-based ginger sauce that incorporates Japanese-style soy sauce, bonito, mackerel shavings, shiitake mushrooms, roasted chili and Japanese pepper, kelp, and dehydrated citrus peel, creating a harmonious blend of flavors. Fancy, innit?
NY Pizza Burger
The Pizza Burger stands as one of Burger King’s most audacious menu experiments that had New Yorkers doing a double-take back in 2010. This heaping plate of a meal wasn’t your average burger – we’re talking, a massive 9½-inch wide beast that looked like it couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be a pizza or a burger, so it just said, “Why not both?”
Priced at a whopping $13, this Frankenstein’s monster of fast food featured four quarter-pound patties smothered in mozzarella cheese and pepperoni, then drenched in marinara and pesto sauce. The whole thing came served on a giant sesame bun that was sliced into six pizza-like wedges, making it perfect for sharing (or not, we won’t judge).
At a jaw-dropping 2,520 calories, this bad boy packed enough energy to fuel you through a marathon – or put you in a food coma for days. BK only unleashed this beast at their Whopper Bar location in Times Square, making it a true New York exclusive. That was only until Japan introduced a similar offering in 2011 with more topping options, including avocado and cheese nacho.
Pregnancy Whopper
The Pregnancy Whopper was Burger King Germany’s quirky tribute to expectant mothers on 8 May 2022. After surveying over 1,000 women about their pregnancy cravings, BK created nine unique Whoppers that turned those wild combinations into reality.
Available for just one day at a Berlin location, these special burgers featured unusual pairings like fish sticks with applesauce, bratwurst (a type of German sausage) with hazelnut & chocolate cream, vanilla ice cream with olives and other utterly bizarre combinations. The most beloved combination, as confirmed by the survey on the BK website? A surprisingly tasty cucumber and Marmalade pairing.
Pride Whopper
The Pride Whopper made waves in 2014 when Burger King decided to turn a single San Francisco location into ground zero for fast-food equality. For $4.29, customers got what looked like a mysterious rainbow-wrapped burger during Pride Week. The kicker? It was just a regular Whopper with a powerful message inside: “We Are All the Same Inside.” The campaign became such a viral sensation that those rainbow wrappers ended up on eBay, fetching up to $1,000.
Eight years later, BK Austria tried their own spin with “equal buns” Whoppers featuring either two tops or two bottoms – a move that landed about as gracefully as a soggy french fry. The backlash was so severe that Jung von Matt Donau, the German advertising agency behind the campaign, had to issue a public apology for not consulting with LGBTQ+ community members before launching the promotion.
The Real Cheeseburger
If you thought that the Green Bay Whopper was overkill, wait till you hear about this cheese lover’s fever dream. The Real Cheeseburger emerged as Burger King Thailand’s most dairy-daring creation in 2023. This monstrosity was packed with a whopping (no pun intended) 20 slices of American cheese between two sesame seed buns – and absolutely nothing else — not even a patty in sight.
Priced at a surprisingly modest 109 Thai Baht (about $3), this meatless abomination costs less than a third of a regular burger. While some adventurous souls in Bangkok attempted to conquer this cheese tower, most couldn’t make it halfway through. The Whopper sparked quite a social media frenzy, though not necessarily for the right reasons. Some customers complained about the “crazy quantity of cheese,” while others questioned if this was some elaborate practical joke. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. As Burger King Thailand proudly declared, “This is no joke. This is for real.”
Shrimp Whopper
If you aren’t a seafood lover, the Shrimp Whopper may not sound like the most appealing burger around. Nevertheless, Shrimps on Whoppers isn’t a novelty at all. You can find all sorts of seafood offerings at Asian BK’s.
In 2023, Burger King Japan introduced a unique surf-and-turf creation that combined their signature flame-grilled beef patty with plump garlic shrimp marinated in spices and herbs, including parsley, black and white pepper, and chili peppers4. Available in three sizes — regular, double, and junior — each version featured the same amount of shrimp but varied in beef patty portions. The regular was priced at 890 yen, the double at 1,240 yen, and the junior at a modest 540 yen4.
This wasn’t Burger King’s first venture into seafood territory. South Korea had previously experimented with various shrimp-topped Whoppers, including the Garlic Shrimp Whopper, while China and Japan offered numerous crustacean variations, including Shrimp Tartar, Shrimp Cocktail, and even Thai-inspired Tom Yum Shrimp versions.
Sprout Surprise Whopper
The Sprout Surprise Whopper was Burger King UK’s brave attempt to make Brussels sprouts appealing back in 2010. For five days before Christmas, three UK locations served up this festive oddity featuring a regular beef patty topped with a second patty made from Brussels sprouts puree, Emmental cheese, and herb crumbs. BK’s bold endeavor to make Britain’s most hated Christmas vegetable palatable didn’t exactly start a Brussels sprouts revolution, but it definitely earned its spot in fast-food history as one of the weirdest seasonal specials ever created.
