The Bizarre Reason Outback Steakhouse Was Once Labeled 'Evil'

Outback Steakhouse sign Noderog/Getty Images
By Angela L. Pagán

You might know Outback Steakhouse as the place with the commercials that have a distinctly Australian voiceover and some sizzling B-roll shots of steak on a plate. What you might not know is that back in 2017, the chain restaurant was thought to be associated with demonic cult activities.

Yes, you read that right. For a brief moment, because of a tweet mapping out the locations of Outback Steakhouse restaurants in multiple cities, people thought the chain could be plotting some evil shenanigans. A now-suspended account on X, formerly known as Twitter, posted a map image connecting some Outback Steakhouse locations, which seemed to form a pentagram.

Other users joined in this investigation and noticed the pentagram layout popping up in many areas across the country, with more than 100,000 X users reposting the original pentagram map and similar posts. This led to a barrage of talk about what this all meant when it comes to Outback Steakhouse as a whole. While some users continued to see pentagrams and theorize, others began posting different patterns they noticed when connecting Outback Steakhouse restaurants on maps.

How Outback responded

tomahawk steak dailymood/Shutterstock

Eventually, Outback Steakhouse was forced to respond to the speculations, and it did so with some humor. The brand replied to the original post with a map showing part of Florida and the chain's popular Bloomin' Onion appetizer superimposed over it. Soon after, the Australian-themed steakhouse also replied to another user's post about the conspiracy theory, writing, "If the Bloomin' Onion is evil then we don't want to be nice."

 

Beyond maps of Outback locations in random regions with lines resembling a five-pointed star pattern on them, there was not much actual evidence to connect Outback Steakhouse to anything satanic. Jokes aside, this theory was a stretch from the beginning. As evidenced by the storm of posts online, plenty of ridiculous patterns or shapes can be gleaned by staring at a map of restaurant locations. The only arguably evil thing about Outback Steakhouse is its lack of authentically Aussie-style menu items.

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