We didn’t used to watch everything on computer screens, but that started changing in 2003 with “End Of The World,” a 90-second cartoon about nuclear annihilation that’s considered by many to be the first viral video. You remember it: The frantic pace; the scratchy, childlike animation; “I am le tired”; and Australia being all, “WTF, mate.”
It was made by a guy named Jason Windsor, who just debuted a polished, yet similarly unhinged sequel to the clip via New York. The follow-up comes not as any kind of commemoration, but rather because we have a president that brags about the size of his nuclear button on Twitter. Yep, Donald Trump is at the center of the whiplashing clip, which features cameos from your favorite confused Aussies and sleepy French slackers amidst shots of Trump and Kim Jong Un dueling with phallic nukes. Watch it above.
“Making fun of these very, very real threats to our survival, that are on the one hand not to be taken lightly at all—really that was the instigation to finally make another video associated with the end of the world,” Windsor told New York. “Because, yeah man, shit’s fucked right now, and it’s only going to be getting worse.”
He also expounded a bit on the making of the original clip, noting that it was born out of “suburban frustration” on a playground in Tracy, California. “There’s not a lot to do in a town like that. So maybe there is kind of a flippant fuck-this attitude [in the video], but I also think that people process stuff that way,” he says. “When there’s something really scary, we laugh about it. These are real things that are happening to us.”
Also, that voice he uses was inspired by the “vaguely Slavic” accent of a character in Rounders. 15 years later, that “H’okay!” remains hilarious.