SufganiKing
In 2016, Burger King Israel launched the SufganiKing for Hanukkah, replacing traditional burger buns with sufganiyot (jelly doughnut-style bread) and substituting the typical jelly filling with ketchup. The burger was priced at 14.90 shekels (approximately $4) and was available from December 25, 2016, to January 1, 2017.
While the product generated buzz on social media, with some Facebook users questioning whether the images were real or photoshopped, actual customer reviews were mixed. A Jerusalem Post review noted several shortcomings: the doughnut buns lacked the advertised ketchup filling, there was no powdered sugar as promised, the lettuce was limp, and the excessive mayonnaise and ketchup made it difficult to eat.
Upside Down Whopper
The Upside Down Whopper landed in June 2019 as Burger King’s most literal marketing stunt yet. To celebrate Netflix’s “Stranger Things” Season 3, BK flipped their signature burger completely upside down — that’s it, just a regular Whopper served bottom-bun-up in retro 1980s packaging. The burger was available only for a limited time at just 11 select locations (a nod to the show’s character Eleven) across major cities like Miami, Houston, Boston, and New York.
While some might call it the laziest tie-in promotion ever (it was literally just an inverted burger), the campaign perfectly captured both BK’s knack for playful marketing and the 1980s nostalgia that made “Stranger Things” a hit.
Whopperito
Originally conceived by a couple of franchisees in Ohio and Pennsylvania, this burger-burrito mashup caught fire on social media, prompting BK to take it nationwide in August 2016. For $2.99 ($4.99 in a combo), customers got their hands on what was essentially a deconstructed Whopper wrapped in a flour tortilla.
The creation featured BK’s signature flame-grilled beef with a special blend of Tex-Mex spices layered with fresh tomatoes, onions, lettuce, and pickles. Instead of the traditional mayo, BK slathered it with creamy queso sauce before wrapping everything in a tortilla. Industry experts speculated this was BK’s strategic move to compete with Chipotle, which was struggling with food safety issues at the time.
The timing couldn’t have been better — the U.S. restaurant industry was facing a tough environment with consumers pulling back spending, and Chipotle’s same-store sales had tumbled 23.6% in the second quarter. While some critics praised its uniqueness, others found it “funky but not polarizing,” as BK’s North American president, Alex Macedo, described it. Whatever may be the case, the product was designed as a limited-time offering while supplies lasted.
Whopper Dog
The Whopper Dog was BK’s attempt to turn Whopper toppings into a hot dog experience. Launched in May 2016, this creation came just months after Burger King added hot dogs to their regular menu. The Whopper Dog took BK’s signature Oscar Mayer hot dog and topped it with classic Whopper toppings: lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onions, mayonnaise, and ketchup.
This experimental menu item was part of BK’s Grilled Dogs line, which initially launched with just two options — a standard hot dog and a chili cheese version. The Whopper Dog represented BK’s efforts to leverage their flagship burger’s popularity in a new format. However, like the rest of the Grilled Dogs line, it didn’t last long on the menu, disappearing by 2017.
Whopper Donut
The Whopper Donut made its quirky debut on National Donut Day 2018 when Burger King decided to punch holes in their signature sandwich. Available at just five locations nationwide (Boston, Miami, L.A., New York City, and Salt Lake City), this creation wasn’t some fancy pastry hybrid — it was simply a regular Whopper with a hole in the middle, marketed as “the first flame-grilled donut.” The removed centerpiece came served alongside as a bonus mini slider, giving customers a chance to enjoy their Whopper two ways. While the modification was minimal, the promotion seemingly captures BK’s knack for turning ordinary menu items into social media gold through simple but memorable gimmicks.
Windows 7 Whopper
In October 2009, Burger King Japan celebrated Microsoft’s Windows 7 launch with a monstrous creation that turned heads across the tech and fast-food worlds. The burger stacked seven beef patties into a towering 5-inch beast, with each patty weighing 113 grams. Customers could tackle the Whopper for 16 days (extended from the original 7-day run after selling 6,000 burgers in just four days).
The first 30 customers each day scored it for 777 yen ($8.50), while others paid 1,450 yen ($15). At over 2,100 calories, this tech-inspired tower packed enough energy to fuel an all-night coding session and then some. The promotion turned into a viral sensation across Japan, with countless YouTubers attempting to conquer what became one of BK’s most memorable limited-time offerings.
The Impossible Whopper
The Impossible Whopper made its groundbreaking debut in 2019 as Burger King’s first plant-based version of their signature sandwich. This meatless creation features a flame-grilled Impossible Foods patty made from soy protein concentrate, topped with sliced tomatoes, lettuce, mayonnaise, ketchup, pickles, and sliced onions on a toasted sesame seed bun. While maintaining the same build as the original Whopper, this version provided a plant-based alternative that helped BK tap into the growing vegetarian and flexitarian market. The Impossible Whopper proved so successful that it became a permanent menu item across the U.S., marking one of Burger King’s most significant menu innovations in recent history.