McFAIL: Eight Case Studies of McDonald's Gone Horribly Wrong

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McDonald's thrives on conformity ― essential when serving approximately 47 million customers daily. Ideally, items get served in the same amount of time and with the same quality and cashier friendliness at every location, a sort of Stepfordian vision of perfection. The last thing any corporation craves is a breakdown in routine, something that's happened a lot at McDonald's in recent years. You know the company is crapping McNuggets over the following crazy eight:

Photo via Epic Fail

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8. Suing McDonald's for your fatness sounds ridiculous, but plaintiffs representing the family of two Bronx teenagers in an ultimately dismissed 2003 case were dead serious. 

7. Claims of menacing crap found in food have dogged the chain for years, but few have the gross-out potential of this month's discovery of a two-inch nail in a burger at a McDonald's in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Photo via Red Twolips

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5. Train-wreck behavior from pop-tart Ashlee Simpson seems commonplace these days, but back in 2005 she offered her first public taste via a drunken McFail in Toronto, in which she unsuccessfully tried to jump the counter and summon a manager. All for no discernible reason. 

4. In a scene that could have inspired an episode of The Sopranos, a gunman trapped five women in a basement freezer, then killed the manager of a Marion County, Ore., McDonald's in 1985.

Photo courtesy Magnetisch

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3. The infamous ball pit death hoax of 1999, when a mother in Midland, Tenn., supposedly lost her 3-year-old after he was accidentally pricked by a heroin-filled hypodermic in the McDonald's childrens' play area. It terrorized parents everywhere.

2. Seven died at a McDonald's in Vantaa, Finland, when a 20-year-old chemistry student detonated the homemade suicide bomb in his backpack. No motive was discovered.

Photo via Hypebeast

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1. James Oliver Huberty killed 21 people and injured 19 others at a SoCal McDonald's in 1984's San Ysidro McDonald's Massacre, as it's delicately dubbed on Wikipedia.

Crave more McDonald's gore? Check out McMurder, a whole Web site devoted to it.