Apr 17, 2026 19:35:00

'The buns in the photos of McDonald's hamburgers in Japan are all slightly misaligned,' a topic that has become a hot topic overseas.

A thread on the social news site Hacker News has become a hot topic, pointing out that 'all the photos of McDonald's hamburgers in Japan have the buns slightly misaligned.'

The buns in McDonald's Japan's burger photos are all slightly askew | Hacker News

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47785738

This is a photo of the English menu on McDonald's Japan's official website. You can see that most of them are distorted, with the buns shifted or slightly crooked.

In contrast, if you look at the menu photos on McDonald's official website in the US, all the buns are straight, and there are no burgers with buns that are crooked or slanted.

Even in the UK, the hamburgers pictured on the menus all have perfectly straight buns, although some may have sauce or toppings spilled on them.

In response, Hacker News is discussing why McDonald's in Japan deliberately tilts or shifts the buns.

One user

pointed out that the Double Teriyaki McBurger seems to have been designed to make the sauce more clearly visible.

However, the user who made this point also commented, 'They do it with hamburgers (which have less sauce), so it doesn't make sense.'

Furthermore, he pointed out that competitor Burger King doesn't distort the buns in their photos, and commented, 'It's kind of...cute.'

The following video released by McDonald's Canada showcases a technique of deliberately shifting the buns to highlight the ingredients in a hamburger. Some

comments suggest that the top bun is slightly offset from the bottom bun to better showcase the ingredients in each layer.

Go Behind the Scenes at a McDonald's Photo Shoot | McDonald's - YouTube


Some comments suggest that 'In Japan, the Food Labeling Act requires that the package and the actual product be the same. That's why the bun is distorted.' Overseas, the following video, which points out that the package and the actual size of Japanese sweets are almost the same, has become a hot topic with more than 110,000 likes. However, there are also comments such as 'Mos Burger and Burger King aren't like that,' which refutes this theory.

Some people say, 'Greek and Roman columns were slightly curved to be pleasing to the human eye. To the human eye, the center of a column appears to narrow in a concave curve at its midpoint, and entasis corrects this distortion.'

by e — фуст.

Other comments included the opinion that ' that's the wabi-sabi of hamburgers, ' and a link to a Wikipedia article explaining wabi-sabi.