Asking for it......

'Unsettling and bizarre' YouTube prank leads to federal In-N-Out lawsuit

The prankster faces a lifetime ban and could be responsible for financial damages

By Farley Elliott

Southern California burger behemoth In-N-Out is stepping into the legal arena again, filing a lawsuit against a local YouTube prankster for impersonating an employee and making lewd comments to area customers.

Bryan Arnett, a popular content creator with more than 600,000 followers across YouTube and Instagram, uploaded a prank video to his YouTube channel on April 25. In the video, Arnett impersonates an In-N-Out drive-thru employee at what appears to be a location in Glendale, talking with customers as they pull up in their vehicles to order food. The restaurant, however, is closed for Easter (as are all In-N-Out locations), leaving Arnett — dressed in a red apron, white collared shirt and paper In-N-Out hat, simulating In-N-Out employee attire — to lure in unsuspecting diners. 

In the video, which is no longer searchable on YouTube but has not been pulled from the site, Arnett pretends to take customer orders, offers nonexistent menu items to some drivers and gets confrontational with others. He asks one: “I like watching my wife sleeping with other men. Is that something you’d be interested in?” At one point, he enlists the help of another person to pretend that a cockroach was found in an order. “We’ve had a pretty bad cockroach problem this week,” Arnett replies to his accomplice in front of an ordering customer. Later, the pair pretend that a condom had fallen into a meal.

Arnett has a history of pranks at In-N-Out, including a video where he gets kicked out by management after attempting to pay for strangers’ orders using only pennies, and another where he places a fake employee of the month plaque on the wall of an In-N-Out dining room. In-N-Out has finally responded, filing a lawsuit in federal court on Friday, June 20, that accuses Arnett of damaging the vaunted burger brand.

The lawsuit alleges, among other things, that Arnett “falsely represented” the company, adding that his “lewd, unsettling and bizarre” remarks in the April 25 video were defamatory and “reflected directly and negatively on In-N-Out.” The suit also notes that the company sent a cease-and-desist letter to Arnett on May 2. If successful, the suit would ban Arnett from all In-N-Out locations moving forward, and he would be liable for proven financial damages. Money made from his video would also be owed to In-N-Out.

Orange County-headquartered (for now) In-N-Out has long been protective of its family-friendly brand. The company previously sued a separate YouTuber back in 2018 for similar pranks and is notorious for hosting international pop-ups as a way to hold on to its global trademarks — though that hasn’t stopped copycat restaurants from occasionally springing up elsewhere.

On Monday, Arnett responded to the lawsuit with a new video on his YouTube channel — while ordering and eating In-N-Out from his car, naturally. “I’m not gonna sit here and act surprised,” he says. “When I went out and filmed the video, I kinda knew what kind of waters I was stepping into.” He later adds, “I knew I was kinda teetering the line a little bit, pushing my luck.”

“I wouldn’t say I’m worried about the lawsuit,” he says in the video. “Like yeah, sure, it’ll probably be annoying or whatever, but whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen.”